While Stieg Larsson’s literary Girl trilogy has received generally positive reviews, reactions to the Swedish film have been mixed.  Having finished the first and second books, and now having viewed the film, I feel ready to throw my two-cents out there.  But first, the disclaimer-y stuff: There are certain to be spoilers, but I’ll try to keep it to book one and the film.  Also, be aware (if you aren’t already) this series contains graphic depictions of violence against women and sexual assault.

I’ll start with my summary and conclusion in case you’re using this to determine whether or not to read the series or watch the film:

If you’re the kind of person who likes psychological thrillers, non-slasher horror films, and murder-mystery style suspense, you’ll probably like this series.  If you like those types of things AND choose to view the themes of the series through a feminist lens, you may well be impressed.  But if you can’t handle violent films on the principle of the matter, this film will overload your system.  If you can’t handle violent films AND choose to view the themes of the series through a feminist lens, you’ll probably be pissed.  And revolted.

Let’s take a look at the first installment in the series.Of the three books, Dragon Tattoo stands most firmly on its own.  Sandwiched between a couple-hundred pages of boring financial conspiracy exists an intriguing, decades-old murder mystery, which only grows deeper and more sinister from page to page.  Very dark, very Silence-of-the-Lambs, what with the evolving picture of a misogynistic serial killer who very intentionally targets women.  Which is investigated by our journalist hero, Mikael Blomkvist.

In fact, we spend most of our time reading about Kalle Blomkvist’s adventures, the many women he gets with, and his attempts to connect with and understand the enigmatic Salander.  In Blomkvist’s (and Larsson’s) defense, I do appreciate the way that sexuality is handled in the series.  Sexual relationships are both casual AND mature in the series – Blomkvists “affairs” are always open (ex. Blomkvist has an ongoing affair with a married woman, whose husband is both aware and accepting of the arrangement) and pretty average (against the stereotype that no women over 30 ever have sex or are desireable, Blomkvist – who is 40-something – regularly has sexual relationships with women older than himself).  The lack of hang ups about sex are pretty refreshing.  Of course in the film, the only (consensual) sex is with the Hot Young Thang so this aspect is pretty much lost.  Ahh movies.  But what about the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, you ask?

Well, she’s in roughly a third of the book, being sexually assaulted by her legal guardian.  Graphically.  Really graphically.  This is also her role in the first half of the movie.  It’s stomach turning to read and to watch.  Over the course of the series we are constantly reminded of the many ways that Lisbeth Salander has been done wrong by The System since childhood (more on that in the second and third books), resulting in being deemed mentally incompetent and assigned an evil guardian who takes atrocious advantage of his power against her.  The theme of Salander’s life seems to be that anyone with power cannot be trusted.  Ultimately, the series is her tragedy, even if she seldom seems to be the true main character.

But Salader is not exclusively a victim – she is also a vigilante.  Many of the criticisms of the book and film are tied to the two violent rapes that Salander experiences, and her violent revenge.  Certainly things here are messy.  No one here is advocating for victims of sexual assault to take justice into their own hands.  No one is suggesting that this is preferable to taking legal action and seeking other forms of help.  However, in the context of Salander’s story – where police have never protected her, doctors have betrayed her, and guardians have exploited her – these options do not appear to be worthwhile.  And while I vehemently oppose prison rape jokes and eye-for-an-eye type humor, I will admit that there was something… satisfying about seeing a woman take the power back from her abuser and place him at her mercy. (In the spirit of full disclosure, my favorite movie as an adolescent was The Crow, so maybe there’s just something about me that approves of sadistic mofo’s getting their comeuppance.)

So we get it – Salander is a scrappy goth/punk cyber-genius who doesn’t take crap from anyone and whom you don’t want to cross.  She teams up with good-natured Blomkvist to solve the disappearance of a 16 year old girl in the 60s.  Through the course of their investigation they learn that the victim had uncovered a pattern in a series of rapes and murders long preceding her birth, and which were committed by a member of her family.  This misogynistic sadism was passed down from father to son, and Blomkvist finds himself very compromised (as he’s fully restrained and nude) in the basement torture chamber of the villain.  And is promptly rescued (or at least rescued in time) by a golf-club wielding Salander.

Is it violent?  Yes.  Is it disturbing?  Yes.  Is it feminist?  Maybe.  Is it exploitative? …Also maybe.  Here is how I came to the conclusion above:

Larsson’s Salander trilogy is oozing with violence against women (domestic violence, rape, incest, sex-traffiking, and societal neglect of these issues).  But it also has strong characters who oppose the status quo.  There are women and men in these books who are appalled at what they see and who seek to make these atrocities public (Blomkvist is constantly publishing material that reveals the conspiracies he uncovers), to seek justice for the victims, to demand consequences for the perpetrators, and to prevent these blind spots in social consciousness from carrying on.  Even in smaller storylines, we see men and women fighting sexism in their day-to-day lives (in the newsroom, in the policeforce).  But the central plot revolves around men who hate women (the first book’s true title).

So if you’re the type of person that just doesn’t understand violence in entertainment, the violence against women as the central plot is pretty problematic.  That’s reasonable.

But if you’re the type of person that can handle violence in entertainment (either just because you can or because you can in the context of a social commentary), the story is pretty engaging.  And if you take that a step further, the direct confrontation of misogyny and attention to putting an end to these direct forms of violence against women paired with the strong feminist women and men in the books could be viewed as… pretty feminist. (RAINN seems to agree?)

It seems to me that The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is another one of those feminist Rorschachs.  And I see feminism in the big dark mess.

Splice is a sci-fi horrorish film that is in many ways a modern retelling of the story of Frankenstein.  What Splice does differently from most sci-fi horrorish films is to incorporate complex, intelligent female characters and examine (both directly and indirectly) female emotional and sexual development in an extreme situation.  Until it blows it at the end.

Also, I have never seen so many people stand up and exit the theater so quickly when the credits started rolling, but that might be a Utah thing (more on that later).  If anything, the strong reactions of my fellow theater-goers only made me more thoughtful about this unusual movie.

Here’s what you need to know: Clive and Elsa are a couple (literally) of scientists who have been working on splicing together DNA from different animals to create new species in the hopes of developing cures for livestock diseases.  They think it would be a good idea to take this to the next level – the human level – in order to find cures for human diseases, and pretty much just to test their theory about how awesome they are.  They’re told no, but they do it anyway.  What they end up creating is first a creepy slimy thing, which evolves into a cute rabbitish thing, and finally into a human chimera thing.  Although Clive was recently trying to talk Elsa into kids, she wasn’t interested.  Now she has become very attached to their creature, Dren, and he’s the one with serious second thoughts.  Spoilers ahead.

There are a few themes to examine here, including the development of the creature, the relationships between the creature and her creators, the choices of the creators, and the overall messages of the film (if we can figure them out). And yeah, there are a lot of scientific inconsistencies in the film and things that just didn’t quite make sense (like a creature with the ability to breathe underwater, fly, and shift sexes but no capacity for vocalized language), but I’m going to set all of that aside for the purposes of this review and just concentrate on the story.

Although Dren started out slimy and creepy and weird (which one could possibly argue for all babies), as she ages she continually develops more human looking features.  Elsa grows attached, particularly when Dren begins developing associations between objects and names as well as the ability to spell with Scrabble letters (but not to speak or write…). Meanwhile Clive consistently views Dren as an experiment (through the first half of the film anyway), and is unsure that they have done the right thing.  He intends to kill her soon after she is born, but is prevented by Elsa’s attachment.  He tries again when she is older and has become sick, but his attempts to drown her lead to the discovery of her aquatic lungs as well as her recovery.  Elsa convinces herself that he knew he was saving her all along, and refuses to acknowledge his fear and loathing for her beloved creation.

When Dren grows too big for the lab, they move her to a barn.  Here we begin to learn more about Elsa’s childhood, giving us some insight to her relationship with Dren as well as her treatment of the child.  It’s insinuated that Elsa was the victim of child-abuse by her mother, and was kept in a small dark room without much more than a mattress – a child hidden away and neglected.  Throughout Dren’s development, she is kept secret, hidden, and spends who knows how many hours a day alone in small observation labs, storage areas, and finally the locked barn.  She doesn’t receive the nurturing, attention, stimulation, or instruction that human children need for healthy development.  Despite her attachment to Dren, Elsa seems to forget that this creature is part human, not just part animal.  Dren finally makes a friend, a barn cat, which Elsa takes away from her as soon as she discovers it.  Her isolation is complete, and her perceived powerlessness begins to drive her to act out.  Which is pretty serious business once you start to get an idea of her adaptations (apparent super-strength, super-agility, super-speed, underwater-breathing, flight, and a poisonous stinger at the end of her tail).  Elsa catches on to this quickly, and in one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the film she ties Dren to a table, strips her, and cuts off her stinger without anesthetizing her once beloved pet.

By this point in the film, Dren has become a young woman.  Elsa has noticed and given her a makeover (a symbol of her budding womanhood, not the She’s All That type thing).  Clive has noticed and given her a dance lesson, which he ended abruptly after recognizing a little too much of Elsa in Dren (in fact, it was Elsa’s DNA that was spliced to make the creature – something she didn’t tell Clive at the time).  The dudes behind me in the theater noticed, too, commenting on her nice thighs.  My hunch is that this is where people start having strong reactions to the film – where they can’t understand what they are seeing or feeling and they begin to dislike it.  Strongly.  Dren is sexy.  She’s beautiful in a very Bratz-esque giant-eyed way.  She’s shapely, graceful, and vulnerable.  We see her womanly thighs as she dances.  We see her pubescent breasts as she cowers.  We see her fully exposed on Elsa’s operating table.  And we have been conditioned by the media industry to see all of this in a very sexual way.   But we saw Dren’s birth, we saw her as a hoppy little rabbit thing, we saw her as a sick child, and now we see her as a monster of some kind.  And none of that is supposed to be sexy.  Sounds a little bit like being 15 again.

But here the film begins to fall apart.  Clive is “seduced” by Dren – a painfully confusing scene for those dudes behind me – and caught in the act by Elsa.  If we look at this event considering Dren as a maturing creature, it makes sense.  She is essentially taking the next step in her personal development and the perpetuation of her new species – mating.  If we look at this event considering Clive as Dren’s creator and parent figure, this is a serious misuse of power and influence – it is the equivalent of incestuous sexual abuse.  How Elsa just gets over this and the film keeps going as though this was a minor event is beyond me.  Dren soon comes down with a mysterious illness, and thinking that she has died, the couple buries her behind the barn.  In fact, she is experiencing a sex-change and comes back violently, for what I suppose is reasonable revenge.  A fair amount of people die, and Dren, now fully male, rapes Elsa (a painful and in my opinion seriously unnecessary scene).  We learn that Elsa has become pregnant from this encounter and will keep the baby as her next step in the science experiment.

In my opinion, the film shot itself in the foot following Dren and Clive’s intimate encounter.  Here’s how I think it should have ended: Dren’s mystery illness is not a sex-change, but pregnancy.  Considering how rapidly her life-span seems to be progressing, and how short her gestation period was (she essentially grew as a fetus outside of the womb following her “birth”), she could pop out Dren, Jr. in a day or two.  She could even give birth to an army of little Dren’s at this rate, and as an entirely female species they could quickly begin shifting the balance of power in our little world.  This would mean that the ultimate climax of her evolution is to become a Queen Bee of sorts.  Instead, a film that said “women are smart, powerful, and can be focal points in a non-romantic film” up until the final fifteen minutes turned around and said “but the almighty penis is the ultimate evolutionary symbol of power and control.”

So why did everyone hate it?  Well, you know my theory on Dren’s sexual influence on the audience.  I also suspected that the sex-change was not a big hit with the conservative population out here and did nothing for the cause of transgender acceptance, which was irritating.  Furthermore, I find it hard to believe that there was anyone in that theater that thought that Elsa should keep her monster-rape-baby, but thinking about abortion as a reasonable solution would tend to make a lot of people out here pretty uncomfortable.  So I loitered a bit to hear what people’s complaints were after they evacuated the theater like a stink bomb just went off.

The consensus seemed to be that there were “a lot of f-words and sexual content.”

Check out this other great review over at i09.  And of course, the always insightful Roger Ebert.

As an anti-Twilight-ruining-classic-mythology tribute, here are a bunch of my favorite werewolf-respecting videos.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll

TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me

Michael Jackson - Thriller (Ok, so it’s more about zombies, but it’s classic.)

And finally, to remedy the damage done to your brain by Twilight, go watch Ginger Snaps.

I feel better now.  How about you?

“Regardless of the business aspect of things, is there a reason that there isn’t a female Hitchcock or a female Scorsese or a female Spielberg? I don’t know. I think it’s a medium that really is built for the male gaze and for a male sensibility. I mean, the best art is made under not an indifference to, but a neutrality [toward] the kind of emotionalism that I think can be a trap for women directors.”

- Bret Easton Ellis

After all the gruesome lady-killing in American Psycho (which was, by the way, directed by a woman), this drivel shouldn’t surprise any of us.

BONUS IDIOCY:

“I’ve always thought that the feminists got it totally wrong on that one. But I can’t go there anymore.”

Because killing women horrifically in an attempt to discuss the pros and cons of being a wealthy hipster is not at all anti-woman.  Feminists should be happy about it!  After all, it was directed by a woman! *headdesk*

From Movieline via Jezebel. (Also interesting: Roger Ebert’s review of the film.)

The adolescent goth kid in me has nothing but love for Christina Ricci after all these years, although I probably haven’t kept up with enough of her films to really be qualified to defend that position.  Memories of Casper and The Adams family mixed with impressions from Prozac Nation and Penelope leave me excitedly awaiting Ricci’s newest film, After.Life, despite only having known about it for a few days (via i09) and not being the biggest fan of the horror genre.  Although I have some hesitations about After.Life, particularly as a feminist, I’m a little excited.

The possible good: Christina Ricci.  Escaping bad dudes.  Some sort of metaphor for being robbed of power and then empowering oneself.

The possible bad: Little red nightie, sexual objectification.  Misogyny, kidnapping, violence against women.  Damsel in distress, dude to the rescue.

So I’m torn.  My feminist conscience is certainly skeptical, but something in me remains curious.  Although I really hate slashers and torture-porn-esque films (a la Saw series and its bretheren), I have an inkling that this is more of a psychological thriller (a la Hide and Seek), which I am actually kind of into.  It could go either way, and I’m certainly willing to give this one a try (even if I can’t entirely justify it to myself), but I’m not holding my breath that it’ll come to my community as it’s not yet scheduled for wide release and our one and only cool little indie theater closed about six months ago.

What are your thoughts on Christina Ricci, After.Life, and the status of women in horror films today?  Anyone seen this film or know more about it?

Although Rosemary’s Baby is considered a classic horror film by many, and a feminist film by some, I had never given the flick any thought, nor had I seen it before.  Once again, my self-imposed Halloween Movie Marathon gave me the excuse to check out something I otherwise might not have, and particularly with the recent Roman Polanski developments, this seemed like as good a time as any to give it a shot.

Themes of female oppression and patriarchal dominance abound in this film, which was based on the book of the same title by Ira Levin, who also wrote the novel The Stepford Wives.  Although I’ve never had much interest in the Nicole Kidman Stepford Wives remake, after Rosemary’s Baby I’m interested to see the original and some more of Levin’s interpretation of mid 20th century women’s roles. My thoughts on whether or not this is a feminist film

Rosemary and her husband, Guy, have just moved in to a posh apartment in NYC.  Their neighbors are primarily senior citizens, and the building has a fair number of urban legends surrounding it – in particular, stories about witches, satanists, and the sacrifice and cannibalism of babies.  Home sweet home.  Although Guy is initially reluctant to socialize with the older neighbors, after meeting them he develops a near obsessive relationship with the couple next door, and becomes increasingly self-centered as his acting career begins to take off.  Rosemary is upset by this, but as a good sixties wife tries not to complain.  When Guy suggests that they finally start their family, Rosemary is ecstatic.

However, the conception of the couple’s first child is less than romantic.  After the neighbor woman drops off a strange dessert earlier in the evening, Rosemary becomes quite dizzy and ill, and the baby-making plans are put on hold.  She has a terrible nightmare in which she is surrounded by a crowd of nude elderly neighbors, as well as her husband, and is raped by a hairy demonic creature.  When she wakes the next morning she has deep red scratches on her back and realizes that it wasn’t just a dream.  Even the most reasonable explanation, that her husband raped her while she was unconscious, is terrifying.  The idea that the nightmare itself was real is too far fetched to even consider at this point.

As the pregnancy progresses, Rosemary has no idea that there is something wrong with her child.  The neighbor woman brings her a special drink each day, her neighbors make sure she has the best doctor in the city, and everyone dotes on her in a seemingly grandparent-y kind of way.  However, Rosemary has been losing weight instead of gaining weight, her eyes have become dark and sunken, and she experiences excruciating pain constantly.  Her doctor tells her not to read books on pregnancy, consult other professionals, or talk to her friends as “every pregnancy is different” – and it is clear to the viewer that there is something very different with Rosemary’s pregnancy.

A family friend who has demonstrated concern for Rosemary’s condition asks to meet her one day to alert her to something he is unwilling to discuss over the phone.  He suddenly falls into a coma and is unable to tell her what he has discovered, but when he passes away he leaves Rosemary a book on witchcraft that suggests that there are satanic practices going on amongst her neighbors and that her baby is likely in danger.  Rosemary’s husband, who has never taken her side over the neighbors, is unsupportive of her theory and throws her book away like a scolding parent.  When she tries to run away and seeks rescue from a different doctor, he calls her husband and sketch doctor, sending her back into the environment she has become so terrified of.

Once she has the baby, she is not allowed to see it and is informed that her little boy has died.  She doesn’t believe that this is true, and begins hiding the medications that her doting neighbors continue to supply her.  In fact, she is confined to bed-rest with constant observation, a guard at her door at all times.  She hears a baby crying in the building and is certain it is her son.  When she is able to sneak out of her room, she finds a secret passageway into the neighbor’s apartment where all the elderly neighbors are socializing around a black bassinet.  Her son is alive, and she sees him for the first time, letting out a blood curdling scream.  Her neighbors didn’t want to eat her son – he is the son of Satan.  Her nightmare was real and her child is the spawn of the devil.  She is devastated, and eventually returns to the cradle, looking upon her son with mercy and we are lead to believe she accepts her duty to mother him.

Terrifying, eh?  What was most disturbing in watching the film wasn’t the witchcraft, the satanic practices, or even the demonic rape scene.  It was the utter helplessness and powerlessness that Rosemary was subjected to as a woman surrounded by patriarchal forces.  Her husband never shows her respect of mercy – at his kindest he treats her like a child, at his worst she is nothing but an incubator which he barters to the neighbors in exchange for an improved career.  Her neighbors also treat her like a silly child, as do her doctors, none of whom ever believe her story or even validate that she is experiencing an unusually difficult pregnancy.  When she walks into the macabre baby shower, she is holding a gigantic kitchen knife, but not once does she strike out at her oppressors.  I can’t think of a time in a movie that I have wanted to see a violent rampage more.

The oppressive results of patriarchy are blatant in this film, and sympathy for Rosemary comes early and easily.  Her strongest drive in the film is to protect her unborn child, and this love empowers her to finally seek escape from her marriage, doctor, and neighbors.  Ultimately, it seems she is unable to escape and once again submits to the power structure around her.  So is it a feminist film for confronting these themes, or is it a feminist failure for remaining void of any hope for escape or change?

I’m inclined to say that the film encompasses many feminist themes without embodying a strictly feminist message.  Although I haven’t read the novel, I read somewhere that in the book Rosemary tells off the old fogies, reclaiming her child by the name she had planned for him rather than the name they gave him – this small change might have been all it would have taken for me to see this as a feminist film.  As it stands, Rosemary never escapes, never is truly empowered, never makes her  own choices.  Knowing that Levin also wrote The Stepford Wives, and knowing Roman Polanski’s very public history of violence against women, I suspect that what may have been a feminist story initially lost its oomph somewhere in the translation from text to film.  Although a great deal of Hollywood stars as well as movie lovers have called for Polanski to be absolved of his sins due to his “artistic contributions,” I wonder if this film could have been much more powerfully feminist and less abstract had it been directed by someone else.  What do you think?

After all the hype, coverage, and controversy regarding Teeth around the feminist blogosphere, I had to add this to my marathon list.  I’ll admit, I was worried.  Would it be as scary as I had convinced myself it would be?  Would it be overly gross?  Would there be too much sexual assault?

Whether or not Teeth has been the scariest film I’ve watched for our Halloween Movie Marathon, it has certainly been the most disturbing in many ways.  It made me laugh, it made me cringe, it made my stomach turn, it made me feel empowered, it made me feel angry.  Consider this your warning:

In case you didn’t know, Teeth is about a high school abstinence-only champion whose vagina has shark-like teeth.  You can imagine the consequences.  Themes of sexual abuse and rape, misogyny, and fear of female sexuality run rampant, and whether or not the vagina dentata equals empowerment is up for debate.

The film opens with a scene of two children in a kiddie pool – main character Dawn and her soon-to-be stepbrother Brad.  Brad is teasing Dawn, and suddenly begins screaming, holding up a deeply cut and bleeding finger.  Although kids experiment, play doctor or whatever, things don’t seem right from the get-go with this boy.  Many years later, Brad is still harassing Dawn, giving her a hard time about her abstinence preaching and making sexual advances.  Brad is the most despicable character of the film, misogynistic to the bone.  He has porn plastered all over his walls, insists on anal sex with the “bitch” he refuses to acknowledge as his girlfriend, tries to force-feed her a dog treat after sex, frequently verbally (and likely physically) abuses her, and never misses an opportunity to demean her, Dawn, and his stepmother.

But Brad is not the only sexual harasser of the film.  Dawn elicits a great deal of animosity from her classmates regarding her abstinence stance, such as taunting “pop that cherry” and “take off your panties” as she walks to class.  When she begins dating Tobey, a boy she met through the abstinence group, things get out of control.  Ironically, her abstinent boyfriend rapes her in a dark (wet, ragged) cave (get the symbolism?), and when her toothed vagina severs his penis, Tobey and Dawn are equally terrified.  After reading about vagina dentata online she seeks the opinion of a gynecologist whose exam turns into molestation, causing him his fingers.  Later on, when she turns to another male for comfort, she is drugged and seduced.  Dawn is surprised when they are able to successfully have sex, but when she discovers mid-coitus the next day that it has all been a bet, she chomps down for the third time.  At this point, Dawn is beginning to understand how to control her power.

The dangers of female sexuality trope, however, has been present long before this point in the movie.  Dawn’s immersion in the abstinence group leads her to avoid even PG-13 movies for fear of “heavy make-out.”  She is overcome by fear and guilt when she even imagines masturbation, and cannot bring herself to look at her own genitalia.  Although her public school health class covers the penis, the textbook itself is censored with a giant (toothed-circle) sticker over the vulva due to concerns about the supposed graphic nature of the female anatomy, or “natural female modesty” as Dawn explains it.

Once Dawn comes to terms with her mutation and has learned to control it, she seeks revenge against Brad, whom she blames for the death of her mother (for whom he neglected to call an ambulance for after an accident at home because he was too busy banging away on his “bitch”).  She seduces Brad, chomps, and when he sics his big nasty rottweiler on her he is betrayed by the dog, who eats his… you know, and spits out the Prince Albert.  Dawn leaves him to bleed to death and hitchhikes her way out of town.  When the creepy old man who gave her the ride locks her in and insinuates that he requires a sexual favor to release her, Dawn gives a seductive smile to the camera and we are supposed to believe that she and her newfound power either live happily ever after or wreak havoc on the men of the world.

But do you catch the problem with the perception of Dawn’s teeth as empowering?    Yes, as a defense mechanism they are relatively effective, but in order to use her teeth as a weapon against sexual assault, she must allow herself to be penetrated.  This isn’t a power that you use to do good in the world, it’s not a power that can be easily used to fight evil.  Just as women are so often nothing more than their virginity, Dawn is still nothing more than what’s under her skirt.

Teeth was certainly an interesting film, and gave me plenty to think about.  It was generally less stomach churning than I expected, with the exception of the deep-seated misogyny and abuse by Brad, but not recommended for the faint of heart.  Again, this was a film that played with stereotypes and horror tropes in new ways, but I wouldn’t classify Dawn’s ending as victorious or empowered.  For other perspectives on the film, check out these two interesting reviews.

I can remember watching The Craft at sleepovers during 8th and 9th grade, collecting old books on witchcraft (always history books and never spellbooks, much to my adolescent disappointment), and playing with tarot cards and Ouija boards by candlelight.  I’m reminded of Willow’s mom (Buffy shoutouts, yo) brushing off her witchcraft as an “adolescent phase.”  In a lot of ways, I think it fits – the search for empowerment, female power, and sisterhood are all common components of the teen girl experience.

The Craft exemplifies all of these themes, as well as addressing other teen (and generally human) issues such as slut shaming, racism, beauty ideals, domestic violence, and sexual assault.

When Sarah and her father relocate to a new town, she is taken in by three aspiring witches as their fourth – completing the circle and representing all the elements.  While her friends, Nancy, Bonnie and Rochelle, work diligently at their craft, magic comes naturally to Sarah and she is able to bring to fruition the spells that they have been trying to complete.  However, things begin to turn bad, and when Sarah tries to leave the group she is harassed, until she demonstrates her superior power, scaring the other girls off and returning to a seemingly peaceful life.

Just minutes into the film, the high school slut shaming begins.  Jock hunk Chris and his two dumb lackeys are quick to torment the original three “bitches of Eastwick,” and quick to objectify and attempt to get with Sarah.  Chris warns Sarah to avoid the girls, as Nancy is a raging slut, and when he is denied sex by Sarah after their first date he spreads rumors about what a terrible lay she was.  He loudly tells her he’s just not interested and that she’s “pathetic” when she tries to confront him.  For better or worse, this isn’t the end of Chris and Sarah (or Chris and Nancy for that matter), but we’ll get back to that later.

When the four witches each cast their dream spells, we gain a great deal of insight into each of their most personal wounds.  For Rochelle, it’s the patience to deal with and protection from a racist classmate, who just doesn’t like “negroids,” what with their “nappy hairs” that she has trouble discerning from pubic hairs in her brush.  For Bonnie, it’s overcoming her insecurities about the burn scars that cover her back and arms.  After hiding behind layers of conservative clothes and her long hair, Bonnie discovers the joy of spaghetti strap tank tops when the spell works (ah, 90s fashion).  For Nancy, it is invoking all the power of Manon in order to escape her “white trash” life.  Nancy’s powers manifest in a Carrie-like way, blowing out the power in her trailer when her stepdad abuses her mother, inducing a heart attack and bringing Nancy and her mother a fortune in life insurance.  And for Sarah, it is learning to love herself as she copes with the guilt she carries regarding her mother’s death in childbirth and continuing her recovery from a suicide attempt prior to her move, which was driven by the need to escape terrible hallucinations of insects and snakes.  But, because it’s a teen flick and Sarah is the main character, there is also a love spell involving the desire for Chris’s attention (teen girls can be gluttons for punishment).

When Sarah’s spell works, Chris doesn’t just fall for her, he becomes obsessive and when she relents and goes on a date with him, he becomes overly physically affectionate and attempts to rape her.  She gets away and runs to her friends for comfort.  Nancy, who has an obsession with Chris of her own (likely due to being used and dumped, as seems to be Chris’s M/O) seeks revenge against Chris by seducing him using a glamour spell that makes him think she’s Sarah.  It’s unclear whether this “revenge” is for Sarah or Nancy herself, but when the real Sarah arrives mid-coitus and breaks the glamour, Nancy really lets Chris have it.  In another of her Carrie-esque rages, Nancy sends Chris out an upstairs window to his demise, screaming “the only way you know how to treat women is by treating them like whores.”

Is The Craft a goth Clueless, a 90s Mean Girls?  Is it a story of female empowerment, vengeance, hormones, friendship?  Whatever it is, The Craft is a teen girl classic in my opinion, and a fun Halloween flick, especially for those of us who had a “dark and scary” adolescent phase.

If Carrie is a story about the horrors of adolescence, Misery is a story of the horrors of middle age.

When romance author Paul Sheldon is in a terrible car accident, his life is forever changed by an act of (bad) fortune as Annie Wilkes pulls him from the vehicle.  A former nurse, Annie sets Paul’s broken bones, medicates his pain, and shelters him in her own home, claiming that the phone lines are down and she couldn’t get him to a hospital.  Soon Paul realizes that Annie, his #1 fan, is much more than he bargained for – she keeps him locked in his room, heavily medicated, and prohibits him from contacting anyone to let them know he’s alive.  Annie forces Paul to rewrite his last novel, which was not to her liking, and as she fetches supplies he explores her home, learning about her treacherous history as a nurse and searching for an escape.  Paul must constantly be on the lookout for any opportunity to escape, and tread carefully so as not to tip off (or set off) Annie.

The film reverses the roles of typical hostage films, plays with the caretaker role women are so often expected to fulfill, and gives us a deeper glance at Stephen King’s Freudian complex with mothers. 

Annie is a new type of psycho killer – she’s a loving, motherly, sweet nurse at first glance, ever the caretaker, always looking to make Paul more comfortable in any way she can.  Annie truly does love Paul, and wishes for nothing more than to keep him all to herself.  She is Paul’s savior, pulling him from his wrecked car in the blizzard and resuscitating him with CPR, and initially seems to help Paul towards recovery.  When it becomes clear that Paul’s health will mean his escape, Annie begins to sabotage him, over medicating him and eventually (in that infamous scene) breaking his ankles.  Annie is part spurned lover, part overbearing mother, refusing to let her patient heal and move on with his life.

Once again, Stephen King’s overbearing caretaker role is full force.  Like Mrs. White, Annie is a very conservative individual – she abhors vulgarity, using cutesy phrases like “cock-a-doody” and “oogie” rather than profanities and scolding anyone who does otherwise.  She will do anything to keep Paul in her home, sheltered from the rest of the world, just as Mrs. White does with Carrie.  When she doesn’t get her way, or her charge doesn’t comply with her desires, she becomes violent, using tortuous and physical punishments to bring Paul into line (again, like Mrs. White and Carrie).  Although it the line between romantic and maternal love for Paul is unclear at times, Annie’s obsessive protection of Paul (paired with Mrs. White’s obsessive protection of Carrie) makes me wonder how Stephen King really views the roles of women, particularly in a caretaking context.  Perhaps this is what makes these films so frightening – they take an “ideal” female trait to a disturbing extreme.

Although she is clearly insane, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Annie’s desperation, loneliness, and fantasy of a fairy tale ending of her own.  Annie lives vicariously through Misery, needing Misery’s story to continue: grieving her losses, reveling in her romance, and fearing her ultimate demise.  Clearly in watching the film the viewer pulls for Paul’s escape, willing Annie to set him free, but in the climactic wrestling match at the end it still feels uncomfortable to watch Kathy Bates beaten by James Caan, even if she did smash his ankles with a sledgehammer. 

Maybe Misery is like Carrie as well in its ultimate tragedy.  Both Paul and Annie are helpless – Paul is physically incapacitated and unable to escape and Annie is unable to develop any meaningful, true relationships.  Her desire to be needed is so great that she drives her patients into hatred.  Okay, so maybe Paul has it a little worse, but each of these characters has something the other needs: Annie holds Paul’s freedom, but Paul holds his stories, the only thing that bring Annie’s life meaning.  If nothing else, Misery is a different kind of horror film, and I suspect that there are more themes lying beneath the surface of this one.

Plus Kathy Bates rules.

Carrie is a classic horror-meets-coming-of-age flick, and it incorporates a wide range of themes, from menstruation to bullying to domestic violence to religiosity.  Stephen King has fallen from favor over the years, but a number of his works have stood the test of time.  Carrie is one of those gems.

Of the films I’ve watched for our Halloween Movie Marathon, Carrie has been the most frightening, and also the most deeply tragic.

Carrie is the story of a high school senior (Carrie White) who is outcast by her peers largely as a result of her strict religious upbringing.  Her mother makes the rounds to visit the parents of her classmates in an attempt to convert them, and when Carrie has her first period (a traumatic locker room experience) her mother punishes her for the sin she has committed.  Taken under the wing of her gym teacher, Miss Collins and asked to prom as an act of charity, things momentarily look up for the young woman until a terrible prank at the prom (dumping pigs blood on her after she “won” prom queen – surely another jab at the locker room incident) unleashes Carrie’s telekinetic rage on the community.

Even in this brief synopsis we can glimpse the following themes: the dangers of female sexuality and sexual development, domestic violence, questions about charity and outreach, and religiosity. 

The danger of female sexuality, as in many “classic” horror films, is a primary theme in Carrie.  Her telekinetic powers first manifest, as far as we know, with her menarche.  Knowing nothing about her sexual anatomy, Carrie (Sissy Spacek) believes she is dying and has a breakdown in the locker room.  Her classmates are less than sympathetic, tossing tampons and pads at her while chanting “plug it up!”  When Carrie tells her mother what happened she is punished, forced to repent for her sins, beat, and dragged into a closet to pray.  This is only our first glimpse of her mother’s radical religiosity, as well as loathing of female sexuality and her daughter, whom she refers to as a result of sin.  Her mother refers to her breasts as “dirty pillows” and is outraged at the idea of Carrie going to prom with a date.  Anything to do with sexual development or sexuality is clearly forbidden in the household.

Carrie’s mother is frequently physically and constantly emotionally abusive to her daughter.  Carrie is beaten often as punishment for her “sins,” but after the manifestation of her powers Carrie finally defends herself.  Towards the end of the film we discover that Carrie’s father, who is absent in the film, was both physically and likely sexually abusive to her mother, as well as alcohol dependent.  Beyond the white family, there is a great deal of mutual verbal abuse in the relationship between queen bee Chris and her boyfriend Billy (John Travolta), as well as physical abuse from Billy to Chris.  With the exception of Sue and Tommy, there is nary a healthy relationship to be seen.

Sue seems to be the only student in the locker room to take mercy on Carrie, and is driven to charitably donate her boyfriend, Tommy, to Carrie for the prom.  Carrie liked Tommy’s poem in English class, but is of course overwhelmed by his invitation to take her to prom (and with a mother like hers, who wouldn’t be).  Eventually Carrie relents and agreed to go with Tommy to get him off her front porch before her mother sees him.  Although her agreement was reluctant, Carrie seems to enjoy herself at the prom, and Tommy’s gestures seem genuine – he honestly wants to show her a good time.  However, as with Miss Collins, Sue and Tommy’s good intentions may be more damaging to Carrie than they could have imagined.  When Miss Collins punishes Carrie’s gym classmates, alpha female Chris is barred from the prom, sending her on a mission for revenge.  Likewise, Sue and Tommy’s attempt at kindness towards Carrie put her right in Chris’s crosshairs on prom night.  Even after the story is over, Sue dreams about visiting Carrie’s grave and as she places flowers for the deceased Carrie’s bloody hand reaches out menacingly and grabs her wrist.

After Carrie’s public humiliation and destructive rage at the prom, she returns home to wash up and seek comfort from her mother.  However, her mother is lying in wait for her with a butcher’s knife, screaming about how Carrie has been taken over by the devil and was conceived in sin.  She stabs her daughter in the back, but before she can finish her off Carrie defends herself, sending an array of kitchen utensils at her mother, symbolically crucifying her.  Mrs. White demonstrated an obsession with physically punishment throughout the film, and this seems like a fitting end for her.  In fact, the scene of her death is filled with stereotypical “orgasmic” moaning, but in this case it might be authentic.  Carrie’s mother’s constant need for punishment and suffering is ultimately fulfilled in her death, whereby she finally pays for her own sin of bringing Carrie into the world.

Throughout the film red is a significant color.  It’s likely no coincidence that Carrie’s last name is White – representing purity and innocence.  Carrie is pure and naive until marred by blood.  From the moment in the shower on, her life is different.  She is fearful of her peers, suspicious of the motives of those around her, and unable to trust even her own mother.  As the movie progresses, more and more red items or red lighting take the screen: Carrie’s hair is strawberry blonde, her mother rages about her “red” dress for the prom despite it’s pale pink hue (here is another example of Mrs. White’s extreme purity), the lights at the prom are red (especially after Carrie’s rage), the blood that’s dumped is (obviously) red, the young woman in the crowd who not only did the dirty deed of rigging the prom election but leads the laughter at Carrie’s expense wears a red baseball cap (even with her ballgown), and the car in which Chris and Billy attempt to make their getaway and run down Carrie (only to be rolled and blown up) is red.

Periods can be a pain, but who knew menstruation could be so destructive?  Perhaps this is the result of a male interpretation of female coming-of-age.  Or perhaps its just an interesting plot device for one of the most resilient horror films of all time.  You be the judge.