Kick-Ass Bitches

Alike- Pariah

Early on in the film Pariah it is clear that Alike is adaptable, she is a Chameleon. After going to a club with her friend Laura she changes out of her hat, do-rag and oversized polo shirt to go home dressed in something a little more feminine. At first it seems that her true identity is the one she shows with Laura— that she’s an AG (aggressive, butch lesbian). However this soon proves false, Alike is actually very shy and sensitive. She spends her lunch hour at school workshopping her poetry with her English teacher, and she doesn’t really enjoy going to the club or the piers to pick up chicks like Laura. When she starts hanging out with Bina, a classmate and the daughter of her mother’s friend, she changes her wardrobe again to be more like her. In the end it is unclear what Alike’s true identity is, maybe she herself does not know, but she decides to break free— she leaves her friends and family behind, throwing off all costumes and misconceptions, to start anew at an early college program on the other side of the country.

For adaptability and independence, Alike is a kick-ass bitch.

Girls Against Boys and the Misogyny of Rape/Revenge Films

Last year I was invited to a test screening for the upcoming film Girls Against Boys directed by Austin Chick, I’m always delighted to watch movies for free, so I jumped at the chance to see it.

1. My first problem with the film lies with the title (it’s a stupid title), I had no information about the film other than the title when I went to see it— this was months before the film was slated for release so there had been no press for the movie, and a trailer had not been made available yet. The title Girls Against Boys does not prepare you for what this film is about AT ALL. This sounds like the title of a sex comedy, but the plot of the movie is: A pretty college student named Shea is dumped by her (much older) boyfriend. In an attempt to cheer her up, her co-worker Lu takes her out for a night of partying. They meet a group of guys at a club, and one of these guy’s follows Shea home and rapes her. Lu and Shea then go on a killing spree to take revenge on Shea’s rapist, and all of the men who have wronged her.

2. Another troubling thing about Girls Against Boys is the costumes. The main characters Lu and Shea spend the majority of the film running around in booty shorts, mini skirts, and tank tops— on one level this makes sense because they work in a bar and use their sex appeal to make tips, but the movie takes place in late October (at the end of the film they go to a Halloween party) in New York City, when the average temperature at night is about 45 degrees fahrenheit. While in reality the women of NYC constantly make stupid wardrobe choices in the name of fashion, this is just ridiculous. Furthermore the girls’ costumes sexualize them to the extreme— even after one of them is raped. This seems a little bit problematic.

3. I can forgive the first two points, although Girls Against Boys is flawed, I actually really enjoyed watching it. I like to see girls kicking ass, and hey if you’re going to portray rape in a movie, I think the least you can do is let the victim castrate her attacker (I’m not saying this would be justice in real life, but we’re talking about the violence of representation here, not real world violence)— but the thing that I can’t forgive, the thing that ruins the film for me, is the “twist” ending. I don’t feel bad about giving away the twist ending, because it’s so subtle that most people do not realize that there’s a twist at all, and I only understand the ending because the director explained it at the test screening I went to. So it turns out at the end that Lu is a figment of Shea’s imagination and they didn’t actually kill anyone. This is indicated (too) subtly— after Shea kills Lu because she starts murdering men indiscriminately who haven’t actually done anything wrong. This is followed by a series of still shots of all the locations where the murders took place earlier in the film, each location is clean and spotless, no sign of dead bodies or blood and guts. Then Shea goes back to school and work acting like nothing has happened. In the last scene of the film Shea walks in on another girl that she works with crying in the back of the bar because of some unspecified boy trouble. Shea comforts her and takes a seat on a staircase, behind Shea on the staircase is a CGI apparition of Lu. Then the film ends. The main reason that this “twist” ending makes me angry is that the ‘oh the protagonist is actually just crazy’ ending is so overdone. It was interesting when Alfred Hitchcock did it in Psycho, the hundred or so movies that have done it since then (Identity, Rear Window, Fight Club, The Ward, The Uninvited, etc.) vary in quality, but have made this kind of ending horribly cliche. But this is also infuriating because it means that Shea didn’t actually get her revenge, that she’s just a victim, and her rapist is still walking the streets unpunished for his crime. It also begs the question that my friend Teresa asked after we saw that film, “So what was she doing all weekend, just sitting in her apartment?”

4. The genre of movies called rape/revenge includes films like Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2, Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives, Teeth, I Spit On Your Grave, and Hard Candy. Although Ingmar Bergman’s 1960 film The Virgin Spring is cited as a rape/revenge film, the genre really started in the 1970s during the exploitation horror trend. More recently rape/revenge film has become the go to genre for indie directors trying to make films about kick-ass female protagonists. These films are the misguided attempts by male directors to insert feminism into their films. The rape/revenge genre is satisfying in it’s way, the women are often very powerful, but rape/revenge is inherently misogynistic: a) the character’s get raped, often violently, these films glorify violence, both violence against women and violence done by women, b) these films tend to treat their female characters as sex symbols, thus eroticizing rape. Basically, it’s really difficult to make a film about rape and have it not be misogynistic. I think it’s notable that none of these films were directed by women.

Celine- Before Sunrise/Before Sunset

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are probably the greatest romance movies of all time. The first is idealistic and hopelessly romantic, the second is bittersweet and just as (if not more) enthralling than the first. The films hinge on characters and dialogue, so they would be nothing without a great female protagonist— and Celine fills the order like few others have. Celine is intelligent, funny, and opinionated. She often seems less naive than her male counterpart Jesse, and isn’t afraid to call him out on his bullshit.

Although Celine is certainly as much of a dreamer as Jesse, she is also a realist, at times to the point of cynicism. She is an idealistic world saver, she sees the problems that trouble humanity, and wants to fix them, she is well aware how little impact she can have as one person, but her cynicism does not stop her from doing this with joy.

For smarts, idealism, and great conversational skills— Celine is a kick-ass bitch.

The third film about Celine and Jesse’s story, Before Midnight, played the Sundance film festival this month, and will be premiering in theaters in 2013.

Jenna- Waitress

“I can’t have coffee, that’s on the bad food list you gave me! What kind of doctor are you?!”

The protagonist of the film Waitress is a sassy pie genius named Jenna. Unfortunately she has a serious self-esteem problem, and an albatross around her pretty little neck: a jealous, suffocating husband named Earl.

When Jenna gets pregnant (after Earl gets her drunk one night and she gives in to his sexual advances) she fears that she will be trapped with her no good husband forever. She then embarks on an affair with her dishy (married) doctor, Jim Pomatter, perhaps as one last hurrah before the baby ruins her life. Dr. Pomatter seems like he might be her knight in shining armor, but in the end it’s actually her baby that saves her. When she holds her daughter in her arms for the first time it gives her the courage and self-confidence to ditch her abusive husband— after all what kind of mother would she be if she allowed her child to live the same miserable life she’d been living? In the end she also dumps the hot doc, and rolls out of the hospital with her girls, fellow waitresses Becky and Dawn, and the newborn Lulu, she don’t need no man.

For sass, brilliant pie, and being a great mom, Jenna is a kick-ass bitch.

Cha Young-goon- I’m A Cyborg, But That’s OK

This character is insane, but she’s totally fine with that. This is not a film like Girl, Interrupted or A Woman Under The Influence about a woman’s struggle to overcome mental illness, to get better, to live the way that society or her family wants her to, no, this is a film about a woman’s totally uncompromising will to live the way she wants to live. Cha Young-goon has the delusion that she is not a regular human girl, but a combat cyborg. She is sent to a mental institution after she electrocutes herself at the factory where she works in an attempt to charge her batteries. The doctors at the hospital do everything they can to pull her out of this delusion, and convince her that she is in fact human, but they are unable to do so.

I’m not saying I’m pro mental illness, I’m just saying that I’m really impressed by this woman’s will power, AND the mental health establishment has a long history of misogyny and attempting to repress people with alternative gender expression or sexuality, and films about women in mental institutions usually just show how this repression operates, they do not show characters like Cha Young-goon, who, although insane, still manages to assert her own personality over the repressive powers of the medical establishment. Ultimately the only person who is able to help Cha Young-goon is not a doctor, but a fellow patient who accepts her assertion that she is a cyborg. In the end she wins, there is no “cure” for her, she has decided to be a cyborg and no one can change her mind.

Cha Young-goon is a kick-ass bitch.

Buffy Summers- Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Buffy Summers is, in my opinion, the greatest character of all time. Buffy the Vampire Slayer started out as a satire, it asked the question, ‘what if the fate of the world rested in the hands of a 16-year-old girl from Southern Californian who cares more about shopping and boys than the serious business of fighting the forces of darkness?’ The movie version of Buffy The Vampire Slayer portrayed Buffy Summers as a shallow, immature, strictly comedic character, but the TV show revealed her to be so much more than that. Buffy is one of only a small number of female superheroes who manages to kick-ass with out compromising her femininity, there is never any doubt that Buffy is a girly girl, which is cool because it shows that just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean that you can’t also be tough, assertive, and independent. Furthermore Buffy evolves through out the TV show to be an incredibly strong and complex character, she is a loyal friend, a fearless leader, and an incredible fighter, but she isn’t perfect she has fears, insecurities, and real world problems. One of my favorite things about Buffy is that her problems are so relatable (this is especially the case after the 3rd season of the show): Buffy may be the chosen one but she still gets rejected by a one-night-stand in college; Buffy’s job may be to battle evil, but she still has to work in a fast food joint to support herself and her little sister after their mother’s death; Buffy may be a confident, beautiful, independent woman, but she still has terrible taste in men (Angel and Spike are both vampires for God’s sake). Although Buffy is not the most book smart character on the show, and sometimes comes off as a dumb blonde she repeatedly shows that she is actually very intelligent, resourceful, and funny— no one has ever told jokes while kicking ass quite as well as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I love Buffy Summers, she’s a kick-ass bitch.