Before I get stuck into this review proper, I want you to know, readers, that I have found it impossible to review without spoilers. THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW. If you care about spoilers for this film, scroll on down past the review to the illustrations and the “you should/should not see this film because…” bullet points.
Other thing is, there’s talk of rape in this, too.
Now, I went to see The Skin I Live In (La Piel Que Habito) on my own, which was possibly a mistake, the reason for which you’ll realise as you read on. I have a little snippet of anxiety left over from school whereby if I go to do something alone, I’ll be afraid I’m in the wrong place. I’ll get my ticket, read the ticket, go to the place it says on the ticket, but I’ll still be a bit scared that I’m somehow, magically, in the wrong place.
So there I sat in the Arts Picturehouse in Cambridge, nervously clutching my mug of tea (THEY LET YOU BRING FUCKING TEA INTO THE FUCKING CINEMA OH MY GOD HEAVEN IN AN AUDITORIUM!!!!), wondering if, when the film started, it’d be the right one or not.
Ten minutes of sumptuous interiors, high-angled shots, hyper-saturated film and an onslaught of seething, brooding madness in, I realised with great satisfaction that yep, I’m watching a goddamned Pedro Almodóvar film. That man has his favourite toys, tropes and themes, doesn’t he? This is another film that watches class through a fish-eye lens, focussing on the life of a very well-off, in-demand surgeon (Antonio Banderas), who is currently undertaking research into the growth of synthetic human skin for the treatment of burns sufferers. He has “help” and a housekeeper and everything.
Also, he keeps a young woman (Elena Anaya) as a pet in a locked room and does experiments on her.
This is just the set-up. This is all revealed in the first extravagant slice of immaculately tailored, dressed and designed film. It goes further. Every single character in this film is broken in some fundamental way. Or if they don’t start out that way, they become that way.
The only truly sympathetic character, I found, was that of the housekeeper, Marilia (Marisa Paredes). She’s stalwart and practical, caring and protective, and I wish she survived ’til the end, but she doesn’t. I was surprised, actually, that there were any purely sympathetic characters at all in this film – it’s Almodóvar, no-one is innocent ever! And, indeed, she is the only fully likeable, empathic person in the film. Everyone else is absolutely horrible in some ways, and deeply sympathetic in others, leaving you with absolutely no bloody idea what to make of them overall.
So far, so Almodóvar.
Now, while I was watching this, absorbing it like a sponge, my thoughts drifted – as they are wont to do – to the rest of the Almodóvar canon. My favourite film of his by a long shot is Bad Education, and if you’ve not watched it, you really must – but he really does have this ongoing obsession (theme, exploration, whatever you want to call it) with transgender people, and the process of transforming gender presentation, and whether or not transformation redeems. He’s also good at casting real trans* people as transgender characters, which is something that Hollywood has yet to realise is a thing that they should fucking do, too. “Huh,” I thought, with this in mind, watching Antonio Banderas’s distressingly hot surgeon-gone-mad leaking deep-eyed insanity all over the cinema, “There’s no trans* folk in this! Weird, for Almodóvar, to not at least have one of us.”
And then everyone was trans* and everything hurt.
No, I’m serious. Holy shit. Yes! Indeed, ALL film literature on this is meticulously devoid of spoilers (and I’m ruining that now, hahar!) but the pretty young thing Scary Dr. Richard is keeping as a toy/pet/experiment/wife replacement/wall-to-wall security camera work of art (I’m not even joking) is the bloke that raped his daughter and has been surgically rebuilt to look like a cis woman as punishment.
Now, before I explore that comprehensive cinematographic clusterfuck in more detail, I’m going to make a quick aside here and say that this film also deals with consent and choice, and what happens to our minds when these basic human rights are removed from us. There’s a lot of relatively graphic sex in it, and not all of it is 100% doubtlessly consensual, so please bear that in mind if you’re off to watch it. There’s also non-consensual body modification and surgery, none of which is graphic, but the treatment of it is brutal and plays upon the mind’s ability to patch in worse realities than that to which it’s denied visual access. And there’s also kidnapping, gagging, drugging, imprisonment and so on, all of which is beautifully and luxuriantly filmed for your horrified pleasure. Nothing is sacred, no-one is innocent, and everything is broken. It’s amazing. It’s like, as the film goes on, it peels off layers of scabs to reveal more horrible things underneath.
Back to the sex reassignment thing, then. This is the first time I have ever seen in a film the notion of sex reassignment as punishment. I’ve seen castration as punishment (The Ladies Club), I’ve seen rape as punishment for being transgender (Boys Don’t Cry) but I’ve not seen this. Now, my initial reaction was, “ASDLAKSJFLDKG HOW DARE MR. ALMODOVAR USE THE REALITY OF SEX REASSIGNMENT LIKE IT’S SOME KIND OF DREADFUL, FEARFUL THING THAT ANYONE WOULD HATE TO HAVE HAPPEN TO THEM” and then I realised that he’s actually written a pretty good precis of what it’s like to be a trans man.
Vicente, the rapist of Richard’s daughter, and let’s ignore the rape part for the moment, is taken away and forcibly reassigned “female”. He’s given a vulva, new skin and breasts, and from the looks of it, a new bone structure and voice, too. (And there’s also the bit where Antonio Banderas chains him up and shaves him with a straight razor, which gave me that’s-my-kink related problems…)
But he still identifies as Vicente – despite quite literally wearing Richard’s dead wife’s face (the reason, I presume, that the part of Vera is not played by a trans woman) – is tortured by how he now has all these different dressy, make-up-y and vaginal intercourse-y expectations of him, and finds solace in yoga and opium to help him forget the pain.
Dude, that’s me. Except without the yoga and the opium and… a few other things, too, but the main theme is there. This is the non-consensual assignment of a sex and attributed gender role that you just aren’t. He plays along and acts the part, but only as long as he absolutely has to before he can escape.
So that was the first time I ever sympathised with a rapist in a film, the end.
Seriously. Watch his films and tell me if I'm wrong. I'm not.
Apparently, people walked out of the preview screening here in Cambridge, which surprises me. There’s nothing graphic (other than sex) in this film, and really, then, you’re only left with the themes to run with, and I can’t really see how you could be disgusted to the point of walk-out over the themes in this film. The cynical feminist in me wonders if the very idea of sex reassignment is really that disgusting to some people…
You should see this film because:
– It’s Almodóvar’s most comprehensible and accessible film that I’ve seen, and would make a nice introduction to how brilliant his work is
– It’s absolutely brutal, terrifying and bizarre, and those are all qualities that make good cinema
– It’s beautifully made, perfectly cast, and the soundtrack made me cry
– You won’t see another film like it, ever
You should not see this film because:
– HOLY NON-CON TRIGGERS, BATMAN
– Antonio Banderas is problematically hot and it’s difficult to watch him being such a terrifying pile of mess and insanity without fancying him a lot
– OR AT LEAST I THOUGHT SO, BUT THEN, I DO HAVE THE WORST TASTE IN MEN EVER
Exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of your host EVERY TIME HE HAS TO ILLUSTRATE ANYTHING
Unsung Heroes: Empress Theodora
Today’s hero had some really quite impressive career advancement over the course of her life. Starting as a small time actress (and most likely prostitute – the entertainment industry of the time was apparently incredibly sleazy), she moved on to wool spinning, a job path she took to its logical conclusion as… Empress? Oh, and then Saint. Who makes a career move like that? The Empress Theodora (500 – 528 AD) of the Byzantine Empire, that’s who.
One of three children, Theodora was the daughter of an actress and a bear trainer of the Green faction1. Following her father’s death she was presented to the Blue faction and became a supporter of theirs. Being a supporter of the Blue faction would prove to be significant later in her life.
The details of her time as an actress or prostitute are somewhat unclear, with a lack of reliable resources on the topic. Procopius spends a lot of his Anekdota providing snippets of a sordid past, and John of Ephesus calls her “Theodora ek tou porneiou”, or “Theodora from the brothel.” Historian Lynda Garland, however, argues that there’s little reason to believe Theodora worked in what we’d recognise as a modern brothel. Instead, she claimed, it was more like a stage-house in which the acting involved lewd displays and off-stage sexual activities with clients were standard. Either way, it was definitely a low status job.
Sarah Bernhardt in Victorien Sardou's play 'Théodora', 1882.
Around about 516 AD, Theodora leaves the theatre/brothel and travels to North Africa. By the time she returns to Constantinople four years later she’ll have made the acquaintance of several high ranking officials throughout the Empire, converted to Monophysite Christianity, and decided to take up a career as a wool spinner. Well, possibly. It’s also possible that the ‘wool spinning’ was a detail added to her life by writers in the 11th century. It was seen as a more virtuous career, one that would partially forgive the ‘sins’ of her earlier life, and thus may have been fabricated to give her respectability.
Whether she was a wool spinner or not, it was around the time of her return to Constantinople that she became associated with the young Justinian, the adopted heir of Justin I. It’s unclear quite how they met, but quite likely it was through a dancer, Macedonia, a member of the Blue faction and informer to Justinian who was himself a Blue faction supporter.
Marriage between Theodora and Justinian was initially problematic. Byzantine laws prevented the heir from marrying an actress, and Emperor Justin’s wife Euphemia would not grant Justinian permission to pursue this. Following her death however the Emperor, being fond of both Justinian and Theodora, changed the law, allowing an actress to repent her past and be considered a clean slate of virtue. Thus the pair were married, and in 527 ascended to the position of Emperor and Empress.
Of course, just becoming the Empress of the Byzantine Empire, though undeniably one hell of an achievement, does not automatically make a person awesome. Theodora gets awesome because of what she did while she was in power. For one thing, she was by all accounts Justinian’s intellectual equal, taking a hand in the forming of Byzantine policy. They may have gotten together because of basic lust, but a sharp mind kept her respected and on the throne (despite being a follower of the Monophysite heresy).
The Blue and Green factions mentioned earlier? About five years into the reign of Justinian and Theodora, they caused trouble in something halfway between a political uprising and a football riot (though with chariot racing instead of football). An event known as the Nika Riots (which is one of history’s most fascinating incidents) saw half of Constantinople burned to the ground, and thousands killed. Justinian and his officials were on the brink of abandoning the city and fleeing for safety when Theodora, so the sources claim, made a stand.
Those who have worn the crown should never survive its loss. Never will I see the day when I am not saluted as empress. Royalty makes a fine burial shroud.
– Attributed to Empress Theodora
Spurred into action by Theodora, Justinian rallied his forces, the riots were put down, and order restored. Over the following years Theodora and Justinian would engage in a large scale public works programme to rebuild the city, including rebuilding the Hagia Sophia in its current form as one of the architectural wonders of the world.
When not putting down rebellions, Theodora was instrumental in passing laws aimed at increasing the rights of many women in the Byzantine Empire. This included the institution of the death penalty for rape, the increasing of property rights and the rights to guardianship of children, and the closing of brothels followed by the opening of a convent to support former sex workers.
Theodora died of unknown causes in 548 AD. Afterwards Emperor Justinian worked to keep the peace and protect her small community of Monophysites, despite being a Chalcedonian Christian himself. Both of them were eventually canonised by the Eastern Orthodox Church.
So there’s Theodora. Given to a sports team as a child, grew up in the sleazy Byzantine entertainment industry, ended up one of the most powerful women in the world and eventually a saint. How’s that for an achievement?
For further reading there’s the expensive but well researched Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium, AD 527-1204 by Lynda Garland, and the more affordable The Empress Theodora: Partner of Justinian by James Evans. There’s also the works of Procopius, but those are skewed by the political issues of the time.
- Unsung Heroes: spotlighting fascinating people we never learned about at school. Rob Mulligan also blogs at Stuttering Demagogue. Stay tuned for future Heroes, or send your own in to [email protected]!
- These factions will be important later. They were somewhere between a sports team and a political affiliation, and pretty important in Byzantine society. There were four teams, named for the colours of their uniforms, though by the time of Theodora only the Blues and Greens were particularly influential. [↩]
Is ‘Chav’ a Feminist Issue?
Chav, n. British slang (derogatory). In the United Kingdom (originally the south of England): a young person of a type characterized by brash and loutish behaviour and the wearing of designer-style clothes (esp. sportswear); usually with connotations of a low social status.
– Oxford English Dictionary
Chav and other C-words
If ‘cunt’ is reportedly losing its power to shock or offend, don’t worry, other c-words are available. ‘Class’, for instance, appears to have become unsuitable for use in polite society these days, while ‘Chav’ has become commonplace in the respectable parlance of those who would never dream of using any other c-word so blithely. Owen Jones’s book Chavs, a welcome and necessary analysis of the latter phenomenon, identifies it as a culture “created and then mercilessly lampooned by the middle-class, rightwing media and its more combative columnists”. Chavs examines the word’s place in current political and cultural discourse in the context of a simultaneous narrowing of socio-economic opportunity and an erasure of traditional working-class identity.
Before we begin, it’s worth heading off a few preconceptions at the pass. ‘Chav’ is a multivalent and unstable signifier, and the word’s origin and evolution shows it meaning different things to different people. It’s been around a relatively long time: a 2005 study described ‘chav’ as a strange subculture which, unlike its predecessors, lacked any association with a particular musical movement or political ideals. 2004 saw the rise of ‘chavertising’, a marketing strategy targeting ’chavs’ as a subculture with spending power, whose members ‘wore their wealth’ and prioritised consumption. At the tail-end of 2004, I attended a gig in Chatham by the former Libertine Carl Barat, whose dubious supergroup, in deference to the town’s history with the term, and with who knows what degree of irony or self-awareness, styled themselves ‘The Chavs’ for the evening. And the (working class and Welsh) novelty rap crew Goldie Lookin Chain were satirizing various aspects of ‘chav’ culture as far back as 2001.
Jones’s book, however, focuses on a particular and relatively recent variation in the word‘s meaning, one which is concentrated in political and media discourse and which is overwhelmingly used about the working class rather than by them. This hasn’t always been, and isn’t always the case – Lynsey Hanley’s review of the book locates the idea of ‘chavs’ within the complexities of working-class communities, where the word can be used to differentiate between ‘those who aim for “respectability” and those who disdain it’. Back in my 1990s comprehensive-schooled childhood, the latter group were certainly distinguishable, known with varying degrees of contempt, amusement or nervousness as ‘neds’ or ‘townies’. But these terms were localised, used within a community to delineate internal hierarchies, rather than to section off an entire community by those at one socio-economic remove from it.
Regardless of the tortuous relationship between the term and the demographic it describes, the use of the word in 21st century political discourse has developed a peculiar, specific and politically-loaded edge. Jones outlines how the word has been stripped of its previous meaning and reapplied in government and media rhetoric, almost invariably being conflated with ‘lower socio-economic group’ by those of a higher one, without reference to or cognisance of the lower socio-economic individuals being tarred with the same brush.
An equal-opportunity stereotype?
At first glance, ‘chav’ is a term tied to class rather than gender. Chav stereotypes are remarkably even-handed: for every lager-swilling lout there’s a single mother, for every Wayne Rooney a Waynetta Slob. The sports gear and leisurewear prominent in ‘chav’ uniform is a type of dress which makes it possible to efface one’s femininity with shapeless tracksuits and scraped-back hair. The baseball cap which graces the cover of Jones’ book is a gender-neutral accessory. Is the female ‘chav’ a recognisable figure? A google image search for ‘chavette’ brings up images of relative deprivation and degradation rather than the upwardly-mobile targets of ‘chavertising’ – the ubiquitous Croydon facelift, tracksuits, pregnant stomachs and yards of bare skin. Many of these are self-conscious or pastiche portrayals by those not identifying as a permanent part of the subculture – a kind of chav drag. There’s also a Newcastle fancy-dress company selling a ‘Super Chavette’ costume, as well as several ‘chav babe’ sites – the straight, and no less curious, counterpart of the numerous gay male chav-porn sites discussed here by Jack Cullen. And the ‘chav’ icon extraordinaire is of course female too – Little Britain‘s Vicky Pollard, one of the oddest fictional stereotypes to be fixed as a moral standard since George Bush Senior instructed America to be ‘more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons’.
The types of women stereotyped as ‘chavs’ make an interesting point about the particularly virulent strain of misogyny which chav-hatred can contain. Anti-chav commentators reveal a disquieting obsession with the presumed sexual precociousness and promiscuity of young working-class women, as well as their aggressive lack of deference and their status outside traditional family and community hierarchies. The behaviour for which ‘chavs’ are criticised includes being too loud, too flash, too drunk, too vulgar and too disrespectful towards their ‘betters‘. Is this particularly problematic behaviour when observed in women?
The tendency for anti-chav rhetoric to thinly veil both misogyny and class hatred reached an eyebrow-raising pitch with James Delingpole’s spittle-flecked rant that Vicky Pollard embodies:
… several of the great scourges of contemporary Britain: aggressive female gangs of embittered, hormonal, drunken teenagers; gym-slip mums who choose to get pregnant as a career option; pasty-faced, lard-gutted slappers who’ll drop their knickers in the blink of an eye…
Here an anti-chav stance allows a thoroughly unpleasant perpetuation of damaging stereotypes of the working class female (sexual promiscuity, sexual precociousness, a thoughtless or scheming lack of protection resulting in pregnancy) as well as a proscribing of non-traditional behaviour (women existing outside traditional family roles, deriving financial support from the state rather than a husband). All this with barely a glance at context or circumstance. Imogen Tyler’s 2008 study ‘Chav Mum, Chav Scum’ found not only that the word ‘has become a ubiquitous term of abuse for the white poor’, but also that “the figure of the female chav, and the vilification of young white working-class mothers, embodies historically familiar and contemporary anxieties about female sexuality, reproduction, fertility, and ‘racial mixing.'”
This gendered and class-based disgust has become particularly prevalent in UK comedy, as identified in Barbara Ellen’s wrecking-ball swing at Little Britain:
Rewarding middle-class, educated, comedy workaholics for lampooning people without any of their advantages, struggling on the margins of society – was this where we’d come to, a boorish festival of exploitation and contempt? … Vicky Pollard alone gave certain sections of the media a label for the disgust they love to express towards young girls spiralling downwards, due to poverty, illiteracy and teen pregnancy…
While the comedies in question do not exclusively portray working class and female characters, the unedifying sight of Oxbridge-educated male comedians sticking it to underclass female grotesques does form part of a disconcerting trend in contemporary comedy towards punching downwards. Pace Kathy Burke as the proto-chav Waynetta Slob, the only recent mainstream female comedian to draw on this stereotype has been Catherine Tate as Lauren Cooper, a character who compared to Pollard is relatively nuanced and sympathetic. (One of Cooper’s appearances has as its pay-off her unsuspected and incongruous knowledge of Shakespeare, rather than a further display of the depths of her blissful ignorance.)
Are we bovvered, though?
Apart from the latent misogyny informing some chav-hatred, then, why is ‘chav’ a feminist issue? The ‘chav’ stereotypes which have gained media prominence and cultural currency are those which are politically useful, being amenable to adoption for narratives which draw on the idea of a semi-criminal, scrounging, feckless underclass to justify political attacks on all of us lower down the socio-economic scale. Many of these stereotypes are female, just as many of the targets of these attacks will be. The current government’s rhetoric repeatedly plays on the stereotype of the idle and recklessly promiscuous single mother, whose ‘irresponsibility’ must be punished, to validate the wider reduction or removal of state support from benefits claimants – even though over half of single parents are in paid employment, a figure rising to 71% for those with a child over the age of twelve. The Daily Mail, happily conflating fact and fiction, used a picture of Waynetta Slob to illustrate an article on the increased number of women claiming sickness benefit, accompanied by the headline ‘Rising toll of ‘Waynettas’. As the smoke cleared after last month’s riots over much of the UK, the single mother was again in the firing line, along with the moral decline, sexual depravity, and social disintegration she is held to represent.
There is still a frustrating lack of attention to class paid by mainstream feminism, whose academic and theoretical focus is often divorced from practical considerations of material inequality, with the result that feminist analysis can seem off-puttingly remote and attuned only to middle-class concerns. Far from having vanished as a vector of political identity, class remains a stubborn and strengthening line of social division. The concept of the stereotypical ‘chav’, and its expansion into a term covering an entire externally-defined and already disadvantaged group, can make socio-economic differences appear insurmountable barriers, erasing the potential for solidarity over the common problems we face. Acknowledging that the discourse around ‘chavs’ can be disingenuous, and can provide a cover for denigrating the social agency and sexual autonomy of working-class women, as well as for wider political attacks on the unemployed and working poor, would be a significant step forward.
- Chavs is available from Verso Books now
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Rhian Jones also blogs at Velvet Coalmine.
Never before seen levels of political Bad-Assery!
I wrote previously for BadRep on how I’m disappointed by most female politicians who have held the top UK posts: while some of the less senior MPs have been great, titles such as “Home Secretary” seem to magically transform people overnight. It’s like Downing Street has a cellar with a Mad Scientist in it, and his lightning machine is nearly ready. You keep expecting David Cameron to turn up to work with a brain in a jar of green liquid, and announce that it’s the new Minister for Equality. We’re hoping for a female politician who will lift the image of women in power, and instead we get Nadine Dorries explaining how they called her mad, those fools at the Academy, but she’ll show them – she’ll show them all, or Louise Mensch saying we should shut down twitter and facebook during any riots.
In fact, responding to the recent London riots, current Home Secretary Theresa May said
We must never forget that the only cause of a crime is a criminal.
Given that she’s in charge of our systems to punish people and deter them from crime, she really ought to have a knowledge of the obvious pressures which make people commit it. In other words, that quote is the opposite of her job, and kinda shows she’s unfit for the post. (Also: it’s grammatically rubbish. A cause acts on a person; it can be anything except the person. Pick one! Just not the person.) Either way it’s not doing great things for the image of women in politics.
There are more women in governments globally than ever before, but whether politically left or right very few of them are behaving any differently to the men. That’s often understandable, since women at the very top are usually under double the scrutiny for any appearance of being “weak” or unsuitable.
One person I totally missed out from my previous post (which was particularly unforgivable given her kickass achievements) was Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, the Prime Minister of Iceland. She is certainly overseeing a country that is doing things very differently, and in terms of democracy also Doing It Very Right. When you see the massive extent of what’s actually going on, you’ll be amazed (bear with me, there’s some politics coming up but pretty soon we get to the flying-shark-pirate-feminist adventures! I’m not kidding, this is epic.)
The World works a certain way when countries get into debt. The International Monetary Fund turns up, tells them to privatise everything and allow foreign investors to buy it all cheap, and refuses to give out any money for loans if they don’t. (I’m simplifying here, but… wait, no I’m not.) Everyone who is still rich agrees that this is the way to go. If you try something different, you will suffer the wrath of many governments, banks and newspapers.
Iceland said no. In fact, as this excellent article points out, they had a revolution and threw out their government, which is pretty much the gold standard for saying no.
Weeks of protests and riots forced them to hold elections, and the new Government decided not to put the entire population into debt for decades by bailing out the banks. They held a referendum and 93% of the people thought they’d rather have Interpol arrest the bankers responsible instead, please. Oh, and they’re having a new Constitution, written by the public.
To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document was not the work of a handful of politicians, but was written on the internet. The constituents’ meetings are streamed on-line, and citizens can send their comments and suggestions, witnessing the document as it takes shape.
Did you know any of this? Did you know there’s a country in Europe who threw out their government through the power of protest, elected a left-wing coalition who then asked the public what they wanted, started writing new rules with complete visibility to anyone on the net, and stood up to the banks and IMF? Because I didn’t see the headlines.
As well as being the first openly-gay head of Government in recent times (and one of the first people in Iceland to fully marry her same-sex partner instead of a civil union), Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is presiding as Prime Minister over one of the gutsiest, brass-badass, openly-defiant movements in the world. A referendum? Putting decisions in the hands of the public? None of that is ever allowed on choices which actually matter. As a friend of mine put it when she read the article: “Iceland, you rockstar “.
Feminists keep waiting for a woman in power to act in a way which differentiates her from the men. Other than being physically seen in the front row (which DOES make a difference), there’s not a lot of point getting a woman in office if she’s then invisible among the grey old guys. I’m not saying that women will govern differently just because they’re women (what? With feelings, while wearing pink? What exactly is supposed to be automatically different?) but Iceland’s Prime Minister is restoring democracy by definition – she’s giving the votes back to the people. Her government is one of the very few even considering going up against the demands of the US, UK, Europe, Asia… everybody. Whether she’s left- or right-wing doesn’t decide if she’s politically great, it’s listening to the views of her country and standing fast against furious demands from Big Money that makes her really quite awesome.
At the moment she is at the front of a government which is trying the first truly different moves in years, and finally we can see a female politician who will be famous for being liberal, fair, in touch with the public and a titanium-plated Badass in the face of pressure. By getting the people to write the new Constitution, she is directly giving a voice to the women of her country. Equal voting rights is crucial, but if that vote only affected things once every four years, and none of the parties offered what 93% of the population want, then the actual power of it would be somewhat lessened. Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir’s government is handing votes back to ordinary women and men and that’s amazing. The views of the whole population will be represented, with public debates via internet along the way.
Is increased democracy feminist? Do the majority of the public hold prejudices, and will their opinions harm women? Or by including more women, do you ensure they won’t vote against their own interests? Is it at least better than a rich, white, male elite doing all the decision-making?
In this case I’m not saying that Iceland’s policies being lefty is for the best, or that their referendum result is the correct one. After all, it might involve the UK not getting all its money back (although an article she wrote in April suggests we’ll see at least 90%). Whether the decisions are good or bad, there is a powerful, articulate woman right at the top of an incredibly exciting political force right now.
I’d just like to ask if we can have Prime Minister Sigurðardóttir over here on an exchange program for a bit please? We’ll lend Iceland Theresa May in return, it’ll be fine.
STOP PRESS: EDIT!
Since the article which brought this to our attention did the rounds online, it’s become clear that several key parts in it aren’t totally… well… accurate. At all.
Some of it is small in terms of the story: Iceland isn’t a member of the EU yet, it’s applying to join. And it didn’t go completely bankrupt, merely under lots and lots of debt.
The part about the new constitution being visible and people being able to send comments in as it goes – that one’s real, and that’s a major factor for us being excited. And regardless of whether Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir was instrumental in bringing any of these changes about, or was initially for or against them, our point is that she’s being seen by the world as the PM at the head of a government which is taking huge steps. If she wasn’t in favour of all the changes, she still retains double BadAss points for defending them so stongly as the official policy now.
Many thanks to commenter latentexistence and others who have helped point out where the inaccuracies lie: we stand by our cheering of the Prime Minister, but warn our readers to take the linked article with a metric ton of salt.
[Guest Post] Doctor Who: Feminist Icon?
Doctor Who returns this Saturday for the second part of the sixth series it has enjoyed since re-launching in 2005. It’s a television programme that has inspired many – kids and adults alike – to a great deal of hoping, dreaming and far far greater fandom than they ever thought possible. It’s a show that escapes reality yet deals with the fantastic in a way that we can all relate to. And, yes, we’ve always liked it because of the crappy monsters and special effects. Whether or not you are a fan of the Doctor, you may now be wondering why he deserves a mention here. Well, let me tell you this…. I think that Doctor Who is very much a feminist show.
Although the Doctor has, so far, always been male and his companions are most often female, the gender of these characters are somewhat irrelevant when it comes to Getting Things Done. The Doctor is no James Bond or Indiana Jones. He uses intellect, banter and good old-fashioned running away rather than weapons, strength or bravado. In addition, there is nothing to say that regeneration could not leave our Time Lord resembling a human female in the future. This did happen when Joanna Lumley briefly played the part for a Comic Relief spoof in 1999, and there is often speculation about which female actor would be best to play the part.
Having relatively little knowledge of the many original series of Doctor Who, due to my poor memory and loss of interest around the Colin Baker era, I thought I’d ask a dedicated fan for a second opinion on this theory. Nick from book blog A Pile of Leaves agreed that I was right about the irrelevant gender of the characters. “Often the Doctor is a paternal or pedagogic figure, but he’s also depicted as fallible, flaky, eccentric, irascible. The first Doctor was told off quite a bit by his stern schoolteacher companion Barbara, the second Doctor was never as clever as astrophysicist Zoe, and the Fourth went around with a Time Lady for a while who was constantly correcting him.”
The Doctor is simply a person, albeit an alien one, and so many of the usual tropes just won’t work here. He’s not ‘all knowing’, although he does a very good impression of that most of the time, and quite frequently he doesn’t have a plan. Most adventure stories have a hero who will always stay and fight, but the Doctor knows all too well when it’s time to simply give up and run away. Unlike most shows with a male and a female lead, none of the Doctors and companions have really had a romantic relationship until Rose Tyler, somewhat controversially, declared her love for David Tennant’s Doctor. The companions are usually just someone to hang around with, adding an extra layer of excitement and preventing the boredom of travelling alone. Occasionally they know a fair bit more than he does too.
Clearly, no discussion on why Doctor Who is a feminist television programme would be allowed without a mention of the wonderful investigative reporter Sarah-Jane Smith. When the character joined the show in 1973 she was added to give a topical splash of ‘Women’s Lib’, but it took a while for the writers to get the hang of exactly how best to do this. With the help of the actress who played her, the late Elisabeth Sladen, in Tom Baker’s second series as the Doctor Sarah-Jane became a strong, independent character who often worked things out for herself. The writers started to give her some of the lines that had been written for the Doctor and she became more of an equal partner to him, staying on the show for longer than most companions and also returning in 2006 for another adventure. Only the best companions get their own spin-off show, right?
Another excellent character who failed to conform to the annoyingly useless stereotype was Ace. Appearing right at the end of the original stretch of Doctor Who series in the 1980s, Ace, played by Sophie Aldred, had already learned to fend for herself on an alien planet before the Doctor even arrived and was far more tough than
he ever was. She battled the Daleks and the Cybermen, gaining confidence during her time in the TARDIS much like the brash Rose Tyler. These days, however, confidence is definitely not something that is lacking when it comes to female characters on the show. Since her arrival in 2010, Amy Pond has always been stubborn, determined and rarely doubts her own abilities. Karen Gillan, who plays her, may have dismissed the idea that Amy is a feminist character, but she most certainly has the ability to kick the patriarchy squarely in the balls. In contrast, her love-interest Rory is a caring and loyal nurse.
For anyone who likes their action-adventure stories to have a proper ballsy action hero, Doctor Who does now have one of those too. Of course, with this being Who, the character is no Jason Bourne. She was introduced in 2008 as a fearless professor and, due to also being a time traveller, River Song (Alex Kingston) not only knew the Doctor but had travelled with a future version of him, which meant that she now knew more than he did! River has seen and done enough to have a pretty good idea how to get out of most situations, and unlike the Doctor, she has no objection to using weapons to get her own way. Most definitely someone I would like to be around to help me out of trouble, but then again, so is the Doctor.
I’m not saying that the programme fulfills every feminist want and need, as it’s still chock full of cliches and stereotypes in places, but this is a story where the parts could theoretically be played by anyone. River Song could be Nathan Fillion and the Doctor could be Helena Bonham Carter. How great would that be? In a Saturday night television schedule where little girls are shown that singing well and looking pretty can make you a star, isn’t it nice that they also have a show to watch where a gang of intergalactic misfits can win via the strategic application of a bit of thinking? There’s more to life than X Factor. Choose Who.
Lori Smith is a rant-lite feminist who enjoys turning her thoughts into word form and then throwing them at the internet to see what sticks. She does this on a weekly basis for BitchBuzz, managed a bit at The F-Word under her Sunday name and dumps the remaining stuff on her blog, Rarely Wears Lipstick.
At the movies: Cowboys and Aliens
WARNING: CONTAINS LOTS OF SPOILERS – SORRY!
I’ll admit, in the wake of previous supposedly Made For Sarah-style films being crushing disappointments (no, I’m still not talking to you, Zack Snyder, after The Incident), I was readying myself for another angry rant in the general direction of the internet. I went into Cowboys and Aliens with low hopes: I wanted cowboys, and I wanted aliens. I got them and they were great.
The cowboy film has always been an exploration of maleness – often specifically white American maleness – pitching “good” masculinity (cowboys) versus “bad” (indians and bandits). There’s often an additional trope which sets masculinity against the untamed natural environment. Alien/monster films focus on our fear of “others” and “outsiders” that we cannot understand or control. Often that other is a frightening idea in our midst, like in District 9 (post-colonial or immigration-related concerns), or 28 Days Later (medical experimentation, unchecked human aggression).
So, with that in mind, Cowboys and Aliens should tell us what American masculinity does in the face of “the other”. Without referencing anything, we can probably conclude that it shoots at it. This is very true.
Except…
… The casting of Daniel Craig AKA that most English of Englishmen, James Bond, as the lead in this action romp seems a little out of kilter. His physical masculinity is present – of this we are in no doubt – but there are nice little moments in which traditional tropes of agressive masculinity are turned slightly around such as the focus on groups, teams and families succeeding rather than the usual “one man against the world”.
I am probably going into too much analysis for what is overall a pleasing action romp. The full spoiler-tastic plot can be found here on the wiki page, but in brief: there are some cowboys, some aliens, stuff explodes. Daniel Craig takes his shirt off quite a bit, Olivia Wilde is hot, mysterious and gunslinging whilst Harrison Ford plays himself. He is the original Space Cowboy, after all.
I did say brief. You can find some more things plus interesting interviews with cast and crew over at the Huffington Post.
What I hadn’t realised, though it is forehead smackingly obvious in hindsight, was that the orignal public outing for this was in comic book format from an idea by Scott Rosenberg, who took a long time to actually sell the concept as a film. No idea why it was such a hard sell; stranger things have happened at the cinema, after all.
The film works. I sat, rapt, as the spectacle unfolded. And spectacle is the right word – action films are about watching Stuff Happening Then Exploding but with enough interesting character and plot elements to lead you through it, without distracting from the important explosions. Otherwise we’ll just be watching a Michael Bay film.
Cowboys and Aliens
A female gunslinger, albeit from very, very far out of town, is certainly a very welcome presence. I’m still in two minds over how I feel about that. It’s good to get female characters into what is usually a very male-dominated genre. Cowboy films are pretty much just that – about cowBOYS.
So let’s look at the boys – there’s a lot of discussion of “being a man” in the film, and the male characters all come of age in different ways, usually through their relationship to each other as father/son types or in their relationship to guns and how big they are. Paging Dr Freud, anyone? As an analysis of maleness it’s not the most subtle.
But then this film isn’t very subtle. Or indeed, subtle at all. The aliens are evil and very “alien” – they have no characterisation and are just the enemy marauding to Planet Earth in search of gold (geddit?). The “baddie” of the film is very clearly avarice. Almost every act of plunder is directly and swiftly punished. The “good” characters are those that express noble qualities of caring for others above themselves and in an interesting turn of events – total self-sacrifice.
The “community conquers all” theme runs strong. The assembled cast must learn to put aside their differences – criminals and lawmen, cowboys and indians, Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford who have a couple of amusing testosterone-offs during the film – in order to fight the common enemy. Now, all of this, well-handled, would be corny but more than good enough for what is essentially a Spaghetti Western crossed with Independence Day. Hey, I don’t need introspection; I liked Thor.
Talking about masculinity and how it is handled in films should be as important for feminists as counting female characters and their agency. Speaking of which, I was pleased to note that the female lead didn’t need rescuing any more times than Daniel Craig, and she’s the only one who knows what’s going on, plus she actually saves the day in the end.
However, there are precious few other female characters, as is the sad case with Westerns – when will we get more cowgirls, when? The only other speaking female characters are a prostitute and a wife, both of whom are damsels eventually in distress. It would have been nice for there to be a human heroine for Craig’s character to riff off (to quote the person I went to the cinema with, “I knew she was too beautiful to be real!”) rather than a space alien on a mission of vengeance. Though maybe she was still a female space alien. I’m choosing to believe she was.
Another lump in the plot stew is the presentation of the Native American characters- the usual “other” to the cowboy, replaced in this film by the aliens. They team up with the cowboys to Save The Day – and frankly, there is a lot of schmaltz and hokum surrounding the entire thing, from their mystical powers that help Daniel Craig’s amnesiac character remember crucial plot points to the fact that Harrison Ford grows as a person by realising his “adopted” Native American son is better than his current one… just before he dies in his arms.
So it’s a film that stereotypes men, women, cowboys and indians. It probably stereotypes the aliens too, but they don’t actually speak so much as growl so it’s hard to tell. It’s silly, it’s schmaltzy… but that’s also why it’s fun. This film does not take itself seriously, and I liked that. Other people didn’t. Many standard clichés of cowboy films are presented, which half made me groan and half made me smile because I wanted them to be there. I was certainly glad that it was a cowboy film with aliens in it rather than an alien film with cowboys in it – I like watching the lone gunman walk into the bar, drink a whisky then get into a fight. If you went to the cinema with an I-Spy Cowboy Films checklist, you would not be lacking many ticks on your sheet.
I’m wondering whether I’m being a Bad Feminist in liking the film despite these flaws. Or do Daniel Craig’s abs just cancel everything out? I believe the original plot did have a man-and-woman cowboy duo hunting down aliens together, which would have absolutely sold it for me. Not sure how the original stood on the Native American characters, though…
Go see this film if:
- You like cowboys and you like aliens
- You like seeing Daniel Craig getting into fights and taking his top off
- ‘Splosions!
Don’t go see this film if:
- You want something that reveals inner, hidden truths about the social pysche.
- Or any kind of subtlety or nuance.
- At all.
Holiday notes: the “Tramp Stamp”
Ah, summer holidays. Bringing with them the many body-related tribulations of trying to get on in life in the face of ridiculous social conventions on how you should look (yes, thank you very much Special K Lady and your Cohorts of Doom). With the annual Revelation Of The Flesh comes a more recent addition to the pile of what Caitlin Moran might term ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT.
The puerile association between a woman’s choice of tattoo placement and her sexual availability. AKA the Tramp Stamp. I hate that word. I hate it as a woman who has many tattoos and is bored rigid of all the shitty comments from the Morally Uptight Brigade about how ink looks “common” or “trashy” on women (and it’s almost always about women), how I’ll hate it when I get older, which is another dull reminder of how once we’ve lost our looks we’re for the bonfire of other people’s vanities.
But worse is the fact that tattoos, particularly this placement, have been added to the ever mounting list of Reasons Why Women Are Sluts. We marched for this, people!
A quick scroll around the internet reveals the extent of the problem. Over 2 million results on Google for the term “tramp stamp” alone. Top hit is the Wikipedia article which doesn’t even try to assert any form of anti-sexism editing beyond the coy reference to “lower back tattoo”, which I initially applauded until I saw the bare bottom shots used in the article. There are pages and pages devoted to deriding these tattoos, and the women who have them. So far, so bad.
The litmus test is whether the chaps get tarred with the same brush. Seems not. They may well have tattoos in this place (it’s a good bit of skin to get inked) but they’re apparently doing it for the irony factor. Or, poor thing, by accident.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not denying that some of these tattoos are ugly, silly or plain ridiculous. I’m very fussy about my tattoos and I love each one to bits almost as much as I love bitching about crap ones. Tattoos are a matter of personal taste, not a flag declaring whether or not I want to sleep with you: if you pour scorn and sexist drivel on my ink, then I definitely don’t.
Tramp stamp – another phrase that we can probably do without. Agreed?