Horror Movies

You guys, I was a scaredy-cat kid. I could not watch or read anything even remotely scary without many sleepless nights ensuing. So it's pretty weird that I find myself increasingly enjoying horror movies (though I still can't handle anything with ghosts.*) However, I've noticed that the horror movies I've seen recently do a not terrible job with their female characters.

Last year I went to see Splice. (Not a great movie to go see with a coworker, by the way.) This movie is about mad science (the mad scientist in question is female) and fucked-up mother-daughter dynamics. It veers off the rails at the end (let's throw in some rape!), but the first 80% is pretty fascinating.

Then a month or so ago I finally got around to watching Jennifer's Body. ZOMG, you guys, I heart this movie. Amanda Seyfried!** Amy Sedaris! Dudes getting eaten! Spiky vomit!

Again, though, the movie is really about the interactions between two women. Said interactions are, again, kind of fucked-up, because this is a horror movie, but you get that there's a real bond of some kind between the two women. So, my question is, is this a horror movie thing? Why can't we have complicated woman-woman interactions and realistic female badassery in other types of mainstream movies?

I don't have any answers for you, because it's Friday, and my brain is tired. But I have bumped up Teeth and Ginger Snaps in my queue, that's for sure.


*The Haunted Mouth, it warped me for life.

**SPOILER ALERT: Am I the only one who thinks that this whole movie would be a totally kick ass origin story for a superhero movie centered around Amanda Seyfried's character?

A Review of Thor, with Many Footnotes

Friday night I went to see Thor. I joked that I would turn off the feminist part of my brain for it, but it seems this has become impossible. In all fairness, it's hard to ignore ancient god-like people goading each other into berserker rage by calling them "princess." I feel like less-dedicated feminists than myself would have issues with that.

So I spent the first forty minutes of the movie rolling my eyes at the Norse god-aliens shaking weapons at each other and hollering, and then a weird thing happened: the movie suddenly became awesome. The titular Thor crash-lands on Earth, minus any special powers, and stomps around providing some delightful fish-out-of-water humor.¹

Also, as my friend Megan pointed out to me 2/3 of the way through the movie, this dude-created, dude-produced, mostly dude-written, and definitely dude-marketed movie makes the completely surprising decision to objectify men instead of women. And it wastes no time doing so: while Thor lies unconscious on the ground (because while being slammed into a vehicle at tornado wind speed isn't enough to kill him, of course, it is apparently enough to render him unconscious for a short period of time) the female characters crack wise about mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He then spends the next chunk of movie either shirtless or wearing a rather tight t-shirt², while the camera lingers lovingly on his pecs and the female characters (and audience, truth be told) gape. That, my friends, is objectification.

Meanwhile (and this is the part that really boggles my mind), the laydeez are not objectified at all. They wear plenty of clothes, even warrior goddess Sif³. And the human female characters all have various academic credentials; not only is Jane Foster⁵ an astrophysicist⁶, but the movie takes the time to establish that her seemingly useless assistant/comic relief buddy Darcy is a political science major. And, incidentally, said women speak directly to each other about the wisdom of chasing cosmic tornadoes and about having their gear stolen, passing the Bechdel test.

The last third of the movie, sadly, resembles the first third, but whatever. I was so delighted to run across a film that makes the exact opposite decision of every other action movie, ever, that I didn't care. Of course the immediate reaction of dudes who don't think too much about the patriarchy is to accuse me of having a double standard. Let me straighten said dudes the hell out.

We live in a patriarchy. This patriarchy spends a lot of time objectifying women. A movie that objectifies women while expecting you to identify with the men supports the status quo. A movie that objectifies men while expecting you to identify with the women challenges it. There's a double standard at play here, sure, but it's not of my making.

Furthermore, I'd like to point out that Hollywood is pretty much full of men, so it's usually men objectifying women. In Thor, straight men⁷ objectified straight men. So again, you'd be out of line to blame this on the ladies.

Don't get me wrong; I don't think the answer to all social injustice is to turn that injustice back upon the aggressors, and I don't recommend that more movies objectify men for the sake of evening things out. But I feel that it is legitimate to take joy in a work that challenges the patriarchy, and to call my enjoyment a double standard ignores a great deal of cultural context.


¹I firmly believe this movie would have been best as a romantic comedy. Hemsworth seems to be mediocre at "intimidating" and awesome at "hilarious". I'm envisioning it as a "Kate & Leopold" type movie, but actually funny and with a lot more beefcake.

²When I searched for pictures of "Thor Hemsworth", Google suggested that I search for "Thor Hemsworth shirtless". And so I did. Who am I to argue with Google?

³What the fuck is up with this, by the way? I assume this was a (poor) choice on the part of the comic series, but Sif has got to be the least warrior-like Norse goddess. What the hell is wrong with, say, Skade? And while I'm on the topic, I felt there was a deplorable lack of Valkyries in this movie (personal bias notwithstanding⁴).

⁴Yes, this is a footnote for a footnote, and yes, "Kyrie" is short for "Valkyrie", believe it or not.

⁵Which is obviously a name for a fictional primatologist, not a fictional astrophysicist, BTW.

⁶Yes, this may have enhanced my enjoyment of the movie. Now shut up.

⁷Well, Branagh seems to be straight. I didn't check out all the writers, etc.

The Women of East of Eden

I love Steinbeck and I love old movies, and yet somehow never watched East of Eden (the one with James Dean) until this week. Better late than never, I guess. Anyway, I'm going to talk about it now, so major spoiler alert for both book and movie.

Of course, it's a great movie, and James Dean is super hot and everything, but what got my attention was the way Cathy/Kate, his character's wayward mother, is portrayed. In the book, she is PURE EVIL. She tears through the novel wreaking havoc just for the hell of it. She starts out by burning down her house with her parents inside. Later she marries Adam (the book's protagonist), then cheats on him, then abandons him and their children, shooting him in the process (he survives). She returns to a life of prostitution, seemingly because her life was insufficiently depraved, and of course sex work is evil.

The movie corresponds to only the last third of the novel, and omits the parent-burning and infidelity. It also gives Kate a voice, which she uses to explain the husband-shooting:

Kate: I shot him because he tried to stop me.

I could have killed him if I'd wanted to, but I didn't.

I just wanted him to let me go.

Cal: Why?

Kate: Because he tried to hold me.

He wanted to tie me down.

I'll admit it, at this point I stood up from the couch and cheered. Shortly after this she lends her son (the movie's protagonist) a chunk of money because she finds it humorous that money from her brothel will support her highly religious estranged husband. You guys, this is pretty awesome. This movie took a character that, in the book, was basically the embodiment of evil and turned her into a fiercely independent, flawed woman with a sense of humor.

And the female love interest (Abra), often a fairly empty role in movies, has depth as well! Though, on the surface, she seems very much a "good girl", she alludes to wanting a more physical relationship than her boyfriend (Cal's brother Aron) does, and wonders if this makes her "bad." She also has this bit of dialogue:

The way I figure it out...

Aron never having had a mother...

he's made her everything good that he can think of...

and that's what he thinks I am.

That's who he's in love with. It's not me at all.

Ahem. There may have been more standing and cheering in my living room at this point. It's probably a good thing I do most of my movie-watching solo.

Again we're talking about a supporting character, but Abra's motivations (sexual frustration and the feeling that she's not seen for who she is) are clearly established. She pursues Cal specifically because he is a good match for her, and she takes the initiative throughout their courtship despite feeling conflicted about it.

For all I go on about the Bechdel test, it's this sort of thing I really want: women portrayed as actual people, with both flaws and virtues, character backgrounds, who are doing/have done their own soul-searching, and have agency. That is what so many movies lack, and fixing it is likely to fix the representational problems that the Bechdel test highlights. If female roles are fleshed out like male roles, then movies will likely have more of them, because audiences like watching characters they can understand and identify with. Furthermore, female characters will have more substantive conversations with each other, because they'll come into contact with each other more frequently, and they'll actually have things to talk about.

Unfortunately, while the character of Kate was altered for the better, in my opinion, the character of Lee was completely excised, leaving only white characters in the movie version. It's too bad, because it is Lee's ideas about free will that shapes the novel and motivates the ending. He also has some things to say about racism, which would have been nice to have in the movie. Omitting him was really an unfortunate decision, and one I do not think was necessary.

The Last Action Heroine

Feast your eyes on that ripped specimen of womanhood to the right. As you should know, that's Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in Terminator II, one of my very favorite movies. It's also one of the only depictions of a female action hero that I actually buy. Hamilton went through intense physical training not only to develop those bulging muscles but also to learn how to handle weaponry and just generally kick ass. The result is a highly memorable role in one of the best action films of all time.

Though Hamilton achieved both an amazing physical transformation and an excellent portrayal of a guerrilla warrior, unfortunately her role's memorability must be partly ascribed to just how rare it is for action heroines to have muscular physiques. Though it is certainly possible to be strong in a wiry kind of way, willowy women are routinely shown kicking ass alongside men three times their size, and it just makes no sense.



It's not like women can't bulk up. I'm no body-builder, but in just six months of roller derby training, I've put on two pant-sizes worth of pure muscle. We do have some rather thin women on the team, but massive freaking thighs are the norm. Female Olympic athletes are generally visibly muscular, though this does admittedly depend on their sport. And, perhaps most to the point, there are highly underutilized muscular actresses out there who could totally rock an action film role; Chyna is at least as good at acting as Vin Diesel.

The problem is that action heroines are usually there to serve as lust objects for straight men, and not so much for compelling the audience's admiration. Sometimes I suspect that ultra-thin women are chosen for these roles partly because the cognitive dissonance induced by a woman wielding firearms that weigh more than she does places the film firmly in the realm of fantasy, allowing dudes to ogle her without feeling remotely threatened. This, like so many other problems with mainstream cinema, will only be solved when Hollywood takes its head out of its ass and finally starts serving up female roles with real substance and depth, and when more men realize that it's okay to identify with women, rather than objectify them.