THE FILM ATLAS ISSUE 1 WOMEN ON SCREEN EDITOR’S NOTE I recently met a rather large man in a pink shirt that read, “men aren’t funny.” Having just spent four years in left-leaning class rooms, I have grown accustomed to seeing feminist statements. They resonate with me and they are important to me. And now that being a feminist is increasingly fashionable in mainstream culture, these statements are more accessible. The text on the pink shirt stood out to me beyond contemporary stock feminism; not because it was better, but because it was so different. The shirt was cheekily THE FILM ATLAS challenging the sexist folklore that women aren’t funny by defi ning men through the same erroneous pigeonhole. Rather than looking at the victim of sexism, the text was searching for its perpetrator. ISSUE 1 In its satire of an antifeminist social mythology, the shirt was effec- tively demanding justice; presenting an accused and suggesting a retributive punishment by declaring men as unfunny. All this for just WOMEN ON SCREEN $19.99+ tax — oh! what a time to be alive! My hope is that the fi rst issue of The Film Atlas can serve a similar purpose to this pink shirt. The Film Atlas is a journal explor- ing visual culture. It contains a collection of articles — both academ- ic and meditative — that look at fi lm through a critical lens. Issue 1 is titled Women on Screen and is appropriately dedicated to females in cinema. Its content strives to look at feminism, and the women who work to realize female images, differently. To accomplish this we asked fi lmmakers, fi lm students, and fi lm lovers to talk to us and to write for us. It is our collective hope that the articles in this jour- nal might inspire a laugh, a sigh of solidarity, or a new perspective on women in visual culture.

Yours, Genevieve Citron Lead Editor and Journal Curator, The Film Atlas MASTHEAD CONTENTS Lead Editor and Journal Curator The Future is Female*: On Queer Futures and Alien Genevieve Citron Transcendence in Science Fiction Cinema and Beyond By Sophia Larigakis Senior Editors page 5 Katie Elder “It’s in the Eyes”: Constructed Value of the Feminine Conor Wickham Gaze in Amanda Knox By Katie Elder Advisory Editor page 11 Carolyn Buszynski Malory Archer: Mad Femme Spy Executive of Tomorrow By Genevieve Citron Editors page 15 Adrienne Buller The Life and Times of Kay Francis Charlotte Butler By Meghan King Rachel Summers page 19 Reservoirs of Embodied Memories in Ikwé: A Reflection on Authors Ancestral Knowledge Coursing Through the Body Pam Austin By Jacqueline Holloran Cooper Keara Campos page 23 Genevieve Citron Kill Bill, Tom, Dick, and Harry Jacqueline Holloran Cooper By Keara Campos Katie Elder page 25 Meghan King Player 1 Disconnected: Exploring Virtual Sites of Sophia Larigakis Subaltern Agency in Virginia David Leblanc By David Leblanc Sam Yoannou page 31 Marriage as Marxist Perversion: Manipulation and Control in Graphics David Fincher’s Gone Girl Madison Newey By Pam Austin page 37 Cover Art The Cost of a Good Cry: A Meditative Reflection on Femininity Aleeza Yermus and Power By Sam Yoannou Art Director page 43 Dylan Freeman-Grist Be Bold: An Interview with Filmmaker & Feminist Emma Higgins The Film Atlas Staff Design Consultant page 47 Frieda Zapf

The Future is Female*: On Queer Futures and Alien 6 Transcendence in Science Fiction Cinema and Beyond dominant history by queer cultures (125). Ann tential as a site for imagining revolutions. Rarely By Sophia Larigakis Cvetovich, quoted in Luciano’s article, suggests does the ‘monster’ subvert embodiment, despite that “[i]n the absence of institutionalized docu- a promise of transcending the limits of human mentation or in opposition to official histories, skin. In “Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs and Biopoli- memory becomes a valuable historical resource” tics in the Pharmacopornographic Era,” B. Pre- (125). Where dominant historiography upholds ciado, assigned female at birth, describes how an illusory ideal of objectivity, queer archiving they hack gender, capitalism and Big Pharma by practices embrace the power of the affective, committing to a regimen of non-prescribed tes- the subjective and the multiple. I want to know: tosterone. In the unauthorized use of a molecule how can we map these queer archiving practices associated with a specific gender, Preciado seeks onto how we see, experience and shape the his- to subvert and resist an institutionally and phar- tories and political landscapes of the future? macologically induced gender binary. Their’s is In her seminal essay “A Manifesto for Cy- a sci-fi contortion of non-fiction anti-science: borgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Femi- a powerful and queer Frankenstein. This resis- nism in the 1980s,” Donna Haraway presents the tance — in text and in life — to the corporate cyborg as the “fiction mapping our reality,” as heteronormative negation of the queer body does “an imaginative resource,” as a “potent [myth]” what science fiction should do: it provides radi- (Haraway 191-196). The cyborg, she suggests, cal visions (and embodiments) of corporeal au- is the postmodern weapon against heteronor- tonomy and transcendence. mative patriarchal capitalism, it is the ultimate In cinema, literature, and even legisla- synthesis — of human/animal and machine — ture, to be alien is to embody and represent an Under the Skin. Dir. Jonathan Glazer. 2013. and yet its wholeness is incoherent; the cyborg absolute Otherness, a non-belonging, an un- “Perhaps the body is, after all, our spaceship, the with theories and mythologies that grapple with is a new totality that revels in its schisms. The fathomable difference. Aliens are conceptual- only vehicle we have for transcendence.” — Palle the nuances of female and queer embodiment cyborg is a mythic proposal for a breakdown of ized as an invasive force, as something rotten Yourgrau, introduction to Chris Kraus’ Aliens and and subjectivity, and which posit alien or cyborg boundaries, a blueprint for “partiality, irony, in- and poisonous in the holy womb, as an intru- Anorexia, 2000 “difference” — as a powerfully subversive “vehi- timacy, and perversity” (192). Its myth rejects an sion that renders the familiar unrecognizable. cle for transcendence” (Yourgrau). The radical ideal of wholeness, and thus refuses to demon- The term “alien” in legislative rhetoric refers to This essay began in my mind as a vague potential of the future, I suggest (and hope, and ize difference. Haraway suggests that the cyborg anyone who lives within a country but has not inquiry into representations of gendered female imagine), is deeply linked to a negotiation with identity is “potent subjectivity synthesized from been officially and institutionally declared a cit- bodies and subjectivities in science fiction cin- (other, one’s own) non-normative bodies. The fusions of outsider identities” (216). Haraway’s izen thereof. One can be a legal, illegal, resident, ema. Like an alien parasite, the essay grew mon- future is a cyberfeminist stage on which to ne- cyborgs unite not in filial ties but, like a cho- non-resident, enemy and non-documented alien. strous and volatile. It evolved into an interroga- gotiate alien transcendence; our bodies ours to sen queer family, through affinity. These myth- What unites these types of “aliens” is the trans- tion of genre, an examination of the constraints hack. ic figures seek to reclaim and thus subvert that gression of borders, and an official declaration of of the gendered corporeal, a record of disap- For those of us for whom the past and “which marked them as other” (217). The cyborg a person’s non-belonging, a rhetorical xenopho- pointment and identification, an open-ended, the present are not nostalgic temporalities — extends a bionic middle finger to a worldly hier- bia. The term implies an intrusion, a breach of unsatisfied anti-manifesto of queer feminist because the structure of society was and is not archy predicated upon what is and is not “natu- ‘protective’ boundaries. The alien, then, is a queer future visions. In dialogue with theoretical my- on our side — the future is the only temporal ral.” Haraway’s mythology is a radical refiguring figure. Queerness is a rejection of arbitrary bor- thologies of cyborgs and aliens, this essay piv- realm left in which to envision a different experi- of difference; it is a glistening queer future. ders and a renunciation of binding embodiment. ots upon two science fiction films made in the ence of society. Therein lies its radical potential. It is no radical insight that science fiction Queerness is also persecuted just as “difference” same year and starring the same actress: Jon- In her essay “Nostalgia for an Age Yet to Come: is preoccupied with masculine-scientific forms of has always been. Luciano writes that queer camp athan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013) and Spike Velvet Goldmine’s Queer Archive,” Dana Lucia- reproduction; the genre is replete with botched “blossoms in the childhood experience of feeling Jonze’s Her (2013). Both films examine non-nor- no suggests that at the core of queer historiogra- attempts at life-giving and claims to godliness singularly alien to one’s straight surroundings” mative (alien, cyborg, bodiless) femininities, and phy is a rejection of the idea of history as singu- disassociated with the act of giving birth. These (Luciano 133). The affective force of feeling alien demonstrate (whether intentionally or not) that lar, objective, linear and logically “progressive” efforts to create a kind of unnatural life are often in the face of violent banality propels queer bod- the violent and restrictive confines of gender ex- (Luciano 123). Rather, queer archiving practices just the reiteration and re-articulation of vio- ies into productive rebellion; the rejection of tend also to these non-human forms. I read these pivot upon the recognition of the “ephemeral lence and patriarchy in higher tech bodies. Rare- stark and arbitrary boundaries makes those who films through a cyberfeminist lens — in dialogue and unusual traces” left outside of documented ly is the fantasy creature utilized to its full po- do not contort their bodies to fit agents of sub- 7 8 version and transcendence. degrees of ‘unnatural’. In Under the Skin, Johans- in her right mind would enter” (45). Johansson’s tant-cum-slave. “She” does everything for him — In Aliens and Anorexia, Chris Kraus notes son’s alien peers at her human body in a mirror character choreographs a lethal seduction: en- picks his music, turns out his lights, entertains that to be alien is to have “changed,” to have be- with a childlike curiosity — her assumed female tranced by the female body that leads them, the him. Voiced by Hollywood’s resident extra-ter- come “exemplary,” to transcend ones own re- skins are, to her, alien. In Her, Johansson’s gen- men wade deeper and deeper into a thick black restrial, Scarlett Johansson, the man’s operating strictive subjectivity (Kraus 38). That which is dered-female operating system hires a wom- lake. When their bodies are fully submerged, system eventually falls in love with him as well, alien, or Alien, is an ironic escape-through-sub- an to have sex with the protagonist Theodore their fate is to decay and then burst: a horrifying and hires a surrogate woman of her choice to mersion into “the imprisonment of total alien- in her stead (since she herself is bodiless). The underwater disembowelment. have sex with him — to be the body she does not ation and self-alienation” (40). In other words, woman the OS hires remains silent, and the OS As Osterweil suggests in her essay, “men, have. In her essay “Feminist Cyberpunk,” Karen the Alien is the final frontier of post-capitalism, speaks for her — a mismatched embodiment, after all, are not such discerning creatures, and Cadora discusses the limits of the gendered body an Other who has sewn up the cleavage of Other- one “whole” woman made out of two pieces of a bit of flirtation goes a long way” (45). An easy in cyberspace. Cadora suggests “female charac- ness, a uniting force of difference. A crucial point femaleness — a voice and a body. This futuristic seduction of a man is what women are told ters cannot assume a disembodied gaze, even in of Kraus’ text is the articulation of the produc- sex work doesn’t work for Theodore, who claims might happen to them in a nightmare (but not virtual reality. They are tied to their bodies in tive non-fiction of feeling alien — of attempting the bought body does not match the voice he has impossible) scenario. A ride from a stranger ways that male characters are not.” (Cadora 365). to transcend one’s corporeal limitations, to be fallen in love with. This iteration of an imperfect in a white van, an isolated, dark house — this That the ‘female’ operating system does not have more than a subject. Kraus’ Alien echoes Har- embodiment, the experience of a body that does is a horror-film tapestry, a series of events that her own body severs this link between gender away’s Cyborg — the Alien’s power lies in its not “fit” — an ‘alienness’ — is simply what it we (women) are taught will lead to our inevita- and the corporeal. Yet the choice to cast Scarlett reclamation of all that is used to mythologize feels like to be an Other. To be treated as female bly sexually violent deaths. And yet, as Glazer’s Johansson as the bodiless voice complicates this. it as a monstrous figure. The Alien and the Cy- by society is be disconnected — violently — film points out, cis-men have not had to imag- Her star text is a potent link to the embodied — borg wield their difference as a transcendence, as from one’s interiority, to grapple with a disparity ine their rapes, their possible deaths, for most of the actress inhabits one of the most famous bod- a way to escape or fight the human violence of between (female) embodiment and subjectivity. their waking lives; cis-men are not made aware ies (and faces) in the world, and thus her voice non-normative embodiment. of their own vulnerability, of their sisters’ fates, is inextricably tethered to form. If this were not There is no such thing as an essential fe- from their first flicker of teenage consciousness. enough, we are given an additional body (white, maleness — gender assignation and biology do White cis-men in particular are not taught, like blonde, normatively beautiful) to associate with not a woman make. In her essay “Manifesto for us, that their bodies — the skins they inhabit the voice — that of the surrogate sex worker. Cyborgs” Haraway asserts that “[t]here is noth- — will cause them immeasurable pain, will be- To emphasize her role as solely embodiment, ing about being “female” that naturally binds tray them, will be blamed for another’s violence. she is completely silent. Johansson’s never-seen women. There is not even such a state as “being The men follow Johansson’s character to their body thus becomes another degree of corporeal female” (Haraway 197). So what do I mean by deaths because, as the film demonstrates, white separation, another alien ghost. Her gives us two ‘women’? Gender may not be ‘real,’ but the ex- cis-men have not been taught (have not had to bodies (one spectral, one mute) for the price of perience of being treated as ‘female’ in a society learn) that the world is a dangerous space in the none, entrapping (potential) female subjectivity that declares us several degrees of inferior is hy- Under the Skin. Dir. Jonathan Glazer. 2013. same way that women have. Osterweil notes: in further claustrophobic, Russian-doll layers of per-real, vivid, visceral. In Ways of Seeing, John In Jonathan’ Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013), “To be a woman is to be… a moving target. Hu- confinement. Berger claims that women “must continually the alien figures are predatorial and parasitic man or alien, women are raped, discarded, and watch [themselves],” as they are “almost con- (albeit sympathetic, in the case of the protago- left for dead… To feel female is not only to suffer tinually accompanied by [their] own image[s] nist, played by Scarlett Johansson). She and her the richness of human pain, but, inevitably, the of [themselves]” (Berger 46). To be treated as alien partner have descended to earth to inhabit violence of gendered hatred” (50). The female female by society is to be in constant negotia- and harvest human skins. The body Johansson’s alien’s death at the hands of a male attempted tion with one’s own image, viewed through a character takes on as her own is that, as de- rapist demonstrates this. Despite the ‘female’ funhouse mirror, and with one’s subjectivity, scribed by Ara Osterweil in her essay “Under The alien’s mortal choreographed seductions, sex- viewed through the distortive lens of reification. Skin: The Perils of Becoming Female,” “of an un- ual violence against women is the specter that Under the Skin’s alien femme fatale con- identified young woman, whose dead body has haunts this film. That this violence is not the stantly multiplied and amputated in mirrors, been discovered on the side of a road… the corpse most ‘obvious’ violence in the film renders it even eternally surveying herself; Her’s bodilessness, of a woman presumably killed in an act of sexual more potent. Her. Dir. Spike Jonze. 2013. followed by her false-embodiment in a borrowed violence” (Osterweil 45). Cruising around Scot- In Spike Jonze’s 2013 filmHer , a man falls To be alien is an affective mode. It is to female body. In both films ‘women’ wear their land in a white van, Johansson’s character picks in love with his operating system. Put differ- sense (or to be taught through violence) that the assumed skins with curiosity, trepidation, dis- up guileless men and brings them back to her ently, he becomes infatuated by the voice of an thick walls of gender and continents and skin are comfort. Their embodiments are ill-fitting, two dark lair — a place Osterweil notes “no woman artificially intelligent, high-tech personal assis- too restrictive. To feel alien — that is, to find one- 9 10 self on the side of the oppressed — is to embody an unsettlement, a dislocation, to negotiate a fer- Works Cited vent and infinite incongruence between body and subject. It is a rejection of fixity. In this sense it is a Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British productive force. Both Under The Skin and Her gen- Broadcasting Corporation der their extra-human futuristic subjects female, and Penguin Books, 1972. despite the fact that neither subject is predisposed to an earthly gendered anatomy. Both Johansson’s Cadora, Karen. “Feminist Cyberpunk.” character in Her and in Under The Skin embody Beyond Cyberpunk: New Critical Perspec bodies that, like so many of the gendered-female tives. Ed. Graham J. Murphy and bodies of sci-fi, stage a myths of femaleness meant Sherryl Vint. New York: Routledge, to be intelligible and thus non-threatening. Both 2010. subjects occupy female bodies and experience the claustrophobia and gendered vulnerability Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: inextricable from female embodiment. Chased Science, Technology, and Social through the woods by a man trying to rape her, Jo- ist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth hansson’s character in Under The Skin tears off her Century.” Simians, Cyborgs and Women: female epidermis in a final attempt to transcend The Reinvention of Nature. New York: the inherited violence of a gendered body (Oster- Routledge, 1991. weil 45). In Her, Johansson’s voice joins a chorus who ascend to a different realm — they are too Her. Dir. Spike Jonze. Annapurna Pictures, intelligent for the world of corporeal creatures. 2013. Female and non-conforming bodies are acutely aware of the limitations of skin. The queer affec- Kraus, Chris. Aliens and Anorexia. Semiotex tive mythology of the alien or the cyborg negoti- t(e): 2000. Print. ates a future imaginary wherein it is possible to transcend the violently constrictive contours of Luciano, Dana. “Nostalgia for an Age Yet to gendered and racialized human skin. The body — Come: Velvet Goldmine’s Queer hacked, glitched, subverted, transcended — is a Archive.” Queer Times, Queer terrain for resistance. Becomings. Ed. E.L. McCallum and Mikko Tuhkanen. SUNY Press: 2012.

Osterweil, Ara. “Under The Skin: The Perils of Becoming Female.” Film Quarterly, vol. 67, 2014, pp. 44 —51.

Under the Skin. Dir. Jonathan Glazer. British Film Institute, 2013.

Yourgrau, Palle. “Introduction.” Aliens and Anorexia , Semiotext(e), 2000. “It’s in the Eyes”: Constructed Value of the Feminine Gaze in 12 Amanda Knox new point of view and constructed image which vinced that the murder is a crime of passion, pry- By Katie Elder makes it increasingly difficult for the filmmakers ing into Amanda’s sexual preferences and part- to reach a conclusion with regards to the veraci- ners and scouring the crime scene for evidence ty of the verdict. linked to her sexual relationship with Sollecito In perhaps one of the most quoted es- or, possibly, with Meredith. Knox’s sexual histo- says on feminist film theory of all time, Laura ry is publicized; her private journals from when Mulvey expresses the idea of on-screen males she was in prison awaiting trial are leaked. Oth- as “active” and on-screen females as “passive” er male reporters join in on Pisa’s headlines and (Mulvey 837). While men in cinema move, cre- representations. In footage from the trial, one ate, look, and prompt action, women in classic journalist can be heard criticizing Amanda’s ap- cinema connote a certain “to-be-looked-at-ness” pearance as she arrives in the courtroom by say- (837). Mulvey labels this as the “male gaze” in ing “they must not have make-up in prison.” Pisa film, males controlling the gaze of the camera himself even recognizes how, after a different and the viewer gaining “scopophilic pleasure” man is suspected and tried for the same murder from what is in front of it (837). In Amanda Knox, as Knox, the public loses interest as he is not a this gaze is most certainly placed on Knox as she “young, sexy woman.” The draw of Amanda’s tri- is berated and bombarded by police, the public, al and conviction comes from her sex and sexu- and the media. In interviews, Giuliano Mignini alization; men actively placing ideas on to Knox defends his certainty of Knox’s guilt, Nick Pisa as she remains passive. criminalizes and sensationalizes her as a media Amanda Knox. Dir. Rod Blackhurst, Brian McGinn. Netflix, 2016. object, Sollecito reminisces about their past and After four years in Italian prison, two Serial (2014) or Netflix’s own Making a Murderer doubts Knox, and all of them continually project murder convictions (and acquittals), a series of (2016). Amanda Knox details the trial and con- ideas of Amanda on to Amanda. trials, interviews, and exhaustive and aggres- viction of its titular character for the murder of For the most part, Rod Blackhurst and sive media coverage, a now 29 year old Amanda her roommate, Meredith Kercher, while the two Brian McGinn attempt to identify and challenge Knox sits rigidly in front of a stark, grey back- were on a school exchange in Perugia, Italy in the one-sided or misogynistic representations of ground. She appears exhausted. In footage and 2007. Like many other works profiling open-end- Knox in their examination of the ways that her photographs from before her conviction, Knox ed cases with high public exposure, Amanda Knox trial is portrayed. The media’s representation of is youthful, her cheeks rosy and her smile goofy. questions the conviction and investigates possi- Knox is one of the representations in the docu- Amanda Knox. Dir. Rod Blackhurst, Brian McGinn. Netflix, 2016. Now, in these more current images, she sits awk- ble faults of the judicial system, while simulta- mentary that appears to be most outwardly crit- While the film’s male subjects contin- wardly in front of Rod Blackhurst and Brian Mc- neously scrutinizing Knox’s defense. Is Amanda icized by the filmmakers, particularly in regards ually lock Amanda in their restricting gaze, Ginn’s camera. Her expression is serious, almost Knox guilty? Or is she innocent? to the sexism and misogyny that is displayed. Amanda Knox tries to give the impression that, gaunt, and her hair is much darker and cropped. Perhaps even more than this, Amanda Journalist Nick Pisa is ruthless in his criticism of for the first time, Knox is controlling her public Her posture is uncomfortable displayed against Knox is also interested in the different approach- Knox: promoting the headline “Foxy Knoxy” in persona within the documentary. The shots of the austere background where she has been es with which this particular case has been pre- his coverage of the trials, and portraying Knox as Blackhurst and McGinn’s interview with Knox placed. At times, Knox is wary of the camera, re- sented, in how these stories are told. Blackhurst a sex-crazed maniac. He criticizes her sexualized are some of the most striking in the film; visual- garding it tentatively or struggling for words. At and McGinn combine police footage from the persona and sneers at her nonchalant reaction to ly poignant for a reason. For possibly one of the other times, she is deliberate, almost exasperat- crime scene and Knox’s court trials, archival her roommate’s murder. In reference to crime first times, alleged murderer Amanda Knox ap- ed, as she articulates her story. This is a woman clips from news stories and press conferences, scene footage of Amanda and her boyfriend at pears on-screen for an extended period of time to whose entire life has been publicized, criminal- and videos and images of Knox herself from be- the time, Sollecito, leaning into each other and tell her own story. Blackhurst and McGinn place ized, avidly debated, and who hasn’t felt that fore the murder, with personal interviews with kissing after learning about Meredith Kercher’s her against a bare background, removing any she’s had the chance to vocalize her own story Giuliano Mignini, chief Italian prosecutor on murder, Pisa smirks: “I mean, who behaves like distractions that may affect the viewer’s inter- yet. Knox’s case, Nick Pisa, a British reporter who that? Of course she did it. She’s mad.” pretation of her words and allowing the viewer Simply titled Amanda Knox, Rod Black- covered Knox’s trial, Raffaele Sollecito, Knox’s Over the course of the documentary it to make their own decisions in regards to her in- hurst and Brian McGinn’s 2016 documentary convicted co-conspirator and ex-boyfriend, and becomes more obvious that these sensation- nocence or guilt. Be that as it may, while Aman- (Netflix) follows a fad of cultural obsession with Amanda herself. Each of these accounts brings alized sexual representations of Amanda only da sits alone and unadorned in those few shots, true crime and detective stories, such as NPR’s a singular representation of Amanda Knox, a continued to escalate. Giuliano Mignini is con- every other piece of the documentary decorates 13 14 her story in a different way. As mentioned pre- other subjects in the film (like the viewer watch- Pisa and the media, Sollecito and the public, and viously, each individual interpretation projects ing these interviews or Blackhurst and McGinn finally even filmmakers Blackhurst and McGinn a different story onto Amanda’s. Just like the themselves) try to find innocence or guiltiness in form their own images of Amanda Knox; individ- men documented by Amanda Knox, Blackhurst Knox’s eyes; believing that some kind of factual ually fixating on pieces of Amanda while often and McGinn project their own judgments onto evidence can be found in the way she looks, rath- disregarding the actual person in front of them. Amanda through each edit combining the shots er than the way she acts. If anything, Amanda Knox makes a viewer aware and anecdotes of others. of just how powerful their gaze and the gaze of In an attempt to expose the subjectivity of others can be, and just how difficult it is to find documentary film, theAmanda Knox trailers show truth within multiple and varied representations just how prominent the influence of a filmmaker of a subject. Amanda Knox’s eyes aren’t the ones can be by expressing opposite judgements about we should be concerned about. It is our eyes, as her innocence. Netflix released two completely viewers, which can be harmful. contradicting teasers for Amanda Knox: one titled “Suspect Her” and the other titled “Believe Her.” In “Suspect Her,” documentary footage is com- Works Cited bined with dark music and the sound of a ticking clock, designed to make a viewer feel anxious. Amanda Knox. Dir. Rod Blackhurst, Brian The trailer includes quick bursts of snapshots McGinn. Netflix, 2016. from the crime scene, along with quotes from Pisa and Mignini vilifying Knox; “I asked my- “Amanda Knox | “Believe Her” - Trailer self, is a monster responsible for this?” Mignini [HD] | Netflix.” YouTube, up articulates to an uneasy viewer. In “Believe Her,” loaded by Netflix US & Canada, the exact opposite tone is conveyed with almost 8 September 2016, https://www. exactly the same footage. In contrast, this teaser youtube.com/watch?v=NueL features softer music and focuses on the sympa- jUNB-GM. thetic side of Amanda as she tells her personal story. “Suddenly I found myself tossed into this “Amanda Knox | “Suspect Her” - Trail dark place,” she confesses to the viewer while er [HD] | Netflix.” YouTube, verging on tears. “I was so scared.” uploaded by Netflix US & Canada, Both teasers utilize factual documenta- Amanda Knox. Dir. Rod Blackhurst, Brian McGinn. 2016. 8 September 2016, https://www. ry footage but reveal completely contradictory youtube.com/watch?v=9r8LG_lC In one of the film’s most salient quotes, sides to Amanda Knox: guilty versus innocent, bac. murderer versus student, and criminal versus Knox realizes and challenges this herself, stat- ing: “You’re trying to find the answer in my eyes victim. Both teasers manipulate the emotions of Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Nar when the answer is right over there,” referring the viewer and reveal how easy it is for filmmak- rative Cinema.” Film Theory and to the other evidence surrounding the crime. ers to project this gaze on to Amanda, to manip- Criticism : Introductory Readings. “You’re looking at me, why? These are my eyes. ulate even her own telling of her own story, and Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Co They’re not objective evidence.” While providing for the documentary to avoid reaching “truth.” hen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: exclusive access to Knox as an interview subject Throughout the documentary, Black- 833-44. hurst and McGinn allow their camera to consis- does (for the first time) allow Knox to become tently fixate on Knox’s eyes. The thumbnail cho- more “active” in her own storytelling one must sen by Netflix to promote the film is an extreme acknowledge how easily others can immobilize close-up of Knox’s eyes. The grey background a subject by placing ideas upon it. upon which Knox’s interview takes place is bar- With each perspective, Amanda Knox ren and, in contrast, Knox’s eyes are striking as fluctuates between an average American college the only spot of colour or expression next to her student and a seductive and crazed murderer. faded pink shirt and pale skin. More than once, With each anecdote, Mignini and the legal courts, Malory Archer: Mad Femme Spy Executive of Tomorrow 16 By Genevieve Citron the crux of these fanciful missions as she, with which was to advance her career, to her re-rout- the force of her bony hand, pushes the narrative ed goal, which is to be in love. forward. Archer’s Malory is the antidote to the ‘femme fatale turned femme ordinary’ charac- ters of these romantic comedies. While Andy’s actions are communicated in the fi lm as being a temporary lapse in judgement for which she later apologizes, Malory’s particular brand of quirky madness is unconditionally unapologetic. Malory refuses to beg pardon for her behaviour and allows herself to be driven by her needs, de- sires, and neurosis. As seen through her many schemes, Malory steps on men, cheats systems, Archer. Dir. Adam Reed. FX. 2009-17. and utilizes every possible resource to propel Having graced the diegesis of many early herself, her career, and Archer’s narrative trajec- twenty-fi rst century rom-coms, the calls-the- tory forward. Reed’s careful calculation of plo- shots career-gal character is nothing new to vi- tlines and character developments throughout sual culture. Despite working to dominate a cap- each episode — and more largely each season — italist enterprise, Malory is worlds away from positions Malory and her female conspirators as the on-screen power women played by Kate the large, in charge, authors of the story world. Hudson in 2003 (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days), Jen- This authorial power exists despite Malory’s in- Archer. Dir Adam Reed. FX, 2009-17. nifer Garner in 2004 (13 Going on 30), or Anne Ha- congruence with typical feminine roles seen in The fi rst episode of FX’s cartoon series possible happenings are consistently proven to thaway in 2006 (The Devil Wears Prada), to name a mainstream Western culture. Conventionally, Archer fades in to fi nd its hero, Sterling Archer, be the meticulous planning of Malory. Her di- few. grey-haired single mother characters like Malo- tied up against the wall of a KGB torture cell. In egetic omnipresence is seen time and time again In How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Kate Hud- ry are barred from leading roles for a variety of this initial scene, he is taunted by his Russian throughout the series; beginning with her initial son plays a disappointedly typical version of sexist and social reasons. However, Malory’s captor, who threatens to shock him with high introduction behind the double mirror and con- Hollywood’s career woman who — in contrast incongruence has less to do with her status as voltage electricity. The picture is intense, dark, tinuing into the current season. Malory’s actions to Malory — is ultimately controlled by outside an old single mother and more with how she is and agonizing to watch, before being loudly in- — in their crudeness, their eccentricities, and forces. In pursuit of a promotion at the magazine completely aligned with the ‘negative’ character- terrupted by Malory Archer; Sterling’s mother their hilarity — succeed in dictating the series’ where she is employed, Andy (Hudson) builds istics of the rom-com women mentioned above. and the director of the espionage agency where narrative trajectory absolutely. up a whacky persona for an investigative piece In stark contrast to these characters — who are he is employed. Malory’s appearance reveals While Malory’s presence as the show’s about warding off romance. Throughout the ma- retributively punished for their individualistic to the viewer that Sterling’s torture is actually in-story maestro is undeniable, it is not initial- jority of the fi lm, she spends her time harassing actions — Malory’s mad behaviour is positively meant to be a training simulation. In this mo- ly obvious. Throughout the series, Malory is and manipulating her soon-to-be love interest, reinforced and encouraged by Archer’s narrative ment, Malory also communicates that she is not continually overshadowed by her man-child Ben (Matthew McConaughey), in an attempt trajectory. just another spectator of Sterling’s distress, but son, Sterling. Dubbed in the diegesis as ‘the to drive him away. In an exceptionally disorga- Malory’s madness is mostly manifested its orchestrator. Here, she subverts the narrative, world’s greatest secret agent,’ Sterling stomps nized climax, Andy embraces her desires; aban- in bursts of antisocial, self-centered behaviour, changing the tone of the scene from serious to around like a whiskey soaked James Bond who is doning societal expectations of how she should wherein she continually gambles U.S. national ludicrous. Positioned behind a double mirror, starved for female — especially maternal — at- act by aggressively singing Carly Simon’s “You’re security and millions of dollars for her personal Malory sips on a cocktail as she watches over tention. His outrageous narcissism and incredi- So Vain” at Ben. Despite her best efforts, Andy gain. This is demonstrated in “Jeu Monegasque” Sterling’s torture with upcurved lips. This intro- ble (granted, cartoon-like) ability to dexterously eventually surrenders to Ben and stops ‘acting (Season 2, Episode 11) when she risks the agen- duction acts as the chief blueprint for the rest of survive dangerous espionage operations is what crazy.’ At the fi lm’s conclusion, all of her hard cy’s collective 401(k)’s by sending Archer on the series, wherein Malory Archer controls the more often than not steals the narrative punch work is forgotten as she relinquishes her previ- a mission to trade this money for a mysterious rules and results of the game. lines. As the show’s foremost protagonist, he is ous role as a journalist for her new role as ‘girl- computer disk. In taking this money, Malory Malory’s role in Adam Reed’s espio- deeply involved in every plot and is often the for- friend’ in a normative Hollywood relationship. triggers the resulting series of events wherein nage-sitcom is unsuspectedly yet completely ward-facing hero who resolves each twenty min- The narrative forgets Andy’s true desires and the agency employees steal, gamble, chase, and that of the director. The show’s series of im- ute episode. Despite this, Malory’s actions are at the happy ending changes from her initial goal, shoot in order to recover their savings. Malory’s 17 18

actions prompt the agency’s administrative staff itizing her career over everything. Malory puts Cheryl, just as with Malory, it is her unwilling- to pawn off stolen property, the field agents to her work over her children, her lovers, and her ness to conform to social norms that lies at the commit fraud, and her son Sterling to rampage colleagues. She looks out for her best interests, core of these controls. In providing a second gen- through his typical self-indulgent (probably he- she calls a spade a spade, and she plays hardball eration of power-femme (albeit mad) women, reditary) behaviour. Moments such as these are like she’s throwing a rock. All this to say, Malo- Archer promises to continue on a narrative path essential to the series, as they function to cement ry behaves in what is best described through the that prioritizes the re-branding of workplace the individual fabric of each character. As the trite and tired words: like a man. Whereas wom- women as decisive and authorial. matriarch of the show, Malory’s idiosyncrasies en who attempt these manly roles are usually In a rather exciting way, Archer represents fuel her colleagues’ by setting a new normal; punished in popular culture, often revealed to be a new category of working women in visual cul- her actions functioning as the tipping point in a unhappy (The Devil Wears Prada) or unsuccessful ture. The series rejects expectations of normalcy crass and criminal chain of dominos. and ugly (any Disney cartoon ever), Malory experi- and looks for an untapped way of representing ences a bounty of self-generated happiness and gendered characters. The women of Archer are success. so conventionally flawed that they manage to be Throughout the series, Malory’s nar- successful. This success arrives to the audience rative controls are gradually lent to the show’s as a result of each female character’s creativi- other women, as they consistently overpow- ty, which is able to run wild in the diegesis and er male characters in pursuit of their desires. exist free from the shackles of societal expecta- These controls are given despite race and class, tions. This creativity would be impossible if the and accordingly fly in the face of dominant Hol- women were to prioritize normalcy over their lywood narratives wherein white men own the idiosyncrasies. These idiosyncrasies would be Archer. Dir. Adam Reed. FX. 2009-17. world, and women just live there. Lana Kane useless if they were made to apologize for them. Malory’s role as Archer’s in-diegesis di- (African-American academic turned profession- Splendidly imperfect, Adam Reed’s Archer does rector is even better demonstrated in Season 5, al spy), Pam Poovey (dairy farmer turned agency the simple work of reimagining how visual cul- which is appropriately titled Archer Vice. In Ar- HR rep), and Cheryl Tunt (railroad heiress and ture looks at working women and portrays their cher Vice, the gang takes a break from espionage Malory’s receptionist) continually work togeth- flaws, specifically, through the mad femme spy to pursue a brief stint as big-time cocaine dealers. er and in tension with one another to control the executive, Malory Archer. This career shift occurs after the agency is force- narrative space. These controls are seen most fully shut down for a string of treason charges commonly through Cheryl. Just like Malory, followed by a mysterious event through which Cheryl’s quirky and mad behaviour is positive- they come to possess a criminally high volume ly reinforced by the diegesis through her con- Works Cited of cocaine. The season’s incredible adventures tinued success. As an heiress and receptionist, take the agency around the United States, to fas- Cheryl represents both sides of American capi- Archer. Dir. Adam Reed. FX, 2009-17. cist dictatorships in the developing world, and talism at once. In her private role as the owner even to country music’s Grand Ole Opry. All, of of her family’s vast enterprises, she controls the How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Dir. Donald course, at the underlying will of Malory Archer, work pursued by a large bureaucratic company. Petrie. Paramount Pictures, 2003. who is revealed to be responsible for the treason In her public role as a receptionist, she executes charges and related cocaine possession. bureaucratic demands ordered to her by Malory. “Jeu Monegasque.” Archer: Season Two, Dir. Malory’s understanding of the rules of Cheryl’s social and labour positions allow her to Adam Reed, FX, 2011. the game is what allows her to coyly exist as the be a strategic candidate for the continued rule of orchestrator of messy and seemingly random female power in Archer’s diegesis. Her position as “Mole Hunt.” Archer: Season One, Dir. Adam events. Even more than this, it is her willingness an administrator and an executive makes this a Reed, FX, 2009. to disregard the rules of a gendered society that special case, as her power begins to seep into ev- allows her overarching power. The off-putting ery corner of the story world; Cheryl’s presence and self-centered actions that position Malory as often resulting in great delays from the highest dually cold and crazy are the same actions that and lowest levels of the bureaucratic chain. She are expected and accepted in male characters. halts meetings, races trains, and literally starts She accomplishes this unlikely persona by prior- fires in order to influence the diegesis. With The Life and Times of Kay Francis 20 By Meghan King er). Kay was unbothered by the formulaic, quan- rated melodrama that has been little seen. tity-over-quality bend to her career. She only Another of my favourite early roles of wanted not to be broke, and, more importantly, Kay’s is Girls About Town from 1931 which has her to never have to resort to the more sordid pro- playing the ultimate flapper girl, Wanda, a wom- fessions available to women, like her mother did an who enjoys the casual company of various when Kay was a child. Good movies meant little; business men for a nominal fee of five hundred a career beyond a pay check meant nothing. dollars an evening. A quasi-hooker with a heart Becoming an actress was a solution to of gold, she ends up falling in love with one of Kay’s needs. She worked for a bit as a theater ac- her paid affections. The film is a deliciously deco tress in the mid 20s before landing her first gig at and bubbly 80 minutes. Common ground shared the Long Island annex of Paramount Pictures in by Kay’s above mentioned characters was their 1928, then set out for Hollywood the following penchant for falling in love with men who are year. After Warner Brothers poached her from woefully wrong for them. This was something of Paramount, Kay steadily made movies through- a specialty for Kay as an actress (and maybe for out the 30s — six in one year at her peak produc- Kay too, who found herself on the failed side of tivity. She hit her stride as a star around 1932, at five marriages). Although the women she played the height of what is known as the Pre-Code era were constantly falling over themselves for of filmmaking when Hollywood films traversed ill-fated men, the intensity with which Kay por- especially scandalous ground. Kay remained trays their adoration comes across as being more amongst Hollywood’s top actresses for a few out of a firmness of spirit rather than a weak years until her career started to wane in the late constitution. Even in her mooniest of moments, Dir. Lloyd Bacon, Busby Burkley. 1934. Wonder Bar. 30s due to disagreements with the executives at in her silliest of roles, Kay portrays women who If you’re someone like me, someone her fair skin seemed to reflect all the light in a Warner’s. By the end of her career she had made fully inhabit their desires, even if those desires whose tastes most closely align with that of a given room. In a word, she stunned, and with over 60 movies, which is pretty absurd when you seem preposterous or bad for her. 60 year old gay male costume designer’s, you’ll this presence she carried off the most ridiculous- notice that over half of them were made during The bulk of her filmography you can take know who actress Kay Francis is. If you take ly decadent outfits with an untold ease. For Kay, her first five years as a screen actress. or leave. I’m of the “take” minority — sometimes your doses of 1930s cinema intravenously and the best looks were those that allowed her to Despite her lack of home-run, lega- despite my best interests — because obsession have a frenzied addiction to hardcore glamour, do little else than stand elegantly with a glass of cy-making movies, she actually managed to always gets the better of me. The types of mov- you’ll know who Kay Francis is. Otherwise, champagne or lay in the arms of her lover. “Natu- make a few pictures that have withstood the test ies Kay starred in aren’t the kind that garner you’re likely among the large swath of the pop- ral” as calibrated to the sensibilities of Kay Fran- of time. Namely, Trouble in Paradise, by the great grandiose restoration rollouts or the Criterion ulation who have unknowingly honoured Kay’s cis, meant an abundance of sequins, silks and Ernst Lubitsch, from 1932. Here Kay assumes the treatment. That her movies are especially hard most famous wish when she said of her career, “I furs. role she was born to play as Madame Colet, a rich to find outside a TCM marathon doesn’t help can’t wait to be forgotten.” My waxing poetic of course begs the French perfume manufacturer who gets swin- her diminished celebrity either. The movies she If you’re the sort of person who is predis- question — why has this magnificent starlet, dled by consummate dandy and professional made towards the end of the 30s grew increas- posed to her particular charms, you almost only once the queen of the Warner Brothers lot in the thief, Gaston Monescu. The film is so Pre Code-y ingly inferior due to the combative relationship need to hear of Kay Francis to love Kay Francis. mid 30s, fallen to such obscurity? The answer with its double entendres and innuendo that it that had developed between Kay and her home No one, yesterday, today or tomorrow, could is simple — Kay Francis couldn’t act, or rather, practically defines the genre. Another solid effort studio. But beyond that, I doubt Kay’s career wear a dress like Kay. Kay Francis, by some al- she was never required to act all that well. She is the Tay Garnett directed One Way Passage (also was really going to swim in the next decade. Kay chemical force of self generated magic, was im- just had to say her lines and be Kay Francis. The from 1932) in which Kay stars opposite William doesn’t at all make sense in the 40s cinematic mi- possible to ignore when she appeared on screen. kinds of movies that called for this type of per- Powell. In it, the two meet on a boat travelling lieu. For one, her characteristic taste for jewels, She was more striking than she was beautiful formance were typically thinner on substance from Hong Kong to San Francisco. Kay’s char- furs, and Veuve Clicquot were a touch gauche — she had these funnily long, downturned eye- and rarely longer than an hour and a quarter. In acter is dying of some impossibly Victorian dis- amidst wartime austerity. This could have been brows that always made her look a little weary, her book, A Woman’s View, film historian Jeanine ease; Powell’s character a wanted murderer who fine if she had the range to play a character of a long and lithe body with a cherubic face, and Basinger nailed down the Kay formula exactly awaits the death penalty upon arrival ashore. more modest means. Perhaps I’m being unfair — eyes impossibly round like porcelain saucers. — “dress her very, very well…surround her with They meet, they woo, they carry out a dolefully maybe she did — but decadence was her calling Everything about Kay Francis recalled the moon, good furniture or exotic settings like Russia and impossible affair. The picture is especially star- card, and being a so-called “good actress” was from the shape of her eyes to the luminous way Paris and Budapest…and let her suffer.” (Basing- crossed and, ultimately, an unfortunately under- not something studio executives cared much to 21 22 explore with Kay. So by the early 40s, not only ponent of the live-for-today, gin soaked nihilism couldn’t be disillusioned, never to build up any ga-ga, doesn’t it? But never mind, that’s my life... was Kay never given much of an opportunity to with which she imbued her performances. The dreams and then you couldn’t be rudely awak- As long as they pay me my salary, they can give act seriously on screen, but the one bankable formulaic nature of her films presented a way of ened, never to throw your whole soul into the me a broom and I’ll sweep the stage. I don’t give skill she did have was so diametrically opposed living within the often fretful experience of femi- keeping of another human being and then you a damn. I want the money...When I die, I want to the broader culture that to be Kay Francis™ ninity that was fluffy and emotionally indulgent, couldn’t be disappointed. Be a play-girl. That to be cremated so that no sign of my existence is was almost unpatriotic. glamorous beyond measure yet ultimately mel- was the system.” left on this earth. I can’t wait to be forgotten.” To add insult to injury, you really don’t ancholy. Like any typical women’s picture of the The way she lived was as fizzy as the want to see Kay in anything remotely resembling time, they were escapist, but on familiar moral lives of her characters. When nothing lasts lon- the humble threads of 40s fabric rationing. In terms. Cooing at a puffy, moneyed old man over ger than an hour, the champagne can never go Works Cited one of her plodding but still more decent films, a coupe de champagne seems much more appeal- flat, nor can a genuinely nuanced performance Living on Velvet (1935), Kay plays a woman who ing when it’s your own idea. Until it isn’t. In her take off the ground. Beating life at its own game Basinger, Jeanine. “A Woman’s View: How falls madly in love with a man who is terrible way, Kay predates Marilyn Monroe’s manner of usually means being left with not much of a life Hollywood Spoke to Women, for her, but to whom she is hopelessly devoted giving herself over completely to love, to peak at all. After leaving movies Kay transitioned back 1930-1960.” New York: Knopf, (quelle surprise). In her unwavering affection pleasure, to the camera. Hedonism coupled with to theater, and did good work there for many 1993. Print. she follows her love — a Howard Hughes-esque ferociously normative concepts of romantic love years until she died in 1968 at the age of 63. She profligate pilot played by George Brent — out made an impossible fantasy out of the lives of was survived by no one, and in her last will and Kear, Lynn and John Rossman. “Kay Fran to Long Island where they share an especially women audiences, though this chimeric cocktail testament she gave most of her fortune over to an cis: A Passionate Life and Career.” shabby marital home. True to form for a wom- was not without an aftertaste of sorrow. Mun- organization for seeing eye dogs — a final effort Jefferson, NC : Mcfarland, 2006. an’s melodrama, Kay’s character has forsaken her dane tragedy becomes elevated with melodrama to give meaning to her life’s denouement. Print. silver spoon life with her wealthy aunt for the and grandiosity whenever Kay warily looks out pursuit of true love. Kay becomes The House- from beneath her famously downturned brows Kear, Lynn and John Rossman. “The wife, sending her love off to the grocery store for at her films’ emotional nadirs. Misery is much Complete Kay Francis Record: All meagre canned goods and milk while she makes more palatable when it’s done in a string of Film, Stage, Radio and Television do with the dilapidated kitchen wearing practi- pearls. It may not be a flawless system, but it has Appearances.” Jefferson, NC : Mc cal, coarse clothes….and a cotton headscarf. The its moments of efficacy. Farland, 2008. Print. whole thing seems downright perverse, and one Something I haven’t given much mention cannot help but feel quite sorry for her (and also so far––in part because it can, and has been, the a bit sorry for yourself for having to witness this subject of entire books — is the absolute mad- pitiful sight). A better actress in a better movie ness of Kay’s personal life. I would be remiss not could pull this off, but Kay doesn’t. Truthfully, to admit that my equation of Kay with her char- seeing her in anything but evening wear is a little acters throughout this piece is largely because jarring. Wools of the boiled variety did nothing Kay, for the most part, was her characters — and for her, nor did pants unless they were silky and then some. Really, the lives Kay’s characters led billowing, and certainly none of the 40s knee were mere softcore vignettes of her own gin-for- The Jewel Robbery. Dir. William Dieterle. 1932. length skirt suits worked. She wasn’t especial- breakfast, bisexual, bed hopping life. Kay her- Kay Francis fans like myself apparently ly fetching in period pictures either, and the few self detailed all of this in personal journals kept have no interest in respecting her mortal wish she did do, like The House on 56th Street (1933), throughout her career, which essentially became to be forgotten. Instead we read her personal were not without their strangeness despite Kay’s a rolodex in shorthand of her sexual exploits journals and scatter our love for her across the considerable efforts. She was simply too much a and consistent drunkenness (a favourite entry of corners of the internet in reverent eulogy of this woman of her time to play anything but. mine simply reads, “Drunk again!”). When Kay weird, wonderful woman. However, none of us While she wasn’t an actress with a capi- was still a fledgling actress and New York social- have captured Kay’s life as best as Kay did her- tal A, I can’t abide by an outright dismissal of her ite in the late 20s, she caught the attention of no- self, in the very journal entry where her most performative abilities, nor the assessment that torious gossip columnist Adela Rogers St. Johns. quoted quote came from. To her likely chagrin, I she was little more than an animated mannequin. Of Kay she said: “Kay Francis decided, as young give Kay the last word — Of course women watched Kay Francis mov- folks so often do, that the best way to beat life “My life? Well, I get up at a quarter to six ies to see what she would be wearing, but this at its own game was to never take anything seri- in the morning if I’m going to wear an evening heightened glamour was also an essential com- ously, never to believe in anything and then you dress on camera. That sentence sounds a little Reservoirs of Embodied Memories in Ikwé: A Reflection on Ances- 24 tral Knowledge Coursing Through the Body of bodies of water. The first close-up of the wa- being” — one cannot help but feel compelled to By Jacqueline Holloran Cooper ter appears quite rough, as it aimlessly crashes consider what bodies have come before our own against itself. By the third shot the water settles and make up the foundation of who we are. to become quiet and serene. The stillness of the lake enables the viewer to see into the body of water like glass, as it literally reflects the world that borders it. This sequence is an important transition as it foregrounds a connection be- tween the water’s movement and the woman’s. Initially, her physical movements scatter hap- hazardly like the first image of the waves, but once her body settles, her actions reflect the clar- ity of her transformed perception. Gradually, the woman’s insight into her grandmother’s memory Ikwé. Dir. Caroline Monnet. 2009. becomes as clear as the water itself. This under- standing is expressed to the viewer through the great articulation and control that the woman Works Cited realizes in her movements. In a triumphant conclusion, the woman Ikwé. Dir. Caroline Monnet. Perf. Emilie dances swiftly across the frame. Ikwé’s final se- Monnet. 2009. quence releases its subject to move beyond the Ikwé. Dir. Caroline Monnet. 2009. limits of her own singular form, as her ‘real’ body Wood, Houston. “Dimensions of Differ Caroline Monnet’s experimental film of landscapes in Indigenous films often function is trailed by the unified specters of her ancestral ence in Indigenous Films.” Native Ikwé (2009) portrays a young Indigenous wom- not only as an establishing shot, but also as a collective memory. These sequential bodies in Features: Indigenous Films from an reflecting on and being moved by her grand- way of retelling historical narratives that are in- motion appear like the ripples that follow a skip- Around the World. New mother’s teachings. The film delves into the spir- scribed on the surfaces of the earth (Wood 95- ping stone on a glass lake. This image of repeti- York: Bloomsbury Academic, itual connection between women and water, but 6). Therefore, by projecting images of water onto tion relates to Wood’s assertion that in Indige- 2008. 86-104. Print. also brings to the surface the ways in which wa- the body itself, the spiritual and historical signif- nous storytelling traditions there is a “practice of ter serves as a visual conduit for accessing Indig- icance of water is inscribed on the woman’s skin. maintaining multiple versions of oral tales” (98). enous traditions and the physical sensations of Although women inherit their ancestral con- Indeed, like each oral retelling of history, these contemporary bicultural living. Monnet’s visual nection to water from conception (the body is rippling images of the woman dancing demon- vocabulary saturates the film with images of wa- created in, filled with, and sustained by water), strate how several expressions of her tradition ter, which emphasize the fluidity of the woman’s Monnet’s subject gains access to the spiritu- may be contained within a single body. This final multifarious identity. In my investigation of Ikwé, al value of water through actively reflecting on sequence presents the embodiment of the grand- I will examine how the film’s imagery establishes her heritage and her grandmother’s teachings. mother’s message as it is animated through the relationships between water, movement, and the When the woman’s grasp on her grandmother’s fluidity of the woman’s movements. Ikwé there- exterior and interior of the body. In doing so Ikwé message begins to strengthen, her movements fore depicts the experience of bodies, both old visually captures the experience of the body and are reconfigured to express a mental and physi- and new, which hold and protect Indigenous mind as a container that preserves and trans- cal novelty. As the woman’s formerly motionless stories that will never dissolve so long as they forms the collective memory of one’s ancestors. body becomes progressively animated, the film are continually told and re-told. Although this In Ikwé’s opening image, a projection of water demonstrates the process whereby she learns film is specific to the experiences of Indigenous is superimposed onto a woman’s naked body — to inhabit the knowledge relayed to her in the women who grew up within this particular tra- an impressionable human canvas. As the woman opening shot. Her movements are fully realized dition, Monnet’s artful contemporary approach lies still, nude, and curled up in a fetal-like posi- by the end of the film, signifying her restored opens up the inherent value of intergenerational tion on the ground, she attentively listens for the connection to her ancestral heritage. reflection to its audiences. After watching the sound of her grandmother’s message that wash- Preceding the final shots of the woman’s body subject tap into her ancestral embodied memo- es over her. According to Houston Wood, shots in its full range of motion, there are several shots ry — which she identifies as the “glue to [her] Kill Bill, Tom, Dick, and Harry 26 By Keara Campos ponents stand in stark contrast to the majority Beatrix’s vigilante status. Urban vigilante films of contemporary female protagonists written to that star famous males typically cast actors who appeal to female audiences (think of the Disney “look better delivering a punch or karate chop princesses). These stereotypical roles do nothing than a line of dialogue” (Hopperstand 149). The to represent women as a whole. Rather, they re- same holds true for Kiddo in her quest to avenge inforce the clichéd view that femininity is solely the loss of her child. As she says herself in Vol- synonymous with emotions and weakness and ume 1, “when fortune smiles on something as vi- therefore female protagonists can only be dam- olent and ugly as revenge, it seems proof like no sels in distress, wives, mothers, or sex objects. other that not only does God exist, you’re doing The Kill Bill heroine, Beatrix Kiddo, is his will.” While the Bride embodies a mentality positioned in league with vigilante protagonists that is typical of male characters, the audience such as Bruce Wayne, Batman, and Dirty Harry. experiences this journey through the eyes of a Through Beatrix, Tarantino presents his audi- female and mother, making Beatrix’s represen- ence with a multifaceted woman: an expecting tation of womanhood progressive, empowering, mother and bride-to-be but also a merciless killer and mutable. with an ambitious goal. Within the larger scope Beatrix emulates characteristics that of the film world, casting Thurman includes audiences typically expect from male heroes; Tarantino within the small percentage of male superior skills in various forms of combat, and filmmakers writing leading parts for women. Dr. unbelievable reserves of resilience and resource- Martha Lauzen’s report on the top 100 domestic fulness. The deaths of Kiddo’s nemeses Vernita grossing films of 2015 reveals that only 13-15% of Green, O-Ren Ishii, and Elle Driver highlight her Kill Bill: Volume 1. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. 2003. male directors and writers create these roles for unparalleled fighting skills. In a Dantean contra- Ever since the 1992 debut of his crime male actors. I foresee a solution to this, which re- women (Lauzen, 4). Lauzen’s numbers show us passo style, she defeats each enemy by besting thriller Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino has places the male authorial perspective with real that films like Kill Bill are rare and therefore cru- them at their own game; “the knife-fighter Ver- been a household name in the cinematic world. female experiences. If women directing, writing, cial for women in film as they offer a space in cin- nita is killed with [the] Bride’s knife. O-Ren is Over the years he has continued to churn out and acting increasingly influence cinema, then ema where female protagonists and antagonists killed by ‘Japanese steel’ [...] And Bill, of course, memorable and iconic characters and plotlines, female realities of violence, sexuality, and life actually exist. dies of a broken heart” (Roth 87). Beatrix’s supe- gradually developing his own mythological mov- will be more accurately expressed. Kiddo’s character and narrative trajecto- rior skills are on display in the climactic samurai ie worlds. Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill: Volume 2 Let’s begin with what initially seems to ry make her the ideal hero and an empowering montage where she single-handedly defeats not are two such films. Released in 2003 and 2004, be a new and positive representation of wom- female representation for several reasons. She is only the ‘Crazy 88’ army, but also Gogo, O-Ren’s respectively, the Kill Bill movies seemingly repre- en in major motion pictures. I first saw Kill Bill physically and mentally strong and displays char- trusted right hand general. In both films, the sent the emergence of a renewed femme fatale: a as an impressionable 17 year old who had just acteristics that are often only associated with Bride embodies toughness and ingenuity. She woman of few words and unparalleled physical moved away from home. Watching the two vol- men. She is the antidote to the helpless damsel in withstands the excruciating training regime prowess. The Bride, or Beatrix Kiddo, Taranti- umes back-to-back in my shoebox dorm room distress. Certainly, she is distressed, but she does of kung fu master Pai Mei and after earning his no’s strong female protagonist played by Uma remains a vivid memory for me. I remember be- something about it, as opposed to having anoth- respect, he teaches her the legendary Five Point Thurman, quite literally annihilates any male ing engrossed by the strong, independent female er person remedy her situation. Beatrix reflects Palm Exploding Heart technique. Later, after that stands in the way of her goals. Not only character that had one goal: to kill Bill. It was the ideal characteristics of the vigilante because waking up from a four-year coma, she kills two does Tarantino replace the traditional hero with refreshing to see a woman represented as a force her main goal — to disenfranchise a despicable rapists and escapes from the hospital, all while a heroine, he also casts women in the roles of to be reckoned with. I was taken with the idea man and avenge the loss of her child — is justly partially paralyzed, before finally teaching her- her worthy opponents — and women of colour, that the character’s goal was to disenfranchise a retributive. When the most vulnerable of society self to walk again. When Budd, a former mem- at that. These choices appear to indicate an in- man, and that this was depicted as achievable. are slaughtered, the justice demanded becomes ber (and one of only two male members) of the spiring shift in Hollywood’s portrayal of women What interested me even more was the fact that proportionally more severe to reflect the crime. Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, leaves her on screen, but when critically examined, these Beatrix’s contemporaries along the way were Correspondingly, the vengeance the Bride seeks for dead, buried alive in a coffin, she resurrects female-driven martial arts films are revealed to women and particularly, women of varying ra- carries “a certain heroic righteousness in her herself by repeatedly punching the wood until be increasingly problematic. While a variety of cial identities. The diversity of these female quest to kill her tormentors,” and therefore val- she is bloody, but free. Through Beatrix Kiddo, female characters take on novel, expanded roles representations resonated deeply with me, as I idates the death of her enemies (Roth 89). Her Tarantino’s audience gets a female protagonist in these films, their destinies remain beholden to myself am a person of colour. Beatrix and her op- lack of speaking lines also helps to establish that extends beyond pedestrian female leads: a 27 28 woman who takes on the role of the vigilante these portrayals are given to the spectator stood. celebrated in our female heroine and her contem- and achieves her goal with finesse and ruthless- through a male perspective. The films’ tremen- By depicting Bill in a sympathetic light, poraries. The choices that seem to be driven by ness. dous gore and violence encourages viewers to Tarantino effectively diminishes the violence Beatrix and her counterparts’ own volitions are The Bride is more than just a Tarantino become engrossed in the on-screen action and and trauma that has been incited by Bill against actually imposed onto them by Bill, and extra-di- hero. She serves as the antithesis to typical pop to cast aside critical judgement. This aesthetic Bride. Instead of being condemned, Tarantino egetically, Tarantino. A true femme fatale needs culture representations of women. Kill Bill is no distancing “through watching an anime section, gives Bill ‘an out,’ a proverbial pass; ‘he’s not a bad to be written and directed by a woman. When rom-com. Tarantino shows a type of ‘romance’ enjoying elegantly choreographed violence, or guy, he just did a bad thing.’ The issue presented these roles originate from a female perspective, where hearts are literally broken. But Beatrix at times comfortably recognizing nods to mov- by this softened portrayal of Bill is that, in actu- the true female experience of how women/wom- is not the only character in the film challeng- ie action traditions of Eastern and Western ality, he consciously did many bad things. Rath- xn interact with violence and sexuality can be ing traditional representations of femininity on male action films” allows viewers to remove er than emphasizing Bill’s cowardly and masoch- accurately depicted. screen. The film’s other female representations themselves from the specifics surrounding said istic tendencies, Tarantino leads the story world As a woman, Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill include multifaceted women of colour, a deeply violence (Lavin 109). It is vital to note that the to a place where the audience can confuse Bill Bill: Volume 2 left me wanting. I want to see films marginalized group in mainstream cinema. Both physical brutality in these films is predominant- for kind natured. In forgiving Bill’s sociopathy, made by women and featuring women of varying strong and nurturing, Vernita Green is a black ly female-against-female. Furthermore, male the film echoes society’s own willingness to turn ethnicities and identities. I want to see females woman who steps away from the violent life forces (both Bill and Tarantino) puppeteer this a blind eye to the immoral actions of powerful create pictures of what female identity means of Bill’s ‘Deadly Viper Assassination Squad’ to bloodshed from a safe distance. These women and charismatic men. Here, Tarantino perpet- to women in varying experiences and engage- be a mother and wife. Unbound to stereotypes act on Bill’s command and are ultimately pitted uates a problem endemic to our own cultural ments. At a glance, Tarantino creates power- of female passiveness, Tarantino’s O-Ren Ishii, against each other. In response to widespread understanding of violence against women; that house women who seemingly defy traditional a “half-Japanese, half-Chinese American army criticism on this subject, Tarantino explained if perpetrated by a ‘redeemable’ man, an assault gender roles. These women are the heroines, brat,” entrenches herself within the crime world that the films exist in an otherworldly dimen- is not an intrinsically immoral act, but rather, a villains, and mercenaries that we so rarely get of Tokyo as the head boss (Tarantino). O-Ren sion: “this whole movie takes place in a special misstep. to see on screen. Unfortunately, when examined flanks herself with two equally strong women, universe [...] this isn’t the real world [...] this is closely, his depictions are rooted in the problems Gogo and Sofia, who are respectively a fighter a movie universe” (Tarantino 126). In making of our male-oriented societies. The solution here and a cunning intellectual. These characters es- this statement Tarantino justifies a realm where is simple: have women create pictures of wom- sentially redefine what constitutes ‘feminine’ or male dominance incites female-versus-female vi- en. Show strong women, show crying women, ‘female.’ These representations demonstrate that olence. Through a critical lens, it is increasingly show real women, show women of colour, show the boundaries surrounding what roles women obvious that while Kill Bill’s women are allotted transgender women, show womxn. Write about play in cinema are mutable. The women in this roles outside Hollywood’s typical safety zone, women who are mothers. Write about women world are able to simultaneously inhabit roles as their existence is predicated on the sadistic will who are leaders. Write about women who are mothers, wives, killers, and leaders. These wom- of male actors. screenwriters. Write about women who are di- en provide an opportunity for female characters Bill’s dominance obviously permeates Kill Bill: Volume 2. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. 2004. rectors. Write about women who are real. But to exist in the areas on the spectrum between the films; they are literally named after him. In most importantly, don’t let these depictions the traditional, female as an object, and the un- Volume 1, Bill is an enigmatic figure that the au- There is a paradox of female represen- come from men, don’t let these images and char- orthodox, female as a vigilante. dience anticipates hating because of the crimes tation in Kill Bill’s story world. What initial- acters become obfuscated by the male authori- he has committed against the Bride. He pulls the ly appears to be a picture of strong women in al intent. Women in film need to kill their Bills, strings from behind the scenes and instigates film transmutes into a typically male illustra- Toms, Dicks and Harrys; women in film need to extreme violence such as The Massacre at Two tion of women. Despite including women of co- overpower the male perspective with their own. Pines, which left Beatrix in the hospital. How- lour in its narrative, casting Thurman — a slim, ever, when we finally meet Bill, he is not the evil, white, blonde, blue-eyed woman — as his lead conniving murderer that we expect him to be. demonstrates Tarantino’s hesitation to push the Rather, he is depicted as a good father and devot- boundaries of Hollywood’s aesthetic bubble. ed admirer of Beatrix; Bill even calls her his fa- The one romantic and consensual sexual rela- vourite person. Tarantino completely dismantles tionship he writes into her narrative (with Bill) the picture of Bill as a murderous psychopath involves a twisted Oedipal dynamic. The narra- Kill Bill: Volume 1. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. 2003. created by Vol 1. and Vol 2. At the end of the two tive is riddled with nods to a male dominated While Kill Bill’s dynamic women are in- films, the audience comes to understand Bill as society, wherein the male perspective sabotages spiring, there remains a troubling truth that more human; he is simply flawed and misunder- the independence and decisiveness that I earlier 29 30

Works Cited

Hopperstand, Gary. “Lethal Weapons: Roth, Timothy Dean. “A Sword of Righ The Gun as Icon in the Popular teousness: Kill Bill and the Ethics Urban Vigilante Film.” Beyond the of Vengeance.” Popular Culture and Stars: Locales in American popular film, Philosophy: Quentin Tarantino Fuller, Linda K., Loukides, Paul, and Philosophy: How to Philosophize Popular Press, 1993, 149-151, Web. with a Pair of Pliers and a Blowtorch, 12 Dec 2016. Greene, Richard, Mohammad, K. Silem, Open Court, 2007, 85-96. Kill Bill: Volume 1. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Web. 4 Dec 2016. Perf. Uma Thurman. Miramax, 2003.

Kill Bill: Volume 2. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Perf. Uma Thurman. Miramax, 2004.

Lauzen, Martha M. “It’s a Main’s (Cellu loid) World: Portrayals of Female Characters in the Top 100 Films of 2015.” Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film Study, 2015-2016, http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/ files/2015_Its_a_Mans_Celluloid_ World_Report.pdf. Accessed 5 Dec 2016.

Lavin, Maud. Push Comes to Shove : New Images of Aggressive Women. Cambridge, US: MIT Press, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 6 Dec 2016.

Machiyama, Tomohiro. “Quentin Taran tino Reveals Almost Everything That Inspired Kill Bill.” Conversations with Filmmakers Series : Quentin Taran tino : Interviews, Revised and Updated, Peary Gerald, University Press of Mississippi, 2003, 118-126. Web. 6 Dec 2016. Player 1 Disconnected: Exploring Virtual Sites of 32 Subaltern Agency in Virginia the kitschy detective fi ction of the early 1990s After a brief prologue where Tarver is By David Leblanc as a hypertext. Robert Stam, Richard Porton, inducted as an FBI agent and receives her fi rst and Leo Goldsmith defi ne the hypertext in Key- assignment to investigate Halperin, players nav- words in Subversive Film/Media Aesthetics as igate the Bureau building to a catacomb-like “the relation between one text...‘hypertext,’ to basement offi ce where they fi nd their new part- an anterior text or ‘hypotext,’ which the former ner. Their introduction bears an uncanny resem- transforms, modifi es, elaborates, or extends” the blance to the moment The X-Files’ Dana Scully latter (47). The hypertext is, in a way, the least (Gillian Anderson) fi nds Fox “Spooky” Mulder surprising development in new media, as their (David Duchovny), on whom she must conduct cultural antecedents and potential inspirations an internal investigation of her own, in his re- are often readily available. Stam et al. write that spective basement dwelling. In the sequence hypertexts like Virginia generate their own mean- that follows, a long take tracking the pair’s drive ing by reconfi guring and reimagining the materi- through pastoral landscapes to the fi ctional town al it stems from, “not only through recognizable of Kingdom, calls upon the roadside tableau in infl uences...the so-called ‘new digital media’ ac- the opening montage from Lynch’s Twin Peaks tually gain their cultural signifi cance by absorb- (1990-1) (fi g. 1). And much like how the death of ing and refashioning earlier media and artistic Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) in Twin Peaks becomes practices” (48). In this way, the hypertext does secondary to the show’s oddball humor, Lucas not only reference or allude to anterior works; Fairfax’s disappearance in Virginia eventually it seeks to reshape cultural artifacts, using them falls to the wayside; making room for the game’s as convenient shortcuts for contextualizing set- interest in its character’s marginality. The game Variable State. Publisher 505 Games. Microsoft Windows, 2016. Virginia. ting and atmosphere. In doing so, the hypertext becomes the site of Tarver’s meditation upon The year is 1992. David Lynch’s latest neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci coins as subal- can develop a new meaning out of past products, her own condition and resistance to oppressive oddball noir melodrama is made into a feature tern (Louai 5). That is to say, Tarver and Halper- or in the case of Virginia, level a critique against structures, all the while entertaining hallucina- fi lm, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992). Only in occupy positions of subordination within the them. Although, as I will show, Virginia shares tory visions of alien abduction and small-town a year later, the pilot for serialized supernatural structures of both the FBI and the cultural canon much with the pop-culture canon it emerges political conspiracies. Tarver’s vivid imagination thriller X-Files (1993-2002, 2016) airs on network the game stems from. from, the game nonetheless strives to disturb and hallucinations, which the player navigates television. Meanwhile, in the fi ctional town of Virginia is unlike many story-driven games the otherwise predominantly white, male, and with an often tenuous grasp on what constitutes Kingdom, Virginia, the disappearance of the of its kind: players may control the protagonist, heteronormative agency cast in the paranormal reality, summon the pop-culture scripts of The young Lucas Fairfax raises questions about the but their agency is effectively undermined by the detective fi ction of the 1990s. X-Files, Twin Peaks, or the science-fi ction cult an- small town’s veil of normalcy. Independent game interactive text’s adoption of cinematic formal- thology, The Outer Limits (1995-2000). developer Variable State’s mystery thriller, Vir- ism — jump cuts, crossfades, and montage, to In another scene, Tarver downs a tab of ginia (2016), emerges from the pop culture ped- name a few conventions of fi lmic language the acid — a stamp marked by a red sparrow, a leit- igree of 1990s paranormal detective fi ction. In game employs. By effectively limiting the play- motif in the game — and navigates a lucid hal- the fi rst person adventure game, players embody er’s control over the game’s direction, Virginia lucination wherein she fi nds some resolution fresh FBI graduate Anne Tarver. Assigned to a aims to empower its marginalized subject. In to her personal turmoil, and even uncovers (or, teenage boy’s disappearance, Tarver’s superiors reality, Virginia, an approximately 90-minute ex- rather, imagines) an occult sacrifi cial ceremony also instruct her to keep a watchful eye on her perience, plays more like a fi lm than any game. It reminiscent of the ritualistic orgies from Stanley new partner, Maria Halperin, who is also under is in my discussion of the game as a cultural text Kubrick’s fi nal fi lm, Eyes Wide Shut (1999) (fi g 2). investigation. During their time in Kingdom, indebted to the lineage of 1990s detective fi ction Virginia’s textual references produce meaning be- however, Tarver and Halperin’s trust is tested as and its exploration of subaltern subjectivity that yond mere intertext, which only reference the they uncover the small town’s conspiracies. Un- I hope to show how Variable State attempts to anterior text; the game’s hypertextual sources are like the heteronormative and white protagonists realize the potential agency of its subject in ren- effectively reshaped and rearticulated in the way in similar texts, Tarver and Halperin are women dering a virtual heterotopia. Virginia, for all its its characters are positioned in dialogue with of colour and, as implied by the ending where supernatural conspiracy and detective melodra- them. Variable State may render an environment they abandon their institutional commitments ma, ultimately aims to empower the subaltern. and atmosphere not unlike David Lynch’s oeu- Fig 1. Comparative shots of opening montage tableau from Twin Peaks to drive off together, queer. They remain what Variable State’s Virginia emerges from (top) and early scene from Virginia (bottom). vre or the science-fi ction of series likeThe X-Files, 33 34

but the black female protagonists that investi- and alien abduction. Such casting affords players Virginia forces the conditions of power- subaltern’s only site and modes of self-expres- gate Kingdom and the narrative paths they take the ability to focus on the characters’ relation- lessness upon its players. A later scene set in a lo- sion are nonetheless bound to the dominant lan- remain the means by which Virginia attempts to ship and how the fictional town of Kingdom — a cal inn, which lifts the staging from the musical guage that positions them as subaltern to begin undermine the white heteronormativity of its postcard version of white, middle class, ‘small town set-pieces of Lynch’s oeuvre, namely the Road- with. cultural antecedents. It is as though Tarver and America’ — understands them. house cabaret from Twin Peaks and Isabella Ros- Halperin are not only tasked with a missing per- Virginia’s leading characters can be un- sellini’s eponymous song in Blue Velvet (1986), sons case, but are effectively meant to indict the derstood as subaltern subjects. The conditions further problematizes Tarver’s subjectivity (fig. normative traditions that populate Kingdom. of subalternity, according to Italian neo-Marxist 3). Players sit at a table and contemplate a cab- theorist Antonio Gramsci, “refer fundamental- aret singer swaying in front of a shimmering red ly…to any ‘low rank’ person or group of people velvet curtain until a man waddles over to them in a particular society suffering under hegemon- insinuatingly. Tarver shows the fake wedding ic domination of a ruling elite class” that denies ring Halperin provided her moments earlier to their status as “active individuals of the same na- repel the man. Whereas the Blue Velvet cabaret tion” (Louai 5). As Tony Bennett notes in New scene serves articulate heterosexual desire, Vir- Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and ginia’s cabaret scene shows how Tarver’s implied Society, “race, ethnicity, and culture have be- queerness is undermined by having to submit come central to the politics of difference” (86). to engaging in rehearsed heteronormativity as “Theorizations of sexual difference,” he argues, a means of deflecting harassment. The black, fe- “are characterized by efforts to develop auton- male, and queer body is articulated as undesir- omous definitions of ‘woman’ and ‘femininity,’ able in one context and the object of unwanted unhinged from their binary relationship to ‘man’ attention in another, conveying the often tumul- and ‘masculinity,’ in which they are inevitably tuous experience of the subaltern. The player’s locked into the position of inferior or subordi- inability to act beyond Tarver’s virtual agency nate counterpart” (85). Virginia acknowledges complicates the question of whether she is, in

Fig 2. Comparative shots of cult/ritual scenes in Eyes Wide — confronts, even — the racial and gendered the end, nonetheless under the subordination of Shut (top) and Virginia (bottom). subalternity of its character. By allowing play- the dominant player that controls her. By sepa- ers to embody these subaltern figures, Virginia rating the player’s agency from Tarver’s, Virginia Virginia features two women of color that engages in what Stam calls “centralizing the pe- effectively subverts the hegemony of control and emerge as unlikely figures in the predominantly ripheralized,” or “self-subjectification” (200). In empowers the character, in turn subordinating white, male, and heterosexual canon that early the game’s opening sequence, for example, play- the player to her agency, her narrative, and her Fig 3. Comparative shots highlighting the cabaret singer in scenes from 1990s detective fiction the games interpellate. ers control Tarver as she gazes in a bathroom desire. Blue Velvet (top) Virginia (middle) and Twin Peaks (bottom). Save for the skeptical Dana Scully in The X-Files mirror, reluctantly applying lipstick before the Gramsci coined the term subaltern in Variable State employs an important or even FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Fos- FBI induction ceremony. The mundane scene, his Prison Notebooks written between 1929 and conceit in response to this conundrum: how do ter) in Silence of the Lambs (1991), Virginia’s an overtly feminine-coded moment of person- 1935 (Louai 4). The term was later redeveloped you give voice to a character that is figuratively source material of paranormal detective fiction al intimacy, introduces players to the character by Gayatri Spivak in her 1988 critique of post- silenced? The characters of Virginia, as it were, lacks representations of women and moreover, as both subject (looking) and mirrored object colonial discourse, “Can the Subaltern Speak.” take Spivak’s concession on the subaltern’s si- women of color, in law enforcement roles. When (looked at). Later in the game, Tarver and Halp- In her essay, which addresses the subaltern as lent subordination as a point of departure: they Tarver and Halperin finally drive off together, erin stop at a gas station upon their arrival in a subject of colonialism (rather than Grams- remain silent. They may gesticulate, express the game does not explicitly announce the queer town. With Halperin going inside to pay, play- ci’s broader definition of the oppressed, or eco- themselves however convincingly in their polyg- subtext, but it nonetheless enacts a queering of ers silently wait as a teen-filled convertible skids nomically dispossessed), Spivak examines the onal minimalist aesthetic, but they do not speak the hypotexts and the characters’ abandon of to a halt next to their window; a teenager leans impossibility for the oppressed to voice their — they have no voice. Yet it is not only the black/ the hegemonic structures (e.g. heteronormativ- toward Tarver and makes offensive gestures at subjectivity in any other language than that of female/queer pairing of Tarver and Halperin who ity) that oppress them. The difference inscribed her — players can do nothing in return. The am- the oppressors. She concludes her essay by con- cannot speak: every individual, institution, or upon these texts is, incidentally, difference it- biguity of the harassment — whether it stems ceding, “‘the subaltern cannot speak’” (qtd. in group in Virginia, even the overbearing figures of self. Variable State’s placement of marginalized from Tarver’s womanhood, black skin, or as is Louai 7). Spivak recognizes “the fact that the the patriarchy, remain voiceless. In this muted persons in leading roles obfuscates the game’s suggested by the game’s ending, queerness — is subaltern...only possess a dominant language or mise-en-abyme, the game acknowledges the lim- already oblique narrative of political conspiracy unresolved. a dominant voice to be heard.” That is to say, the its and problems of “giving voice,” as Stam words 35 36

it, “to the disempowered” (201). By eliminating weaves in revisions to the montage where play- Society. Malden, MA: Blackwell the voice altogether, Virginia attempts to figura- ers do not part with Halperin, driving off togeth- Pub., 2005. Print. tively flatten the imbalances of hegemonic dis- er instead. The virtual heterotopia effectively course. Tarver and Halperin may not speak, but revises the conventional mundanity of the nor- Blue Velvet. Dir. David Lynch. De Laurentiis no dominant cultural language speaks on their mative timeline, so to speak, therefore queering Entertainment Group, 1986. behalf, either. the text in offering Tarver the potential to enact Virginia, then, emerges as a “virtual het- her desires and subaltern agency. Eyes Wide Shut. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. War erotopia,” in the words of Stam, wherein the In its representation of queer futurity, Vir- ner Brothers, 1999. subversive potential afforded by technology can ginia enacts the potentials of the virtual hetero- “be used to create critical utopias that expand topia as “a point of relation to the actual world” Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces: Uto the possibilities of time and space, as well as both in terms of the canon of early 1990s detec- pias and Heterotopias.” Trans. Jay individual and social identity” (284). Heteroto- tive fiction it interpellates and the first person Miskowiec. Architecture/Movement/ pias, as defined by Michel Foucault in his essay, subaltern subjectivity it employs to “virtualize Continuité, October 1984, 9p. “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias,” the real” (Stam 277). Players effectively embody represent the characters and their intimacies, exploring the Louai, El Habib. “Retracing the concept counter-sites, a kind of effective- “very everydayness of their digital gazes” (277). of the subaltern from Gramsci to ly enacted utopia in which the Yet the game not only enacts a heterotopic imag- Spivak: Historical developments real sites, all the other sites that ery in its polygonal and colourful aesthetic, nor and new applications.” African Jour can be found within the culture, its remediation of heteronormative and predom- nal of History and Culture (AJHC), Vol. are simultaneously represented, inantly white cultural scripts; Virginia effectively 4 (1), January 2012, pp. 4-8. contested, and inverted. Places of subverts the hegemony of power that structures this kind are outside of all places, the game-experience. There remains the facile The Outer Limits. Leslie Stevens, creator. even though it may be possible to argument that games inherently place characters Showtime, 1995-2000. indicate their location in reality. (in this case, subaltern subjects) in controlled (3-4) positions of subordination and therefore perpet- Silence of the Lambs. Dir. Jonathan Demme. uate the figure’s subalternity, further silencing Orion Pictures, 1991. Although we can effectively locate Virgin- them. At the same time, however, Virginia’s lim- ia’s ‘Kingdom’ geographically and culturally (in iting and even complete removal of player con- Stam, Robert, Richard Porton, and Leo the game’s obsession with early 1990s detective trol in its pervasive use of filmic language disarm Goldsmith. Keywords in Subversive fiction), the township and the potentials itaf- the player in order to convey a story instead of Film/Media Aesthethics. Chichester, fords Tarver and Halperin still exists beyond this traditional gameplay, supporting the subaltern West Sussex, UK; 4: Malden, MA, reality — our fleshspace. Virginia’s screen-medi- character’s autonomy. This is perhaps Virginia’s 2015. Print. ated heterotopia, like the mirror in Foucault’s greatest subversion of hegemony: rendering the text, appears as “a placeless place…in an unreal, player subordinate to the character — the con- Twin Peaks. David Lynch and Mark Frost, virtual space” (4). The otherwise silenced and trol of which they may take for granted. In Vari- creators. ABC. 1990-1. subordinate figures, Tarver and Halperin, find able State’s heterotopia, the black, female, queer alternative means to express themselves in this body may initially enter this mediated space of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Dir. David virtual world. Virginia’s final montage sequence the virtual real under some hegemonic pow- Lynch. New Line Cinema, 1993. has players lackadaisically dash through years er’s control — the player — but eventually be- of Tarver’s life following the investigation in an come agents of their own desires and potentials. Virginia. Variable State. Publisher 505 imagined scenario where she parts with Halp- Games. Microsoft Windows, 2016. erin. Droning through monotonous labour and ascending the corporate ladder, the game uses The X-Files. Chris Carter, creator. Twenti Works Cited rapid editing and graphic match cuts (where eth Century Fox Home Entertain players raise a classified file only to drop a new ment. 1993. one on their subordinate’s desk) to convey the Bennett, Tony, et al. New Keywords: A dreariness of this potential future. Virginia then Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Marriage as Marxist Perversion: Manipulation and Control in 38 David Fincher’s Gone Girl she nonetheless becomes financially bound to is not essentially about distance from capital or By Pam Austin Nick and thus subject to his authority. However, patriarchy. Rather, a woman’s freedom is won through a series of manipulations, and ultimate- through an understanding of how these ideol- ly by mobilizing her labour power against Nick, ogies operate in concert, and by subverting the Amy inverts the power dynamic of the tradition- gendered expectations within their framework al heterosexual marriage. Then, in a strategic to her advantage. marital compromise, Amy performs the role of Gone Girl initially depicts Nick and Amy the dutiful and gracious wife thereby enabling a as equals in their marriage. Working as writers new female driven power within the institution- in New York, they both contribute proportion- al confines of coupledom. ately to the relationship, financially and emo- tionally. In the early stages of their marriage, there is little evidence of a compromise of iden- tity between them; they simply appear compat- ible. When both Nick and Amy lose their jobs in the Great Recession, the economic shift forces the couple to acknowledge their relationship’s unequal structure. The film here depicts a re- surgence of an otherwise dormant patriarchal authority in Nick. Having failed at capitalism, he seeks to regain some control within the fa- miliar structures of patriarchy. This control first Gone Girl. Dir. David Fincher. 2014. takes form when Nick begins to “push [Amy] to In Western society, marriage is typically cess to agency; for the woman, it represents the Gone Girl. Dir. David Fincher. 2014. be someone she doesn’t want to be: a nagging depicted as a pure and utopian union that cele- disavowal of her agency through the institutions Marriage generates and is perpetuated shrew, or controlling bitch” (Fincher). brates a couple’s shared love and devotion. Offi- that define the union. While capitalism and pa- by the creation of specific gender identities and Fearing that his loss of labour power ciated in front of friends and family, a wedding is triarchy are not one in the same, they operate in roles. In her essay “The Unhappy Marriage be- could end their marriage, Nick subconsciously thought to be the ultimate expression of love and concert to undermine female agency within a tween Marxism and Feminism,” Heidi Hartmann seeks to control and confine Amy through reg- humanity. In reality, marriage can be reduced to marriage’s allegedly ‘equal’ partnership. writes that “patriarchy operates primarily in the ulating hers. Though both are highly educated simple utilitarianism; obtaining government tax David Fincher’s 2014 film, Gone Girl, in- psychological realm, where female and male and capable of working, Nick insists that the incentives, the economization of cohabitation, vestigates the flawed notion of equality in het- children learn to be women and men,” and that couple relocate to Missouri, where he can take and the social impetus toward having children. erosexual coupledom. The film advances that, marriage is an institution that confirms these care of his ailing mother and ostensibly find bet- In many ways, heterosexual marriage is much while marriage is fundamentally centered on instructions (Hartman 7). It is ultimately “the ter employment, and where Amy is not able to less concerned with romantic love than it is with compromise, its basic terms need be renegoti- ideological construction of gender” within the work. Because of this pressure imposed onto her a commitment to the institutions for which it ated for it to operate with some semblance of confines of a heterosexual marriage “that keeps by Nick, Amy must use her trust money to pur- was originally created: the patriarchy, capital, equality. Gone Girl follows the changing percep- the male dominant” (Spivak 306). Since West- chase a small business for him to manage. This and the state. Following this, marriage can be re- tions of Amy as she resists, submits to, and nav- ern marriage is understood as the foundation action stages the conditions of the couple’s re- duced to a social contract in which individuals igates patriarchal control through her marriage and paradigm of the stable family, it becomes liance upon Nick as the sole breadwinner with- commit to adhere to the conditions and prece- with Nick. The film oscillates between position- a space “where dominance and submission are in their household. Hartman writes that “it is dents of these institutions. In this sense, mat- ing Amy as a victim and as a conniving and mali- learned” (Hartmann 22). Further, when patri- symptomatic of male dominance that the female rimony is a compromise between the desire for cious partner. Initially depicted as the “cool girl” archy operates in conjunction with capitalism, unemployed is never considered a crisis” (32) human intimacy and the desire for the utilitari- who is smart, sexually adventurous, and relaxed it ensures both economic and ideological dom- and that “the material base of the patriarchy an benefits of a legalized union. For those who in her marriage to Nick, Amy is transformed — ination over women. Hartmann argues that the lies most fundamentally in men’s control over choose this partnership, entering into a marriage in a sense, tamed — into a submissive and needy “relationship between capital and the patriarchy women’s labour power” (14). In accordance with represents the acceptance of the terms and con- wife. Through this union, she is bound to inhab- is in constant evolution,” and that freedom from Hartman’s point, Gone Girl poses Nick’s employ- ditions of these institutions, however the con- it the social and institutional codes of both pa- capitalism does not translate into freedom from ment a necessity and Amy’s as a luxury. Thus in sequences for either partner are dramatically triarchy and capital. Despite the fact that Amy the patriarchy, and vice versa (3). However, as moving to Missouri, and taking Amy’s capital in different. For the man, marriage represents ac- has her own money given to her through a trust, Gone Girl articulates, female agency in marriage hopes of creating his own, Nick attempts to safe- 39 40 guard his economic and patriarchal control over er). Through framing her oppressor for her ‘mur- fantasy created by her sociopathy. Instead, one act of self-defense and effectively absolves her of Amy. der,’ Amy concocts a way to both end a poison- ought to address the terms of her oppression. all guilt and suspicion of foul play. Amy does not Over the course of three years, Amy and ous relationship and reclaim agency within her Gayatri Spivak argues that, in the context of the need a voice or a cover story, as the media, which Nick’s marriage gradually degrades, culminat- marriage. developed world, the oppressed subject does look to speak for the ‘oppressed,’ readily create ing in his infidelity. While Amy continually at- not encompass all women, but rather the spe- one for her. tempts to address or challenge these issues, her cific niche of “the females of the urban working From her strategic economic and class efforts are met with verbal or physical abuse from class [for] whom the structure of exploitation position, Amy is able to use the once-disempow- Nick, demonstrating his need to enforce physical is especially compounded by patriarchal social ering weapons of femininity to manipulate and domination in tandem with economic control. relations” (300). Amy and Nick, although facing control her husband. At the end of the film, she Where Amy perceives Nick as abusive, he char- financial difficulty, are largely members of the is once more in a position of personal and cap- acterizes her as “neurotic and demanding,” illus- urban bourgeoisie, and thus not aligned with the ital dominance. Amy further inverts the power trating a pattern that Hartmann understands as working class. Further, Amy has multiple de- dynamic within her marriage by engaging her “a response to a social structure in which wom- grees from Harvard and, as a well-known child- reproductive labour power through a genuine en are systematically dominated, exploited, and star, is ensconced firmly in the upper class. In pregnancy to ensure that Nick stays bound to oppressed,” where “women’s discontent is not Gone Girl. Dir. David Fincher. 2014. the scene where Amy hides in the trailer park, a her by his social obligations as a parent. Hart- [merely] the neurotic lament of the maladjusted” Fincher constructs Amy’s resistance to cliché of the working class woman, Greta, whom mann argues that the role of women within cap- (Hartmann 13). In understanding Amy’s misery marriage in two stages. First, Amy rejects mar- we understand as ‘trailer trash’, acts as a cata- italism is to “reproduce the labor force, provide as an institutional issue, the potential of return- riage entirely. This is done through her initial lyst for Amy’s next marital negotiation. Greta’s psychological nurturance, and provide an island ing to a state of equality through mutual respect attempt to literally break free from the restric- relationships under both patriarchy and capital- of intimacy in a sea of alienation” (5). In under- appears impossible. Thus, Amy is forced to un- tions of the patriarchal domination; staging her ism are more oppressive, extending even to the standing Amy as sociopathic, Nick contends dertake coercive methods to reinstate her agen- death at the hands of her husband. In framing realms of physical violence, and do not afford her that she is not able to perform either of the lat- cy within the marital framework. In protest to Nick, Amy ensures the public assumption of his the same agency that Amy enjoys. When robbing ter tasks, and that he must instead carry those Nick’s dominance, Amy manipulates the codes guilt, thereby guaranteeing his judicial death Amy, Greta’s notes how evident it is that Amy burdens for the sake of their child. While Amy and institutional responses under patriarchy sentence and her freedom from his oppression. “ain’t never even been hit before” (Fincher). Her will physically bear the child, Nick will become to her advantage. While she does not wield the The second stage is more nuanced. When her statement marks the difference between the two responsible for those tasks typically associated patriarchal power herself, she instead mobilizes initial plan begins to fall apart, Amy comes to women, as victims of different iterations of op- with the woman. Through inverting these tradi- extant discourses of male domination over wom- appreciate that the constraints of patriarchy and pression. Where, in the media and in her com- tional gender duties, Amy ensures not only her en. This tactic enables her to publicly embrace capital are present in broader society beyond munity, upper-middle class Amy is understood financial stability, insofar as she and Nick will the role of submissive wife and victim, while dis- the confines of marriage. In this secondary stage, as a victim of male domination, where lower not divorce, but also guarantees her control over empowering Nick in the process. Amy realizes that she enjoys a high degree of class Greta is an object of ridicule or hatred. their family. Through manipulating the tools of Gone Girl demonstrates how when mobi- class privilege, which complicates — or makes While Amy does fall victim to Nick’s femininity, Amy is able to control and ultimately lized tactically, the work of a marriage — namely more bearable — her oppression under both domination, Greta’s attack refocuses her under- alter Nick’s identity. compromise and sacrifice — can also be a source capital and patriarchy. She begins to understand standing of this oppression. At the same time While both Nick and Amy consider di- of subversive pleasure and agency. If a woman this upon being attacked and robbed by her two that Amy is attacked, Nick is shown on televi- vorce on multiple occasions throughout the film, understands the limitations that restrict her, young neighbours in the trailer park where she sion begging her to return home, which operates the couple eventually chooses to stay with one she may find pleasure in using those very con- hides. The female assailant, Greta, sees through as a new form of marital compromise in which another. Nick does so in order to protect oth- straints against her tormentor. Rather than sim- Amy’s costumed attempt to pass as part of the Amy has the upper hand. While her decision to ers from her sociopathy, and Amy, in order to ply presenting a scenario of a woman’s gradual lower class, and as a result is able to take advan- return home releases Nick from police suspicion, assert her newfound ability to manipulate her disempowerment through marriage, Gone Girl tage of her. Through this, Amy realizes that her it also grants Amy a new degree of authority husband. Their marriage thus emerges from the supposes that Amy wins some degree of agen- complete rejection of both capital and patriarchy within their relationship. Through Nick’s tele- film as little more than a calculated game, where cy from subverting traditional power dynamics. has proved to be precarious. As a means to justify vision appearance, Amy comes to see him as the the victor changes from moment to moment and After staging her own murder, Amy attempts to her return to relative security, Amy opts for a re- ideal man that she has molded. In order to return pleasure is derived through exerting control over frame Nick for homicide. As our narrator, she negotiation of her marriage, which is now pred- home, she performs the ultimate role as victim one’s opponent. The film presents an intense iro- presents this act as vengeance against Nick for icated on subverting her oppression, rather than under patriarchy through restaging her kid- ny then, where the two are posed as the utopian his embrace of patriarchal and capitalist oppres- submitting to it. napping and abuse at the hands of an obsessed ‘happy couple’ when in fact their entire marriage sion over her body, and for changing her into It is unfair to argue that Amy is not op- ex-boyfriend, Desi. By self-inflicting a barrage of is predicated on destroying one another. “someone that she never wanted to be” (Finch- pressed, and to discount all of her struggles to wounds, her brutal murder of Desi is seen as an At the film’s conclusion, Nick asserts 41 42 that the primal questions of any marriage are “Who are we, and what have we done to each other?” Nick’s statement commu- nicates that the foundations of a marriage are the structures of control and domina- tion present within it. The film thus pres- ents the institution of marriage as existing not for the sake of love, but as a means of codifying pre-existing structures of con- trol in society. Marriage provides the in- stitutionalized opportunity to control another person, the primal motivations of both patriarchy and of capitalism. Within this framework, Gone Girl presents mar- riage as a compromise wherein both part- ners leverage cooperation as a strategy for coercing the other, and for navigating the constraints of both patriarchy and capital.

Works Cited

Gone Girl. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike. 20th Cen tury Fox, 2014.

Hartmann, Heidi. “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism” in Women and the Revolution, ed. Lydia Sargent. Boston, MA.1981. 1-41. Print.

Spivak, Guyatri Charkavorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Cary Nelson, Lawrence Grossberg. Chigago, IL. 1988 University of Illinois Press. 271-313. Print. The Cost of a Good Cry: A Meditative Reflection on 44 Femininity and Power do these characters justice, as if this is their ONE acters have been acknowledged and expected, By Sam Yoannou SHOT to deliver the perfect Batman. As if Bat- even if diversity within these roles is not. In or- man hasn’t been remade 78,439,274 times. I’m der to fully dissolve the issue, there needs to be a only throwing shade at these nerds because I am better balance in developing these characters so one myself, and I have joined nearly every conver- that their power is not synonymous with mas- sation about every casting development that has culinity. Unfortunately, mainstream media often taken place in both the Marvel and DC realms. presents female characters that must compro- To this day the most excited I’ve been was when mise their womanhood in order to be powerful I found out Anne Hathaway was going to be — which is a balancing act I’ll discuss in a few playing Catwoman in Christopher Nolan’s The paragraphs. Dark Knight Rises (2012). In 2015, I released my first short film, ti- Let me tell you something. Seeing a male tled CRYHARD. My boyfriend of two years bru- superhero is cool, but seeing a female superhe- tally cheated on me, and to cope with the pain ro is WILD. It’s kind of like the systemic sexism I thought would surely never end (**SPOIL- that takes place in your brain when your pilot ER**: it did), I made a movie about attempting on a transatlantic (or really just any) flight, is a to kill him with an axe. Since — as previously woman. The idea of seeing a girl with substantial mentioned — I don’t necessarily put that much power is more exciting, because (unfortunately) thought into art, I just kind of made the film it is still out of place. thinking it was a dumb (but funny) portrayal My obsession with powerful female char- of a woman destroyed by a slimy little man. My acters does not stop at comic book superheroes, ‘dumb’ movie ended up getting into a few film CRYHARD. Dir. Sam Yoannou. 2015. obviously… that would be weird. I like all boss- festivals. Most recently, I flew to Los Angeles to Although I’d like to think of myself as a sticky little spider fingers…God, what a rush! ass female characters, and so do most viewers, watch it at the Broad Humour Film Festival. Af- sophisticated film buff, with a pallet for nuanced The whole culture behind the superhero movie but not for the reasons you would think. With ter the screening, there was a Q&A discussion themes and enriched storylines, I’m really not. has clearly gone bananas, with the re-branding the much debated third wave of feminism (Is where I was extremely surprised to hear that my My favourite genre of movie is action, or action of Marvel over the last five or so years. The col- it happening? And if so, why? Do you guys still film brought up a topic I definitely did not think horror, depending on what kind of temporary liding of worlds, the superheroes you know so burn your bras?), both the big and small screens about during production. thrill I’m looking for that day. I wish I could say well, with the celebrities that basically rule the have made a drastic effort to increase the num- I was basically asleep on the podium I was more cultured, more intelligent, more will- Western world, is a juicy development that gets ber of characters embodying a new ‘powerful fe- when one of the girls in the audience said “I have a ing to “dive in!” as they say, but I’m just not. I use better with every casting. male’ trope. Audiences respond well to this new question for Sam about CRYHARD.” movies the way I imagine a man, worn out by the trope, as shown with the success of characters What? I perked up and she said: “I really Depression might have: to escape the tragic re- “Joseph Gordon Levitt is going to play like Alicia Florrick (The Good Wife), Olivia Pope liked how the protagonist was a strong female alities of everyday life…But I digress! Within the Robin!” (Scandal) and — my personal favourite — Cookie character, while still remaining completely vul- seemingly vapid genre that is action, my absolute “Oh my god, I love him.” (Empire). These actresses are well received and nerable. How did you achieve that balance?” favourite is the superhero movie. Because really, “WHO doesn’t?” well paid. It was recently revealed that Scarlett how much do you need to think about a super- Johansson has broken the record as the highest hero movie? “Not that much” is the answer I offer “James McAvoy is playing young Profes- paid female actress for her role as Black Widow you. Although I enjoy a good superhero film from sor X!” in the Avengers franchise. start to finish, my favourite part is obviously the “STOP!” Although I’m as overjoyed as anyone to reveal: when you know that you’re about to see see more diversity in female roles, these long some supernatural (or natural, if we’re talking “Ben Affleck is going to be Batman.” awaited castings are problematic. The fact that Batman) power in action. Like in the original “Yeah, I can’t see myself getting behind this still seems to be a novel concept is a prob- X-Men, when you just know Logan is about to that…” lem I see diminishing over time, just based on the sewer his opponent at the underground Albertan progress that has been made with female charac- CRYHARD. Dir Sam Yoannou. 2015. boxing match, or in the 2002 Spiderman (with These pairings are made, followed by the ters already. There was a time when empowered To put this in perspective, the main char- my favourite actor of all time, Toby McGuire…) flak delivered by comic-junkies across the world, women characters were way fewer and farther acter in CRYHARD finds out her boyfriend is when he first starts climbing the wall with his debating if the studio made the best decision to between. In recent years, however, female char- cheating on her, then cries really hard for like a 45 46 week, cuts bangs, and then in a seemingly men- ance I accidentally achieved that is kind of rare fat girls who are funny but not sexy, dumb air- tally unstable move, decides to stalk her ex with to see. Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow has head girls with nice racks that get killed first an axe. Basically, I just wrote what I felt like do- undergone a female circumcision. She literally in horror movies, or powerful girls who have ing in real life, but obviously didn’t do because had her girlhood taken from her, and that’s why no emotion and sometimes no vagina hole, but that would be insane. And as women, we have she was able to become the most powerful, and DAMN can they get shit done. As a female, I can to be aware of anything that can make us seem cutthroat Russian assassin. Alicia Florrick in The tell you that there are times when I’m a dumb insane, even if it is completely 100% justified, Good Wife cries for the first time in Season 2 and airhead, who gets shit done while crying in a because it can and will be used against us, and it is treated like a massive breakthrough in the power-suit. Embrace me America! fused to our reputation for the rest of our psychotic, show. “She’s CRYING? That’s crazy because this period bearing lives. character never cries.” Now, back to my biased The founder of the festival chimed in: opinion that Cookie from Empire is the best char- acter ever. With Cookie you have a woman who Work Cited I agree. I think it’s very rare to see embraces her motherhood, loves her babies, is a female character with self agency, easily hurt, cries sometimes, but is still a power- CRYHARD. Dir. Sam Yoannou. 2015. who you know, for lack of better house at the company, and does whatever is best words could ‘fuck you up’ without for her. Like THAT is what I’m talking about! compromising her female identity. Everyone close this journal and go watch Empire. She was still upset, she was still crying, but there was a power that came with her feminine vulnerabil- ity. Great job.

I had nothig to add, short of:

Thank you! Of course, this was a completely intentional artistic choice, a microcosm if you will, for the harsh dichotomy females must face in this great world: To em- brace the power of man, and thus, CRYHARD. Dir. Sam Yoannou. 2015. cut loose from our sacred feminini- ty? Or…the dignified but seemingly stagnant choices, to clutch to our feminine roots and forgo the vast opportunities male characters have the privilege of grasping on a reg- ular basis. As you can imagine the decision was QUITE a tough one that I spent years deliberating, kind of like how J. K. Rowling wrote CRYHARD. Dir. Sam Yoannou. 2015. Harry Potter for 5 years on napkins before she actually started writing As I said, I’m not like a brilliant film sa- the book. So to answer your ques- vant! But, you only need two eyes and a heart to tion Linda, YES, I am a genius. know that women need to start being portrayed as they are on television and in film, instead of Instead, I just nodded in agreement and being divided into these brutal stereotypes: girly said nothing at all. When I got home, however, girls, bitchy girls, lesbian workaholics that wear I started thinking more about it. There is a bal- power suits and don’t get laid, butches, tomboys, Be Bold: An Interview with Filmmaker & Feminist Emma Higgins 48 By The Film Atlas Staff full-time film work. I started making my own right way. shorts and ridiculously embarrassing pieces and then kind of built it up from there to directing. I think in some ways it’s a good process. One of the things I like about filmmaking is it’s not easy. TFA: Your editing style is very unique. Without If I had gotten funding immediately and easily a formal film education, where did you learn to for my first draft of my first script, it would have edit? been terrible. Sometimes the hoops that you have to jump through will ideally just make [the EH: That’s very kind of you. I’m using some work] better and my hope is that when it finally more editors now rather than doing it all my- happens it will be really well deserved. self. I think it’s better to collaborate with people whenever you can because it always brings new TFA: Your short film, God Hates a Coward (part of things to mind. But at first [editing] was a ne- the 2016 Bell Media Sound and Vision film chal- cessity because I had no money to do anything. lenge), was made on a budget of $100. Do you At that point, I would have to edit just to get find it is a great obstacle if you aren’t granted a projects to happen. So I got a copy of Final Cut large budget for a short? and I just taught myself things. I made a bunch of short films in my kitchen and learned how to EH: That one was a challenge. It was $100 in edit that [way]. two weeks, which is fast. And because you [are given] the locations you can’t really preconceive Emma Higgins TFA: You mentioned to us previously that you anything. We also had to use [a specific] song. Emma Higgins is a Toronto-based and lower budget things, there was more for me in were trying to get funding for your feature film, But it was a very pure experience too because filmmaker hailing from Vancouver, BC. Since Toronto. I had someone representing me here and Northwoods. What is this process usually like for you can’t really worry much about things. You moving to Toronto, Emma has become deep- there aren’t really directors’ reps in Vancouver, it’s filmmakers in Canada? can’t worry about [the film] looking ‘the best,’ ly involved in the city’s cultural industries. much more of a service town. There is a huge film you’re just like “okay great, I can get this camera She has directed many music videos, work- industry [in Vancouver], but [the sets are] often EH: I can’t say that I’m an expert on this be- and we’ll shoot on that.” ing with artists such as Mother Mother, Dirty American money. They’re not actually creating a cause I haven’t successfully funded my feature Radio, Dear Rouge, Brave Shores, and Shawn lot of what’s being filmed. yet. There are a lot of ways and it is sort of this I think [the filmmaking process] is better now Mendes. She created the short film God Hates nebulous thing that happens in different ways though. It’s insane, you can buy these little cam- a Coward (2016) as part of the 2016 Bell Media TFA: How did you get into film originally? Did you for different people. I have known some friends eras [that are] a couple grand and they look really Sound and Vision film challenge and recently go to film school in Vancouver? who’ve managed to get their films made using awesome. It’s not a rich person’s game anymore. completed her latest short, Currency (2016), for Telefilm money. I don’t know if you saw Hello I think another way to finance films is to just which she was awarded a BravoFACT grant. EH: I didn’t go to film school. I very randomly — Destroyer (2016) this year at TIFF? Kevan Funk make really cheap ones, a lot of filmmakers will Emma is currently working on developing her it’s kind of embarrassing I guess — was doing ex- [the director] is from Vancouver/Toronto too tell you that. Make a film for no money. Most of first feature length project,Northwoods . tra work, acting work when I was 14 or 15. I was and I thought that film was great. He [received the time the less money, the more creative free- Emma sat down with us to talk on set one day and asking a ton of questions and I Telefilm funding and] pieced that together over dom. about filmmaking in Canada, her roots in remember this DOP (Director of Photography) at years. I have so much respect for him for making the North, and women on-screen. You can the time [asking] “would you like to work in this?” that happen. TFA: You’ve directed many music videos and are visit Emma online at emmahiggins.com. and I was like “Uh, I’m 15 and you have to go to now moving into narrative work. Can you speak school for years to PA.” He said, “No, no, you don’t. I have some other friends that go a more private to the difference between these two formats? This interview has been edited for length and clarity. My girlfriend’s actually a location manager so you financing way by finding investors, not through can just email her and she’ll get you out on a set Telefilm. Or you can do foreign sales —where EH: Music videos are more crafted as commer- The Film Atlas: Why did you choose to move sometime.” you’ll find a sales agent on board and sell to cial pieces so it involves a little bit more mar- from Vancouver to Toronto? foreign markets — which is a little bit easier if keting. [The artist] knows what they’re going So I went and PA’ed on a set and kind of took that you’ve done films in the past and have a track for so it’s often very collaborative as well. A lot Emma Higgins: I felt that at the time since I was up as my high school job. By the time I was ready record. There are many different methods that of the artists that I work with will have ideas or directing a lot of Canadian content, music videos to graduate high school, I just fully slipped into people use and I don’t think there’s any sort of visuals that they will bring to the table. We’ll 49 50

discuss things and they’ll come up with some- ple trust me with their songs, or even trust me gnettes in Currency. What’s your inspiration for look at the stats on it and it’s insanely tilted to- thing [of their own]. You know, it’s their songs. with a budget, so I’ve been able to get really ex- that? wards male characters being represented and perimental. I feel like with music videos, if you their stories being told. I couldn’t give a shit I also fi nd music videos to be very quick and sat- can do that, you should. A lot of [my style] just EH: I’m often inspired by multimedia. I just like about telling more male stories. I have a very isfying. Often we’re shooting these things and comes from trying to do things that you don’t see breaking the boundaries a little bit. There are hard time relating to them and it’s just exhaust- they’re out within a month. I get the song, we everyday or trying to [incorporate] weird camera other fi lmmakers that [incorporate multimedia] ing. Not that I wouldn’t ever make a fi lm with a come up with [a concept], we shoot it, and it’s tricks. Stuff like that is really appealing to me. often and I don’t know why I love it, I just re- male protagonist but right now [female protago- done and out in the world. So it’s very reward- It’s bold. I’m trying not to be super basic and I ally do. You watch Natural Born Killers (Oliver nists are] what interests me the most. ing for everyone involved. It’s this tangible thing think that is [a fi lmmaker’s] job in some ways. Stone, 1994) and it’s great. It cuts from fully an- that’s here and we made it and now we can share Make bold choices. Make statements rather than imated scenes to 16mm black and white to fully I don’t think there are any tricks to portraying it. just playing a really safe role. crisp 35mm. It’s all over the place and there are females; I just want to portray them honestly. It’s no rules. So I would say that a safer interpreta- not that I’m trying to glorify women or champi- TFA: In your short fi lm,Currency , you often rack tion of that is incorporating some mixed media on something. I’m just trying to present honest focus and play around with different camera forms or graphics within live action when it’s stories of women. Get more women on screen techniques. How, in the moment, do you choose appropriate. and talking, whatever the role, just more of it. these formal elements? TFA: We were struck by the natural beauty in TFA: Do you fi nd that you are given different op- EH: Honestly, especially in shorts, there’s some- your Northwoods teaser. Do you fi nd it consider- portunities than male directors? thing to be said about instinct being all you have. ably more diffi cult to shoot in the cold? You prepare and you prepare and you prepare EH: I wouldn’t say that I’ve experienced any- and then you get on set and shit never goes how EH: Yeah, shooting outside is diffi cult. It’s actu- thing so obvious as that. I guess people have been you want it to. You’re there and it’s like okay, for ally one of the things that I fi nd really creatively surprised to learn that [I’m a woman]. Some peo- some reason your idea doesn’t work, so you have stifl ing sometimes in Toronto. There’s this 4-5 ple don’t even read the [credits] on stuff. I sort of to fi gure out how to capture different angles on month period when I’m conceiving ideas and am take it as an interesting compliment. One of the The Drugs. Dir. Emma Higgins. 2017. the spot. It’s just trusting your instincts in that limited by [the weather]. You can’t necessari- best comments I ever got was when I made this TFA: When you’re working with artists, do you moment. It’s something that I think is very diffi - ly go do something that will take place outside country video that was really “bro” — dudes and feel like you are given enough creative control? cult. I would like to say that everything was per- because it’s going to look really grey and people cars and trucks — and [people] were like “this fectly planned out in advance but it’s a little bit won’t physically be able to do it for that long. is the best macho video ever.” I directed it, we EH: I feel like it’s important that [the artist is] more instinct. You’re sort of limited to do something in a stu- had a female editor and a female producer, and defi nitely refl ected. Sometimes you can have dio. we did the manliest video. No one knew or could confl ict with people. You know, with any sort of believe that ladies made it. work, some people you’re going to work better TFA: I feel like this is particularly true with Ca- with and some people you’re going to see eye to nadian fi lmmaking — TFA: It’s disappointing that a man might as- eye with. And that’s a diffi cult place to navigate. sume men direct your work, especially if it is of One of the things I would say I’ve learned in the EH: Yeah, the North. My lens is fogging up every interest to him. last couple years is [to have] more confi dence in two seconds and stuff and you’re like “ugh, this standing up for what I know is good, what I be- is making me so frustrated.” But you just gotta EH: I think that there’s this idea of what con- lieve in, or what I feel represents me too. I think roll with the punches. stitutes a ‘female’ fi lm. You know, [when] peo- it’s just something you get after a little bit more ple talk about the female vision or whatever, it time. It’s the confi dence to be like “no, you need TFA: Your main character in Currency is a wom- tends to be [depicted as] romantic or soft. [Peo- to trust me. This is why this is going to be good an and the two main characters in Northwoods ple] think of dramatic, arty fi lms as opposed to and make sense.” are going to be women as well. What is your ap- action movies. I was reading this story on how proach to depicting women and femininity on- Martin Scorsese’s editor (Thelma Schoonmak- Currency. Dir. Emma Higgins. 2016. TFA: You employ a very specifi c authorial style screen? er) is a woman and how she’s edited every sin- to your work. How did you start to develop this? TFA: You regularly incorporate animation into gle one of his fi lms. She’s won three Oscars and live action, like the animated fi gures in the Brave EH: I cannot bear to watch more male stories. she’s obviously incredible. One of the questions EH: I’ve been very lucky to have had some peo- Shores music video, Surf’s Up, or the animated vi- It’s just unbearable. It’s all male driven. You even she was asked a while back in an interview was 51 52

“As a woman, how do you feel about working on such violent material? Isn’t it upsetting to you?” And she said, “Oh, but it’s not violent until I edit it.” When I say that I want to tell female stories it’s not always like I want to tell the story of be- ing a woman and experiencing menstruation. It can just be a very entertaining film that happens to have female characters at the helm. It doesn’t need to be about “being a woman.”

TFA: Even within the past five years, do you find noticeable differences in gender equality work- ing in the film industry?

EH: It’s hard to say. I’m in such a different place than I was five years ago, just where I’m at in my career. I think that there’s a lot more information. There’s more research being put in that actually shows the numbers on how many speaking roles [are female]. I think that people are becoming more aware of the bias on screen.

You know, people have these old ways of think- ing that women can’t do as well in the box office and stuff like that. There are a few [women] that are breaking that idea. Force Awakens (2015) can star a women and it can do well. I think the big one was Pitch Perfect 2 (2015), which was direct- ed by Elizabeth Banks and broke a bunch of box office records. It’s little things like that that will hopefully change people’s minds. I’m optimistic.

THE FILM ATLAS

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