My husband’s response: "Well, duh." (As you can probably guess, I relate to smart, sophisticated, powerful, independent women – I bet most of you do too. ;)
Elizabeth Tudor (1533-1603) was a complicated and fascinating woman who continually made it clear that she was rising above the perceived limitations of her sex to lead her country. She was known as The Virgin Queen; though whether or not she was a virgin in the literal sense remains debatable – she certainly belonged to no man. In fact, she claimed she was married to England.
She did entertain suitors (and often pitted them against one another) in order to gain political advantage. Marriage, of course, would have meant losing control of her affairs, and after having seen what her father did to her mother, Anne Boleyn, and to her sister’s mother, Catherine of Aragon, as well as to her subsequent step-mothers, she was savvy to avoid such entanglements. As she famously said, "Better beggar woman and single than Queen and married," – a belief that ensured Good Queen Bess a freedom rarely afforded female monarchs.
Elizabeth I is a woman that captures the imagination, and many actresses have played her over the years – from Sarah Bernhardt’s silent portrayal in 1912’sLes amours de la reine Élisabeth to Bette Davis in the Hollywood drama The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex in 1939 to Helen Mirren in Elizabeth I in 2005.
Listed below, in no particular order, are but a few of the women (and one man) who have most notably played the Virgin Queen in all her tempestuousness and grace.
In this, the second part of my email interview with directors Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Dawn Valadez, the collaborators talk about breaking the rules of documentary filmmaking, getting the girls to open up on camera, how their film can be used in classrooms, and their future projects.
The ambitious, and successful, documentary Going on 13 will begin broadcasting on Public Television this September. The 73 minute film (which is in English, Spanish and Hindi, with English subtitles) takes place over a period of four years and reveals the interior lives, family commitments and school days of Ariana, an African American, Esmeralda, a Mexican American, Isha, an immigrant from India, and Rosie, a mixed race Latina, as they navigate crossing the threshold from childhood to adolescence.
Directors Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Dawn Valadez’s award winning project is an intimate look at a difficult transitional period for any child; their compassionate study is landmark not only in its ambition but that in it addresses the concerns of a diverse group of pre-teen and urban girls of color.
Moments we get to share include Ariana crying at her mother’s wedding, Rosie discovering Allen Ginsberg at a local bookstore, Esme’s sister’s Quinceañera, and Isha’s trip to India. We see them questioning the changes their bodies are making – or what they’ve heard those changes will be. One schoolmate asks, "Have your parent’s talked to you about pube-er-tee? Do you have internal or external bleeding – or something like that?" Another friend says about a boy crush, "They are in love, even though they don’t know what love is." A later scene featuring a woefully unqualified male schoolteacher conducting a sex education class makes it all the more painfully clear that our children receive mixed and confusing messages at a critical time, and that girls in particular are in need of female role models and support systems.
But they grow up anyway –with or without it. As Esme wisely puts it, "I’m turning into a young person and I’m supposed to change. I can’t stay little all my life. I would if I could, but I can’t so I shouldn’t."
Co-directors, Guevara-Flanagan and Valadez graciously took the time to answer interview questions by email on their filmmaking careers, finding the girls (and where they are now), the logistics of such an ambitious project, and what they’re currently working on. The first part follows; part two will be posted on Friday!
The trailer for The Moon Inside You begins like a bad Dan Brown-zombie flick: "A curse on half the planet...a secret kept too well....so...much...blood." Thankfully, the world's in for one less crap slasher and in for a humorous new approach to talking about what most of us hate talking about...periods.
From the looks of the rest of the trailer (available on the film's homepage), the movie will be a mix of personal stories (a group of women share histories of problematic periods), humor (two oblivious women walk around with comically-soaked crotches), irony (a professional man, completely straight-faced, states, "It's a phenomenon humans share with other apes...and old world monkeys"), and cultural analysis (clips from the Carrie, anyone?)...to say nothing of the belly-dancing classes and claymation scenes.
A few days ago I was chatting with my dad about our various writing projects.
Dad: You know how you’ve been writing about Quentin Tarantino?
Me: Yes?
Dad: You know he used to work in a video store?
Me: Uh-huh.
Dad: And you used to work in a video store?
Me: Yeah.
Dad: Well there you go.
Well there I go. Once upon a time Quentin Tarantino worked in a video store – and so did I.
Today I write about pop culture, and Tarantino makes it.
There you go.
Tarantino’s latest film also begins "Once upon a time . . ." and as to be expected, reactions to his "movie movie universe" movie, Inglourious Basterds, are once again as mixed as his genre conventions.
Though I didn’t explicitly say so in my recent threepartpost here for Bitch exploring the question of feminism in Tarantino’s work, I’m a fan – a cautious, conscientious fan, who recognizes that his work is problematic on many levels. For me, the combination of the issues in his work, and the visceral pleasure of the movie experiences he creates, presents a conflict that is worth exploring. Additionally, and I think this is crucial to my experience and interpretation of his work, he is a movie-maker of, and pop culture influence on, my generation. Pulp Fiction is as much a marker in my life as Star Wars, Goonies, or Trainspotting, Wonder Woman, 90210, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Tarantino and I may not have grown up watching the same movies, regardless of our once-upon-a-time employ, but his work has led me to his influences, which in turn have furthered and enriched my relationship to popular culture.
Last week many of you contributed enlightening responses to my two part poston women directors and provided useful suggestions on we can do to ensure that Hollywood supports women producers, screenwriters, and directors. Thank you!
Since then, I’ve been thinking about what can we do to get Hollywood to do a better job of representing women in film as leading characters. And I’m curious – as consumers of culture, do we, in general, read books more than we go out to watch movies (at least mainstream movies)? And if this is so, wouldn’t Hollywood be wise to make greater efforts to adapt books to film?
Should we help them out by making a list of books featuring women we admire, women who have inspired and moved us, and made us think about the world differently? I mean, though I can’t speak for everyone, and I do occasionally loves me some gratuitous explosions, I’m fairly certain that an adaptation of Eat, Pray, Love is going to get more women in theater seats than say, G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra.
I know most people don’t care for Lois, but I think that’s because they haven’t really given her consideration. I mean, here’s a female character who, despite office sexism perseveres with moxie. She’s tough-talking, street smart, and modern. She has her own apartment in the City, is an award-winning reporter, and is dedicated to her profession—all of which sounds admirably progressive, even feminist to me. It reminds me of something I wrote in my book about Gloria Steinem’s comment about rescuing Wonder Woman by putting her on the cover of Ms. magazine. While Wonder Woman serves as a symbol of our highest aspirations, Lois may have more accurately reflected the lives of journalists at Ms., and at the time was certainly in need of as much rescuing as Diana Prince.
The newspaperman, and newspaperwoman, have long captured the American imagination – and reporters, anchors, and even photojournalists have served as the protagonists in comics, animation, television and film.
As a woman writer and pop culture herstorian I can’t help but be drawn to places in pop culture where women and journalism intersect – and that means I absolutely adore Lois Lane.
She is not the first woman reporter in popular culture, but Lois is likely the most recognizable – and certainly the longest lasting in the American cultural consciousness, having debuted alongside Superman and Clark Kent in 1938.
Readers, we are living an era of ill-advised remakes of already great (or at the very least, already classic movies). Titles allegedly in the re-works include: Red Dawn, Red Sonja, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Total Recall, Barbarella, Short Circuit, and The Karate Kid. So this morning’s report from Variety about a new adaptation of James M. Cain’s novel, Mildred Pierce, had me exhaling a huge sigh. According to the report, Todd Haynes, who wrote and directed I’m Not There and Far From Heaven, is slated to write and direct a miniseries staring Kate Winslet with the possibility that it will air on HBO.
While I’d watch Winslet do anything after her guest appearance on Extras, and she can surely go toe-to-toe acting wise with the original film’s star, Joan Crawford, who won an Academy award for the role, I wondered if a new version would have anything different to offer.
Sarah Mirk’s post last month, Beat the Majority - Name a Female Scientist, reminded me of an ad I saw several years ago for a Women in Film festival here in Seattle. In it, a dominatrix flanked by muscle men is asking a man in an interrogation chair if he can name five female directors – five female directors who weren’t actresses first. Of course, he can’t, and the dominatrix proceeds to list all the directors included in that year’s festival line-up. While many accomplished actresses have also directed – Barbara Streisand, Jodie Foster, Ida Lupino, Sofia Coppola, Penny Marshall, and Diane Keaton – to name but a few; it could be argued that it was their acting that helped them break into directing. This should in no way belittle any of their accomplishments, but what about women who set out to direct in the first place, without the benefit of already being recognized?
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