tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-157932442024-03-07T19:54:23.735-08:00The Feminist SpectatorThe Feminist Spectator ruminates on theatre, performance, film, and television, focusing on gender, sexuality, race, other identities and overlaps, and our common humanity. It addresses how the arts shape and reflect our lives; how they participate in civic conversations; and how they serve as a vehicle for social change and a platform for pleasure. It’s accessible to anyone committed to the arts’ political meanings.Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.comBlogger211125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-1697782411268894742012-12-24T07:19:00.000-08:002012-12-24T07:19:00.776-08:00Feminist Spectator at New Address . . . Reminder<br />
Just a reminder that The Feminist Spectator has migrated to Wordpress.<br />
<br />
New posts (and the archive of all old posts) can be found at <a href="http://www.thefeministspectator.com/">www.TheFeministSpectator.com</a>.<br />
<br />
Sign up for notification of new posts with the "follow" button on the new site.<br />
<br />
Recent posts on:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><i>Hello I Must Be going</i>, an indie film starring Melanie Lynskey</li>
<li><i>Nashville</i>, the TV series starring Connie Britton</li>
<li><i>Children of Killers</i>, a play by Katori Hall</li>
<li><i>Liberal Arts</i>, Josh Radnow's indie film</li>
<li>Lisa D'Amour's Pulitzer Prize finalist <i>Detroit</i> at Playwrights Horizon</li>
<li><i>Bachelorette</i>, the film version of the hit stage play</li>
<li><i>Beasts of the Southern Wild</i>, the magical realist film about the Louisiana delta</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Thanks for reading The Feminist Spectator.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
All best,</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Jill Dolan</div>
Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-19718133166071295292012-09-24T05:36:00.000-07:002012-09-24T05:36:30.566-07:00Sign up for The Feminist Spectator at its new locationJust a reminder that The Feminist Spectator has migrated to Wordpress.<br />
<br />
New posts (and the archive of all old posts) can be found at <a href="http://www.thefeministspectator.com/">www.TheFeministSpectator.com</a>.<br />
<br />
Sign up for notification of new posts with the "follow" button on the new site.<br />
<br />
Recent posts on:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Lisa D'Amour's Pulitzer Prize finalist <i>Detroit</i> at Playwrights Horizon</li>
<li><i>Bachelorette</i>, the film version of the hit stage play</li>
<li><i>Beasts of the Southern Wild</i>, the magical realist film about the Louisiana delta</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Thanks for reading The Feminist Spectator.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
All best,</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Jill Dolan</div>
Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-87967449472859732052012-08-11T08:58:00.002-07:002012-08-11T08:58:55.409-07:00Chely Wright, Wish Me Away<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
The Feminist Spectator has posted a new item:</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
"Coming Out
Stories: Chely Wright, Wish Me Away" . . . </div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Chely Wright is a country music singer who debuted in
1994 and achieved her life’s dream by becoming part of the Grand Ole Opry
tradition, recording several Top 40 and number one songs, including “Shut Up
and Drive” and “Single White Female.” In 2010,
she publicly came out as a lesbian, after 20 years of maintaining the
[...]<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
You may view the latest post at<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<a href="http://www.thefeministspectator.com/2012/08/11/coming-out-stories-chely-wright-wish-me-away/">http://www.thefeministspectator.com/2012/08/11/coming-out-stories-chely-wright-wish-me-away/</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Sign up there to continue following the blog.</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Many thanks for reading,</div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
The Feminist Spectator</div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-55971952367761357572012-08-11T08:57:00.000-07:002012-08-11T08:57:07.870-07:00Shameless Self Promotion . . .. . . with information about the reissue of <i>The Feminist Spectator as Critic</i> and about <i>The Feminist Spectator in Action</i>, a forthcoming book of feminist criticism I'm publishing with Palgrave Macmillan can be accessed on the <b><i>new </i></b>Feminist Spectator site at<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.thefeministspectator.com/2012/08/11/a-word-on-the-summer-and-shameless-self-promotion/">http://www.thefeministspectator.com/2012/08/11/a-word-on-the-summer-and-shameless-self-promotion/</a>.<br />
<br />
Be sure to sign up to follow the blog on its new site.<br />
<br />
Best,<br />
<br />
The Feminist SpectatorJill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-80197483008194503862012-05-24T07:21:00.005-07:002012-05-24T07:21:53.768-07:00Scandal<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator has posted a new item, 'Scandal'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Shonda Rimes’ new television series arrived at its first
season finale last week, after a terrific premiere and seven-week run and the
promise of renewal for a second season. Kerry Washington stars in the
first series to feature an African American woman in the leading role since
1974, a fact of network history that seems [...]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You may view the latest post at<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.thefeministspectator.com/2012/05/24/scandal/">http://www.thefeministspectator.com/2012/05/24/scandal/</a></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
Do elect to "follow" The Feminist Spectator on the new site. Thanks!</div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-42947018956708827542012-05-22T12:48:00.000-07:002012-05-22T12:48:01.446-07:00Diversity Drama in the 2012-2013 Season<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Hi, Friends, this is a redirect to the new blog site at <a href="http://www.thefeministspectator.com/">www.thefeministspectator.com</a>. Do sign up to follow The Feminist Spectator there.</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator has posted a new item, 'Diversity
Drama in the 2012-2013 Season'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm coming late to the controversy over the resoundingly
white male-written and -directed season announced for the Guthrie next year, in
part because I'm tired of hearing myself rehearse the same old indignities at
these repetitive insults to women’s artistry and integrity. Reading the
many smart excoriations of Guthrie artistic director Joe Dowling’s defensive
protestations [...]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You may view the latest post at<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.thefeministspectator.com/2012/05/22/diversity-drama-in-the-2012-2013-season/">http://www.thefeministspectator.com/2012/05/22/diversity-drama-in-the-2012-2013-season/</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-68288464924378462192012-05-17T07:47:00.001-07:002012-05-17T07:47:40.678-07:00Smash and Broadway<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKXKgNc1lrdXZ-kpUDiJYN_FylvHQ010IXLns1frIELB0cO_6l7TUHgGo62DO8dXKhjKbVRL2JN9YBQ3oFaNsDAUDuz1GtghrWsHeCqBEwgLR-QTd7XJl6BQFkgUhlGsJnR1CM/s1600/Smash,+5-16-12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKXKgNc1lrdXZ-kpUDiJYN_FylvHQ010IXLns1frIELB0cO_6l7TUHgGo62DO8dXKhjKbVRL2JN9YBQ3oFaNsDAUDuz1GtghrWsHeCqBEwgLR-QTd7XJl6BQFkgUhlGsJnR1CM/s1600/Smash,+5-16-12.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator has posted a new item called "Smash and
Broadway." Here's a teaser:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Smash <i>ended its first season this week, and has been
renewed for a second, minus Theresa Rebeck, its creator and original show
runner (and one of the only women playwrights to be produced on
Broadway). Too bad that Rebeck is losing such a high profile, visible
perch from which to write for television, but maybe [...]</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You may view the latest post at<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.thefeministspectator.com/2012/05/17/smash-and-broadway/">http://www.thefeministspectator.com/2012/05/17/smash-and-broadway/</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Do subscribe to the new Feminist Spectator site by adding it to your RSS feed or clicking on the "follow" button in the lower right-hand corner of the new page.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Thanks for your interest and support as The Feminist Spectator migrates.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My best, jd</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(The Feminist Spectator)</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-79287990201346096302012-05-07T13:46:00.001-07:002012-05-07T13:46:56.673-07:00George Jean Nathan Award . . . and New Web Site<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The ceremony at which I received the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for 2010-2011 was staged in Prospect House at Princeton University on April 28, 2012. Cornell professors Roger Gilbert and Ellen Gainor (who kindly nominated me for this honor) presented me with the actual award, after which I delivered the following remarks. My words were followed by a panel discussion about theatre criticism, gender, and blogging, the audio transcript of which I hope to post shortly. Once it's transcribed, I'll add it to The Feminist Spectator site.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This post also marks the launch of my new web site. At the Nathan Award event, Helaine Gawlica, my archivist and webmistress, presented the new site. I want to thank her for her work migrating The Feminist Spectator from Blogger, and for designing the look and architecture of the new site. I'm very pleased to move The Feminist Spectator into its next iteration.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>To read the post, see <a href="http://www.thefeministspectator.com/" target="_blank">The Feminist Spectator</a> at its new site, www.thefeministspectator.com. When you arrive, be sure to click on the "follow" button in the bottom right hand corner of the window to receive posts when they're published, or add the new site to your RSS feed (the link is available at the very bottom of the opening page).</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br /></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Thanks to all of you who've been loyal followers of The Feminist Spectator on Blogger, which will now remain as an archive of the original blog. All future posts will be found on the new site.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.thefeministspectator.com/" target="_blank">Join me there!</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My best,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<br />
<br />Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-34930303218973273692012-04-18T13:28:00.000-07:002012-04-18T13:28:36.009-07:00Girls<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivj8Sz3TkmRZDM6VNnhvJdNmxZ9GxE7d1pXHxaYT1RQywwWQS_cBryBUkmIbFB5bYFrjNFa5JUhus_IsungqpewxCKij5KjT-2uUoelO6Prt36a0yPG5xsCpBN6yM8hMLZiEWl/s1600/Girls,+Lena.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivj8Sz3TkmRZDM6VNnhvJdNmxZ9GxE7d1pXHxaYT1RQywwWQS_cBryBUkmIbFB5bYFrjNFa5JUhus_IsungqpewxCKij5KjT-2uUoelO6Prt36a0yPG5xsCpBN6yM8hMLZiEWl/s1600/Girls,+Lena.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Lena Dunham on </i>Girls</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lena Dunham’s HBO series has been hailed for its
sharp, insightful snapshot of 20-something young, white, straight women
navigating their New York City lives in a post-<i>Sex and the City</i> moment in which (<i>Bridesmaids</i> aside) nothing has really seemed to catch the zeitgeist
from a women’s perspective.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dunham, who plays Hannah, the lynchpin of the
quartet of friends on whose overlapping lives and close-knit friendship circle
the series will focus, shines with a particularly smart, offbeat on-screen
charisma. She radiates intelligence in a
way that few women on television do, with the exception of Edie Falco in <i>Nurse Jackie</i>, Julianna Margulies in <i>The Good Wife</i>, or (sometimes) Laura
Linney in <i>The Big C</i>. In some ways, Hannah reminds me of Jane
Adams’s character in the much-missed <i>Hung </i>(also from HBO).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Hannah is not a waif-like, flighty young woman,
but someone with dreams, desires, and something to say. Her body size doesn’t conform to conventional
impossibly thin standards, which means her clothing (she remarks how expensive
it is to look “this cheap”) hangs differently around her. Her haircut doesn’t seem outrageously expensive
and she doesn’t seem to wear make-up.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In other words, her appearance immediately
breaks the mold of most young women seen on television and in films. And even though she comments on her weight
and her clothes, bemoaning how they don’t hold up to the ideal, it’s still a
pleasure to be invited into the life of a normal-looking woman.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Her friends, though, conform more closely to
typical beauty and behavior standards.
Marnie (Allison Williams), Hannah’s roommate, has long brown hair and a
svelte figure and, in the pilot, bemoans the excessive attention of a hovering
beau.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUSe5bPf3E8-Hd6ErYODNF5d9M2Jx48XzEQWfJd-R6Eg6IsrEPJceD2QIrRek0xWvvVINe1i-Qcm-r3bFvC7FCBkzlgqK16eiXUCZi7PHW_OPp1wNjpyGuRWcvZD_9DIfX7Zjy/s1600/Girls%252C+Allison.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUSe5bPf3E8-Hd6ErYODNF5d9M2Jx48XzEQWfJd-R6Eg6IsrEPJceD2QIrRek0xWvvVINe1i-Qcm-r3bFvC7FCBkzlgqK16eiXUCZi7PHW_OPp1wNjpyGuRWcvZD_9DIfX7Zjy/s1600/Girls%252C+Allison.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Allison Williams as Marnie</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet), their
motor-mouth, hyper but earnest friend, is also thin and attractive, if slightly
more “ethnic” (read Jewish; her last name is Shapiro).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimBOgJpk2LQG_GbnUNX-chkmXQnW3xLxuAD0RdDPmNSYqbrgK5QZrW5IIhVDvhGVa1GykA9Dx7sWf9BATls8zUrNtjfO-WHQTJSDRvLu7nyG30OSERFmtSzqojySRSZ5wQ6tjS/s1600/Girls%252C+Zosia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimBOgJpk2LQG_GbnUNX-chkmXQnW3xLxuAD0RdDPmNSYqbrgK5QZrW5IIhVDvhGVa1GykA9Dx7sWf9BATls8zUrNtjfO-WHQTJSDRvLu7nyG30OSERFmtSzqojySRSZ5wQ6tjS/s1600/Girls%252C+Zosia.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Zosia Mamet as Shoshanna</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And Jessa (Jemima Kirke), Shoshanna’s British
cousin, is chic and sophisticated—or at least her accent makes her sound that
way. Jessa, it soon turns out, is also pregnant,
so her body looks strangely more like Hannah’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhevJratQ_SieqOkhHJNSE0Pqd7Iy9WwnLwNTzjL8ZfVz8dwNcFcWzjGnETms4XtxQ3ghKvu5aBwg3x79Nw6If2PJCtjsaegNw3ouFGnkix39TCXe9G2irqZQJkWH6hWwHfPhGs/s1600/Girls%252C+Jessa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhevJratQ_SieqOkhHJNSE0Pqd7Iy9WwnLwNTzjL8ZfVz8dwNcFcWzjGnETms4XtxQ3ghKvu5aBwg3x79Nw6If2PJCtjsaegNw3ouFGnkix39TCXe9G2irqZQJkWH6hWwHfPhGs/s1600/Girls%252C+Jessa.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Jemima Kirke as Jessa</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Rebecca Traister, </span><a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/04/12/true_new_female_friendship/?source=newsletter" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank">writing admiringly of the show in <i>Salon</i></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, notes how these four
women’s primary intimacy focuses on one another. In the show’s opening image, Hannah and
Marnie spoon in bed together as the alarm goes off in the morning. Marnie, it seems, wants to escape the
smothering embrace of her boyfriend, which she had accomplished the night
before by hanging out in Hannah’s bed watching </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mary Tyler Moore</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> show reruns and falling asleep.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Later, the friends bathe together, Marnie shaving
her legs wrapped in a towel and Hannah lounging naked beside her, eating a
cupcake for breakfast. But even though
Hannah mentions that she’s never seen Marnie’s breasts, Marnie demurs,
insisting that she only reveals herself to people she’s having sex with.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And thus my basic hesitation with <i>Girls</i> so far. I love the focus on female friendships, which
we so rarely get to see on television (<i>Sex
and the City </i>aside—I was never a fan.
And I long for Alicia and Kalinda to be friends again on <i>The Good Wife</i>). But much of the <i>Girls</i> pilot works overtime to secure these women’s heterosexuality. Marnie and Hannah have slept together, but
we’re not to mistake them for lovers.
Later in the episode, another of the friends makes a crack about
lesbians (clearly, I’ve blocked it out) that’s meant to underline, again, that
she’s <i>not</i> one. And despite Hannah’s penchant for having sex
with inappropriate male partners, same-sex choices don’t appear to cross her mind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If these women truly are intimate with one another
emotionally and logistically, I’m not sure why sexual relationships between
them have to be so quickly foreclosed.
For young women who are sharp, sophisticated, and observant about social
mores and patterns, such heteronormativity bespeaks a limited imagination, a
cultural palette that fails to explore the full spectrum of human
relationships.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Hannah’s tryst with Adam (Adam Driver) in the
pilot has <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/04/10/dunham_girls_sex_scares_men/?source=newsletter" target="_blank">provoked some viewers</a> with its awkward, explicit sexual nature. Adam drives their exchange, telling Hannah
how to position herself, taking her from behind, and clearly using her for his
own enjoyment without either one of them appearing to be very concerned with
hers. Hannah talks throughout the sex,
asking him if she’s doing what he wants and explaining why she’s not interested
in being penetrated anally. He finally
asks her to be quiet, shutting down her ruminations and, it seems, her sexual
agency.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps this is how Hannah prefers to have
sex. Fine with me. But as a television representation, it sends
a certain message about how women prioritize (or not) their own desire. Hannah, of course, knows that she’s
compromising and apparently, in future episodes, is caught in the typical
muddle of nice guy v. bad guy boyfriend dilemma. <i>Girls</i>
wants to represent women and their desires differently, which I admire.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Of course, I’m basing my impressions on only the first episode. I’ll keep watching and hoping
that the show gains a confidence that will let it leave aside its implicit
homophobia and think more openly and creatively about how intimacy among
friends—and sexuality among women—can be expressed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.hbo.com/girls/index.html#/girls/index.html" target="_blank"><i>Girls</i> </a>on HBO, Sundays at 10:30 p.m.</span></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-28482938061951340302012-04-05T07:10:00.000-07:002012-04-05T07:10:05.600-07:00The FS Suggests . . . Split Britches gets the Booth Award<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">FYI, Split Britches will receive the </span><a href="http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/s720x720/545016_267562866666044_100002369985469_594700_1374327850_n.jpg" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank">Edwin Booth Award</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> from the Theatre Program of the CUNY Graduate Center today.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm sure it'll be a wonderful conversation. See the link for details.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator</span>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-76808380036608190552012-04-04T06:27:00.000-07:002012-04-04T06:27:07.463-07:00The Hunger Games<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_STCHlrMmldPcniVU2wUQ9Ma5lLuQaWlRmcAAxYinfgRoXr2NU8kEfdPFimC-LC4HIax9ENQ_a28rB1hCY16nycDXoDIRdgiIf-5MAf1cV05MF2eOiFDfT742Lx72z0_YRech/s1600/Hunger+Games,+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_STCHlrMmldPcniVU2wUQ9Ma5lLuQaWlRmcAAxYinfgRoXr2NU8kEfdPFimC-LC4HIax9ENQ_a28rB1hCY16nycDXoDIRdgiIf-5MAf1cV05MF2eOiFDfT742Lx72z0_YRech/s1600/Hunger+Games,+3.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Jennifer Lawrence in her iconic pose as Katniss in </i>The Hunger Games</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">How sweet is the taste of a movie with a female
heroine heralded as the <a href="http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/04/01/box-office-report-the-hunger-games-wrath-of-the-titans-mirror-mirror/" target="_blank">top-grossing non-sequel film debut weekend of all time</a>? And how sweet is it that <i>The Hunger Games</i>, the adaptation of the first novel in Suzanne
Collins’s trilogy about Panem, a dystopian country that sacrifices its children
for the amusement of its privileged leisure class, is a faithful, stirring,
smart film that doesn’t pander to either sentimentality or sensationalism in
translating Collins’s politically nuanced story to the screen?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Starring Jennifer Lawrence (<i>Winter’s Bone</i>) as Katniss Everdeen, the trilogy’s heroine, <i><a href="http://www.thehungergamesmovie.com/" target="_blank">The Hunger Games</a></i> creates a rich material
world for a story imagined so vividly by so many readers. Director Gary Ross and his production
designers realize the fictional country’s twelve dispossessed districts and its
excessively decadent capitol in a way that convinced me it was just as I’d pictured
it as I read the novel, captivated by Collins’s narrative.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Katniss hails from District Twelve, where coal mines
provide the Capitol with energy and the district’s residents with straitened
lives of near-starvation and strife.
Katniss breaks the repressive government’s strict rules by sneaking through
the district’s boundary fence to hunt for food with her friend, Gale (a
handsome, stalwart Liam Hemsworth). Her
father died in a mining accident; his sudden death left her mother catatonic
with grief and unable to care for Katniss and her younger sister, Prim.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvYBov6uCiKKpcbcYaP8TxiDReUM5ryy1a_qA4BTcUgIEGta5ucMyBpb0F8vMmNv3GB0TY7GLnikg0vEXBhMpAcUAdmuQcv0NbmBwWt4nuQPCAC3dFL_EBv2VqCfNL6L4MGhOb/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+woods+bow+and+arrow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvYBov6uCiKKpcbcYaP8TxiDReUM5ryy1a_qA4BTcUgIEGta5ucMyBpb0F8vMmNv3GB0TY7GLnikg0vEXBhMpAcUAdmuQcv0NbmBwWt4nuQPCAC3dFL_EBv2VqCfNL6L4MGhOb/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+woods+bow+and+arrow.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Katniss the hunter</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ross’s film establishes in deft strokes that
Katniss is an accomplished hunter with a keen understanding of the woods in
which she and Gale poach. Wearing
threadbare clothing and scuffed boots, she strides through the hills and trees
(Ross filmed around Asheville, North Carolina) and confidently wields a bow and
arrow to bag birds and the rare deer.
She and Gale have an easy camaraderie that comes less from romantic
attraction than from similar survival instincts, the confidence of being good
at what they do, and the imperative that they provide for their families.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJqC0WZZ7QV2oFo2SGz3Kx4YKbLQdu0OMzqkI8ktxX_6sB9Qtm70YVzNE4w3vaoIQ1TzGdjak23Pbwb_ZDR8N1RnzPt8ZRHTVl7ktuZZ_Atc6OGWmlsAYezaIdE837qGlU8XnR/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJqC0WZZ7QV2oFo2SGz3Kx4YKbLQdu0OMzqkI8ktxX_6sB9Qtm70YVzNE4w3vaoIQ1TzGdjak23Pbwb_ZDR8N1RnzPt8ZRHTVl7ktuZZ_Atc6OGWmlsAYezaIdE837qGlU8XnR/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+7.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Katniss and Gale in the woods before the reaping</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In other words, <i>The Hunger Games</i> breaks stereotypes almost immediately by
representing a friendship between a young man and woman that’s not based on facile
heterosexual romantic rituals. The stakes
for Katniss and Gale are much higher—they could be killed for leaving the
district borders, but they risk their lives to put food on their tables.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Their lasting bond is broken by the annual “reaping,”
when two children between 12 and 18 from each of Panem’s districts are chosen
at random as “tributes” to compete in the televised gladiatorial competition known
as “the hunger games.” In District
Twelve, the children assemble in the town square wearing their best clothes,
shirts and pants and dresses of worn, graying cotton, while the Capitol’s bubble-headed
representative, Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), parades before them in garish shades
of pink and red. Her excessively
colorful outfit, make-up, and wig set her off as outlandish in the district’s drab
landscape.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQQK_95C8V0C0BXbRAZ5zs5CnAXsan8OhcflwE2oLin9lzCPTF51rygu_MKz6k5RRVWi3MNPEzRuxnwhJ_udWvOvJbx3HxOw-c1NZ2OmLGzpangkF7MxuuVfcjY6IarRE5E2MC/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQQK_95C8V0C0BXbRAZ5zs5CnAXsan8OhcflwE2oLin9lzCPTF51rygu_MKz6k5RRVWi3MNPEzRuxnwhJ_udWvOvJbx3HxOw-c1NZ2OmLGzpangkF7MxuuVfcjY6IarRE5E2MC/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+4.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>The garish Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks) and Katniss at the reaping</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To begin the reaping, Effie plays the videoed
reminder that the Games were established to assert the Capitol’s political
primacy, after the districts tried unsuccessfully to rebel against its hegemony. Before she picks the names of the unlucky
tributes, Effie unctuously pronounces her benediction: “May the odds be ever in your favor.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When Prim is selected as the female tribute, Katniss
desperately volunteers to take her younger sister’s place, and is promptly
caught up in the horrifying preparations that propel the tributes into the
fabricated arena where the games take place.
Along with the male tribute, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson, <i>The Kids are All Right</i>), Katniss travels
by train toward the glittery, surreal capitol.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">En route, the two District Twelve competitors are
groomed for the games by Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson), District Twelve’s
only previous winner. His drunken apathy
is downplayed in the film adaptation; as soon as he recognizes Katniss’s
gumption and talent, he’s persuaded to be the mentor he takes much longer to
become in Collins’s book.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3ra-Nigt4K62YZQysT5kO-bxl2fwQTo-r2X2KUfBBgO3TrI4JPlvzT5PmLrymZWkpr5MQnsCig9B60t6L161EGaiRSFy_XDHlIIR4_G9-gtsqSmalJflkyNfliihv2YQXUcU9/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3ra-Nigt4K62YZQysT5kO-bxl2fwQTo-r2X2KUfBBgO3TrI4JPlvzT5PmLrymZWkpr5MQnsCig9B60t6L161EGaiRSFy_XDHlIIR4_G9-gtsqSmalJflkyNfliihv2YQXUcU9/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+6.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Harrelson as Haymitch</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Likewise, Cinna (Lenny Kravitz), the stylist who
helps Katniss and Peeta make an impression on the Capitol denizens and the
nation’s audience in the televised interviews before the games begin,
demonstrates immediate sympathy for his tributes’ plight. He signals his antipathy for the brutality of
the whole proceedings even as he helps Katniss establish her infamy as the “girl
who was on fire” in the pre-games parade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXXn6RWd5dpgTl7a0yfvQ_RGqSDASVV6fOHZaHnFkfhGEuiMWjjFuYX5Z29IN9HtlPjc68WRrDv5l0ZKO2DhndtD4VhVQPbIxmdGDI-73mFejMko57Phoca30LpCDqRUqULZ-m/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXXn6RWd5dpgTl7a0yfvQ_RGqSDASVV6fOHZaHnFkfhGEuiMWjjFuYX5Z29IN9HtlPjc68WRrDv5l0ZKO2DhndtD4VhVQPbIxmdGDI-73mFejMko57Phoca30LpCDqRUqULZ-m/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+10.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Kravitz as Cinna in a pre-games benediction</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In these preliminary scenes, before Ross brings us
to the central agon of games in which 24 children and teenagers are meant to
murder one another until a single victor remains, the director and his
cinematographer show us District Twelve and the Capitol from Katniss’s point of
view. The reaping, for instance, rushes
by in a blur, capturing moments and faces in fragments that seem almost Expressionistic
as they look so resolutely through Katniss’s anxious eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The kinetic editing and point-of-view shots help
create an atmosphere taut with tension and fear, and beautifully capture
Katniss’s confusion and terror (and intelligence) as she’s escorted by Peacekeepers
(who look like soldiers from the <i>Star
Wars</i> films) into the custody of her handlers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By giving us visual insight into Katniss’s
emotional vulnerability, Ross humanizes a heroine whose inner dialogue we can
no longer hear, as we could reading Collins’s prose. [<i>Spoiler
alert.</i>] Katniss’s strength enables
her to survive the games, but it could also make her appear unsympathetic and
impassive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In fact, <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/movies/the-hunger-games-movie-adapts-the-suzanne-collins-novel.html?scp=1&sq=The%20Hunger%20Games%20review&st=cse" target="_blank">Mahnola Dargis, writing for the <i>Times</i></a>, found Lawrence’s performance “disengaged”
in just this way. But the film itself
addresses this quandary; Katniss isn’t cut from gregarious cloth, and refuses
to pander to the television viewers even when her life depends on it. Similarly, Lawrence doesn’t play to Ross's camera; hers is a nuanced and, I think, strong and successful performance
of Collins’s signal heroine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Instead, Ross uses his camera to bring us closer
to Katniss’s feelings, while letting her retain the dignity of her strength and
her intelligence and, in some ways, her privacy, despite the intrusions of rabid
spectators into her life prior to and during the games. For example, in moments of duress in the arena
fabricated and controlled by the “Gamemaker,” Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley), the television
director who engineers the games much like Ed Harris’s producer character manipulated
the world of <i>The Truman Show</i>, we see
flashbacks to earlier moments in Katniss’s life that help explain her resolve.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimXUBE-R0DxTQgKj7qW4yMcr5N1kyvHI89J_LrosKVgTnFXMXdgUfesbWpSMZUnYpBven19n5Vf7cWbwdLSxmtAFVcY6FbRDIy_W_sx2Xnq4dIadMnkxsKyaaAAAyv_5MKUktU/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimXUBE-R0DxTQgKj7qW4yMcr5N1kyvHI89J_LrosKVgTnFXMXdgUfesbWpSMZUnYpBven19n5Vf7cWbwdLSxmtAFVcY6FbRDIy_W_sx2Xnq4dIadMnkxsKyaaAAAyv_5MKUktU/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+9.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Wes Bentley as Seneca Crane, with his fabulous beard</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We see her father descending into the mines, and
then watch a fiery explosion that implies his death. We see her mother descending into madness. We
see Katniss's prior relationship with Peeta, the baker’s son, who defies his hateful
mother by throwing bread meant for their pigs in Katniss’s direction, as she
hovers in the rain outside the bakery, hungry and watching.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And when Katniss is stung during the games by
horrifying “tracker jackers,” an insect engineered by the Gamemaker with stings
so painful they bring on hallucinatory episodes and sometimes death, we see the
venom’s effects on Katniss from her perspective. Blurred, tunneled images capture Peeta’s
distorted voice shouting at her to run, and the woods rushing by in a swirl of
surreal light and color. All of these filmic
strategies place us squarely behind Katniss.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ross and his team tell the story with a dynamic
style that moves it inexorably forward, even in scenes that might otherwise be
static. The whole thing feels like a
chase film, in which Katniss and the other tributes are being followed and
watched not just by one another, but by the eyes of the state, which are always
focused on them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For instance, when Katniss first ties herself to a
branch high in a tree on her first night in the arena, she hears a mechanical
noise, and realizes that what she took for a knot in the tree trunk is actually
an embedded camera. As she peers into it
curiously, Ross cuts to people watching “at home,” in large crowds outdoors in
the districts, or on make-shift screens in their homes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Capitol’s technology invades their lives
not for the pleasure of information and communication, but to insure its own
hegemony. This is technology as tyranny,
the flip side, Collins suggests, of the high tech revolution as empowering.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the book, Katniss’s inner monologue was protected
from the ravages of such state surveillance, so the reader was insured a
counter-point to the intrusions of President Snow and his minions’ power. <i>The
Hunger Games</i> on film, though, is also about watching. The film’s spectators,
too, have a kind of power over Katniss and, not insignificantly, over Jennifer
Lawrence, the young actor chosen for a role that will rival Bella’s in the <i>Twilight </i>series for fan and media
attention.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I read a <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/23/is-jennifer-lawrence-going-stir-crazy-from-hunger-games-hype.html" target="_blank">snarky piece on <i>The Daily Beast</i></a> that suggested Lawrence was being ungenerous about her
fame, self-deprecating and diffident. I
didn’t see the David Letterman interview to which the article mostly referred,
but it sounded to me like Lawrence has taken a page from Katniss’s playbook,
which is partly what makes her so wonderful in the role.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lawrence is rarely off screen during <i>The Hunger Games</i>. But her emotional presence is carefully
modulated. Rather than playing a more
conventional girl—although the dystopian Panem begs the question of what a “conventional”
girl would look or act like in such a hard-scrabbled existence—Lawrence plays
Katniss as tensely coiled and focused physically and mentally on outsmarting
the other tributes and, eventually, the Capitol’s manipulators.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZtXLo0vbkeys2TIqeZUK9aFwQcCAf8CTIUaulIU8-eOH6I1xtakd92mmuszdSV_oenMKZxOks-u0TwZ2H3_Q3a9SSzSVp6Z43BTPc__jwDgTc2Js712Fu9HaewlqWm2TT8uE_/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZtXLo0vbkeys2TIqeZUK9aFwQcCAf8CTIUaulIU8-eOH6I1xtakd92mmuszdSV_oenMKZxOks-u0TwZ2H3_Q3a9SSzSVp6Z43BTPc__jwDgTc2Js712Fu9HaewlqWm2TT8uE_/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+2.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Katniss in the arena</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In Lawrence’s keen interpretation, Katniss is a
reluctant heroine. She won’t pander to
the Capitol’s media or its cameras in the ways that Haymitch, her perceptive
mentor, suggests might be necessary for her to actually win the games. If spectators empathize with or come to favor
a tribute, they send help into the arena, little metal parachutes with containers
full of much-needed medicine, food, or supplies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Katniss is forced to think through the costs of
her refusal to perform as a more typical, coy, feminine girl, but her continued
unwillingness to capitulate makes her an important role model for what will no
doubt be legions of the film’s teenaged girl fans. Ross carefully establishes Katniss’s
foils—the girly-girl tributes from the other districts who interview with the
games’ television host, Caesar Flickerman (a terrifically campy Stanley Tucci,
in a blue wig and practically Elizabethan garb).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although they prove themselves to be quite tough
in the arena, for their interviews most of the other girls wear sexy dresses
and assume flirtatious manners. And during the games, they combine forces with
the alpha males, playing the Bonnies to their Clydes. These female tributes are also
lethal—especially Clove (Isabelle Fuhrman), who throws knives—but they’re
represented in relation to their young men.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Katniss can’t even fathom such gender performances
or alliances. Her subsistence-level life
has taught her only to survive, and has stripped away the niceties of human interaction
to a central, necessarily suspicious core.
Gale is the only person she trusts, with whom she can briefly let down
her guard as they talk, before the reaping, in the woods.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But even there, Ross disallows any hint of romance.
Theirs is a relationship built on trust
and need and a long-standing regard and love.
Only when Katniss leaves for the games, and her relationship with Peeta
is broadcast around Panem, does Gale realize he’s jealous. His own embarrassment and confusion makes him
sweet and rather feminine himself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Peeta, on the other hand, quickly understands that
playing to the crowd might curry important favor. He waves to the Capitol fans who watch their
bullet train enter the city, crafting a charismatic smile to wear for
them. (Hutcherson’s appealing, low-key
magnetism is perfect for the self-deprecating Peeta.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">He insists on taking
Katniss’s hand and raising it in a show of victory as their chariot rolls
through the gigantic presentation hall at their pre-games debut. As their clothing flames behind them, he
tells Katniss the fans will love their daring, and he’s right. Katniss suspiciously jerks her hand from his,
but he persuades her otherwise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYeKBnV-xxSyneDqEoGRT-sFcO6rcpQHw8MKI_rJhNNEQM6_320k8HtgM7fDGzh7IF90onYRCAKlB7fWTw8qFsBApM3ol1hw2OageqnIG7zadVgLO9F8IzgECddAhIhlF7xujt/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYeKBnV-xxSyneDqEoGRT-sFcO6rcpQHw8MKI_rJhNNEQM6_320k8HtgM7fDGzh7IF90onYRCAKlB7fWTw8qFsBApM3ol1hw2OageqnIG7zadVgLO9F8IzgECddAhIhlF7xujt/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+8.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Katniss and Hutcherson (as Peeta) train for the games</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When, during his own interview with Flickerman,
Peeta declares his love for Katniss, it’s not immediately clear if he’s playing
to the cameras again or if he means it. The
rest of the film hangs on this ambiguity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But if Peeta is wily about winning through an
appeal to spectators, Katniss’s survival skills keep her firmly enmeshed in the
immediacy of the arena’s challenge. How
wonderful to watch this girl-hero read the woods, feeling the soil for moisture,
crushing leaves in her hand and releasing them to see how the wind blows, using
her bow and arrow to bag food and, in the end, to protect herself and Peeta
from the remaining tributes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">How lovely to see Peeta hang back behind her as
they move through the forest, Katniss with an arrow cocked in her bow for their
mutual protection. How amusing the hear
Peeta joke that he’ll take the bow to hunt, and to watch Katniss’s incredulous reaction. How nice to see the girl save the boy,
helping him into a sheltered cave when he’s hurt, risking everything to get
medicine for him, and masterminding the actions that in the end will save them
both.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lawrence plays these actions with an understated
performance that’s alive with nuance.
Her face registers everything, but in subtly expressive ways—with the
twitch of an eye, a small compression of her lips, a hard-won smile, a flicker
of confusion. Her pre-games interview
with Caesar Flickerman is a marvel of acting as reaction. Katniss is startled and confused by the
audience’s uproarious response to her answers to his questions, but she doesn’t
have the vaguest idea how to play to their affections, as she’s been tutored.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1WZmIwIQ6kw9p9mr6LNrENxwWWu6bwsobnaaEKuUaJYo5wbfHKDfLZK93eFmbHKdOwSqbZUJ0Nv-kwpDSAZBO_5VsutygkvktQDBq50nQuxYLDOFM5hCHH95qCoyUuN49FtGv/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1WZmIwIQ6kw9p9mr6LNrENxwWWu6bwsobnaaEKuUaJYo5wbfHKDfLZK93eFmbHKdOwSqbZUJ0Nv-kwpDSAZBO_5VsutygkvktQDBq50nQuxYLDOFM5hCHH95qCoyUuN49FtGv/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+11.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Tucci as Flickerman and Katniss in her pre-games interview</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lawrence works for every smile Katniss
musters. Wearing her red,
off-the-shoulder gown, offering to model its fiery train for Flickerman,
wearing make-up that’s alien on her face and a hairstyle that’s foreign to her,
Katniss looks like a girl in the drag of femininity, trying to work it as
ridiculously as Sandra Bullock playing Miss Congeniality, but with much less
comedy and much higher stakes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Katniss’s final confrontation with President Snow
(Donald Sutherland, oily and reptilian as ever) models a chilly resistance and
promises quite a David v. Goliath confrontation as the trilogy builds
momentum. Lawrence’s performance is clear
and strong; she does Katniss justice by acting with economy and reserve. Katniss’s inscrutability serves her well
among her enemies and the film’s spectators; it keeps her mysterious,
unpredictable, and interesting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Much has been made of the story’s violence,
especially among young people forced to murder one another by heartless
manipulators. Although the film is tense
with the sounds and ever-present threat of bloodshed, remarkably little of it
is actually seen on screen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The initial bloodbath at the cornucopia, when the
tributes are first delivered to the arena, is cut in rapid sequences in which,
once again, the briefly pictured parts—of faces, limbs, actions, objects—come to
stand for the whole without directly representing the killing. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Occasionally, one of the more vicious
tributes is seen murdering someone, but usually at a remove. Katniss and Peeta are rarely shown directly
inflicting violence; their humanity is always evident and operative.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ross also keeps sentiment at bay, even in the more
emotional, moving scenes. Katniss takes young Rue (Amandla Stenberg), a tribute
from District Eleven, under her wing, after Rue helps her escape from the “career”
tributes who’ve surrounded the tree in whose branches Katniss keeps herself
safe. Their relationship mirrors that of
Katniss and Prim. Lawrence and Stenberg play
their scenes together beautifully, creating a warmth and connection that belies
their murderous environment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh12giN9sOEGlb2_qmX_DUeBiOoiW_82g8C38fYbPMV3jln7FT2ygN1vXyZt-rDeHLgHQVKJFEdm-gb5_gO4QAAvzmX1Q3Kxjmg7xSBnFGWat1-HQ8zDaf4Yi_wYTjy3IxTp9N_/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh12giN9sOEGlb2_qmX_DUeBiOoiW_82g8C38fYbPMV3jln7FT2ygN1vXyZt-rDeHLgHQVKJFEdm-gb5_gO4QAAvzmX1Q3Kxjmg7xSBnFGWat1-HQ8zDaf4Yi_wYTjy3IxTp9N_/s1600/Hunger+Games%252C+12.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Amandla Stenberg as Rue</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That Katniss cares for Rue until her bitter end, and
uses the occasion of her tragic death to gesture in solidarity to her comrades
in District Eleven, begins the insurgency that grows through the rest of the trilogy. Here, too, Lawrence productively underplays Katniss’s
defiance, emphasizing her hesitant heroism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In addition to its progressive and nuanced take on
gender, <i>The Hunger Games</i> also
presents a sophisticated view of an entirely multiracial future society. Those with the most state power continue to
be white—President Snow (pun intentional, I assume), Seneca Crane, Caesar
Flickerman, and the others are all white (and male).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But in the Capitol and in the districts, Ross
has careful cast the extras and other characters in a multiracial array. Every crowd shot is full of people of color
as well as people who look white, enough so that the racial and ethnic
diversity of appearance is notable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When Katniss’s alliance with Rue provokes a revolt
against the Capitol in District Eleven, Ross films their riots in a style reminiscent
of footage of 1960s American civil rights demonstrations. The Peacekeepers subdue the protesters with water
cannons. People of various races,
working together, overturn dumpsters and destroy property.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The scene is shot in a palette of black and
white, and the protestors’ anger and determination, along with the Peacekeepers’
might and the general confusion of social rebellion, look very much like images
from the 60s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In addition to its admirable representations of
gender and race, heterosexual romance is muted profitably in <i>The Hunger Games</i>. Katniss’s tenderness is reserved for Rue; their sweet, more emotionally expressive moments
are lovely and moving. Katniss’s rage
and grief when Rue dies is her most overt emotional moment during the games.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She also grows attached to Peeta, but because they’re
both aware that they’re playing to the cameras, the authenticity of their
romantic involvement is always in doubt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although by the film’s end, it’s clear that Gale
is jealous of Katniss’s relationship with Peeta, and that the sincere and
earnest Peeta very much wants to continue the romance they’ve performed,
reducing these relationships to “Team Gale” and “Team Peeta” to parallel the
Team Edward/Team Jacob triangle of the <i>Twilight</i>
franchise is just silly. <i>The Hunger Games </i>is about much more than
a young girl choosing between two very different suitors; it’s about fascism and
rebellion, about hope and social critique.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I find myself delighted by the amount of press this
film has already generated, most of it positive, for a screenplay co-written
(with Billy Ray) by a woman based on her novels, about a young woman whose
ethical humanity, physical strength, and emotional intelligence is a terrific
model for us all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Looking forward to the second film (scheduled for
Thanksgiving 2013).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator</span><o:p></o:p></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-54401734386868015402012-03-30T07:46:00.000-07:002012-03-30T07:46:58.736-07:00Game Change<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNN-3SHrvBatdvDhHHImS8x3AwGc2jSlPKRAa8fP8GTEBmDAgmRV9S93nWBnGbjDdopTJx6eYRa9K6owZwAj0_i8_W-tWTWfm4HwuOvK3mlaFUWhBuIC_3Zhgdrvo3DdR8HjdC/s1600/Game+Change,+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNN-3SHrvBatdvDhHHImS8x3AwGc2jSlPKRAa8fP8GTEBmDAgmRV9S93nWBnGbjDdopTJx6eYRa9K6owZwAj0_i8_W-tWTWfm4HwuOvK3mlaFUWhBuIC_3Zhgdrvo3DdR8HjdC/s1600/Game+Change,+1.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Ed Harris and Julianne Moore as McCain and Palin in </i>Game Change</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The HBO-produced adaptation of Mark Halperin and
John Heilemann’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Game-Change-Clintons-McCain-Lifetime/dp/B0058M62SE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333118024&sr=8-1" target="_blank">best-selling 2009 book</a>, <i>Game
Change</i> centers on the John McCain-Sarah Palin part of the ticket for the
2008 Presidential election. While the
book looked at Clinton and Obama’s dust-up over the Democratic nomination as
well as McCain’s eventual fight for the vote against Obama, the film adaptation
focuses on the selection and requisite care and feeding of the star personality
who became Sarah Palin.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Impersonated with empathetic, uncanny likeness by
Julianne Moore, Palin appears in Danny Strong’s script just as she did in
Halperin and Heilemann’s book—as an ignorant, child-like woman thrust into the
national limelight way too fast, way too soon, and way too recklessly by a
campaign trying to “do something bold” to shift attention from Obama’s meteoric
rise in popular favor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">With a breezy, rather snarky tone, the book
doesn’t waste time lambasting McCain staffers for their lightly vetted choice
of the then barely known governor from Alaska.
Based on the numbers game that now determines elections, the McCain campaign
realizes that they’ll lose if they can’t close the gender gap that’s opened in
the polls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although McCain is intent on selecting Joe
Lieberman as his “bold choice” for a running mate, to demonstrate that
bipartisanship is possible on a presidential ticket, Lieberman’s pro-choice
reputation makes him a bad pick for holding onto the far Right voters who are
now necessary to secure the Republican base.
(<i>Game Change</i> takes place in
2008. The present contest for the
Republican nomination demonstrates how much farther the extreme Right has
thrust itself into the party.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When Rick Davis (Peter MacNicol), McCain’s national
campaign manager, stumbles across a YouTube video of Palin chatting with an
interviewer, he’s captivated by her charisma, poise, and attractiveness. The brief scene underlines that Palin’s
competition wasn’t stiff; the other women Davis watches are obviously competent
politicians but dreary, uninspiring (and, not insignificantly, unattractive) performers.
<i>Game Change</i> emphasizes that
Palin is an adept political actor, following the footsteps of her hero, Ronald
Reagan (who was nothing if not a consummate, Hollywood-trained matinee idol).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Davis and other McCain staffers quickly realize
that Palin has much of Reagan’s magnetism, and soon, she’s on the ticket, appealing
to Republican voters with her “aw shucks” performance of ordinariness. What soon appalls the McCain campaign is how
little real knowledge of the political system supports her sudden appearance in
the national arena.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Where the book was a biting indictment of Palin
and what it painted as her self-involved, self-aggrandizing machinations, the
film adaptation, directed by Jay Roach (<i>Recount</i>),
is in most ways kinder to the former governor.
Strong’s script underlines that she never asked for the spotlight, and was
invited to take the number two spot on McCain’s ticket without being carefully vetted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In a scene illustrating her only pre-announcement interview
with Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson) and Mark Salter (Jamey Sheridan), McCain’s
most powerful staffers, they ask questions to determine her willingness to
play by McCain’s rules and espouse his views (a promise on which she ultimately
reneges). But they never dream that she
can’t cite a single Supreme Court case or that she might not know what “the
Fed” represents.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The film portrays the McCain campaign’s
incredulity when Palin’s real deficits begin to emerge. Attempting to prep her for debates and
interviews on national television, Palin is truculent and withholding, reducing
frustrated staffers to providing boilerplate answers to the questions they anticipate
will be posed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But the film suggests it’s not really
Palin’s fault that she’s in way over her head.
She excelled as the governor of a small state in which she met voters at
the fair with her family (represented in an early scene), and chatted with constituents one-on-one as she took her
daughters on the rides.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Moore perfectly captures Palin’s folksy, somehow
sincere warmth in those early pre-vp selection scenes, and demonstrates, in her
first meeting with Schmidt, that Palin has more steely reserve than first
appears. Her debate prep scenes are both
horrifying and pathetic, as Palin sits with a pencil and a notebook furiously
scribbling down information that staffers lecture at her. She seems a reluctant student, but one eager
to prove that she can pass the course.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But she passes <i>her</i> way, and becomes the wrong sort of
maverick in the McCain campaign. As she
gains confidence from the warm crowds she attracts at personal appearances, power
begins to change Palin into a more Machiavellian operative who’s more concerned
with her own image than the campaign.
But because <i>Game Change</i> doesn’t
hold her entirely responsible for being on the ticket in the first place, even
her shift into a more calculated power-grabber doesn’t read as an utter
indictment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In one of the film’s most poignant scenes,
Moore-as-Palin watches Tina Fey-as-Palin re-perform on <i>Saturday Night Live</i> the real Sarah Palin’s devastating Katie Couric
interview. Moore’s face (as Palin) is a study as
she gradually registers that Fey is making fun of her. Alone in front of the television, Moore
carefully builds Palin’s hurt resentment, as she realizes she’s being
ridiculed. The scene humanizes Palin by
imagining her feelings as she watches Fey, and helps viewers understand why she
soon becomes obsessed with her image and approval ratings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Game Change</i>
also presents Palin’s family respectfully.
Todd Palin’s political peccadillos are washed with a patina of
innocence, and even Bristol’s pregnancy seems like just another adolescent
indiscretion. Of course, the story picks
up before their lives have been invaded by a rabid national media, but the film
depicts the family as sincere and rather naïve, as wounded as Sarah by what
they see as the campaign’s and the press’s betrayal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By giving Palin’s personal life a pass, and
through Moore’s remarkably sympathetic performance, <i>Game Change</i>’s discerning critique falls more softly on the
mercurial personality quirks of a woman untested in the baiting and switching
of hardball national life than it does on an expedient political system driven
by television cameras and polling numbers.
The film emphasizes that </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Schmidt,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">McCain’s senior strategist, was full of hubris to think that Palin would solve the campaign’s
problems, and the movie’s narrative turns mostly on his trajectory.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Played by Harrelson with a swagger that dissolves
into humiliation, <i>Game Change</i> traces
Schmidt’s horrified understanding of his mistake and the consequences it could
have had for the nation had McCain been elected. The film is bookended by scenes of Anderson
Cooper interviewing Harrelson-as-Schmidt about his reflections on the 2008
election after the fact.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Schmidt deflects Cooper’s direct probing about
whether Palin was truly ready to assume the presidency. He does, however, squirm when Cooper reminds
him that she was the vice presidential nominee for a candidate who was 72-years-old
during the campaign and had already suffered two bouts of melanoma. These framing interviews are juxtaposed deftly
with <i>Game Change</i>’s scenes of Palin stumbling
over basic knowledge of the American political system, which allows the film’s
critique to laser in on handlers like Schmidt, for whom performance and the
superficiality of capturing the camera’s attention was, for a time, more
important than anything else.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Game Change </i>chronicles
Palin’s change alongside Schmidt’s. If
they start as uneasy allies, by the film’s (and the campaign’s) end, they’re
adversaries. Palin insists on giving her
own concession speech the night of the election; Schmidt practically spits at
her when he tells her that vice presidential candidates never give such
speeches. For Palin, unburdened by
knowledge of precedent, the rules are up for grabs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Her willingness to put her finger in the eye of
Washington went on to endear Palin to Tea Party-ers looking for a heroine. Her empty charisma and her superficial ease
connecting with voters through a medium that looks intimate while it maintains
a boundless distance did indeed change the game.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Frank Bruni, writing in the <i>New York Times</i>, <a href="http://bruni.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/game-change-and-loyalty/?scp=1&sq=Frank%20Bruni,%20game%20change&st=cse" target="_blank">published several blogs</a> on the film that address
the question of McCain’s campaign staffers’ loyalty. <a href="http://bruni.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/more-thoughts-on-game-change/?scp=2&sq=Frank%20Bruni,%20game%20change&st=cse" target="_blank">Bruni argues</a> that if the dirty laundry of necessarily
brutal campaign practices is hung out publically to dry, as it is in this film, honorable potential
candidates will shy from the most bruising, most prominent races.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But the confidentiality of the political process
seems an already dead issue. What <i>Game Change</i> underlines for me was how
mercenary McCain’s male staffers were in playing to the gender gap, choosing a
female vice presidential running mate not on the basis of her qualifications,
but on her appearance and a charisma they thought would buy votes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Their thoughtlessness and implicit misogyny
(choose a woman, any—pretty—woman) brought the body politic the persistent
problem of Sarah Palin, a woman who went on to co-opt feminism for her own
selfish purposes, who continues to champion her political ignorance, and who
remains the star of a fictional “Main Street” on which “ordinary” American
people are white, straight, racist, homophobic, anti-choice, and proud of their
political stupidity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Game Change</i>
ends with Schmidt, Davis, and Salter drinking in a bar on election night after
McCain has conceded. They ruefully agree
that McCain’s loss let them dodge the bullet that Palin as vice president
would have shot into the American political system. But the film (and the book) also lets them
off the hook. They down their drinks,
shake their heads sheepishly, and go off to run other campaigns, bearing no
on-going responsibility for ushering Palin so far into political power.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Scary stuff.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.hbo.com/movies/game-change/index.html" target="_blank">Game Change</a>, HBO and on-demand.</span></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-42302940360336837262012-03-26T14:48:00.000-07:002012-03-26T14:48:24.443-07:00Porgy and Bess<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCkGyp8ci14PKMgTGP06a72G2XDrKvDgsOsP4nZbwscBuU3WavMLsv4IPBUN7E5lYZmTqZUm3xBC9dLacN8lmnLTeyD19smsiJJjcn8up0USYp9NYiQyDrdl8Ya9yDRXaAf8Cl/s1600/Porgy,+P+&+B.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCkGyp8ci14PKMgTGP06a72G2XDrKvDgsOsP4nZbwscBuU3WavMLsv4IPBUN7E5lYZmTqZUm3xBC9dLacN8lmnLTeyD19smsiJJjcn8up0USYp9NYiQyDrdl8Ya9yDRXaAf8Cl/s1600/Porgy,+P+&+B.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis as Bess and Porgy</i></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This
controversial production comes to Broadway with the baggage of both historical
and contemporary critique. First
produced in the 1930s as a “folk opera” by George and Ira Gershwin, and DuBose
and Dorothy Heyward, this production, directed by Diana Paulus with a revised
book by Suzan-Lori Parks and Deirdre L. Murray, opened August 17, 2011, at the
<a href="http://www.americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/gershwins-porgy-and-bess" target="_blank">American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge</a>, where Paulus is the artistic director.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Before
he’d even seen the production, <a href="http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/stephen-sondheim-takes-issue-with-plan-for-revamped-porgy-and-bess/" target="_blank">Stephen Sondheim excoriated the artistic team</a>
for what he found unethical meddling with the Gershwin’s original work. But as Hilton Als wrote in a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/09/26/110926crat_atlarge_als" target="_blank">lovely background piece and review for <i>The New Yorker</i></a>, the “original” was full of racism, an artifact of a moment in
theatre history when white people represented their skewed vision of people of
color for other white people. Why in the
world would anyone want to preserve such original intentions for a 21<sup>st</sup>
century audience?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">More
than a bit of sexism surfaced in Sondheim’s argument, too. Here’s a young white woman director and two
talented women artists of color engaging one of famous narratives of American
opera and theatre, all with an eye to renovating the central character of Bess,
the drug-addicted woman whose desires drive this revision’s plot. Given this refocusing, Sondheim’s unfortunate
objections might derive from his personal taste and respect for some artists
over others, as well as from his professional investments in preserving the
sanctity of the original text.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
Sondheim kerfuffle sent the production to Broadway on a cloud of critique, but
from my perspective, this <i>Porgy and Bess </i>provides
a transformative theatre experience. With
a simple set by the talented Riccardo Hernandez; unobtrusive but evocative choreography
by Ronald K. Brown; a superb ensemble, each one of whom seems to follow his or
her own grounded and nuanced narrative arc; and stage pictures that seem
organic instead of posed, the production offers a thrilling experience at the
theatre.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Hernandez
creates down at the heels Catfish Row, in Charleston, South Carolina, with a
one-dimensional curvilinear back drop, all corrugated tin and wooden window
frames through which light (designed by Christopher Akerlind) projects in
geometric patterns that change with the time of the day. A simple working water pump establishes the
outdoor scenes, and performers bring on wooden chairs and crates to give the
stage picture levels and textures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yet
with so few props and such a schematic set, Paulus and her actors create a
whole world, an African American community of fishermen and washerwomen, of
tinkerers and tradespeople, of grifters and preachers, and of good people and
bad. The ensemble moves constantly,
providing a living backdrop to the story of Bess and Porgy’s doomed
relationship.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Paulus
draws attention to her stars through their costumes. Bess (the sublime Audra McDonald) wears a beautiful,
bold red dress when she arrives in Catfish Row on the arm of her evil
lover/procurer, Crown (Phillip Boykin).
Costume designer ESosa leaves McDonald’s arms bare and her breasts heaving
over the bodice, accentuating her figure with a high slit up the side and barely
supportive straps. Porgy (Norm Lewis)
wears layered, dirty but pure white shirts, which help him stand out among the
rest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgygypkj7Wn3u7ldq3HJdrpjH4t60ZqceDYwOXiJ0suxi-JTcfwr1UpHpHYkHpDFxn3EJq3FHpGXioR7389TT6s3UqKzmg_UtCp27HJD2Khot_BrTyOzL6nhddbCCbe1_CxwNRJ/s1600/Porgy%252C+red+dress+and+ensemble.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgygypkj7Wn3u7ldq3HJdrpjH4t60ZqceDYwOXiJ0suxi-JTcfwr1UpHpHYkHpDFxn3EJq3FHpGXioR7389TT6s3UqKzmg_UtCp27HJD2Khot_BrTyOzL6nhddbCCbe1_CxwNRJ/s1600/Porgy%252C+red+dress+and+ensemble.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Bess's red dress makes her the focus of the stage picture</i></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although
the careful design and direction lets spectators track the show’s central
couple, Paulus embeds Porgy and Bess’s story within a lively, close-knit neighborhood
both visually and narratively. Theirs
isn’t a singular story, but a relationship aided and abetted by a community
that’s very protective of its “crippled” friend.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Porgy,
hobbled from birth, walks with a stick and a limp, his hips extended awkwardly
and his left leg twisted impossibly. His
disability makes it difficult for him to maneuver more than a few steps without
being offered a seat by one of his neighbors.
But Lewis plays Porgy with quiet dignity, not an ounce of self-pity, and
a sexy magnetism that makes him the production’s emotional core.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Shortly
after he and Bess arrive at Catfish Row, Crown murders one of the community’s men. To avoid prison, Crown hides
out on an island off the coast of Charleston while Bess slowly, hesitantly
begins to embed herself in the domestic life of Catfish Row, forming an awkward
relationship with Porgy. When she joins
her new neighbors for a picnic on the island where Crown happens to be hiding,
and dallies behind when the others board the boat for home, Crown accosts Bess,
insisting that she’s still his woman and that he’ll come for her once he thinks
it’s safe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2QIBZZfVr3JSQXnftQ6ySOeRLCm0SB-iRHXZCRxMJOlpv5iwliD3CmfILSCy9UrTF9pmOW-0cbqnMto4M7jl3pzLkoaRZksOFqokUaezEW6WmCRRFJMTVY5RRJDBKvQ6RURwN/s1600/Porgy%252C+Bess+and+Crown.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2QIBZZfVr3JSQXnftQ6ySOeRLCm0SB-iRHXZCRxMJOlpv5iwliD3CmfILSCy9UrTF9pmOW-0cbqnMto4M7jl3pzLkoaRZksOFqokUaezEW6WmCRRFJMTVY5RRJDBKvQ6RURwN/s1600/Porgy%252C+Bess+and+Crown.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Boykin as Crown with McDonald as Bess</i></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In
a scene that could easily be played as a rape, Paulus’s direction and McDonald’s
terrific acting indicate that although his physical force makes it difficult
for Bess to resist Crown, she’s also attracted by his sexual clarity. Her desire confuses Bess. In this production, it’s not her drug
addiction that’s her Achilles heel, though that weakness appears at key moments
to throw her integrity into doubt. But
it’s Bess’s deep sexuality, her own desire, by which she’s ultimately undone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In
Catfish Row, women are supposed to channel their sexuality into marriage and
child-rearing. The upstanding, loving
couple Jake (Joshua Henry) and Clara (Nikki Renée Daniels) represent the ideal
relationship, one to which Bess knows she should aspire but can’t quite
figure.</span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghJfMZoFhJ9nKVewI8d0zVQZSDezekngYQPI2cB4VkyFVgk8zvpodDLedvhwZtm_YX-wv0C7rC_pjmkRrt4RtOq79pixAxV175nQLYeGMprPDDx0j4i6LeEudU11NyS5iCtUXE/s1600/Porgy%252C+Jake+and+Clara.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghJfMZoFhJ9nKVewI8d0zVQZSDezekngYQPI2cB4VkyFVgk8zvpodDLedvhwZtm_YX-wv0C7rC_pjmkRrt4RtOq79pixAxV175nQLYeGMprPDDx0j4i6LeEudU11NyS5iCtUXE/s1600/Porgy%252C+Jake+and+Clara.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Henry and Daniels as Jake and Clara</i></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She holds Jake and Clara’s new-born
baby with great wonder and tenderness, staring into its face as though it holds
a secret she wishes she could fathom.
And when the couple dies in the hurricane that rocks Catfish Row, Bess
insists that their baby now belongs to her.
But exactly this contained and proper domesticity eludes Bess, however
truly happy she seems in Porgy’s embrace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJz-3vUcqwzA6VbSQxzOUd2KM3DAvYIpXMo4BvDPsYq-vYWlFPctH1c2O7R2ndIr5WM62K2gPy9qMMXPBpXb7GSlcj5Lw4m8z_IIXzrwO8kawdUsFkIW2Q82DE2vTbi8h5YprJ/s1600/Porgy,+Bess+and+baby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJz-3vUcqwzA6VbSQxzOUd2KM3DAvYIpXMo4BvDPsYq-vYWlFPctH1c2O7R2ndIr5WM62K2gPy9qMMXPBpXb7GSlcj5Lw4m8z_IIXzrwO8kawdUsFkIW2Q82DE2vTbi8h5YprJ/s320/Porgy,+Bess+and+baby.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Bess experimenting with domesticity</i></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although
Porgy repeatedly scoffs that “no cripple can hold Bess,” he never really seems
to believe it, because the character’s goodness radiates from Lewis’s presence
whether or not he’s speaking. Lewis’s is
a smart, clear, intensely human performance, in which the typical pitfalls of
the “crippled” character redeeming the “abled” through his unsullied humanity admittedly
is present, but not as salient as it might be.
In this revision, his character feels fuller and more fleshed out, and in
fact, Porgy doesn’t ever really redeem Bess.
The typical trope is foiled in ways that help play against the
stereotype.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Porgy
loves and protects Bess, and finally finds his manhood by killing Crown, who
continues to appear in their lives like a demon that just won’t die. After Porgy stabs Crown to death in a stage
fight in which they struggle on the ground, the only level at which Porgy might
have a chance to even the odds against Crown, Porgy struggles to stand and
declares that he’s now a man.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It’s
unfortunate that the disabled Porgy distinguishes himself through violence, and
that his gentler, more domestic masculinity is pitted against Crown’s volatile force
in the first place. Boykin, as Crown, is
a muscular, large, dark-skinned African American man, who presents the
character in all his brutal sexuality and contrasts starkly with Porgy’s less
stable physical presence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Even
after Porgy kills Crown, theoretically freeing her from the violent man’s hold,
Bess is seduced by Sporting Life (played by David Alan Grier as a kind of Ben
Vereen-as-the-Leading-Player-in-<i>Pippin</i>
spin-off), who tells her that Porgy will be imprisoned for life and that she
belongs in a big city. Sporting Life smoothly
urges her toward the boat that’s leaving soon for New York (in another of the
musical’s many numbers that became standards in the American repertoire).<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkBysI01R3xPqqB0nasEqPY_xL3NGDD9qst2GZpj1c1Uzreujoy3VeEykQbokq40zTyLEsGaKtTH0SlCZcv7uyPMkZY_5hp6Yi_6K2IuSkHEWLEg3Zw_fdhFNf3DVEVuCUpUzh/s1600/Porgy%252C+Sporting+life.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkBysI01R3xPqqB0nasEqPY_xL3NGDD9qst2GZpj1c1Uzreujoy3VeEykQbokq40zTyLEsGaKtTH0SlCZcv7uyPMkZY_5hp6Yi_6K2IuSkHEWLEg3Zw_fdhFNf3DVEVuCUpUzh/s1600/Porgy%252C+Sporting+life.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>David Alan Grier as Sporting Life</i></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Played
by the truly astounding McDonald, Bess’s desires muddle her, pulling her from
one choice to the contradictory next.
She clearly feels safe with Porgy, but her blazing sexual heat draws her
to danger and to a larger palette on which to paint herself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bess
never looks quite comfortable in the cotton shifts in muted prints and soft
fabrics that signal her acceptance into the quotidian life of Catfish Row. The image of her lush body presenting itself draped in red in those first scenes always haunts her attempt to be just one of the women, to
domesticate herself for her own safety and acceptance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nonetheless,
this production doesn’t demonize Bess and neither does it leave Porgy broken by
her disappearance at the end. He decides
he’ll follow Bess to New York to win her back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What
will happen after is anyone’s guess, but that future isn’t as important as
knowing that both Porgy and Bess have opted to move out into a larger world,
one less predictable, perhaps, one less full of love and care and
fellow-feeling than the landscape of Catfish Row, but one in which
they can find bigger, more ennobled versions of themselves in which to live.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That,
in itself, is an achievement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
Feminist Spectator<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.porgyandbessonbroadway.com/index.html?gclid=CLyiuM_Cha8CFcRM4AodDm7y0A" target="_blank">Porgyand Bess</a><i>,</i> <i>Richard Rodgers Theatre, Broadway.</i></span><i><span lang="en-US" style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: #0400; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: #0400;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-16404561489076778642012-03-11T09:28:00.000-07:002012-03-11T09:28:43.184-07:00Wit<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwbCYSUo8zCKZu8PtcmD7CbKb_6O1TkUCWphNNOvj1LVWD2AU6mgU-ChJkpoFUdEZL8i5OHa1QxPaRVtMxQziZJniPFJtLn8QRF5wG-KGrTFlRqAyQw7e5ofUg6jNpOqbbrGUR/s1600/Wit,+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwbCYSUo8zCKZu8PtcmD7CbKb_6O1TkUCWphNNOvj1LVWD2AU6mgU-ChJkpoFUdEZL8i5OHa1QxPaRVtMxQziZJniPFJtLn8QRF5wG-KGrTFlRqAyQw7e5ofUg6jNpOqbbrGUR/s1600/Wit,+1.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Cynthia Nixon on Broadway as Vivian Bearing in Margaret Edson's </i>Wit</span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Cynthia Nixon, playing the lead in the Broadway revival of
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wit_(play)" target="_blank">Margaret Edson’s play, <i>Wit</i></a>, does a
heroic job putting her own mark against Kathleen Chalfant’s signature
performance as the dying Vivian Bearing, the professor and scholar who meets
the only fight she can’t win in her struggle with ovarian cancer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In fact, by the time her cancer is diagnosed, Prof. Bearing is as
good as dead. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">At stage four, the cancer
is already metastasizing and her treatment will mostly benefit science rather
than herself.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But in perhaps her one selfless
choice, according to a script that finds its heroine mostly distasteful, Vivian
signs up to undergo a rigorous eight-month treatment that doesn’t save her
body, but in most ways saves her soul.</span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bearing is hardly a sympathetic character. By acquiescing
to be the subject of research instead of a researcher herself, she learns that there’s
more to life than finding new knowledge. The long hospital stay that ends her
life is her last lesson in how to have the relationships that she regularly denied
herself, devoting her time to the obscure and difficult sonnets of John Donne
instead.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Edson’s play, which won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, wants to have it both ways. It indicts a medical
establishment that sacrifices the humanity of its patients to its quest for
their cure, but at same time indicts its patient, who’s devoted her own life to a similar kind of exacting and dehumanizing (at least in Edson’s version)
research.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0149910/" target="_blank">Chalfant </a>played this sacrificial character with a dignity and
nuance that made her a truly tragic figure.
Vivian learns too late in her life that she can relate to people instead
of just teaching them, and that human feelings are more ennobled by living them
than by engaging them on the page.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdQVERwIHuBh-Yuh7A_3VEMhy3y8KjaeIorOXRpAXkC-ADixtH9HQZbathr5dGC1hnPkta6Ixp0ospOs5IbciAxo_1leEdvM8Rti_q2rj9OPBcjTNgwYW_REzwrFWk8e0Veajq/s1600/Wit%252C+Chalfant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdQVERwIHuBh-Yuh7A_3VEMhy3y8KjaeIorOXRpAXkC-ADixtH9HQZbathr5dGC1hnPkta6Ixp0ospOs5IbciAxo_1leEdvM8Rti_q2rj9OPBcjTNgwYW_REzwrFWk8e0Veajq/s1600/Wit%252C+Chalfant.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Publicity material of Kathleen Chalfant in the 1998 Off-Broadway production</i></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Through direct address to the audience from her hospital bed,
Vivian lays out the story of her life and her sudden illness, describing how
her father rewarded her zeal for reading, and how her own intellectually
significant female professor inspired her to ever better research and
writing. Her tone is mordant and a bit
self-deprecating, as though she’s embarrassed to think back on her trajectory
from its sorry end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the right hands, Vivian can be an engaging and self-aware
narrator of her life’s excesses and can suggest that hers are just a different
variation on those we all suffer. But as
directed for laughs by Lynne Meadow, Nixon’s Vivian is a bit strident, her humor too forced and ironic, until the
morphine finally
calms her down toward the play’s end. She finds her humanity just as the medical
establishment reaches the epitome of its objectification of her body. But Vivian is such an unlikable character
until then that it’s hard to see her story as anything but a joke at the
expense of a smart woman who’s happily chosen to devote her life to her work,
however esoteric.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYIuUTkWBd714jSRJlUNgMkEF7oFqiNe3AhgD_VdvU8wvxS6atT5_pu5cupsQ1KOvhZwDmHJM3UV2nZcQJxRL-7H6bGLrawNqKDYYjf-HufA9OEpZBHOJqUOXcRdKQz3AXvsoi/s1600/Wit%252C+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYIuUTkWBd714jSRJlUNgMkEF7oFqiNe3AhgD_VdvU8wvxS6atT5_pu5cupsQ1KOvhZwDmHJM3UV2nZcQJxRL-7H6bGLrawNqKDYYjf-HufA9OEpZBHOJqUOXcRdKQz3AXvsoi/s1600/Wit%252C+2.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Prof. Bearing's work is played as too much of a joke in this production</i></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nixon is a smart performer, and emotionally enough in
tune with the role that she does strike nice chords of sympathy with Prof. Bearing. And clearly the cancer narrative appeals to
her. At a moment when so many women (including
Nixon, who’s a survivor) are diagnosed with breast, ovarian, and other cancers,
a play that addresses their situation with the frankness of <i>Wit</i> is very welcome on Broadway.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It’s just too bad that Edson asks us to think only about how
little agency women have in their own medical care. That, perhaps, marks her play's age—witness the
recent uproar over the lack of women testifying before Congress about their
proposed legislation on women’s reproductive health, which might indicate how fed up women have become with just the kind of objectification and powerlessness that Edson’s
play indicts. But a play that
also allows audiences to laugh at the righteous pursuit of a life of the mind
that Vivian Bearing’s career represents compromises its otherwise feminist intent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In this Broadway revival, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0078136/#Actress" target="_blank">Suzanne Bertish</a> brings terrific verve to
her role as Vivian’s inspiring professor.
She relishes the knowledge she imparts to her pupil, and then demonstrates
utmost compassion when she finds Vivian again at the end of her life. When she crawls into Vivian’s hospital bed to
read to her former star student, the moment is wrenching, not just because all
she has at hand to read aloud is a children’s book she recently shared with her
grandson, but because she loves and respects Vivian for who she is.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The professor's compassion at the end bears no moral judgment,
which is so palpable in the rest of the play. She brings only a clear love and felt presence
that finally
ushers
Vivian out of her life and into a kind of peace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This production ends as the original did, with Vivian’s
resurrection of sorts after the death that finally, supposedly, frees her from
physical and spiritual pain. Downstage
right, Nixon unfolds from an embryonic ball of limbs and flesh into a
triumphal, extended human “V,” naked and, I suppose, liberated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The moment is a bit too stark for my taste and too symbolic of the
empty freedom that Vivian’s release into what Donne called the “pause” that is
death brings. She holds her arms above
her head in a peculiar, Pyrrhic victory. But her naked body seems also to signal how
she sacrificed her physical desire for her intellectual ambitions. It’s the wrong kind of triumph to celebrate,
and leaves the play rather hollow at the end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nonetheless, it’s good to see Nixon claiming Broadway real estate
to perform a serious play written by a woman.
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/theater/margaret-edson-author-of-wit-loves-teaching.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Margaret%20Edson&st=cse" target="_blank">Edson never wrote another play after <i>Wit</i></a>,
and still insists she has no intention of returning to the form. She continues to teach at an elementary
school in Atlanta; <i>Wit</i> was the one
dramatic story she wanted to tell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Given new oncology protocols, the play feels dated, though its
critique of medicine’s essential inhumanity remains sadly relevant. Its portrait of a female professor
as brittle and emotionally stunted still smarts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When do we get to see a story about a smart, talented woman
intellectual who’s not punished by a fatal disease? These stories have been tiresome since <i>Wit</i> was first produced in New York in
the ‘90s.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I’m always glad when work by and
starring talented women is visible in public forums, but how I wish we
could hear stories that celebrate instead of implicitly denigrate their
accomplishments, and that let them thrive instead of fade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://witonbroadway.com/index.html#goog-search" target="_blank">Wit</a></span></span><span style="color: windowtext;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, <i>on Broadway through March 17th</i>.</span></span></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-40307163596466668232012-02-28T07:57:00.000-08:002012-02-28T07:57:28.001-08:00The Oscars, 2012<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioe1YQ4NuICPQYPd8s6gwE7EtApVlKPM2NxlRkUosat9EJ3VbdegVAY6CrEikRw9sFv3VZThFWnx7TH2V9pRDc7janiq7oVxgaIO-c3BWrc5nTO2etjngg9gJbw7a_FyfyKx7m/s1600/Oscars+12,+longshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioe1YQ4NuICPQYPd8s6gwE7EtApVlKPM2NxlRkUosat9EJ3VbdegVAY6CrEikRw9sFv3VZThFWnx7TH2V9pRDc7janiq7oVxgaIO-c3BWrc5nTO2etjngg9gJbw7a_FyfyKx7m/s1600/Oscars+12,+longshot.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Opening of the show at the theater formerly known as Kodak</i></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What’s a feminist spectator to make of an awards
show that honors films that have so little to do with women behind the camera
or as central to their stories? <a href="http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/1136290--oscars-2012-where-are-the-female-directors" target="_blank">Other writers have detailed the appalling lack of women nominated for Best Director this year</a>, after Kathryn Bigelow’s historic win for </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Hurt Locker</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> in 2011. God
forbid a pattern should emerge of even nominating, let alone awarding, work by
women directors. In my alternate reality
version of the Oscars, Dee Rees (</span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Pariah</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">)
and Maryam Keshavarz (</span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Circumstance</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">)
would both be on that list.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Instead, Academy voters nominated nine films for
Best Picture, only one of which has anything remotely to do with women. And that’s <i>The Help</i>, a movie whose racial politics are so compromised that it’s
difficult to applaud its nomination, though its actors were uniformly excellent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Frankly, Viola Davis was robbed by her friend Meryl
Streep, who won her third Oscar for Best Actress. That Streep should win for playing Maggie
Thatcher as some sort of pseudo-feminist heroine, instead of Davis winning for bringing
dignity and empathy to Aibileen, an entirely oppressed African American maid
working in the heart of the pre-Civil Rights racist South . . . that’s just cruel
and unusual.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVTB7RxZfOYdMMVen41R2LGrafZLhQMu3xVpqp9ASwlngl0dCocya2ym4PbGP3MicmbZoaDDAsjFB7GScxhm6Mf2T8xaR1-Pz5ooTEfmeAnk2hGFKsDN4c3bcdAXY7ei46aptL/s1600/Oscars+12%252C+Viola+Davis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVTB7RxZfOYdMMVen41R2LGrafZLhQMu3xVpqp9ASwlngl0dCocya2ym4PbGP3MicmbZoaDDAsjFB7GScxhm6Mf2T8xaR1-Pz5ooTEfmeAnk2hGFKsDN4c3bcdAXY7ei46aptL/s1600/Oscars+12%252C+Viola+Davis.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Viola Davis, whose Oscar show hair style prompted a surprising amount of comment</i></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Streep was right when she anticipated that people
watching Sunday’s telecast would say, “Aw, no!
Not her again!” But when she won
a Golden Globe for her role this year, Streep named her fellow nominees with admiration. She even mentioned actresses whose glorious
work wasn’t nominated (including <i>Pariah</i>’s<i> </i>Adepero Oduye).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUxxOTjU4M018xtGeOsvjaJbL9KT2g1qDnfuwtDeJd4DSFyuS7GevScws1uXa75niW6OYvOkt9zzr3WQsRJ5YfBaFTqBvn6lFN427CHtDUjfXkPhYesvGe-MYm5i_NQUKbO1FN/s1600/Oscars+12%252C+Streep.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUxxOTjU4M018xtGeOsvjaJbL9KT2g1qDnfuwtDeJd4DSFyuS7GevScws1uXa75niW6OYvOkt9zzr3WQsRJ5YfBaFTqBvn6lFN427CHtDUjfXkPhYesvGe-MYm5i_NQUKbO1FN/s320/Oscars+12%252C+Streep.jpg" width="198" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>A not particularly gracious Streep</i></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Instead of repeating that generous gesture at the
Oscars, Streep smugly brushed off imagined objections to her win and didn’t
even nod at the pack of excellent actresses she bested for the award. She did embrace Davis on her way to the
podium, but some more sincere public recognition of her steal would have gone a
long way. Even her pithy and earnest
speech about the importance of friendship was too oblique to acknowledge the
surprise of her win over Davis. When
will Davis, even with her talent and stature in the industry, again be cast in
an Oscar-worthy role? We can only hope
soon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Also robbed last night were Annie Mumolo and
Kristin Wiig, whose biting, knowing, hysterical screenplay for <i>Bridesmaids</i> deserved recognition. Sure, <i>Midnight
in Paris</i>, which did win, was clever and even heart-felt for the typically
more cynical Woody Allen. But how
predictable for him to write still another movie about a younger version of his
anxious and conflicted self. And how
predictable for the Academy to acknowledge him again (even though he never
attends the show, nominated or not). <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi6WL0md8IeUwXtPhvyT_VLHygXgvN3tBkwLmM_SwvKvncrY3qsKEsVlGchNSn6KmKpZvlbfyIzMhGU4sS75VypAp1oP6AX_qKNb6jyCNb2GsnYpwPouuBgUKqZPaRMxxH7BKm/s1600/Oscars+12,+Wiig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi6WL0md8IeUwXtPhvyT_VLHygXgvN3tBkwLmM_SwvKvncrY3qsKEsVlGchNSn6KmKpZvlbfyIzMhGU4sS75VypAp1oP6AX_qKNb6jyCNb2GsnYpwPouuBgUKqZPaRMxxH7BKm/s1600/Oscars+12,+Wiig.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Kristin Wiig, robbed of a Best Original Screenplay Award by Woody Allen</i></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When have we ever seen characters like those Mumolo
and Wiig wrote for their comrades in <i>Bridesmaids</i>? When have we seen a woman conflicted about
losing her best friend to the bridal industry and social prerogatives of
marriage? When have we seen a story
about women so invested in being “the best friend” that they practically
fist-fight to speak into a microphone at an engagement party? When have we seen a stocky, pearl-and-bowling-shirt
wearing woman seduce a man pretending he’s not an air marshal on a plane? Or seen women getting sick every which way in
the bathroom of a bridal shop? So much
of <i>Bridesmaids</i> was refreshing because
it was told from a smart, talented, desiring, and ambivalent <i>woman’s</i> point of view. Why wasn’t that story honored by the Academy?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps because it turns out that most Academy
voters are white men whose median age is 62.
<a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/academy/la-et-unmasking-oscar-academy-project-html,0,7473284.htmlstory" target="_blank">A recent Los Angeles Times study</a> found that 94% of voters are white and 77% are male. Of course that crowd will nod instead to
Woody Allen. Of course they’ll honor other
stories about boys and men, like <i>Hugo</i>
(however sweet), <i>Extremely Loud and
Incredibly Close</i> (however sad), <i>War
Horse</i> (however wrenching), <i>The Artist</i>
(however quiet), <i>Moneyball</i> (however
smart), <i>The Descendants </i>(however
noble), and <i>Tree of Life </i>(however
oblique). Even in the Oscar show’s
montage curated to demonstrate how much we love the movies, all the clips showed
either heterosexual love scenes or men racing to get themselves out of trouble.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The only girls or women in evidence outside of
those embracing men in the montage were Linda Blair, layered in her extreme exorcism make-up, and
Meg Ryan, doing her extremely fake public orgasm in <i>When Harry Met Sally</i> (a rather self-serving scene for host Billy
Crystal). This, then, is how we love
women in the movies? Only if they’re in love
with men, possessed by demons or by sex, or completely absent? Please.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I liked the interstitial interviews with actors
and filmmakers on the Oscar show, in which they described when they began to
love the movies. But only Reese
Witherspoon seemed to get any screen time there, among a host of men telling anecdotes. At least a few women got to speak to their
work during the production clips, for which short quotes from interviews with
nominated artists played alongside images from their films. Those moments brought dignity and respect to
the profession, in stark contrast to the ubiquitous, mindless prattle between presenters
who can only seem vacuous in that context, regardless of their intelligence.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(But even those short clips elide the fact of women's lack of advancement in the film industry. <a href="http://newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newscenter/news.aspx?s=73375" target="_blank">Martha Lauzen's recent study</a> about women and the "celluloid ceiling" reports the dismal percentages of women producers, editors, and cinematographers working on the top 250 films of the year.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Christopher Guest crew’s funny spoof about
focus groups, in which the assembled tweaked <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> out of its Dorothy, offered the best writing (and
some of the best performances) of the Oscar show evening.
The standing ovation for Octavia Spencer, winning for her performance as
<i>The Help</i>’s stalwart Minnie, was
moving, but I wish she’d won for better material than the stereotypically sassy
maid who’s redeemed by the socially mobile white woman who tells her story.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizW3FBR6QBLxxdCRl0kYFs4NBqA2Ay6rHXjvGPEBoJVyni3WSpmsIWhE2VPHfeFvZbGQpCH7kciRWrxwNy6F7PnAApM9Mlv0wWbVkN0fSnf1ydaceDbqvMUK_3TNKIblVHkBVv/s1600/Oscars+12%252C+Octavia+Spencer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizW3FBR6QBLxxdCRl0kYFs4NBqA2Ay6rHXjvGPEBoJVyni3WSpmsIWhE2VPHfeFvZbGQpCH7kciRWrxwNy6F7PnAApM9Mlv0wWbVkN0fSnf1ydaceDbqvMUK_3TNKIblVHkBVv/s1600/Oscars+12%252C+Octavia+Spencer.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Spencer embraced by Davis after her award was announced</i></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Watching <i>Beginners’</i>
Christopher Plummer accept his award for his fine performance as a gay man
coming out late in his life was heart-warming. But his win for playing gay didn’t make up for
the fact that no one awarded this year thanked same-sex partners or referred in
any way to queer lives. Along with
women, LGBT folks were invisible in the show (unless you count the vaguely
homoerotic flying men in suits in Cirque du Soleil’s strangely out-of-place
spectacle).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I’m glad <i>The
Separation</i> was the first Iranian movie ever to win a Best Foreign Film
award. But the film’s wife/mother in the story is
demonized for wanting a better life for her daughter, and for precipitating
another woman’s tragedy by “abandoning” her own family.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What kind of message do these awards send about
women?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZ4OV9-USaakDZK3IQfGWWU9NLMKcJ6vD3a_JPXDC_dxA2-GaM2kAs88a6TpiMINOl2i5mtr7x7ENWKUxzwN1mW3LdDoNz9C0CpwSTbh413Hg4_oCqqr14UbfnZn-to4EYLap/s1600/Oscars+12%252C+Crystal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoZ4OV9-USaakDZK3IQfGWWU9NLMKcJ6vD3a_JPXDC_dxA2-GaM2kAs88a6TpiMINOl2i5mtr7x7ENWKUxzwN1mW3LdDoNz9C0CpwSTbh413Hg4_oCqqr14UbfnZn-to4EYLap/s1600/Oscars+12%252C+Crystal.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Billy Crystal's opening number</i></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Finally, here’s Billy Crystal, trotted back out to
host the show for the ninth time. How
self-congratulatory of him to structure his entire opening monologue about
whether or not he should accept the invitation to host? His shtick all evening seemed to me like Jewish
minstrelsy. We won’t even mention his
blackface routine as Sammy Davis Jr. alongside Justin Bieber in that silly,
manufactured scene from <i>Midnight in Paris</i>. Crystal shrugged his shoulders like a
low-rent Bob Hope and tried to raise eyebrows that looked paralyzed by Botox. Crystal seemed a parody of himself, a canned,
predictable, self-immolating copy of the quick-witted, genial host of shows
past.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I’ll just keep hoping that next year, things will
change. Maybe Tina Fey and Kristin Wiig
will write and host the show. Or maybe
they’ll write and Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer will host. Or maybe Janet McTeer and Glenn Close will do
the honors, dressed in matching tuxes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And maybe the nominated material will be rich
examinations of the lives of women, people of color, and LGBT people, as well
as straight, white, male people. Wouldn’t
it be nice to hear and see stories that say something we haven’t heard before?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Eternally optimistic,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-69452141645067766802012-02-22T15:10:00.000-08:002012-02-22T15:30:46.452-08:00Queer Dance at U of Michigan<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I was in Ann Arbor last weekend for the first-ever
conference on <a href="http://www.cordance.org/Resources/Documents/Detailed_Schedule_1_4_12.pdf" target="_blank">queer dance</a>, co-organized by Clare Croft (whose dissertation I was
pleased to advise at the University of Texas at Austin) and University of Michigan dance professor Peter Sparling.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Two days of panel discussions, workshops, and
film screenings were capped each evening by a program of performances that
showcased some of the most interesting work in the field, and that read back
nicely over the days’ discussions about how we define, study, and create queer
dance.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Presented in the Betty Pease Studio Theatre at the
University of Michigan (whose Department of Dance and an impressive number of other
campus units hosted and sponsored this <a href="http://www.michigandaily.com/arts/meanings-and-makings-queer-dance-conference?page=0,0" target="_blank">landmark event</a>), the performances
offered a fascinating mélange of bodies in motion, choreographed abstractly or
in snippets of narrative scenarios brushed with wit, beauty, and grace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Diverse across gender, race, ethnicity, and the
performatives of sexuality, both performance evenings played with the known
tropes of queerness, referencing the familiar without being predictable. For instance, the drag duet called <a href="http://www.cherdonnalou.com/" target="_blank">“TheCherdonna and Lou Show,”</a> performing <i>out
out there (A Whole Night Lost)</i>, might have reminded spectators of drag
queen and drag king performances, since the two performers were costumed and
made-up in the over-emphasized gender accoutrements of out-sized masculinity and femininity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But that both performers were women and that their
duet was funny and entirely unexpected, lent the act a freshness and surprise
that made it memorable. “Cherdonna,” the
femme (I guess you would call her), towers high above “Lou,” the “butch,” whose
slight form is nevertheless appealing, with her drawn-on beard and moustache, her
bowler hat, and her plaid suit.
Cherdonna wears a pleated white dress, high heels, and an even higher
bouffant hairdo that poufs memorably over her head while she dances.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Both performers’ faces are made-up in the
clown-like lipstick, eye-shadow, and colorings reminiscent of the late <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethyl_Eichelberger" target="_blank">Ethyl Eichelberger</a>
or <a href="http://taylormac.net/TaylorMac.net/Home.html" target="_blank">Taylor Mac</a>, a kind of <i>Godspell</i>-esque presentation of outré gender that’s both
funny and queer in this context. The dance shows the duo as a couple whose affection alternates with rage and who finally
pull (obviously fake) knives on one another, stabbing their partner and themselves in rhythm to
light-hearted music danced with whimsical steps. The piece is a hysterical, warm commentary on
relationships and Cherdonna and Lou’s bodies and movement styles muddle
anything we might presume as binary gender.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In her conference welcome speech, Croft situated
the panels and the performances in both a personal and critical lexicon that
refracted usefully across the two days.
She shared an anecdote about the first time she was ever called “queer,” which was in a
dance class when she was eight years old. A little friend turned to Clare with haughty
antipathy and called her the name. Croft
said she thought for a moment, and then told her friend that if “queer” meant “strange,”
she stood guilty as charged, proudly claiming her difference without at that
point needing to carry what later became its sexual baggage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The sweet and funny story linking queerness to
a profitable strangeness echoed throughout the conference, in Cherdonna and Lou’s
odd couple and in other equally generative performances of unaligned,
cock-eyed, off-kilter gender and scenarios of sexual desire which, by accumulation,
demonstrated “strange” as a really useful way of thinking about embodied queerness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In her too-short discussion with the performers
after the final evening’s presentations, Croft also noted that what distinguished
much of the dance we saw together was that the performers looked back at the
audience, an invitation to intersubjectivity that might in itself be
particularly queer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In fact, the
conference’s first panel, “Queer Nations/Queer Boundaries,” included papers by
Ramón Rivera-Servera (Northwestern) on dance floor gossip in queer Latino/a
clubs; by Nic Gareiss (University of Limerick) on being a queer performer in
traditional Irish dance; and by Sara Wolf (UCLA) on artist damali ayo’s performance of a public
claim for race reparations. All three papers teased out the specific queerness of public
intimacy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Gareiss described how the popular Irish dance form
(marketed especially to tourists) interdicts the exchange of queer gazes by insisting
that the male dancers look either at their female partners or out at the
audience but never at one another.
Gareiss demonstrated his queer resistance to these constraints, showing
a clip of him dancing solo, accompanied by a male Irish fiddler, in which he
seemed to be performing the step dance directly <i>for</i> his musical accompanist.
The personal yet public performance exchange rewrote the more frontal
and certainly more heterosexual conventions of the dance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Likewise, Rivera-Servera’s ethnography described what
he called queer world-making through gossip on the dance floor. He suggested that gossip creates
a profitable friction around what can be a too homogeneous notion of <i>latinidad</i>. He quoted informants who watched and
critiqued sotto voce one another’s dancing from the sidelines, pointing out the
differences in styles across the ethnic diversity inherent in a pan-Latino
community. Gossip about movement, Rivera-Servera
proposed, nuances what might look like a shared politic. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This public intimacy and useful parsing of queer
differences seemed very much evident in the performances as well as in the
papers. <a href="http://dance.uiuc.edu/people/1041" target="_blank">Jennifer Monson</a> and <a href="http://www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/grant_recipients/dddorvillier.html" target="_blank">DDDorvillier</a> presented <i>RMW(a) & RMW</i>,
a piece they first performed together in 1993, revived in 2004, and have
presented once a year or so since.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the first half of the
two-part dance, they wear wigs and make-up reminiscent of Cherdonna
and Lou’s, the drag-like/clown-like, exaggerated eye-makeup and inked outlines
that signal overt gender performance and that point in a Butlerian sort of way to
gender as a surface rather than a depth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Monson wears a black and
white, short print dress and blond wig, while Dorvillier cavorts in an
oversized lime green shirt and pink gym shorts, wearing a curly black wig. The two women dance in parallel, taking turns
performing more angular and abstracted movement while the other sets a timer
and then watches her partner dance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As Rivera-Servera pointed out to me later, the scene
is vaguely cruise-y, as it seems like they’re purposefully performing for one
another. It’s certainly seductive; one
of the performance’s pleasures was how keenly Monson and Dorvillier watched one
another. It occurred to me that we
rarely see lesbians <i>looking</i> at one
another in representation. How pleasurable it is for queer spectators to witness
that gaze exchanged.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The two switch places by mirroring one another’s last
gesture as they then take over the solo.
With their increasingly rigorous movement, their wigs fall off and are
kicked aside. As this first part ends, Monson
and Dorvillier lie on the ground with their costumes pulled up toward their
chins, their bare torsos and buttocks making funny sucking sounds against the
dance floor as the lights fade out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When the second part begins, the pair appear dressed
in matching white t-shirts and rolled-cuffed jeans and jackets that soon come
off. They proceed to dance one of the most erotic, athletic duets I’ve ever seen
two women perform. They rarely (if ever)
lose contact during the piece’s second half, climbing over and across and
around one another’s bodies in a tangle of limbs and muscles and desire that
was thrilling to watch.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In one glorious moment, Dorvillier climbs up
Monson’s legs and torso and stands on Monson’s flat back, balancing precariously
but somehow surely. This second half
builds to a wonderful deep kiss, and then Monson and Dorvillier literally lock lips, remaining
attached at the face in this extended erotic contact as they keep moving their
bodies around and about and over and under one another.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Part of what was moving and lovely about this piece,
in addition to its frank woman-on-woman sexuality, was that the two dancers are
squarely middle-aged. Breathlessly watching
them perform such virtuosic athleticism felt like an affirmation of persistent
lesbian desire.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By “persistent,” I mean
continuing over time—that is, knowing that Monson and Dorvillier have performed
the piece for almost 20 years demonstrated that time can be a medium in which a
relationship like this—physical, affective, aesthetic—can grow, change, and
continue with a queer sort of commitment.
Such persistence, and such lesbian/queer relationships, are too often
disappeared (and I mean that as an active verb) in live performance and representation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In fact, Hannah Schwadron (UC-Riverside) gave a
wonderful paper about the Darren Aronofsky film <i>Black Swan</i>
earlier that day in which she argued that it refers to lesbian sexuality
only to deny it, just as the film also “disappears” Jewishness through the
conventions of white-encoded ballet (and the Anglicized names of its stars: Natalie Portman, née Hershlag; Mila Kunis, born Milena Markovna Kunis; and Barbara Hershey, born Barbara Herzstein).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Given how often especially middle-aged lesbians
are forced into invisibility in mainstream and even queer
representation, watching Monson and Dorvillier so palpably, frankly, and
beautifully create, explore, and perpetuate a queer desire felt exciting, as well as deeply political.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Other performances were equally provocative and
generative. <i>Remnant Hit/fix</i>, by performer/choreographer <a href="http://chavassedanceandperformance.com/about/amy.html" target="_blank">Amy Chavasse</a>, set more
quotidian movements to various texts and songs, as Chavasse addressed the
audience with a frank and ingenuous tone.
She seemed to talk personally, but as in many of these pieces, the
status of “autobiography” was difficult (and somehow unnecessary, finally) to
ascertain. To finish the piece, Chavasse
selected a woman out of the audience to sit on a stool across from her and
listen to Chavasse’s final monologue.
Again, the public intimacy was moving and compelling to watch.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Cositas</i>,
choreographed by <a href="http://www.lunanegra.org/artists/choreographers/joel-valentin-martinez.php" target="_blank">Joel Valentin-Martínez</a>, presented dancer Javier Marchán-Ramos in
a tight-fitting red satin ball-gown with a corset-like closure laced up both
his chest and his back. He entered from
downstage right, and slowly crossed upstage left, trailing the exceeding long
train of his dress behind him. Part of
the simple dance's allure was the suspense over how long his train
would actually be; the end didn’t appear until Marchán-Ramos was practically on
the other side of the stage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In addition, because of the dress, the corset, his
carefully coifed dark hair, and his rather coy gaze, Marchán-Ramos’s gender read
as ambiguous and mysterious. He’d glance over his
shoulder at spectators as he crossed the stage, but it wasn’t until the piece’s
second part, when he gathered the dress in his arms and performed more athletic
movements, did a more familiar performance of masculinity emerge. The performance seemed to glow
and practically shimmer with the richness and clarity of its images.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In her solo <i>Walking
the Line</i>, excerpted from her longer piece <i>SILO/SOLO</i>, choreographer/videographer/performer <a href="http://www.aliennationcompany.com/people/andee.htm" target="_blank">Andee Scott</a>
accomplished one simple, enormously provocative movement. Naked from the waist down, Scott slowly moved
from center stage to downstage center, walking out of the stage's darkness into the light of a projector
that made her bare torso, chest, and neck into a projection screen. The moving image reflected in sharp, bright light
and vivid color showed Scott wearing a full white dress, dancing alone in a
rural landscape between two low hills.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although the projected image extended only from
one side of her body to the other, the vibrant scene seemed full of freedom and
light. Watching Scott’s video play
across her chest and collarbones made for a very vulnerable, tender moment of
performance. Rather than narcissism,
which could be expected from a dancer projecting herself onto herself, the
image conjured the sublime liberty of solitude, of nature, and of
self-expression.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Watching Scott use her skin, unfettered by modesty
or convention, reminded me of <a href="http://splitbritches.org/" target="_blank">Peggy Shaw</a> performing <i>To My Chagrin,</i> in which she projects a video of her then-small
grandson, Ian, playing by himself, across her bare breasts. As in Shaw’s piece, Scott’s represented not
just intimacy but <i>heart</i>, love, and
closeness that seemed wonderfully generative and physically and emotionally
generous. That Scott stood quite still
and half naked in the moment of performance, and used her body to represent a moment
of <i>past</i> or <i>prior</i> movement, also seemed to queer her dance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nudity appeared fairly frequently in these performances. The first evening began with
dancer/choreographer Gina Kohler’s <i>dream
[factories]</i>. Kohler was pre-set in
the Pease Studio, sitting naked on a drop cloth center stage, methodically pouring
beet juice meant to represent (I assume) blood over her white body.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As she emptied the deep red liquid from jars
over her head and across her limbs, Kohler slid her body across a shiny,
slippery piece of Mylar or something that she’d placed in the middle of the
cloth. The red liquid pooled around her
as it ran off her skin, leaving rivulets of red across her face, torso, arms,
and legs. As Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”
played, Kohler spun around on her back, flipped to her stomach, looked out at
the audience, and twirled some more before she finally stood up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The performance reminded me of <a href="http://www.caroleeschneemann.com/bio.html" target="_blank">Carolee Schneemann</a>’s
<i>Interior Scroll</i>. Although Kohler didn’t pull a text out of her
vagina, as Schneemann did in the ‘70s, the evocation of blood beckoned to the
same kind of insistence on the difference of the female body that Schneemann performed
in the 70s. Here, Kohler was joined on
stage by another female performer, dressed in briefs and a bra in a bathing suit
sort of costume, covered with gold paint and glitter and wearing a unicorn on
her forehead that she caressed and pointed with throughout the piece.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although the second dancer (Sara Procopio) never directly
interacted with Kohler, she represented an onstage spectator for Kohler’s
bodily acts, directing and refracting our gaze.
A male collaborator (Eric Kohler) trained a video camera on Gina Kohler
throughout this first part of the piece, projecting a live feed onto a screen
upstage that focused on her face or body parts as she moved. His filming also seemed to both direct and to
interrupt our gaze, yet rather than representing “male” power over Kohler’s female
body, his camera seemed to offer just another way for us to look at it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the second of the three-part piece, Kohler
strapped on a harness and transparent acrylic dildo and danced to Leonard Cohen’s
“I am Your Man.” The movement here was
both more every day and more frontal, and necessarily more symbolic and
abstract. Seeing a naked woman dancing
with a dildo on, regardless of what it’s supposed to mean, is pretty powerful
in performance and forestalled whatever claims of female essentialism might have been evoked by the blood and beet juice scene.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the third part, Kohler executed jumping jacks
non-stop while Cohen’s “The Future” played.
For the length of the song, she faced the audience and scissored her
arms and legs together and apart while the unicorn-wearing dancer watched. The endurance test left her breathless.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although <i>dream
[factories]</i> didn’t necessarily cohere (these three moments were
extracted from a longer piece), each individual image was arresting. Kohler’s matter-of-fact stage persona
undercut the sensationalism of her nakedness and of the dildo. She looked out at the audience throughout,
engaging us with a kind of butch dare.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Because she wasn’t wearing clothes, I wondered how she performs her
gender off stage, since so many of our cues for reading gender are determined by
sartorial choices and the movement styles they dictate. But throughout the piece, her gaze back at
spectators read to me as butch, which worked in a productive tension with her
naked female body.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nakedness and gender and sexuality conjoined in
Kohler’s <i>dream [factories]</i>, in Monson
and Dorvillier’s <i>RMW</i>, and in <a href="http://www.arts.duke.edu/artsjournal/thomas-f-defrantz-joins-dance-faculty" target="_blank">ThomasDeFrantz</a>’s collaborative performance, <i>Theory-ography
4: We Queer Here!</i> Generated with a group of six local Michigan
students and DeFrantz’s own students, <i>Theory-ography</i>
was the most text-based and post-modern of the performances.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The performers collected index cards from
spectators before the piece began, on which they invited the audience to write
an instruction or a description that the dancers were </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">later</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">asked to
embody.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Early in the piece, DeFrantz
read out a card that commanded, “Disrobe.”</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Most of the performers stripped off a layer.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When DeFrantz again commanded “disrobe,” James
Morrow, the one man in the performance, went all the way.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">His nakedness was disarming and charming.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The dance here was improvisational and
angular, much of it rooted into the floor in emphatic and erratic movements for
which the performers hurried across the stage or threw themselves onto the
ground. Watching Morrow’s penis flopping
happily against his stomach, and watching him seem to feel liberated rather
than embarrassed by his nakedness, was quite lovely. His naked presence also echoed Kohler dancing
while wearing the harness and dildo from the evening before, and commented
profitably on the construction of sex.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The woman of color performing in <i>Theory-ography </i>stripped down to her underwear when DeFrantz
announced the instruction to disrobe, revealing that her breasts were bound and
that she was wearing black “men’s” jockey shorts.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That they did take off their clothes proved
these two performers, in particular, generous and acquiescent, but somehow also
full of agency. They inhabited a physical
sexual difference with élan, once again unruffled by the audience’s gaze. These performers gazing back, or inviting
what performance theorist Dwight Conquergood called “co-presence” with
spectators, felt rather happy and comfortable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Theory-ography</i>
was one of the more cerebral performances at the conference, but these two
gender/sexuality representations warmed what might have otherwise been a
playful but “cool” piece. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cruising-Utopia-Futurity-Sexual-Cultures/sim/0814757286/2" target="_blank">José Muñoz’stext about queer utopia</a> didn’t sound particularly illuminating as the
performers took turns reading from his book into a microphone. But as they called out “Queer me” to signal they
were ready to switch narrators, passing the text among the performers made it
multivocal in interesting ways, and the <i>fact</i>
of reading it, in itself, seemed generative.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Likewise, that one of the performers always
trained a video camera with a live feed on the proceedings made the piece a
multi-layered experience. And the text projected
over the feed—such as “where is queer,” “queer is here,” and other verbal
interrogatories and assertions—offered another level of wondering that made the
performance fun and self-reflexive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Perhaps because the conference attendees were also
for the most part participants (since most people presented papers or
performed) and perhaps because we saw two nights of performances after two days
of panels, workshops, and screenings, the audience for these pieces felt like a
community of sorts, however “imagined.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Watching performers whose nakedness seemed matter-of-fact and
comfortable; whose virtuosity, regardless of age or ability, seemed admirable;
whose queerness (or not, since finally, who can tell just by looking at someone
moving?) seemed multiple and fluid; the richness of these experiences created a
temporary public of people buoyed by witnessing, creating, and thinking about
queer dance. I appreciated every moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator</span><o:p></o:p></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-9064412070875665382012-02-16T08:45:00.001-08:002012-02-16T08:45:06.947-08:00Smash<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju7ZiWeUSe32FM9IoGuZ2FeJoJ8oes0huW-SYp8bMY4U2gZDIwGZB9oDS18ciYXx-yc3ucgSAdI_9WOkEComYb35evbHlKPckZlzOSVkqrQz_9e5eflYAWUXXEIbtThpcPOD9W/s1600/Smash,+duelling+Marilyns.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju7ZiWeUSe32FM9IoGuZ2FeJoJ8oes0huW-SYp8bMY4U2gZDIwGZB9oDS18ciYXx-yc3ucgSAdI_9WOkEComYb35evbHlKPckZlzOSVkqrQz_9e5eflYAWUXXEIbtThpcPOD9W/s1600/Smash,+duelling+Marilyns.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Katharine McPhee and Megan Hilty as duelling Marilyns in </i>Smash</span></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">With only two episodes aired, it’s difficult to
say where exactly <i>Smash</i>, the new NBC
series about backstage Broadway lives, will take us. Executive produced and so far written by
playwright Theresa Rebeck, the show responds to Fox’s <i>Glee </i>by embedding lavish musical numbers in its story of a
lyricist-songwriting team creating a Broadway show about Marilyn Monroe. The plot line so far addresses the intrigue
that surrounds producing, casting, and directing such a behemoth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Of course, the whole thing is an elaborate
fantasy. First, Angelica Huston (whose
once expressive face is now, sadly, barely mobile) plays Eileen, the sole
producer of the new musical. In reality,
Broadway shows are littered with people whose financial investments, if nothing
else, give them above-the-title producing credit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Second, Rebeck’s script for <i>Smash</i> has streamlined the process so that in just two episodes, the
dynamic music-and-lyrics duo Julia (Debra Messing) and Tom (Christian Borle) have
moved from the glimmer of an idea into staffing and casting the show. In real life, a project like this would be
workshopped for years and involve a zillion people before it arrived at the
point where <i>Smash</i> picks up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrh1yQqeNESLJgUsyULJrRafcVi4qGLTUYjWn1lSaciNgSGkgEs3c51BNX0FRUL09D3GiaD5UVc5v3UhqitGheWzm7PZLFY4-qmErVZR-di6NpnwT1lxUynPBZmhh65TQ3mHfb/s1600/Smash%252C+Borle+and+Messing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrh1yQqeNESLJgUsyULJrRafcVi4qGLTUYjWn1lSaciNgSGkgEs3c51BNX0FRUL09D3GiaD5UVc5v3UhqitGheWzm7PZLFY4-qmErVZR-di6NpnwT1lxUynPBZmhh65TQ3mHfb/s1600/Smash%252C+Borle+and+Messing.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Christian Borle and Debra Messing as the musical's authors, Tom and Julia</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But here, by the second episode, Eileen has encouraged
the director, Derek (written as a sexy sleaze and played by the British actor
Jack Davenport, late of <i>FlashForward</i>),
to do a quick workshop production and then get the show on Broadway’s
boards. Would that it were all so easy!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The musical’s partners are played with verve and
somehow, believability, by Messing (cast as Rebeck’s doppelganger) and Borle
(who last season played a superb Prior in <i>Angels
in America</i> at the Signature Theatre Off Broadway). So far, Borle has little to do as Tom but
basically play out-and-proud gay. He
flirts with his impossibly cute but untrustworthy assistant, Ellis (Jaime
Cepero), and lobbies for his friend, Ivy Lynn (Megan Hilty), to get the lead in
his show.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The show’s conflict comes from the competition it
manufactures between its would-be Marilyns, two talented young women with very
different looks and takes on the iconic star.
Hilty (<i>Wicked</i> and <i>9 to 5</i>), a bona fide Broadway performer
both in actuality and in character as Ivy, represents the body-type. She’s blond, buxom, and can belt with the
best of them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZm6TVJ1UrWnTPxTS1o7xR-sQLoqbTfDBhWgymSf0olSwg8ObAJpK7PJebmsfBzK4AT-LbfKdNyokCrwgOPDoeJkQx1pTDAuYoyBrIPfx0YDgagJ-hsMcbYLnrt5weGChqH41S/s1600/Smash%252C+Megan+Hilty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZm6TVJ1UrWnTPxTS1o7xR-sQLoqbTfDBhWgymSf0olSwg8ObAJpK7PJebmsfBzK4AT-LbfKdNyokCrwgOPDoeJkQx1pTDAuYoyBrIPfx0YDgagJ-hsMcbYLnrt5weGChqH41S/s1600/Smash%252C+Megan+Hilty.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Hilty as Ivy, the Broadway veteran</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Former <i>American
Idol</i> star Katharine McPhee plays Karen Cartwright, an untested young woman
from Iowa (of course), whose brown hair and slight build make her less
recognizable, at first, as the curvy, breathless 50s personality who seduced
Joe DiMaggio, Arthur Miller, and President Kennedy. But in the show’s intercut fantasy sequences,
dolled up in the right costume, wig, and make-up, Karen passes for Marilyn very
well indeed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTUazz7i1SPBYgC4ueqFJWkSkH8N1sqf_J7DYv263Xxy2Ggkf7dTAlD4P6EDRU5zaM_bRB7jzH7Gb6-WJyt3Gz1uZvzjRhnSklvSPd7ZCH12uGu8Cv1tb_MDThyphenhyphenWcyAUFNW1TP/s1600/Smash%252C+Katharine+McPhee.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTUazz7i1SPBYgC4ueqFJWkSkH8N1sqf_J7DYv263Xxy2Ggkf7dTAlD4P6EDRU5zaM_bRB7jzH7Gb6-WJyt3Gz1uZvzjRhnSklvSPd7ZCH12uGu8Cv1tb_MDThyphenhyphenWcyAUFNW1TP/s1600/Smash%252C+Katharine+McPhee.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>McPhee as Karen, the Midwestern novice</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The first two episodes have careened along on the
suspense of who Derek would cast as the musical’s lead. He summons both young women for private
meetings, calling Karen late at night and requiring that she come to his (mouthwateringly
lavish) apartment for a private audition.
In the first episode’s most unlikely scenario, she goes, and somehow
maintains the upper-hand in a situation clearly constructed for sex.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Derek tells her he needs to “see everything,” and
she changes in his bathroom into a large, white, man’s shirt, then performs the
equivalent of a private lap dance and signature Monroe-style song. At its end, she tells Derek that’s all he’s
getting, and leaves his apartment unscathed (though it’s unclear whether he
respects her for her fortitude or loathes her.
He must ultimately respect her, because he calls her back and lets her
continue the audition in public). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiKKhHQaKNuBBh5fFZKlWFsP5BYnYRB72gdRzXmcKxqnMChTpuRac56MSnOR7xn7N8APctfrWn56lf8aKXnpBW29r0t3reDIdvzVh-GHZqkz5qeo9ErS9t6TUK1isqeVkq4hT_/s1600/Smash%252C+casting+couch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiKKhHQaKNuBBh5fFZKlWFsP5BYnYRB72gdRzXmcKxqnMChTpuRac56MSnOR7xn7N8APctfrWn56lf8aKXnpBW29r0t3reDIdvzVh-GHZqkz5qeo9ErS9t6TUK1isqeVkq4hT_/s1600/Smash%252C+casting+couch.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Karen lap-dancing for Derek at his apartment</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Hilty’s character, Ivy, is less reticent when
Derek makes his moves. They’re working
alone in a rehearsal hall when he asks if he can let down her hair (literally)
and then frames her blond locks around her face meaningfully. The next scene shows them rollicking naked in
bed together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All this reaffirms the stereotype of the Broadway
(and Hollywood) casting couch, the mythic place where powerful men have sex
with desirable and desiring young women to authorize and launch their careers. Because Karen has a boyfriend, Dev (Raza
Jaffrey, who plays a functionary at the mayor’s office), and because she’s
rejected Derek’s advances, she’s portrayed as the ethical, fresh-faced,
unspoiled young thing from the flyover states.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ivy, on the other hand, is already performing in a
Broadway show. Her friends are gypsies,
the corps of performers who sing and dance in musicals and make their living as
unknown but employed and talented company members. Many of the men are gay, and in <i>Smash</i>, that stereotype holds fast. One of Ivy’s friends is hired to dance in the
Marilyn musical’s rehearsals, and passes information on to Ivy about Karen, her
competitor. Since Ivy is already part of
Broadway culture, she’s portrayed as wiser to the ways of the world and more
willing to play what Rebeck describes as the professional theatre’s necessary games.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Subplots abound here, all meant to humanize Julia,
the Messing character, who is the show’s lead.
Julia and her husband, Frank (Brian d’Arcy James), live in a comfortable
brownstone with a huge kitchen, huge bedrooms, and a huge patio or porch off
its dining room, its real estate representing another of the show’s fantasy aspects.
He stays home to supervise the household
and their teen-aged son. Julia is the
family breadwinner, although in the pilot, she’s supposed to be taking a break
from her professional work to concentrate on her family’s child adoption
process.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Frank’s disappointment in her decision to develop
yet another musical instead of being available for the social workers and other
bureaucrats who fill the U.S.-China adoption pipeline establishes another plot
conflict that will no doubt play out this season. Julia balances on the precarious edge between
being a good artist and a good wife/mother and <i>Smash </i>tries not to judge her for putting her work first.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But by the second episode, the balance shifts, as Julia
reveals her deep emotional commitment to the adoption and Frank wavers,
admitting he wants to go back to work as a science teacher and that he’s afraid
he’s too old for a new baby. Watching
how this dilemma plays out along or against typical gender expectations should
be interesting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Smash</i> is
fun television, and the musical numbers, which so far represent more of a tease
than the series’ meat, are energetically choreographed and beautifully
performed. <i>Smash </i>has an impressive pedigree; it’s produced by Steven Spielberg
in conjunction with a number of Broadway notables, directed by the very
talented Michael Mayer, and cast with some of the best actors in New York. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Rebeck, the series’ show-runner, is one of the few
successful women playwrights who, like Wendy Wasserstein before her, can open a
play directly on Broadway. Her most
recent hit, <i>Seminar</i>, which stars Alan
Rickman (though Jeff Goldblum has just been announced as his replacement) and
Lily Rabe, is a funny, smart play about a creative writing workshop lead by a
preemptory, haughty snob. Rebeck’s ear
for dialogue and witty repartee and her talent for slick plotting is
unparalleled in the contemporary American theatre.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And Rebeck’s commitment to women playwrights is
well-established. Her keynote for the 2010
Laura Pels Awards excoriated powerful theatre producers and critics for their
gender bias and demanded action. She’s
been an outspoken, visible, and powerful advocate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sometimes, though, <i>Smash </i>tells stories in which its women are maligned without necessarily critiquing how they’re forced to
compromise. The first two episodes turn on the caricature of the
mean-spirited but talented, wicked but sexy straight male director who tests
his female stars in the sack as well as on the stage. The story line forces Karen and Ivy to compete
for his attention sexually as well as professionally. That might be how Broadway business is
conducted, but if <i>Smash</i> is a fantasy
anyway, why not imagine a different kind of theatre world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I’ve only seen two episodes so it could be
entirely too soon to tell where the story of <i>Smash</i> will take its characters and its audience. It’s fun to watch a television show that’s
actually about theatre, instead of one like <i>Glee</i>
in which the musical numbers are justified by the high school club
setting. And it’s fun to see the gay subculture
of Broadway represented so nonchalantly.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The song-and-dance numbers (choreographed by
Joshua Bergasse) so far are energetically performed and filmed with high style
and verve. And it’s wonderful to see
Rebeck’s name splashed across the credits so prominently.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I’ll stick with <i>Smash</i>, because it’s significant and important that Rebeck is a
woman carrying a high profile, big-budget series. And I’ll keep believing that the women
characters will get more complicated and the show’s story lines more
nuanced. Then the show really will be a
smash.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-4385085453418353282012-02-03T02:37:00.000-08:002012-02-03T02:37:39.484-08:00Pariah<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh51ofhPz4KA6P_2QMaiNrSDZ8NZp531HtHGgRlB4PTPTGFCJ-9sBkUe5Icj75uMrUT3lHPCVPW_g7Cd087_5SXxFMalfE8G4fA4oqIKWHDOd789bJ2avLAZI1UsISy8pTHbsUG/s1600/Pariah,+Alike.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh51ofhPz4KA6P_2QMaiNrSDZ8NZp531HtHGgRlB4PTPTGFCJ-9sBkUe5Icj75uMrUT3lHPCVPW_g7Cd087_5SXxFMalfE8G4fA4oqIKWHDOd789bJ2avLAZI1UsISy8pTHbsUG/s1600/Pariah,+Alike.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Adepero Oduye as Alike in Dee Rees's </i>Pariah</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dee Rees’s debut feature film is a terrific study
of a teenaged girl who identifies as a lesbian, even though she lives under the
heterosexual enforcement of an unhappy mother and a warm but philandering
father.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Rees’s semi-autobiographical
film does a beautiful job of narrating the double-life of Alike (Adepero
Oduye), a very smart high school senior who dresses as a conventional girl
under her mother’s disciplining eye, but then changes in the bathroom as soon
as she arrives at school into the t-shirt and sideways-worn ball cap of the
butch lesbian she knows herself to be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Pariah</i>
is a family study and a coming of age film that illustrates the shifting mores
of a particular slice of mostly middle-class African American life. Alike’s sister and her high school peers, for
instance, are indifferent to or intrigued by her gender performance, but those
of her parents’ generation eye her with antipathy and suspicion.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Her mother, Audrey (beautifully played by Kim
Wayans), frantically tries to enforce Alike’s waning heterosexuality, buying
her a deep magenta sweater with ruffles down the front that couldn’t be further
from her daughter’s self-presentation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-5R8YkCfXDTcy5FhWnKem70MubxFcZ2CDgmnjmUCdHSp_BVD7oj7moRBlp9qvwJM0jG9sMU9Bo9xdzbKEVXrWhmeGrLXG2Xz21BXOGeYrq4DleV4EkujV1Q1DW27IahtgLY_U/s1600/Pariah%252C+Alike+in+drag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-5R8YkCfXDTcy5FhWnKem70MubxFcZ2CDgmnjmUCdHSp_BVD7oj7moRBlp9qvwJM0jG9sMU9Bo9xdzbKEVXrWhmeGrLXG2Xz21BXOGeYrq4DleV4EkujV1Q1DW27IahtgLY_U/s1600/Pariah%252C+Alike+in+drag.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Alike in feminine drag with her sister Sharonda (Sahra Mellesse)</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When a dyke club opens across from a bodega that
Arthur (Charles Parnell), Alike’s father, frequents, the male customers eye the
women who stop by the store with hostility.
One calls out a young woman, who listens to his disparaging remarks and
then casually insults him right back, much to the amusement of Alike’s father
and his friends.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although the scene is
tense, and pregnant with the possibility for gendered violence, the young dyke
saunters out of the store with the upper hand.
The tide of public opinion, Rees suggests, is turning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Alike’s sister, Sharonda (Sahra Mellesse), teases
her older sibling mercilessly. But when
she crawls into Alike’s bed one night for comforting, as they both listen to
their parents’ incessant nighttime quarreling, Sharonda whispers, “You know I
don’t care, right?” She isn’t specific,
but they both know that Sharonda is talking about Alike’s sexuality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In one of the film’s funniest scenes, Sharonda bursts
into Alike’s room when Alike and her best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker), are
fitting Alike with a large white dildo and harness. But Sharonda is unfazed and promises not to
tattle. This younger generation makes
common cause along a set of new sexual mores—Sharonda is eager to have
heterosexual sex—against parents who cling to an older notion of sexual and
gendered morality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Much to its credit,<i> Pariah</i> is a coming of age story, rather than a coming out story. When Rees first introduces us to Alike, she’s
already very clear about her identity, though she’s yet to have sex. Much of the film details her flirtations with
other women, including her devastation at the hands of coldhearted Bina (Aasha
Davis), a straight young woman who befriends and seduces her, only to dismiss Alike
the morning after.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But Alike’s certainty
about who she is—and that “God doesn’t make mistakes,” as Audrey claims and Alike
agrees, but from diametrically opposed perspectives—drives her toward her own
liberation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Still, Rees details with compassion the enormous
costs that remain for these young women.
Laura, Alike’s butch mentor through the world of clubs and dating, has
been kicked out of her family home and has left school. She lives with her understanding older
sister, Candace (Shamika Cotton), both of them struggling to make financial
ends meet while Laura studies for her GED.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQlSqJlfLBWO02ZbwZh8MsfU0x226EXIYA-BTZ6wx0mtUbyp0u7qpTual93kJAAKwhm_PCOo9-n0TpH5-u4pmaZWhs9PWUl7-Oq6qUdxchkIHrcHQEcwbZX8fWJmqgHfFAGU1T/s1600/Pariah%252C+Laura.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQlSqJlfLBWO02ZbwZh8MsfU0x226EXIYA-BTZ6wx0mtUbyp0u7qpTual93kJAAKwhm_PCOo9-n0TpH5-u4pmaZWhs9PWUl7-Oq6qUdxchkIHrcHQEcwbZX8fWJmqgHfFAGU1T/s1600/Pariah%252C+Laura.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Pernell Walker as Laura</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When she finally passes the test, Laura returns to
her family’s home, where her disapproving mother opens the front door warily—and
only halfway—listening with stony hostility to her daughter recite her recent
achievements and saying not a word in response.
When her mother closes the door in Laura’s face, you can feel Laura’s heartrending
loss and humiliation at her mother’s rejection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Pariah</i>
upends expectations by refusing to succumb to genre stereotypes. For instance, although the bar Laura and
Alike frequent is in what Arthur (who’s a detective for the NYPD) calls a “bad
neighborhood,” the bar is represented as a place of heightened sexuality,
experimentation, and lustful openness, but never as a site of violence or
invasion. The women in the bar create
their own space; since the film is set in the present, no police harassment spoils
their fun.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Likewise, when Laura and her friends hang out on
the piers smoking dope and drinking, Rees construes the public space as open
and free, rather than one in which her characters might be victimized. Laura observes another young woman talking to
a john in a car about a potential trick; in a different movie, Laura would
start turning tricks herself to help pay her expenses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But in <i>Pariah</i>,
the characters’ grit and dignity insist on hope. Alike and Laura are smart and capable. Only their parents’ blindness to a sexual and
gendered future in which their choices are acceptable hampers their way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Because the film is semi-autobiographical, art and
creative expression finally free Alike.
Her supportive high school creative writing teacher encourages her to “dig
deeper” with her poetry. After Bina breaks
her heart, Alike knows something of love and loss. Davis plays Bina with a nice balance of
cruelty, warmth, and her own sexual confusions. Her scenes with Oduye, as the two girls are
forced together by their mothers and then gradually form their own bond, ring
true and complicated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the film’s climax, Audrey physically attacks
Alike when she admits she’s a lesbian, cutting her cheek with her ring and
knocking her daughter to the floor. But
Bina’s cruelty and her mother’s violence only shore Alike’s resolve, and she
finds her creative voice. Her poems
express both her emotional pain and her fierce determination and her talent
launches her out of her family and into the future.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">How lovely to see a film about a young lesbian
that ends with a journey toward a life of promise. It’s worth marking how differently this story
can be told in 2012 from the way it was 10, 20, or certainly 30 years ago
(think films like <i>Personal Best</i> in
1982, or <i>Lianna</i> in 1983, or even <i>Kissing Jessica Stein</i> in 2001). And how lovely to see a film about a young
lesbian of color instead of the typical young white women moving through this
story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Pariah</i>'s advertising tag line offers the dictionary definition of the word: 1. A person without status. 2. A rejected member of society. 3. An outcast. Rees's film narrates how Alike turns those understandings around one by one.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The actors are uniformly terrific in a cast that
should have been honored with one of the many ensemble award acknowledgements
going to films like <i>The Help</i>. Oduye is wonderful as Alike, conveying both
her youthful inexperience and her self-knowledge and desire in ways that honor
the complex character Rees creates.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Walker, as Laura, brings dignity and depth to a
role that could have easily fallen into the sidekick stereotype. She and Oduye create a friendship layered
with loyalty, tinged with lust, and shot through with its own complicated
desires, always balancing the power shifts that rock their relationship
unpredictably. Alike, after all, still
has parents and a home; Laura has been exiled from a family she clearly still
loves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Pariah</i>’s<i> </i>only less convincing characters are
Alike’s parents, who too often seem like vehicles for her story rather than
full-fledged people of their own.
Arthur, her father, is successful professionally but unhappy
personally. He’s clearly having an affair
and barely tolerates his hovering wife.
Audrey is simply unhappy, and takes out her resentments by berating her
husband and too tightly controlling her daughters. As a mother, she’s a shrewish monster, whose
desperate insistence on Alike’s heterosexuality displaces her own failed
intimacies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivZ-LPrS0LxNpn4jhGpLqB8M4c5PYcldZkN7Xl_LRmq0CMl08TgMY_9QMRxR-f9ROFHd8O-aqFIWOyHKAq8KqFKNQgCITFFYHBVhv9nu4Swb4NFQ0e-t-hBQ64qyTS-BV-o58w/s1600/Pariah%252C+Audrey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivZ-LPrS0LxNpn4jhGpLqB8M4c5PYcldZkN7Xl_LRmq0CMl08TgMY_9QMRxR-f9ROFHd8O-aqFIWOyHKAq8KqFKNQgCITFFYHBVhv9nu4Swb4NFQ0e-t-hBQ64qyTS-BV-o58w/s1600/Pariah%252C+Audrey.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Kim Wayans as Audrey</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Naturally, Alike identifies with Arthur, who
recognizes his oldest daughter’s sexuality but can only support her tacitly. He’s too weak-willed to stand up to Audrey,
fleeing instead to solace outside his family and letting his daughters bear the
brunt of her wrath. After Audrey attacks
Alike, Arthur begs her to come home, but Alike stays with Laura, firmly
refusing, until she graduates high school early and rides off to San Francisco
to accept a scholarship at UC-Berkeley.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Her relationship with her parents makes Alike’s
story conform a bit too closely to the stereotype of the father-identifying
lesbian alienated from a malignant mother.
But Wayans and Parnell bring nuance to these
conventional roles, representing as they do a way of thinking about sexuality
and gender that, <i>Pariah</i> argues, is
becoming quickly anachronistic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When Meryl Streep won the Golden Globe award as
best actress for her performance in <i>The
Iron Lady</i>, the gracious actor took the stage and acknowledged not only her
fellow nominees, but also Adepero Oduye, who wasn’t nominated for a Globe or
for an Oscar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Streep’s gesture was generous and true. <i>Pariah</i> might still be in limited
release, and might never achieve the box office of a bigger film, but as an
artistic statement, it’s vivid and important.
The film was nominated for the 2011 Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (where Bradford Young won for <i>Pariah</i>'s cinematography) and for various other awards, but escaped notice
by the most visible, prestigious committees.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What a shame.
<i>Pariah</i>’s is a story that needs
to be seen, heard, and told and told again.
Rees’s version is moving, beautiful, and deserving.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-45784822639660291292012-01-31T14:28:00.000-08:002012-01-31T14:28:13.191-08:00Albert Nobbs<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga0m6uCZXGJvVzQATPzy0KCkeBsKIAtoudlZTsAKVUiqtsnB5dS0bLaNCJ-BzDuy3vYoHUGvVTS0CVC_H9ub7PDwfCsXQulYGWGL6PhbABSvMzyTp_saYIX7hPyrYwC9CxA3dh/s1600/Nobbs,+close+up.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga0m6uCZXGJvVzQATPzy0KCkeBsKIAtoudlZTsAKVUiqtsnB5dS0bLaNCJ-BzDuy3vYoHUGvVTS0CVC_H9ub7PDwfCsXQulYGWGL6PhbABSvMzyTp_saYIX7hPyrYwC9CxA3dh/s1600/Nobbs,+close+up.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Glenn Close as Albert in </i>Albert Nobbs</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Albert Nobbs has been Glenn Close’s passion
project since she performed the title role in <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2001/jun/09/guardianobituaries.books1" target="_blank">Simone Benmussa</a>’s play, <i>The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs,</i> in New
York in 1982. Her commitment pays off in
a beautiful, starring performance in the film she co-wrote and co-produced. With her small eyes peering out of Albert’s
guarded face, Close demonstrates her sensitivity to the emotional nuances of
being a woman in the late 1800s Dublin who spends her life living as a man.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Albert Nobbs
</i>is based on a novella by the Irish author <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Moore_(novelist)" target="_blank">George Moore</a>. Moore makes a brief appearance as a character in
the film as a guest at Morrison’s hotel, where Nobbs works as a waiter for the
preemptory, social-climbing proprietor, Mrs. Baker (Pauline Collins). In Benmussa’s play, Moore narrated Albert’s
story, providing a critical frame that guided spectators’ understanding of the
compromises Albert had made to enable his own survival.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Here, what we learn of Albert’s past and the
reasons for his life-long masquerade as a man come from stories Albert shares
with Hubert Page (Janet McTeer). Page is
a housepainter with a similar life, with whom Albert is forced to share his bed
for a night at the hotel. When a
bothersome flea forces Albert to strip off his clothes, he inadvertently reveals
his female body to Page.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsDMUksN7QFvVdEQDCpd4otqIKn578jAweraL7_9E6pEO7h5GMyCsdlyFH2aUMG_YYUzAkqG6_WAFlQvIpgBAtZFJfg7t8an9qWlVgu7Sk9rKsDwzvm2l2xNIqx_KsU9Kv4jYc/s1600/Nobbs%252C+Hubert+page.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsDMUksN7QFvVdEQDCpd4otqIKn578jAweraL7_9E6pEO7h5GMyCsdlyFH2aUMG_YYUzAkqG6_WAFlQvIpgBAtZFJfg7t8an9qWlVgu7Sk9rKsDwzvm2l2xNIqx_KsU9Kv4jYc/s1600/Nobbs%252C+Hubert+page.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>McTeer as the strapping housepainter, Hubert Page</i></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Fearful and humiliated by this exposure, the
horrified Albert begs Page repeatedly through the night and the next day not to reveal the truth. When
Albert’s whining becomes bothersome, Page puts down his paint brush, closes the
door, and exposes his breasts to Albert, shocking him to his core. Albert is incredulous to have met someone
like him, who carries such a deep and abiding secret. But the two passing women don’t fully share
their stories until Albert seeks out Page and his wife, Cathleen, at the flat
they share in the city.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Hubert Page, it turns out, fled an abusive
marriage by stealing her husband’s clothes and his occupation, reinventing
herself as a male house painter to make her way in the world. She meets Cathleen (Bronagh Gallagher), another woman living
alone, and they share a home until people’s gossip forces them to marry. When Albert visits their cozy flat, it’s
clear that Hubert and Cathleen have made a full and rich life together. Their physical and emotional intimacy is
compelling and mysterious to Albert, who can’t quite contemplate a life beyond
the structured, impersonal, servile routine to which he’s disciplined himself
at Morrison’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">With Page’s encouragement, Albert begins to dream
about opening a tobacco shop finding a companion of his own. But Albert has lived unemotionally and
impassively for so long, he has no idea how to court a woman or really how to
interact in more than a professional manner with anyone at all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In fact, when Page asks the waiter his name, Albert
responds, “Albert.” Page clarifies, “No,
your real name.” After a beat and a
swallow, Albert says again, “Albert.”
The wrenching moment underlines their differences. Page has recreated himself but kept his
spirit intact. Albert has become the
surface of his masquerade and can no longer fathom his own depths.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The film, directed by Rodrigo Garcia, provides Albert’s
cross-dressed existence with a justification different from Benmussa’s
adaptation. Albert haltingly tells Page
that he was raised by a foster mother, whose financial circumstances soured,
forcing them to mingle with a rougher crowd than those to which Albert was
accustomed. He relates that as a young
girl, he was assaulted by a gang of boys, and soon after, began passing as a
male waiter. The film implies that
sexual violence turned Albert toward the gender impersonation that became his
life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">By contrast, Benmussa adapted Moore’s story to
demonstrate the economic forces that would compel a woman to pass as a
man. In her Brechtian, non-realist and
non-psychologized play, Albert’s desperate need for economic survival explains
his male attire and his single-minded devotion to counting his tips. He
organizes all of his relationships according to financial necessity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Close’s film, too, captures some of Albert’s
Scrooge-like attachment to his coins, which he fingers luxuriously, records
precisely in his journal, and buries under a floorboard in his room at the
hotel. When he courts Helen Dawes (Mia
Wasikowska), a chambermaid at Morrison’s, he sees her as a partner for his business
endeavor and little more, because he can’t conceive of a relationship that isn’t
driven by the cold imperative of cash. But
that story about sexual violence makes him seem more a broken soul than someone
wily enough to pass as a man to make his way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nonetheless, the film is a fine demonstration of
gender as performance. At a masquerade
ball at Morrison’s, to which only the hotel’s guests are invited to wear
costumes, the inebriated Dr. Holloran (Brendan Gleeson), who lives among the staff,
asks Albert what he’s dressed as. Confused,
Albert responds, “I’m a waiter, sir,” to which the doctor replies, “And I am a
doctor. We’re both disguised as
ourselves.” The doctor has no idea how
descriptive he’s been. He finally uncovers
Albert’s truth when the waiter dies from a blow to his head, suffered during an
altercation with Joe Mackins (Aaron Johnson), the young man with whom he vies
for Helen Dawe’s affections.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi263XJNSn2DeI65DDDmZkszmX3z2VgaVP1XMumOzMfCGwv2o2w590iq-AFbj8KuoIgm3m3ZrToqn3ik60IQzC13LfFZ4wYR4bIaSotBl13KVLUTC0PjYRk9XV3aCrEc1Qzi7pH/s1600/Nobbs%252C+Joe+Mackins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi263XJNSn2DeI65DDDmZkszmX3z2VgaVP1XMumOzMfCGwv2o2w590iq-AFbj8KuoIgm3m3ZrToqn3ik60IQzC13LfFZ4wYR4bIaSotBl13KVLUTC0PjYRk9XV3aCrEc1Qzi7pH/s1600/Nobbs%252C+Joe+Mackins.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Joe Mackins (Johnson) and Helen Dawes (Wasikowska)</i></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mackins provides the masculine sexual energy of <i>Albert Nobbs</i>, and proves the only one at
Morrison’s who sniffs something off about Albert. He tells Helen that Albert smells of money,
but he intuits Albert’s lack of desire and his passion only for his cash. Though the illiterate laborer can’t
articulate the problem, Joe is the only one who sees through Albert’s
charade. That is, all except an
odd-looking, nameless young boy, a guest of the hotel who stares at Albert
wordlessly, and later looks at Hubert Page with the same unsettling,
inarticulate knowingness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizHj0-X56I0qqcOTHsgtIQllXVK3y_5AB8QZyvYNAXfg4V6-Aq4jIbeZtVuSGXhyphenhyphenGjlq91dpWl7RoN0LD3gjFaplbb0uXh8PE7NY9fJen6-wveQYUvWEkAkvZFngZnYr-IoL9X/s1600/Nobbs%252C+little+boy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizHj0-X56I0qqcOTHsgtIQllXVK3y_5AB8QZyvYNAXfg4V6-Aq4jIbeZtVuSGXhyphenhyphenGjlq91dpWl7RoN0LD3gjFaplbb0uXh8PE7NY9fJen6-wveQYUvWEkAkvZFngZnYr-IoL9X/s1600/Nobbs%252C+little+boy.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>The boy who somehow fathoms the secret of Albert and Hubert</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But the mores of late-1800s Dublin are so
constrained that none of the others would ever suspect that a person who looks
like a man in fact is not. For instance,
when Cathleen dies of typhoid fever, Albert and Hubert venture out costumed as
women, wearing the dresses that Cathleen made as a kind of tribute to her life. In their experiment with nostalgia, they look
awkward and ridiculous. Page’s dress is
too small for the tall and bulky guy; his long arms stick out of the sleeves
and the dress fails to conceal his painters’ boots, in which he lumbers along
the Dublin streets. In his bonnet and skirt,
Albert, too, looks silly and strange.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But a man passing them in the lane tips his hat to
Hubert and Albert anyway, reading femininity from their dresses regardless of
their inadequate gender performances. As
Judith Butler would argue, the surface enactment is enough to signal gender, which
for Hubert and Albert, if not for all of us, has no depth anyway. Watching the film, I had so accustomed myself
to Albert and Hubert’s utterly persuasive gender performances that despite what
I knew, their outing as women seemed sad and pathetic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This moment of female impersonation wasn’t part of
Benmussa’s play, and makes an uneasy addition to the story. Close plays Albert in that scene as entranced
with his feminine attire, despite his clumsiness with its draping. Albert and Page walk on the beach in their
women’s wear, and Albert suddenly seems to feel free. His bonnet falls onto his back and he runs
ahead of Page, arms stretched out, catching the wind in his hair.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Page looks on, amused. For him, femininity has long lost its interest
or its necessity. His grief over Cathleen’s
death means his feminine impersonation is more about wearing things she touched
than remembering his long-cast-off womanhood.
After their brief beach venture, both men return to their workers’
clothing, resuming the costumes of lives they can’t be without.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB6mLhOznSbd1KvRFPoZVwWsnPGPxca_Bv-EalCnwPmXirOW0JyJUiOw9z40d3YAB1sdXJojbMVDQDL6ieoQXF8qNzvfsyheCR3kaLOSkvX7oJaa-G-FjoNy0Y3XEezXoT8sVM/s1600/Nobbs%252C+Albert+and+Hubert.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB6mLhOznSbd1KvRFPoZVwWsnPGPxca_Bv-EalCnwPmXirOW0JyJUiOw9z40d3YAB1sdXJojbMVDQDL6ieoQXF8qNzvfsyheCR3kaLOSkvX7oJaa-G-FjoNy0Y3XEezXoT8sVM/s1600/Nobbs%252C+Albert+and+Hubert.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Albert Nobbs (Close) and Hubert Page (McTeer)</i></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Close and McTeer are utterly affecting in their
performance of the men’s halting friendship.
Albert can barely express himself; throughout the film, he casts his
gaze down or away, rarely making eye contact.
Watching Close slowly move Albert’s eyes to meet Hubert’s is a study in
courage and need. And yet what we see is
the shadow of a man, whose excitement is kindled not by emotional connection
but by the possibility of rearranging her living situation to improve her
economics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Cathleen’s death provides an opportunity for
Albert. He suggests that he replace Cathleen
in Hubert’s home, so that they can keep their expenses low and live
reasonably. Hubert protests, “But I
loved her,” an emotion unintelligible to Albert.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Likewise, when he courts Helen Dawes, she’s
frustrated and insulted that Albert plans to marry her without even venturing
to kiss her. Startled by her complaint,
Albert obliges by pecking her cheek, sending Helen running back to the virile
if corrupt Joe Mackins.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFJDx3kio2p0xfgo_V3CR_aN2r4Nbmv7Mq1DFNJVRFRy1UEklBTzlc0T4XxTszw0j7T_OC4ZmFmqNs-Ma-0uE_BUzo-bETCPfxdgCW6RGCumaWiW2nHbSZQPR7V_fD-kaf0XTV/s1600/Nobbs%252C+kissing+Helen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFJDx3kio2p0xfgo_V3CR_aN2r4Nbmv7Mq1DFNJVRFRy1UEklBTzlc0T4XxTszw0j7T_OC4ZmFmqNs-Ma-0uE_BUzo-bETCPfxdgCW6RGCumaWiW2nHbSZQPR7V_fD-kaf0XTV/s1600/Nobbs%252C+kissing+Helen.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>The wrong kind of kiss . . .</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Albert, in other words, is a bit of a fool at
Morrison’s. When he’s not working, he
sits on the landing between floors, looking up and down, scheming about his
future and making notes about his money.
Benmussa’s dialogue notes that Albert is neither up nor down, neither
here nor there, a physical representation of his refusal to inhabit binary
gender categories. Close sits on the
landing in the film, too, but without the critical comment of the play, he
seems simply strange.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The film, however, can paint the lives around
Albert with richer contrasting detail. Jonathan
Rhys Meyers plays a viscount who arrives at Morrison’s with an entourage of
friends and women to drink and have sex.
Mrs. Baker enables their assignations, and their unfettered heterosexual
energy permeates the place. Even Mrs.
Baker flirts with the doctor shamelessly, though he’s having an affair with
another of the chambermaids.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Only Albert has no place in the hotel’s network of
sexual intrigue. When Helen finds
herself pregnant and she and Joe fight about their future, Albert tries to
rescue her by offering to take care of her and the child. For his chivalry, Joe pushes him violently
and he falls into the hallway wall, giving Albert the head injury that kills
him. He dies alone, his money buried
under his floor, where Mrs. Baker finds it and uses it to employ Hubert to
paint her entire hotel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The doctor who finds Albert shakes his head over
the miserable circumstances in which people live. Albert’s death inspires him to change his own
life; he runs off with his chambermaid and leaves Morrison’s Hotel. Helen has her baby, which she names
Albert. And Hubert paints the hotel
where his friend died, carrying with him the secret of Hubert’s sex and his own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The film is smart and sweet, sad and atmospheric. If it doesn’t pack quite the intellectual and
political punch of Benmussa’s play, at least <i>Albert Nobbs</i> lets us watch Close and McTeer in performances that
should compel conversation about what it means to inhabit the strictures of gender. The difference between Close as, for only one
example, Patty Hewes in her starring television role on <i>Damages</i>, in which she plays a female lawyer as manipulative shark,
and Close as Albert, in his furtive, rigid performance of masculinity, tells us
a lot not just about Close’s talent as an actor, but about how masculinity and
femininity are always just constructions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsx1sgBxKC2rM8Ujj8JMjZzQaog-BmJa90nV4swbP9aY1vElNxD3Chf99wXVWE5GyD1r_CUKTnAo57stiiTREVXdkvZgsr8uYfy6s6s8ShF9S5qauOkp8rzlgX5AN2iopm8C3a/s1600/Nobbs%252C+Close+and+McTeer+as+women.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsx1sgBxKC2rM8Ujj8JMjZzQaog-BmJa90nV4swbP9aY1vElNxD3Chf99wXVWE5GyD1r_CUKTnAo57stiiTREVXdkvZgsr8uYfy6s6s8ShF9S5qauOkp8rzlgX5AN2iopm8C3a/s1600/Nobbs%252C+Close+and+McTeer+as+women.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Close and McTeer, out of costume and makeup</i></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYJUhwO47nab7qh2rZ98wvsPzjjfUtTM5Ut8xnxA8_SyzyrUgU90AXi1bWCszBphHKqNdrK60Sh61awXm3D0KX2aO8xnl_s0E4BYWGrX44THsIW5HR3ssIhxg9qn1u2_X30m1B/s1600/Nobbs%252C+McTeer+and+Close.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYJUhwO47nab7qh2rZ98wvsPzjjfUtTM5Ut8xnxA8_SyzyrUgU90AXi1bWCszBphHKqNdrK60Sh61awXm3D0KX2aO8xnl_s0E4BYWGrX44THsIW5HR3ssIhxg9qn1u2_X30m1B/s1600/Nobbs%252C+McTeer+and+Close.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>McTeer and Close, buddies</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On the other hand, the film’s most wrenching
moment is when Albert rips open her shirt to scratch that flea and reveals her
breasts encased in a girdle. The way
Close gathers her shirt and her covers her breasts, as if she’s trying to make
them and herself disappear, illustrates her painful body shame. By contrast, when Hubert unbuttons his jacket
and opens it wide to show Albert his bountiful, unfettered breasts, he
demonstrates a lovely ease with the contradictions of his female flesh and his
masculine self.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Albert Nobbs</i>
does a fine job of narrating the gains and losses incurred along the continuum
the two characters represent. With its
close-in cinematography and Dublin street sets that offer little hint of an “outside”
to this late nineteenth century world, <i>Albert
Nobbs</i> clarifies how history and society constrain possibilities for gender
performance. For that alone, as well as the
pleasure of Close’s and McTeer’s masterful performances, <i>Albert Nobbs</i> is an important and worthy pleasure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-45681773032140678462012-01-29T06:42:00.000-08:002012-01-29T06:42:51.166-08:00Canadian Theatre Review on Women and Trans Artists<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just a note to publicize an important new source of information on work by women and trans people in Canadian theatre . . .</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: 'Frutiger LT Std 45 Light'; font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Queer Performance: Women and Trans Artists<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i>CTR</i></b><b> 149, Winter 2012<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span lang="EN-CA">Edited by Moynan King</span></b><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://www.utpjournals.com/Canadian-Theatre-Review.html">CTR<span style="font-style: normal;"> 149<b> </b> </span></a></i>includes
performance texts by Jess Dobkin and Ivan Coyote along with critical essays and
interviews of artists such as Trey Anthony, Nathalie Claude, Mariko Tamaki and
Tristan Whiston, to name a few. These artists have led the way in
Canadian performance innovation with multidisciplinary and theatrical
experimentation while drawing, in many cases, substantial audiences and
dedicated fans. This issue will show that queer performance almost always draws
artists from other disciplines—including film, dance, music, new media, design,
and the visual arts. The assembled articles are just a few pieces in the
massive puzzle of queer Canadian performance.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The issue includes:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Getting
Kinky Inside and Outside: A Conversation with Trey Anthony</b><br />
Superstar playwright and actress Trey Anthony opens up to SPY DE´NOMME´ WELCH
about representation and identity in Canadian theatre, and shares her insights
into the spiritual impact of storytelling.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="margin-right: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>A Sadly Overlooked Lesbian Gem: Hope Thompson’s
Green</b><br />
SKY GILBERT offers a loving and impressionistic journey through Hope Thompson’s
Green and explores her stylistic quirks and radical uses of camp.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-right: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-right: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Funny Girl: An Interview with Mariko Tamaki</b><br />
Award winning writer and playwright Mariko Tamaki sits down to talk to ABI
SLONE about her career as a writer, what it’s like to be on stage, and how
queer subject matter just won’t go away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-right: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-right: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For more information, contact <a href="http://www.utpjournals.com/ctr" target="_blank">CTR</a>.</span></div>
<div style="margin-right: .25in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-62361978410112583732012-01-28T08:05:00.000-08:002012-01-28T08:05:37.084-08:00The Descendants<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQCsBP2gESGDsty-jiie6CUyrjACk-MhfdQSeKclDtpII211Z55xc0iaFvA6ps5y6um8l95EKQa1f8c5UXcKNXQ2yksGzjROUWRP1riACpy3AqW5QhS3CgO16xrZnujNT4mdvY/s1600/Descendants,+foursome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQCsBP2gESGDsty-jiie6CUyrjACk-MhfdQSeKclDtpII211Z55xc0iaFvA6ps5y6um8l95EKQa1f8c5UXcKNXQ2yksGzjROUWRP1riACpy3AqW5QhS3CgO16xrZnujNT4mdvY/s1600/Descendants,+foursome.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Woodley, Clooney, Miller, and Krause, on the beach in </i>The Descendants</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Writer-director Alexander Payne’s films—if <i>About Schmidt,</i> <i>Sideways,</i> and now <i>The
Descendants</i> are any indication—are sensitive, expressive investigations
into white, middle-class, heterosexual masculinity. George Clooney, recently nominated for an
Academy Award for his role, for which he already won a Golden Globe, plays Matt
King, a real estate lawyer in Hawai’i whose life falls apart when his wife’s
injury in a boating accident leaves her in an irreversible coma. In the voiceover that frames much of the
film, Matt admits that he’s always been the back-up parent to his two
daughters, and can’t quite fathom what to do with his family when he’s left in
charge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As his wife lies in a hospital bed kept alive by a
ventilator and IV fluids, Matt is called to his 10-year-old daughter Scottie’s
elementary school to apologize for the photographs the girl took of her
indisposed mother, which she pasted into an album to share at show and tell. Then he has to bring Scottie (Amara Miller)
to a classmate’s house to apologize for more of her indiscretions. The kid is foul-mouthed and unpredictable; as
Matt talks on the phone, he sees her throwing deck chairs into the family
pool. So he wrangles Scotty onto a plane
and goes off to the Big Island to collect her 17-year-old sister, Alexandra (Shailene
Woodley), hoping she can help out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Instead, Matt finds Alex drinking with a friend,
out past her curfew on the grounds of the private school at which she
boards. When he and Scottie bring Alex home,
she’s hostile and impertinent. At her
last visit home, she fought with her mom, and doesn’t hesitate to inform Matt
that his wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie) was having an affair. Matt knows he’s been an inattentive husband
and an absent father, but this news unravels what he thought was his safe,
secure world.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizCo086-45RLcLdz-95Ic0cGsjVpS0Tb95d0VePhy2fi44JR_xdKW4w4sHv1MQsntLd-w27QExN-uzd09QueGXjgrm5BzmTSPZNS14PMkKOlPnZ_Fv9ax5fv3-L4FcEYiL3yCx/s1600/Descendants%252C+Alex.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizCo086-45RLcLdz-95Ic0cGsjVpS0Tb95d0VePhy2fi44JR_xdKW4w4sHv1MQsntLd-w27QExN-uzd09QueGXjgrm5BzmTSPZNS14PMkKOlPnZ_Fv9ax5fv3-L4FcEYiL3yCx/s1600/Descendants%252C+Alex.jpg" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Woodley as Alex informing Matt about her mom's affair</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Clooney is a subtle actor, with an admirable
willingness to push beyond his handsome, action-star reputation. (He’s also very good as a corrupt
presidential candidate in <i>The Ides of
March</i>.) Matt’s face and bearing
change in small but significant ways when Alex tells him about Elizabeth’s
infidelity. He changes from a smooth
public operator to a man humiliated by what he didn’t know about the most intimate
aspects of his own life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This new knowledge unmans him, but it also (of
course) humanizes him, and sends him careening toward his own redemption. In his more feminized role as a cuckold, Matt
also gets a handle on his parenting. He
and Alex form a bond over their determination to track down and confront Brian
Speer (Matthew Lillard), the realtor who was Elizabeth’s other man.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Once the story focuses on finding Brian Speer, <i>The Descendants</i> becomes a kind of
intra-Hawai’i road movie, except that Matt and his family fly among the islands
to track Brian down. [<i>Spoiler alert</i>, <i>though nothing in the film is really a surprise.</i>] They’re accompanied by Sid (Nick Krause), Alex’s
the hapless guy friend, whose presence she insists will help her be more civil
to her father and her family. While at
first Sid seems a thoughtless, insensitive child—he laughs at her grandmother’s
Alzheimer’s and doesn’t seem very sympathetic to Matt’s plight—it turns out
that he recently lost his father and proves more emotionally acute than Payne
at first lets on. The foursome slowly,
carefully reconstitutes a semblance of family by replacing their grief over Elizabeth’s
impending death with their wrath about Brian Speer.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbQve90UDbu3V4UAgXo80aUNRGvP6cVKVwrMivxi12-jaT7QC1AOOr9TzhRO6rDiwKLsBHoDEXdVTbyk-HReLpR2LZ5JxHYehJNSh7wd0N7FYgxLATWCj_TSuzuQKeFTYwxJcR/s1600/Descendants%252C+the+Speers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbQve90UDbu3V4UAgXo80aUNRGvP6cVKVwrMivxi12-jaT7QC1AOOr9TzhRO6rDiwKLsBHoDEXdVTbyk-HReLpR2LZ5JxHYehJNSh7wd0N7FYgxLATWCj_TSuzuQKeFTYwxJcR/s1600/Descendants%252C+the+Speers.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Julie and Brian Speer (Judy Greer and Matthew Lillard)</i></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When they find him on Kaua’i, and it turns out Speer
has a wife and two small kids. Their
rage dissipates into irritated sorrow, as Matt understands that the man he’s pictured
as a mythic monster is really just an ordinary person who made a mistake. In their climactic confrontation, Matt
insists things happen for a reason, but Speer argues that, to the contrary, sometimes
things just happen. Living within that
capriciousness is part of Matt’s life lesson, and forgiveness becomes the film’s
rather pat, too comfortable denouement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Elizabeth dies after they remove the ventilator—in
accord with her living will. Matt and
his daughters sprinkle her ashes off a canoe they row out to sea, encircling
the dissolving ash with their leis as the huge hotels of the Oahu shore loom in
the background. In the film’s last shot,
Matt, Alex, and Scottie lounge silently but companionably on the family couch,
watching <i>March of the Penguins</i>
together as they eat ice cream. With the
stationary camera set in a medium shot, we watch them make room for one
another, sharing a blanket and their dessert as they listen to Sydney Poitier
narrate the epic story of penguin families and their journey. The analogy couldn’t be clearer.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdo2u1kEmwxNeYGZpQH0iV_xNM-g_gTdKNqYo1IMRpWaUnLyrvqq4dhfdncN7RdvKBcdW084yrEUppVHy-7tCJPSjx3mLdNiyBnCr7hFn7zXi1DP6_7Vq3bmFSdjhyphenhyphenoHXjrx7_/s1600/Descendants%252C+last+image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdo2u1kEmwxNeYGZpQH0iV_xNM-g_gTdKNqYo1IMRpWaUnLyrvqq4dhfdncN7RdvKBcdW084yrEUppVHy-7tCJPSjx3mLdNiyBnCr7hFn7zXi1DP6_7Vq3bmFSdjhyphenhyphenoHXjrx7_/s1600/Descendants%252C+last+image.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>The final shot, family united, no mother</i></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Payne contrives the plot to serve Matt’s character
development. As in <i>Sideways</i>, all that really happens in <i>The Descendants</i> is that a man weathers a mid-life crisis and comes
out on the other side, knowing himself a little better and becoming more
forgiving of himself and his circumstances.
Matt, mind you, has a very good life—his last name, after all, is
“King,” and his family owns a large parcel of land on Oahu, the sale of which
the whole state is apparently tracking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When it turns out that the Brian Speer (whose name
is also perhaps too symbolic) stands to profit from the sale, Matt waxes
sentimental about being Hawaiian (his great-grandmother was an island native). Against the wishes of his (mostly male)
cousins, Matt decides to keep the land (and a beautiful stretch of gorgeous
blue-green ocean and pristine sand and dunes it is, too—the film makes Hawai’i look
like paradise).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Eqj8Bd461Fr2hSGdH2vPNBnoGkOo5OT9Gber_Ne4BOEtBtgpC5i7R0sTt7akfIAuRlcVPCpN_liWUqx22JxXCYFt0rBseTvZLw06oLNiYfNgWol4uZmfL3CLhU4za1juF7P9/s1600/Descendants%252C+the+land.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Eqj8Bd461Fr2hSGdH2vPNBnoGkOo5OT9Gber_Ne4BOEtBtgpC5i7R0sTt7akfIAuRlcVPCpN_liWUqx22JxXCYFt0rBseTvZLw06oLNiYfNgWol4uZmfL3CLhU4za1juF7P9/s1600/Descendants%252C+the+land.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Matt and his daughters observing the King family land</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Clooney’s performance is open and moving. He abandons his movie star glamor to play a
man who wears short-sleeved Hawai’in shirts and pastel pants with high-riding
waists. His hair is streaked with gray
and his face is lined and worn. He’s deceived
by a man who’s clearly not his kind or dignified equal. But Speer’s very inadequacies secure Matt’s
essential goodness. His emotions move
from rage to forgiveness. He kisses his unconscious
wife’s cracked lips when he tearfully says good-bye, using the occasion of her
loss to accept his own failings and become a better man.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Matt and Alex find their new and better selves over
Elizabeth’s inert body, talking to her as she lies immobile and unhearing. Alex, too, rises to the occasion of her
mother’s death, guiding her little sister and supporting her dad. Woodley is terrific as Alex, playing a girl
thrust into adulthood perhaps a bit too quickly without a trace of
sentimentality. She’s smart, thoughtful,
and always seems in control, registering Alex’s emotion without wallowing. She matches Clooney scene for scene.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIDW_37mJw0aE6PX2hfQlSkrqLhnrenVhhwHklje8Y0MVZM5wl3c7Q4Fn21sUYHSNgrNlARXis7XBL5y3iFI5NBYjaiC4nZjr_2moVbCfmmnWwKUOx3QEGqdu9fji8FDDN9tCe/s1600/Descendants%252C+father+and+daughter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIDW_37mJw0aE6PX2hfQlSkrqLhnrenVhhwHklje8Y0MVZM5wl3c7Q4Fn21sUYHSNgrNlARXis7XBL5y3iFI5NBYjaiC4nZjr_2moVbCfmmnWwKUOx3QEGqdu9fji8FDDN9tCe/s1600/Descendants%252C+father+and+daughter.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Clooney and Woodley</i></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But as in Payne’s <i>Sideways</i>, women are the agents of the men’s transformation in <i>The Descendants</i>. Clooney makes Matt King appealing enough that
the film is a pleasure to watch, but I preferred him in <i>Up in the Air</i>, which reversed gender stereotypes by making
Clooney’s character the naïve romantic with unfounded expectations of the woman
with whom he’s having an affair.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Too many contemporary films rely on the old (often
dead) woman-as-agent-of-man’s-self-knowledge-and-redemption trope. Just in the recent crop of 2011 fall and
Christmas movies, for only two among many examples, Ryan Gosling’s character in
<i>The Ides of March</i> has his epiphany
when the beautiful, young, naïve Evan Rachel Wood character commits suicide
over her affair with Clooney’s presidential candidate-senator.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And in the critically touted Iranian film <i>The Separation</i> (nominated for a Best
Foreign Film Academy Award), the wife who insists on divorcing her husband is
blamed for the subsequent family tragedies and indirectly for the miscarriage
of the woman whom he hires to replace his wife’s domestic labor. The considerably less privileged woman is
also portrayed as immoral, while her husband—despite his tendency toward
violence—is redeemed by his grief over his unborn child’s loss. The pattern persists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>The
Descendants</i> is well-written, beautifully photographed, and wonderfully
acted, but the story it tells is tired and familiar. And the woman, once again, has to take it
lying down.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator</span><o:p></o:p></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-80649933402422989332012-01-27T04:22:00.000-08:002012-01-27T04:22:34.376-08:00Girl with the Dragon Tattoo<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsioNe2QA5i0UZLbSTg7uD9_A5p27JPIcZHRPY9BEpEB7CDWiYaBEMLx6nolCn5QmzwqHM5PW1sleAwxlwV08yk_U7fOWui3Vbhn1x3cnQqN0PASRH9ZZWVwF8DPtur1FYD51f/s1600/Girl+with+Dragon,+pierced+and+smart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsioNe2QA5i0UZLbSTg7uD9_A5p27JPIcZHRPY9BEpEB7CDWiYaBEMLx6nolCn5QmzwqHM5PW1sleAwxlwV08yk_U7fOWui3Vbhn1x3cnQqN0PASRH9ZZWVwF8DPtur1FYD51f/s1600/Girl+with+Dragon,+pierced+and+smart.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">David Fincher’s tense, moody film adaptation of
the popular Stieg Larsson book actually improves on the reading
experience. Where the book offered a
great story with plodding prose, Fincher’s film cuts the narrative to the bone
while staying faithful to Larsson’s plot and characters. The film’s visual style makes it a pleasure
to watch, evoking both the cosmopolitanism and gritty urbanism of Stockholm and
the frozen, snow-blown north Sweden countryside where much of the central
mystery unravels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For a film that’s in large part about an ace computer
hacker, Fincher both downplays and makes visually interesting Lisbeth
Salander’s notorious skills, intercutting shots of her snub-nailed fingers
flying over her keyboard with those of her intense gray eyes, replete with
eyebrow-piercings, peering intensely at the screen. Only sparingly does Fincher use screen shots
that indicate she’s reading other people’s email.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The film is a huge improvement over the Swedish version
released a few years ago and starring Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth, which I found a
more literal, bloodless adaptation.
Fincher’s slick Hollywood idioms turn the story into a stylish,
fast-paced thriller. In the opening
credits (as other critics have noted), the director nods both musically and
visually to the iconic James Bond films, a nice intertextual reference, since
Fincher’s Mikael Blomkvist is played by Daniel Craig, the latest Bond.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Fincher also judiciously uses atmospheric, nearly
Technicolor flashbacks to the Vanger family’s 1960s history, when the family
patriarch’s treasured niece, Harriet, mysteriously disappeared. Fincher makes the American adaptation of
Larsson’s story more vivid, lending cinematic appeal to the narrative while he moves
it smoothly through its paces.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
real revelation in Fincher’s </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Girl with
the Dragon Tattoo</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> is Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nominated for a Golden Globe (which she lost
to Meryl Streep for </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Iron Lady</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">)
and now for a Best Actress Academy Award, Mara deserves the accolades heaped on
her performance.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Her Lisbeth is slight
but fierce; Mara seems both smaller and steelier than Rapace was in the role,
more emotionally fragile but more physically and psychically determined.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In
her early scenes in her kindly employer Dragan Armansky’s office (Goran Kisnjic,
in a small but empathetic supporting role) and in her first meeting with Nils
Bjurman (Vorick van Wageningen), </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">her
evil new guardian, Lisbeth refuses to make eye contact.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But
when she does shift her gaze to look directly and defiantly at her
interlocutors, you see a young woman who’s absolutely in control of her traumatic
past (about which we learn very little in this first film of the trilogy).</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She’s taught herself a kind of discipline that
keeps her highly functioning while letting her passion for vengeance simmer
just underneath the surface of her skin.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Those gray eyes become the swing door to a boiler room of the soul,
where her rage is stoked by knowing that the social corruptions—most of them
gendered—that have kept her a ward of the state since she was twelve continue
to structure Swedish life.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On
the other hand, if you don’t know her backstory, Lisbeth doesn’t necessarily seem
motivated by revenge.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My intrepid
film-going companion, Feminist Spectator 2, hasn’t read any of the Larsson books,
and found Lisbeth even more fierce and fascinating because she appears
brilliant, scary, and tough without being psychologized.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dragon Tattoo</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> is, of course, just the
first in what will be a new trilogy of films based on Larsson’s story.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In this one, all we hear of Lisbeth’s past is
what she mutters to Blomkvist when he’s finally gained her trust.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When he asks her why she’s still a ward of
the state, Lisbeth admits matter-of-factly that she’s considered criminally
insane because she set her father on fire and burned 80 percent of his
body.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But since even this tiny, teasing
revelation comes relatively late in the film, FS2 says spectators have already
come to admire her without needing this justification.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lisbeth’s
sordid history will be fully explicated in the next two films.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mara, however, plays her with full knowledge
of the character’s past and her journey into her vexed present.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mara’s achievement is to make Salander a
fierce, even feminist, character without creating her as a monster.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sure, all her Goth accoutrements are in place,
from her jet-black Mohawk to her kohl-lined eyes to her multiple facial and
body piercings, along with her leather jacket, knapsack, boots, and green
canvas cargo pants.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lisbeth
smokes like a tough, holding her cigarettes between her thumb and her
forefinger and squinting at the ubiquitous smoke.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She wears ratty black t-shirts and
sweatshirts with hoods she pulls up to hide beneath. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When Blomkvist barges in on Lisbeth and a
one-night-stand she’s picked up at a lesbian bar, her tattered t-shirt reads
“Fuck Off You Fucking Fuck” in faded stenciling.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(But he’s undeterred.) </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Her neck is adorned with heavy chains and
razor blades, the jewelry of a woman who refuses to submit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLTGeS1iH_r5gTZ-kbuTnZk0IC6aWjM_orQf9izZiJWpsMTo-x9z-JVndDdPhFt5Si1uwrg-1t_QrFuonCCcHRsh9BeavJfIH8qN64fAsyZC-gpDjTHpOa1Bl5NWf19-1IOPVd/s1600/Girl+with+Dragon%252C+hood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLTGeS1iH_r5gTZ-kbuTnZk0IC6aWjM_orQf9izZiJWpsMTo-x9z-JVndDdPhFt5Si1uwrg-1t_QrFuonCCcHRsh9BeavJfIH8qN64fAsyZC-gpDjTHpOa1Bl5NWf19-1IOPVd/s1600/Girl+with+Dragon%252C+hood.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Lisbeth, hooded</i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">[If you haven’t read Larsson’s books or seen
the Swedish film trilogy or Fincher’s</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">adaptation,
spoilers follow.]</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although
Lisbeth is a force to contend with, her new guardian decides he can use his
power over her for his own nefarious sexual purposes.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bjurman forces her head into his lap at their
first meeting, threatening to commit her to an institution if she doesn’t
comply.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When she sees him again,
required to ask him for money since he’s taken control of her affairs, he rapes
her brutally, sadistically enjoying the pain and humiliation he inflicts.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But it doesn’t take long for Lisbeth to exact
her revenge, forever reducing her rapist to a quaking eunuch.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnGwFC2EBrAC_wlTc261ylwNlDCpXIinssGDbxDnd97YLth9dWuY2NcYK_lQb4MDwiMDTN6aFCmlhDiWDNYM55w6I31BBZT47jsCIBkLHzMYg1-MWAPhZIIvLj9FyNxNNLNdDW/s1600/Girl+with+Dragon%252C+Lisbeth+and+guardian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnGwFC2EBrAC_wlTc261ylwNlDCpXIinssGDbxDnd97YLth9dWuY2NcYK_lQb4MDwiMDTN6aFCmlhDiWDNYM55w6I31BBZT47jsCIBkLHzMYg1-MWAPhZIIvLj9FyNxNNLNdDW/s1600/Girl+with+Dragon%252C+Lisbeth+and+guardian.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Lisbeth threatens Bjurman in an elevator</i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To
Fincher’s credit, the film doesn’t sensationalize Lisbeth.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The other characters don’t react to her as
though she’s a spectacle, undercutting what might be spectators’ expectations
that she’ll create a stir simply by how she looks.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Instead, lawyer, Dirch Frode (Steven
Berkoff), dispatched by the wealthy Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), treats
Lisbeth respectfully, aware of her talent as a researcher and overlooking her
open hostility.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Likewise,
when Blomkvist peremptorily visits her apartment after he learns that she’s
hacked into his computer, he, too, is unfazed by her unkempt appearance and
aggressive demeanor.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Instead, he insists that she drink the coffee
and eat the breakfast he fixes for her while he persuades her to help him find
Harriet Vanger’s murderer.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As
FS2 points out, that the film’s “good” men react generously to Lisbeth directs
spectators to see her magnanimously, too.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">On the other hand, FS2 continues, Mara is a beautiful young woman, and
the camera exploits her small, perfect features, her flawless skin, and her
clear gray eyes.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That is, despite all
her bravado and her frightening accessories, Fincher takes care to on some
level glamorize Lisbeth, to keep her safe from the audience’s, as well as the
other characters’, antipathy.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Even
the police officers she approaches while she’s doing her work seem to find
nothing remiss in Lisbeth’s outfit or her bearing.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">They worry that the information she wants
will upset her or they’re annoyed because she expects unusual access and
demands too much time.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But they obviously
don’t see her as a freak.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nonetheless,
she rides a mean motorcycle and wears a fearsome helmet.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lisbeth’s heroism comes from her character
more than it does from her actions.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When
she forces the villainous Martin Vanger (Stellan Skarsgard) off the bridge on his
family’s island, causing his car to overturn and catch fire as he stares out,
doomed and helpless in the driver’s seat, Lisbeth watches without remorse.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And
what a nice switch to see her rescue Blomkvist from certain death instead of
vice versa.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Too often in suspense films
like </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dragon Tattoo</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, it’s the
woman—however intrepid and smart—who is saved at the end by the man when she
finds herself unwittingly trapped in the villain’s house. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Drag
Tattoo</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, on the contrary, at the film’s climactic moment it’s Craig/Bond/Blomkvist
who is trussed up like a bird waiting to be plucked, and it’s Lisbeth whose
eleventh hour appearance, wielding a nasty golf club, saves his life.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lisbeth
and Blomkvist simultaneously solve the central mystery of who has been
murdering women—all gruesomely raped and slaughtered with references to Bible
verses—around the time Harriet Vanger disappeared.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But it’s Lisbeth who tracks the killer to his
lair after Blomkvist falls into his trap, and Lisbeth who, once the demon is
dispatched, goes on to vindicate Blomkvist’s wrongful slander conviction in the
Wennerstrom corporate corruption case that sets Larsson’s plot in motion.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Wennerstrom
revenge subplot of </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dragon Tattoo</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> is
nearly campy, as Lisbeth sheds her signature style for a Dolce and Gabbana look
that one critic rightly called “drag.”</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She dons a blond wig and outsized sunglasses, a form-fitting dress and
stiletto heels, to move some funds around various off-shore banks, creating a
trail of financial malfeasance that bankrupts Wennerstrom, exonerates Blomkvist,
and secures Lisbeth’s independent future.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIf2hn5CNmliw-5Mg1j0c3qyEwY9oATELgBw7VlSjxiuBTEVTLXH3cr8xHI0vxykaWcCeWYUI11vejxxMkR3pKlYvYI3jIh1log24SFtKyZcAzSwJYE5lSGmAQjPZOQ9u4IPl_/s1600/Girl+with+Dragon%252C+in+drag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIf2hn5CNmliw-5Mg1j0c3qyEwY9oATELgBw7VlSjxiuBTEVTLXH3cr8xHI0vxykaWcCeWYUI11vejxxMkR3pKlYvYI3jIh1log24SFtKyZcAzSwJYE5lSGmAQjPZOQ9u4IPl_/s320/Girl+with+Dragon%252C+in+drag.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Mara as Lisbeth in drag</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In
her drag scenes, Mara beautifully performs Lisbeth’s disdain for her temporary performance
of conventional femininity.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When her
masquerade is over, she tosses her earrings down an airport sink and throws her
wig out the window of a train.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
sequence is a wonderful illustration of Lisbeth’s skill as an operative, but an
even better demonstration of her utter aversion for traditional feminine
costumes and behavior.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I was
actually surprised that Fincher’s film leaves Lisbeth’s feminism so intact. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I found Fincher’s representations of women in
his film, </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Social Network,</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> misogynist.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Those who disagreed with me often pointed to
Mara’s character in that film; she plays Mark Zuckerberg’s smart and cutting but
quickly dismissed and ultimately irrelevant girlfriend.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But
while women were incidental sexual playthings in </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Social Network, Dragon Tattoo</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> is very much Lisbeth’s film.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She’s its moral and narrative center and its
keen social observer.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Watch Mara’s ears
and eyes perk up when Blomkvist invites her to help him find “a man who kills
women” (which was apparently the title Larsson preferred for his first book).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lisbeth
is also the film’s most interesting character study, not because of how she
looks and dresses but because of how she reacts to the world around her and
then </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">acts</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Mara has little dialogue, but her expressive
face and her physical commitment to Lisbeth make her fascinating.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Watch her exit from the elevator where she
excoriates the reprehensible Bjurman and leaves him terrified as the doors
close behind her.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just turning her back
on her guardian is a moment of utter command, clarity, and complexity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lisbeth/Mara
also brings </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dragon Tattoo </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a
surprising sense of humor.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When she
begins working with Blomkvist, the couple hunch over his laptop in the cold
cabin Henrik Vanger has provided for him.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She rolls her eyes as Blomkvist slowly pecks at the keys to bring up
screen images.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It’s a small but
hilarious moment, as Mara gives Lisbeth an interior life lets her drolly,
wordlessly comment on her male partner’s technological inadequacies without
needing to perform her superiority.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lisbeth
is firmly in control of their relationship.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She initiates their first sexual encounter; she demands that he stop
talking until she has her orgasm; she saves him from certain death; and she
delivers the goods on Blomkvist’s nemesis, Hans-Erik Wennerstrom (Ulf Friberg),
which restores Blomkvist’s reputation.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">My quibbles
with Fincher’s representation of Lisbeth are minor.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For example, after she’s raped by Bjurman,
she stumbles home for the de rigueur victim-in-the-shower scene, where we see
her bruises and the blood running from her body into the tub.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(I guess it’s difficult to signify pain in a
film without these iconic signs.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although Mara does an excellent job screaming Lisbeth’s rage as she
struggles against Bjurman’s restraints.) </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The next time we see her, Lisbeth is in a
lesbian bar, where she picks up the (beautiful) woman who Blomkvist finds
sharing her bed the next morning.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicLihV42ZYTrNoydla5m3hyphenhyphenmq3CLPMrk5vukMJ8Fry9dItCCMz0uok1SuVhUrJsKl5sbfqgApWn0vca6-B2j2bsg0PQKADNk342duuhI9qcWQtKnb50RZ41qiRMmbS5ng5w2cU/s1600/Girl+with+Dragon%252C+shower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicLihV42ZYTrNoydla5m3hyphenhyphenmq3CLPMrk5vukMJ8Fry9dItCCMz0uok1SuVhUrJsKl5sbfqgApWn0vca6-B2j2bsg0PQKADNk342duuhI9qcWQtKnb50RZ41qiRMmbS5ng5w2cU/s320/Girl+with+Dragon%252C+shower.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>The dragon tattoo and Lisbeth in pain</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
juxtaposition of the rape and the lesbian bar scene makes it seem as though male
sexual violence has propelled Lisbeth toward sex with women.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Instead, in the book, she has an on-going
relationship with a woman that mirrors Blomkvist’s relationship with his
colleague, Erika Berger (Robin Wright), and clarifies that one of Lisbeth’s
charms is her assertive bisexuality.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Likewise,
</span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dragon Tattoo</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">’s last several scenes
focus too much on Lisbeth’s unexpected affection for Mikael.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She tells her beloved former guardian, Holmer
Palmgren (Bengt CW Carlsson), who’s in a nursing home recovering from a stroke,
that she’s made a friend.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">She buys Blomkvist
an expensive leather jacket and she rides off to deliver it to him.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Despite
her strength of character and insight, Lisbeth is emotionally immature, and
hasn’t picked up Blomkvist’s cues. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So
she’s devastated when she arrives at the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Millennium</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">
magazine offices to find the flirtatious Mikael going off in a taxi with Erika.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The film ends on Lisbeth’s romantic
disappointment, which undercuts her earlier rejections of heterosexual femininity,
especially for those spectators who haven’t read or seen the earlier version of
the trilogy and don’t understand—as they say—where she’s coming from.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But
still, Fincher and Mara make Lisbeth complicated enough. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">That final moment could be read as a strong
woman realizing she was about to succumb to sentiment and abruptly choosing not
to. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(Well, maybe that’s a stretch).</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And Lisbeth does seem young.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In comparison, Fincher portrays Blomkvist as squarely
middle-aged, and steers Craig far from his Bond action hero routine.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The actor sports an unshaven, grizzled
salt-and-pepper chin throughout the film, and rather than leaping tall
buildings and consulting cool gadgets, he’s often physically compromised.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For
example, when he creeps around Martin’s glass-walled lair in the film’s climax,
he’s the one who takes a kitchen knife from the counter, intending to defend
himself as ineffectually as a typical female victim in a horror film.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Blomkvist is the one who falls when he tries to
run from Martin’s house and who is lured back in to the man’s trap.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As Martin boasts with a sneer, people’s
desire not to offend often trumps their instincts for self-preservation.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(Skarsgard plays the villain with the perfect
mix of unctuous obsequiousness and arrogant pride.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Blomkvist
is the first man who’s demonstrated this self-defeating instinct to Martin.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Blomkvist is a metrosexual intellectual, a
not quite effete representative of the fourth estate, and Craig plays him with
intelligent bemusement and horror at the grisly murders his research
uncovers.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">His black-rimmed glasses hang
crookedly off his ears instead of over his head, and he pulls them onto his
face to peer into documents and computer screens.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Using eyeglasses to signify intelligence is a
tired cliché, but Craig at least makes the gesture convincing.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimFbItyPW1eKMfu-sJY07y5rasXK5KndQSfKEE1YOLQC3Gk7nl09f8z-jytNvxgBrkShCsQNE9rcOGUWL_rfsX157o-NBBQHiy8kL-lir39IPMWjGFZyzZkR4rH0u8oVvLv_X5/s1600/Girl+with+Dragon%252C+Mikael+and+Erika.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimFbItyPW1eKMfu-sJY07y5rasXK5KndQSfKEE1YOLQC3Gk7nl09f8z-jytNvxgBrkShCsQNE9rcOGUWL_rfsX157o-NBBQHiy8kL-lir39IPMWjGFZyzZkR4rH0u8oVvLv_X5/s1600/Girl+with+Dragon%252C+Mikael+and+Erika.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Blomkvist (Craig) and Erika (Wright) at the magazine offices</i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Wright
plays Blomkvist’s long-time friend and sometime bed-mate Erika as his
intellectual and political companion.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Wright’s
beauty is only enhanced by the lines on her face.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The middle-aged couple has a lived-in
relationship, even though she remains married to her husband.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Blomkvist and Erika are comfortably established
in their lives, in contrast to Lisbeth, who’s still struggling with the tangled
tendrils of her past.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Lisbeth’s
relationship with Blomkvist might be a turning point.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A scene in which they work together on the
bed in a hotel room, with him in a white terry robe and her in her Goth outfit,
is a nice moment of intimacy across clear differences. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But she’s still testing new contours for her
life, while his are indisputably firm.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It’s
a shame, then, that the film’s ending makes Lisbeth seem a jilted lover, when
her character is otherwise so compelling, strong and competent.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One
last note:</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I’m surprised that critics
and spectators refer so often to what they consider the film’s extreme violence
and sexuality.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">While the rape scene is certainly
horrific, </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dragon Tattoo</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> didn’t strike
me as significantly more brutal than any other shoot-‘em up, set-‘em-on-fire
action flick.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Does
this film seem more extreme because its hero is a woman?</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Because Lisbeth neutralizes Bjurman with a stun
gun and then tattoos “I am a rapist pig” across his naked stomach?</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Because it’s Martin, the male killer of women,
who dies in a ball of fire?</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Or because
it’s Daniel Craig who’s victimized and saved by a woman in the end?</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just wondering.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
Feminist Spectator</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-top: 12.0pt; mso-add-space: auto;">
<o:p></o:p></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-82088506881174825242012-01-26T03:48:00.000-08:002012-01-26T03:48:43.572-08:00George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, 2010-2011<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Just a note to say that The Feminist Spectator
blog won the <a href="http://www.arts.cornell.edu/english/awards/nathan/" target="_blank">George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism</a> for
2010-2011. I’m delighted by this
honor. The Feminist Spectator is the
first blog ever to receive the award in its 56 year history, and I’m only the
seventh woman to win in the history of the award. The last woman so honored was my friend and
colleague Alisa Solomon, who won for her book <i>Re-dressing the Canon: Essays on
Gender and Theatre </i>in 1998. I
attended Alisa’s celebration party at PS122 that year, and remember the pride I
felt in her accomplishment. I’m thrilled
to be joining her and so many other critics and writers I admire in this
distinguished company.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Other recent award winners include Charles
McNulty (chief theatre critic at the <i>LA
Times</i>), Marc Robinson (for his book <i>The
American Play</i>), Randy Gener (for his writing at <i>American Theatre</i>), H. Scott McMillin (for his book <i>The Musical as Drama</i>), and Ray Knapp
(for his book <i>The American Musical and
the Formation of National Identity</i>).
The prize is adjudicated by the chairs of the English Departments at
Cornell, Yale, and Princeton, though <a href="http://www.arts.cornell.edu/english/news/article.php?id=124" target="_blank">Cornell administers the award</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Karen Fricker wrote a lovely post in her <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2012/jan/09/jill-dolan-theatre-critic-award" target="_blank">theatre blog at The Guardian</a> about the
significance of my award, noting that Nathan award's history of gender imbalance “might
reflect the field’s demographics, [but] it does nonetheless prompt questioning
about why criticism is still largely perceived and practiced as a man’s game,
when the accomplishments of Dolan and other leaders in the field . . . prove
that turning out incisive, engaging critical prose about what happens on a
stage does not require a Y chromosome.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The significance of the Nathan award going to a
blog has also been remarked by various commentators. London-based theatre critic Mark Shenton, on
his blog <a href="http://blogs.thestage.co.uk/shenton/2012/01/a-critical-disgrace-and-disservice/" target="_blank">Shenton’s View</a>, suggests that “the web can also usefully provide a
forum for critics to do their work away from the commercial and space
restraints that typically operate in newspapers.” Shenton discusses the recent firing of
long-time <i>Village Voice</i> film critic
J. Hoberman as an example of the sad state of contemporary arts criticism, and says
that Hoberman has responded to his ouster by announcing that he’ll start a
blog. Shenton also notes that Howard
Kissel, who once wrote for the <i>New York
Daily News</i>, now regularly contributes his criticism to the online
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/" target="_blank">Huffington Post</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Clearly, there’s a lot to say about the state of
theatre and arts criticism. I’m hoping
to sponsor a panel discussion about gender and criticism, and about blogging as
a forum for criticism, as part of my Nathan a</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ward celebration.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Save </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Saturday,
April 28</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, tentatively planned as the date for an event here
in Princeton.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Details forthcoming.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Meanwhile, I want to take the opportunity of the
award to thank those of you who read this blog.
When I first started writing The Feminist Spectator (seven years ago
this August), I felt like I was sending words out in the void, happy to see
them move off my private screen but unsure where and with whom they might
land. Learning that so many of you read
the blog, and engaging your comments and quarrels, gives me great pleasure, and
encourages me about people’s desire to engage long-form, generative arts criticism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I’m so grateful for the critical community your
reading creates for my writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist Spectator</span><o:p></o:p></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-56834169082300857762012-01-10T18:21:00.000-08:002012-01-10T18:22:30.085-08:00Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHuW2E8kklWfXbFCSK0wphzPLtTNpITt2mM8z_u-MEt7QJ1_pSIrampr9OUFkCHNHPsQAfoxjleXVd-djzm1rVDKwtK9y2lJ6pfbQoYe4ETB1IlpCzECyaMQTSz1W0T7_tIXNB/s1600/Codependent+Lesbian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHuW2E8kklWfXbFCSK0wphzPLtTNpITt2mM8z_u-MEt7QJ1_pSIrampr9OUFkCHNHPsQAfoxjleXVd-djzm1rVDKwtK9y2lJ6pfbQoYe4ETB1IlpCzECyaMQTSz1W0T7_tIXNB/s1600/Codependent+Lesbian.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Film poster; Suzan Ziegler and Lisa Haas</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I had the pleasure of seeing</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> at the Galway Film Festival in Ireland last summer. It's now playing through January 12 at ReRunGastropub Theatre in DUMBO (more info below).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The film, written and directed by Madeleine Olnek, is a lovely, quirky, comic fantasia, with a beautifully understated performance by Lisa Haas as the sweetly codependent lesbian who's fallen in love with a space alien. Filmed in a sort of Ed Wood, low-budget camp sci-fi style,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Codependent</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">offers a fun queer evening at the movies.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Olnek was a regular at the WOW Café in the 1980s, when the underground lesbian
performance space was breaking rules about theatre and poaching from popular
culture to rewrite what we understood of gender and sexuality norms.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> The film is based on her play of the same title, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">which will soon be published in a
collection of work from WOW that Holly Hughes and Alina Troyano (Carmelita
Tropicana) are co-editing for the University of Michigan Press. Olnek made the play into an indie feature film that’s now making the rounds on the festival
circuit.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">I caught the showing on the
first night of the Galway Film Festival at Town Hall last July.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">In true WOW style, the
film both quotes and breaks the genre conventions on which it’s based.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Jane (Haas) is a desperately shy, lonely
lesbian clerk at a greeting card store, who finds a note dropped seemingly out
of the blue in which a lesbian space alien asks if they can be friends.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">As Jane’s therapist (the wry Rae C. Wright)
tries to help Jane puzzle through her emotions while persuading her that she
hasn’t </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">really </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">been contacted by
aliens, the planet Zots suffers an environmental
crisis.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">They believe their ozone layer
is being destroyed by “big feelings,” and resolve to send to Earth any of their
citizens whose love affairs are damaging their planet.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">On Earth, the reasoning goes, the aliens’
hearts will be broken, and they’ll return to Zots cured of their commitment to
love.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">And so begins a tale of
aliens-on-another-planet, in which the sexual and cultural mores of Earth clash
with the otherworldly style of the citizens of Zots.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Beaming down into Jane’s world, Zoinx (the
handsome, square-jawed Susan Ziegler) targets the shy lesbian for her
experiment in Earth-bound relationships.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Despite her monotone, high-tech, echoing voice and her utter lack of
human affect, Jane finds Zoinx charming.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Part of the film’s joke is that Jane never acknowledges Zoinx’s
strangeness, accepting the alien’s bald head, her never-removed large,
Elizabethan-style collar, which nearly encircles her starkly prominent pate,
and her strange way of expressing affection (she puts her hand against Jane’s
nose in an awkward gesture whenever she’s feeling intimate).</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Jane is so delighted by Zoinx’s company that
she happily engages her alien customs and generously teaches Zoinx the equally
strange ways of Earth.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Two other aliens have
been sent to Earth to participate in Zots’ project.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Bar (Cynthia Kaplan) and Zylar (Jackie
Monahan) have the misfortune of having “big feelings” for one another, but try
to find earthlings who might cure them of their mutual affliction.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Olnek includes hilarious scenes in which
various local lesbians respond to Zylar’s personal ad (written and videoed),
and find themselves incapable of understanding or accepting what looks to them
like weird role-playing.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">In their
one-note delivery, Bar and Zylar’s declarations of desperate love both undercut
and underline the typical (or is it stereotypical?) excess of lesbian
attachments with truly funny, sweet knowingness.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Two “men in black,”
federal agents of some sort who track the aliens’ activity on Earth, shadow
Jane and Zoinx, trying to figure out the place from which the aliens enter and
leave the country.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Their scenes are
filmed almost entirely in a parked suburban van, where the senior agent (Dennis
Davis) complains that he’s always passed up for promotion, watching those he’s
trained leapfrog over him professionally.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">His junior partner (Alex Karpovsky) asks him probing questions,
inquiring, for instance, whether his wife, Debbie, is a “transman,” to the guy’s
utter perplexity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">The two men’s deadpan
humor offers a terrific counterbalance to Jane and the aliens’
shenanigans.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Their surveillance
activities also allow Olnek to feed them anthropological lines about lesbian
relationships, as their ridiculous comments about whether these romances last (for one example) provide both a dominant cultural voice and an eye that lets them peer into the
margins with a rather friendly, liberal curiosity.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Davis and Karpovsky play their scenes with a
lovely improvisational tone and Davis, in particular, comments as much on
conventional masculinity as Jane and the aliens comment on lesbian
relationships.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Codependent Lesbian Space Alien</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> is filmed with an intentionally
low-budget gestalt reminiscent of Ed Woods’ opus and the science fiction
movies of the 1950s.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Olnek uses low-tech
special effects to represent the aliens’ space ship, and the film’s black and
white stock lets her use fun ‘50s-style titles and images of galaxies swirling
in space.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">The music, too, quotes ‘50s melodramatic
film conventions to over-emphasize emotions and to help announce Olnek’s
affectionate parodies not only of sci-fi but of stereotypes of contemporary
lesbian relationships.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Watching actors
dressed as aliens walking robotically through real New York East and West
Village locations while no one on the streets blinks an eye is also a hoot.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Codependents</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">
ends up being a sweet, funny love story in which two deeply “different” women
triumph over their odds.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">At a public discussion after the
showing in Galway, Olnek described how she researched the genre and understands
its roots in Cold War paranoia.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Aliens,
she pointed out, where often portrayed as they are in her film (that is, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">bald and homogeneous in appearance) to
represent Americans’ fear of the uniformity a Soviet take-over might impose.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Likewise, Olnek suggested, their monotone
speaking voices borrow from those ‘50s sci-fi movies, in which the aliens’
voices, too, were leeched of individual character and affect.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Putting these
characteristics in a lesbian context, however, makes them sweet and
hilarious.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Jane takes Zoinx out for a
drink at the Cubbyhole, a lesbian bar in Greenwich Village, where Jane whispers
that the clientele tends to be unfriendly.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">
</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">When Zoinx asks Jane to dance, she happily complies, trying to turn her
embarrassment into a kind of pride when Zoinx's moves prove anything but
conventional.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">The reaction shots are
hysterical.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">Go; you'll have fun.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;">The Feminist Spectator</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"><a href="http://www.codependentlesbianspacealienseekssame.com/new/" target="_blank">Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same</a>, through January 12, <a href="http://reruntheater.com/index.php" target="_blank">ReRunGastropub</a>, DUMBO, Brooklyn.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15793244.post-12981232158943614722011-12-19T16:03:00.000-08:002011-12-19T16:09:10.177-08:00Once, the musical<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTemFibV-a63JsmkHHMvsKQ3Hgtn9-MR7hv0nJTGDFRQISRAX2G7koPXzSiQ2H7Cp-TJ-yj__tPi_R9VV29exjpRhvr7EDzzIwqIu660OMP6R1KZsL38Be4N9wa9aAzqnf-hQA/s1600/Once%252C+best.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTemFibV-a63JsmkHHMvsKQ3Hgtn9-MR7hv0nJTGDFRQISRAX2G7koPXzSiQ2H7Cp-TJ-yj__tPi_R9VV29exjpRhvr7EDzzIwqIu660OMP6R1KZsL38Be4N9wa9aAzqnf-hQA/s320/Once%252C+best.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>The stars and supporting cast on the pub-style stage</i></span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">When you
enter New York Theatre Workshop’s space on E. 4th St. to see <i>Once,</i> the musical adaptation of the 2007
</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Irish </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">indie
film (<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=15793244#editor/target=post;postID=7562348752715864952" target="_blank">see my 2007 blog post</a> on the film), the well-worn theatre suddenly feels like a party hall. The stage has been transformed into a bar,
replete with distressed old mirrors and sconce lights, and a low counter that
serves double-duty as a place for spectators to get a pint before the play
proper starts and as a secondary acting platform for the considerable talents
of this musically distinguished and emotionally empathetic cast.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">In Irish
playwright Enda Walsh’s faithful adaptation, the </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Dublin
</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">community on
which the story focuses is bound by its music making. The cast is small by musical theatre
standards, since the "community here," usually represented by dozens of
supernumeraries, is the close-knit one of Dublin street buskers and musicians
who remain soulfully devoted to music as an expression of their pining spirits.</span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Steve Kazee plays “the guy,” a recently
jilted, emotionally and artistically ambivalent singer/song-writer who at the show’s
beginning, </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 15px;">after a wrenching solo, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11pt;">has decided to abandon his battered guitar on the street as a kind of remnant of his own lost soul.</span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But “the girl”
(like “the guy,” also nameless, an odd conceit borrowed from the film)
overhears his ballad and brings him emphatically back to his music and to his
life. Played by the lovely, energetic Cristin
Milioti (last seen at <a href="http://nytw.org/the_little_foxes_info.asp" target="_blank">NYTW in Ivo Van Hove’s <i>Little Foxes</i></a>), she drags him to a music store where she borrows a
piano on which to accompany him in her resonant, equally soulful style. Through sheer will and a bit of artfully withheld
romance, she encourages him to resume his music-making in America, where he can
reconnect with his departed girlfriend and have a wonderful life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As in the
film, music expresses the duo's personalities and their yearnings. The musical's loveliest and most haunting
number remains the Academy Award-winning “Falling Slowly,” written and
performed by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, the original guy and girl who
remain credited for the music and lyrics of this adaptation. The ballad grows as a duet between the two,
whose voices blend perfectly as their separate instruments play a kind of
syncopated, already sad flirtation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPREyX_2X_EaS3PKEaGAlMnErxUlVKqeToyZG2yk24Tbhy0i1H8FbfiwBHGFo0NBngLxUO2WDnJp5HDUGm2UCY8h_r4hsvOUwxn0UAp6_XvPEYB4ahyphenhyphenCiHMSCeBYU43Y1u6HB8/s1600/Once%252C+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPREyX_2X_EaS3PKEaGAlMnErxUlVKqeToyZG2yk24Tbhy0i1H8FbfiwBHGFo0NBngLxUO2WDnJp5HDUGm2UCY8h_r4hsvOUwxn0UAp6_XvPEYB4ahyphenhyphenCiHMSCeBYU43Y1u6HB8/s1600/Once%252C+2.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: center;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, the original "guy" and "girl"</i></span></span></o:p></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: left;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span></span></o:p></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Although the pair
fall in love as soon as they begin harmonizing together, the musical keeps them
apart rather than uniting this typically central heterosexual couple as more
conventional musical stories are wont to do.
In fact, one of the pleasures of <i>Once
</i>is watching it resist the stereotypical formula. The community that typically mirrors the
central couple's initial opposition—like the cowboys and the farmers who should
be friends in <i>Oklahoma</i>—here are
already united.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Walsh
manufactures some humorous initial conflict between Billy (Paul Whitty), the
music store owner, and the bank manager (Andy Taylor) to whom the girl and guy
turn for a loan to make their album.
When the banker turns out to be a closeted musician (and a
not-so-closeted gay man), he gives the couple the money and joins the band,
overcoming Billy’s suspicion of capitalists to become part of the singing and
playing ensemble.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In fact, that
band of sympathetic brothers and sisters is one of the sweetest things about
this very sweet show. Director John
Tiffany (<i><a href="http://www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=home_Black%20Watch%202010" target="_blank">Black Watch</a></i>) keeps his
instrument-playing and singing cast on stage throughout <i>Once</i>, John Doyle-style. He
guides them toward saloon-style chairs that line the wide proscenium stage in
between numbers. From there, they watch
the action intently and provide the occasional musical punctuation or
undertone.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The several
acoustic guitars, an electric bass, a banjo, an accordion, a ukulele, a bass,
and two violins, as well as a drum set employed in the climactic studio
recording scene, compose the orchestra, all played by members of the cast. The mournful ballads underscore the fated
love story, and the musicians provide pre-show and intermission Irish pub music
to persuade the audience into the Dublin world of <i>Once</i>.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And the
audience loves it. They approach the bar
on stage willingly before the show and during the intermission, where cast and
crew pull pints of Guinness and other beers.
Several spectators the night I attended danced with the musicians who sang
together center stage, stomping their feet Riverdance-style and making that
particularly Irish sort of merry before the central story got underway.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The pre-show
party is a fun theatrical choice, shaking up, as it does, the conventional
separation between performer and spectator.
The choice to create a pub-style environment that lets the show be small
and intimate, signals from the start that <i>Once
</i>is not aspiring to more typical musical spectacle that would mock the more personal commitments at the film’s heart.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjdN6-hJHlNDzzDL3spZP3dAUbmTFGte_bxtiCL_z9-7YyQQddbmhtuUOWdOSjT5XU6mZHOmmNlgsyINXWsXYNmezhg1x5OTV05dUrNwpU6W3YyzXyUKKpnlWQJ5215b2i5xWz/s1600/Once%252C+film+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjdN6-hJHlNDzzDL3spZP3dAUbmTFGte_bxtiCL_z9-7YyQQddbmhtuUOWdOSjT5XU6mZHOmmNlgsyINXWsXYNmezhg1x5OTV05dUrNwpU6W3YyzXyUKKpnlWQJ5215b2i5xWz/s1600/Once%252C+film+poster.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: center;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>The poster for the original film</i></span></span></o:p></div>
<div class="Body1" style="text-align: left;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><br /></i></span></span></o:p></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The guy lives
with his father (David Patrick Kelly), a crusty old Dubliner named “Da,” above
the vacuum repair shop they run together.
When the girl finds the guy losing heart on the street, she asks him to
fix her Hoover, insisting that he make the machine “suck.” Because she’s Czech—and Walsh gets a fair
amount of mileage from her Eastern European seriousness—she soberly sets about
the task of re-inspiring the guy toward his own talents.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">He’s grudging
at first, floundering on the shoals of lost love and confusion about his own
ambitions. But she’s insistent. In the first act, in fact, she’s a bit too
single-minded in her intention to repair his heart, and appears the stereotypical
girl in the service of a guy’s future rather than her own.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">But Walsh
gives the character more nuances in the second act. She has a child and a husband who’s on his
way back to Dublin from a trial separation.
And although she’s drawn to the guy, she has a stalwart ethic that
requires her to try to make her marriage work.
That the guy and the girl clearly love one another but don’t become
lovers is a refreshing tactic for a musical.
Their attraction shimmers around the show, and their sad but somehow
right failure to consummate their love makes <i>Once </i>wistful and somehow true about those complicated affairs of
the heart.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Bob Crowley’s
evocative set and costumes are lit beautifully by Natasha Katz, who gilds the
actors with the kind of romantic, introspective warmth that seems to deepen their
emotional complexity. Many of the show’s
scenes take place in squares of light that mark off the space, carving it into
intimate encounters between pairs of characters--the guy and his father; the
guy and the girl; Billy and his date. <i>Once</i>, as a result, is an intimate,
surprisingly quiet affair, in which between the numbers, the characters spend
time simply talking to one another about their desires, hopes, and dreams.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Czech
background of the girl and her extended family—her mother, daughter, and
cousins figure heavily into her Dublin life—is played for laughs. The cousins, of all the musical’s characters,
are cardboard stereotypes meant to elicit the national confusions and language
humor that comes from immigrants navigating new worlds.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Walsh and
Tiffany handle the film’s international flair with supertitles which, in a
creative twist, project the English dialogue into the characters’ native
tongues. That is, the audience sees the
girl’s exchanges with her family projected in Czech, and some of the Dubliner’s
dialogue projected in Irish. The actors
speak in English with various degrees of Eastern European and Irish accents, none
of which are pronounced enough to get in the way of comprehension.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The show’s choreography
is light and unobtrusive, but occasionally inspired, as when the girl and the
guy, in separate images, seem to sculpt the air with their arms, providing circles
of warmth and intimacy into which one of the other performers walks. For instance, the girl, downstage center,
curves her arm out in front of her, and one of the other women moves into her
embrace, leaning her back into the girl’s chest and circling her arm around her
waist so that the girl can lay her chin on the other woman’s shoulder.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">In another
light but poignant dance moment, when the girl listens to the guy’s music on a
pair of large headphones, the two other young women in the cast (both of whom
play the violin) mirror her as she moves about the stage, their hands
outstretched into the air with the exhilaration of listening to sounds you love.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Once </span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">is
a charming production, currently selling out at NYTW and poised to <a href="http://oncemusical.com/index.html?gclid=CKSI_-7EjK0CFQdN4AodZkMonA#googsearch" target="_blank">move to Broadway</a>
in February. The show’s investors
premiered the production at Diana Paulus’s American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge
before the move to NYTW; they apparently have always planned on a Broadway run.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When the show
moves to the Bernard Jacobs Theatre, I only hope it finds a way to retain the
intimacy of its appeal for a larger audience.
It would be a shame to sacrifice the pub-like atmosphere of the theatre,
and the quiet simplicity of the acting and the singing, or to make the show wholly
bigger for a Broadway crowd.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The appeal of
<i>Once</i> comes from the appropriate scale of its ambitions—to tell a story through lovely ballads,
sung from broken, yearning young hearts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Feminist
Spectator<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="http://nytw.org/once_landing_page.asp" target="_blank">Once</a></span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt;">,
New York Theatre Workshop, December 16, 2011.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>Jill Dolanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09674110837402216325noreply@blogger.com0