I’m short on words today, so instead I’ll leave you with my favorite performance from the premiere feminist-leaning actress working today: Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly.
In “The Devil Wears Prada,” Streep chips away at Miranda’s bitch stereotype until she’s left with who Miranda truly is: a devoted, convicted, hard-working woman who made her own fortune and career on her terms.
So here’s to you Mirandas and Meryls out there:
Dakota Fanning, it’s nice to see you’ve matured from playing impish daughters of movie star dads to complex, self-contemplating young woman. Please leave behind those borderline pedaphiliac Marc Jacobs ads. You don’t need ‘em to sell yourself—or anyone/thing else.
And let’s remember it’s not just women who are affected—it’s the men and boys who watch and are being taught that on Oscar night- just like all other nights- guys get the Awards and women get to be the body brands.
I’m never sure how to feel about Women’s History Month, especially since once you’re out of the 8th grade, it seems to inch further into obsolescence. But as Rush Limbaugh chose to usher us into this femme-inspired month with a senseless, derogatory attack on women, maybe we need to celebrate WHM more than ever.
So, in this great month of remembering and reflecting on pioneering women, I’m going to bring you (roughly) a movie a day that features women protagonists who might have gotten lost in Hollywood politics, yet they’re ones we should—and need—to be talking about. Today, I’m starting backwards with 2008’s family drama masterpiece “Rachel Getting Married.”
Every time I mention “Rachel Getting Married,” whether now or back in 2008, the response it would elicit from men was my first eye-opener of how we, as consumers, view stories centered around women: There were groans and snorts, a roll of the eyes, and the the unabashedly sincere, “Why would I want to watch a movie about Anne Hathaway bitching the whole time?” Have we become so accustomed to Bridezillas and whiny rom-coms that this is what even male art-house patrons expect from our women characters?
Yes. Fortunately, director Jonathan Demme (“The Silence of the Lambs”) and screenwriter Jenny Lumet did not craft a leading woman from a gender-conditioned man’s perspective.
The leading woman here is not Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt), as the title implies, but Kym (Anne Hathaway), an irreverent recovering drug addict who is permitted leave from rehab to return to her childhood home for her sister Rachel’s wedding. But recovery does not mean rehabilitated, and Kym drags with her a self-destructive nature she can’t quite shake; rather, it’s enabled when she must confront the years-worth of repressed anger, resentment and grief of Rachel over Kym’s role in the death of their late brother. On the surface, yes, there is a wedding; however, “Rachel Getting Married” is not solely a “woman’s story,” but a story of recovering from a traumatic loss.
We have seen many redemptive stories about men, but very few centered around women. Typically, a woman is integral for a man’s redemption, or uncovers her own sense of identity through a man’s help, love or support. Hollywood also loves a woman in crisis, at a point of no return; one glance at headlines and TV packages concerning Whitney Houston’s recent death shows that a woman’s tragedy is almost greater than her lifetime body of work. But Kym has a point of return, and although Lumet traveled where very few writers dare to go—crafting an unapologetic female protagonist—she and Demme are careful not to portray Kym as tragic; she’s flawed and desperate, but entirely devoid of self-pity. You might hate her enough to never want to give her a chance, but she’ll fight for that chance anyway.
Through her self-absorption and mean-spirited sarcasm, Kym is a polarizing character, and it was a drastic departure from her “Princess Diaries” role for Hathaway, who traded in her trademark Cheshire-grin for a cigarette-clinging grimace. Kym is only unsettling, however, when viewed through an archetypal lens; she confounds those who only see good girls and sinners, nice girls and mean girls. Kym forces the audience to consider a woman as more than a definition, as she plays a role in no one else’s journey but her own.
Aside from Kym’s struggle with addiction and grief, if there was a film in the last five years to pass the Bechdel Test with a flying double rainbow, it’s “Rachel Getting Married.” The film explores a relationship left untouched by filmmakers: sisters. Their relationship is fraught with insecurities and resentment, but despite their suffering, Kym and Rachel seem to display a responsibility toward each other—a refreshing break from the cattiness too often displayed by women in films.
“Project X,” which reads like an extended GoDaddy commercial, is the 2012 answer to “Super Bad,” because Jonah Hill is a super-serious actor now who only goes back to high school when he’s an undercover cop and BFF’s with Channing Tatum.
Funny story: For a brief and regrettable time in my life, I dated a former-Nickelodeon actor who was auditioning for this movie, then known as a top-secret project produced by the “Hangover” director. I helped him read lines for the audition (they were terrible). Alas, he didn’t get the part, but considering he broke up with me when I was going through a rough time and didn’t feel like having sex with him everyday, maybe he was perfect for this role.
OK, so maybe I’m biased. But despite this movie’s depiction of teenage girls as Megan Fox cyborgs who are constantly DTF in sexy bra-and-panties combos, the mentality behind these teenage boys is perhaps more troublesome. As much as Hollywood believes this is how boys should act, it doesn’t paint them in a particularly favorable light. They come off as neither intelligent nor rational, but rather primitive. Is this the new masculinity? If it is, I think it actually makes a pretty strong case for femininity.
A movie as hedonistic as “Project X” also reads like Softcore Porn 101—is this where the fascination for whores and strip clubs begins? The more teenage boys are taught that this is how they should look at, judge, and regard women, then the more the teenage boys who are shy, sensitive, and considerate will tailor their wants and desires to mirror what they think they should be rather than who they really are. And then they’ll go to college and join fraternities.
Since the release of “Super Bad,” there has been lamenting over the lack of “female Super Bads” in Hollywood. Although I don’t think it would be productive to show teenage girls sexually objectifying their peers, it’s obvious that teen comedy for girls did reach a whole new low in the new millennia, save for “Easy A.” Can we just bring back Kat from “10 Things I Hate About You?”
My weekend pick: Stay home, rent “Easy A” or Marjane Satrapi’s poignant coming-of-age tale “Persepolis,” and save your money for next week’s release of “Friends With Kids.”
In the soon-to-be-infamous “Desperate Housewives” trial that opened yesterday, Nicollette Sheridan had to testify that, in real life, she’s not her DH character.
Meaning: She’s not a hyper-sexual woman who seduces every man she sees, regardless if there’s a wedding band on his finger.
I’ll say it one more time: An actress who played a “slut” on TV is actually not a “slut” in real life.
Got it? Good. Consider yourself brilliant, because it took a team of lawyers to prove this.
From CNN:
Sheridan first tried to make sure jurors knew she is different from the character she played, who she described as “a very colorful character, sassy, overt, audacious.”
“She has a heart, but people loved to hate her,” Sheridan said. “I think honesty is about the only thing we shared.”
Jurors appeared to enjoy several clips of the show, featuring her character seducing a series of men. They laughed several times during the playing of the clips.
Sheridan filed a lawsuit of wrongful termination against her former employer, DH creator/showrunner Marc Cherry, after her character was suddenly killed off in season 5. The inciting incident that Sheridan claims led to her termination? Cherry hitting her on the head during a disagreement over a line change. Cherry at first denied the incident; then, he said he hit her but it was only a “comedic, light tap,” as if it were OK for a showrunner (or a director) to hit an actress. It’s not, but ABC seems to think Sheridan’s on-and-off screen character deserved it.
While this case is a whole load of he said-she said, I do have to wonder, has an actor’s onscreen persona ever been dissected, scrutinized or refuted in court? Was Robert Downey Jr shown clips of all their bad boy performances? Or Charlie Sheen? Or Robert Blake?
So far, this case just seems to be sending the message that women are rightfully pigeonholed in cultural tropes, whether in a TV role or a real-life courtroom drama. Don’t know you? She was only so good at playing a “loose,” money-grubbing woman onscreen because she was a “loose,” money-grubbing woman offscreen, too.
The Independent Spirit Awards were as equally disappointing as the Oscars this year, women-wise. Out of the 10 films nominated for Best Screenplay/First Screenplay, only one film had a women writer (Brit Marling, “Another Earth”). The directing category also featured five men, zero women.
If there was one triumphant “women moment,” it was writer-director Dee Rees and producer Nekisa Cooper winning the John Cassavetes Award for their Sundance showstopper “Pariah.” Of course, in the press room Rees fielded questions about the similarities between “Pariah” and “Precious.” She laughed it off and had this to say:
You mean, aside from having a black protagonist and being set in Brooklyn? Our film is about identity, it’s about this girl trying to find herself and I think that’s a universal concept everyone can relate to.
