Gone Girl and "The Cool Girl"

There have been a lot of complaints that David Fincher's Gone Girl is a misogynistic film. Quite frankly, I understand that. After all, the film depicts its female lead as a mastermind who frames innocent men for rape, and one could even argue that the film suggests  all women are "fucking crazy bitches," to quote Ben Affleck's character Nick. In short, the character of Amy (Rosamund Pike) is manipulative, hysterical, and downright psychopathic.

However, I think that this surface-level analysis of the film doesn't fully capture its complicated commentary on gender politics. In fact, what makes Gone Girl so progressive and, from this humble female's perspective, so on point is the way that it completely shatters the male fantasy of The Cool Girl.

What, you might ask, is The Cool Girl? Well, to quote the original Gone Girl novel:

Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men — friends, coworkers, strangers — giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much — no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version — maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain.

While this rant is cut down to a few lines in the film version, the message is still clear. Amy had to put on this act of femininity and play the part of what men want in order to seduce Nick. And when he finally got to know the real her and Amy's act faded away, he cheated on her and planned to leave her. While this of course in no way justifies Amy's actions, every female can identify with her experiences. And thus, in a way, Amy is not just a femme fatale but a badass female hero who, through her scheming and framing of Nick, is saying a resounding "fuck you" to every man who gets bored of a woman because he only fell in love with his own idea of her.

As Gone Girl writer Gilian Flynn puts it, "I waited patiently - years - for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we'd say, Yeah, he's a Cool Guy.”

But that never happens. Instead, women continually are forced to embody the impossible double standard of the feminine, hot and sexy yet impossibly cool girl. The girl who never nags, never gets mad, and is impossibly "chill" and understanding at all times. The girl who caters to male perceptions of attractiveness but can still hang with the guys.

We see this Cool Girl image permeating pop culture. The Cool Girl is the beer-drinking, french fry eating, football-loving "one of the guys" Sabrina (Olivia Wilde) in The Change-Up, and she's the casual sex-having commitment-phobe Jamie (Mila Kunis) in Friends with Benefits. Even Jennifer Lawrence's lovable public persona is built around this false, manufactured idea of The Cool Girl--she loves to stuff her face full of Doritos and joke about her bodily functions and yet she's still sexy and fuckable... and everyone thinks, "Wow. She's not like most girls." And that misperception that she's somehow different than most girls (because most girls are so naggy and annoying, right?) is what makes her so fucking cool to men.

 Now, there is one other reason why I absolutely love Gone Girl. And it's the same reason most people have such a problem with it.

Amy is a psychopath. She's evil. She's cunning, manipulative, and devious. She's the kind of villain that is so scary, so cold, so ruthless, she will go down in movie history as one of the most infamous and chilling villains of all time. And she's a woman.

Let's face it. All of the cool villains in pop culture are male. Consider The Joker (Heath Ledger) in The Dark Knight or Kaiser Sosse (Kevin Spacey) in The Usual Suspects. The evil mastermind is always a man. In most films, women get to play the part of the damsel in distress or even the likeable protagonist, but when do women get these meaty, challenging roles where they play complex characters, psychopaths, sociopaths, or brilliant manipulators? When do women get to play superhero villains or serial killers? When does the big twist ending reveal that the woman was behind everything? Never.

Thus, I love Gone Girl because it's not even Ben Affleck's film. Of course, it's marketed as a Ben Affleck film, considering most people don't know the name Rosamund Pike. (And this is not meant as an insult to Ben's performance--he does a phenomenal job in the film.) But Gone Girl is impactful due to its big twist in which the audience realizes that Amy is actually an evil mastermind. And it's so surprising because women NEVER get these kinds of roles, so no one would ever expect it.

So, I love Gone Girl because, by the end of the film, everyone is talking about Rosamund Pike's performance. For once, a woman gets to steal the show. Finally, a female actress gets to play a twisted character. And that's ultimately what makes Gone Girl so special--Rosamund Pike's scene-stealing performance shows just how strong, devious, and powerful women can be.

Ultimately, Gone Girl is a brilliant film because it initially reinforces the idea of The Cool Girl. It suggests that Amy is the perfect housewife, and, as viewers, we all yearn to know what happened to this perfect woman and mourn her disappearance. Then, halfway through, Fincher turns this false idea of the Cool Girl on it's head--actually, he tells us, that woman never existed. Thus, the film is great because Amy gets to punish her own husband for only loving her as The Cool Girl as opposed to the real her. She gets to punish Desi (Neil Patrick Harris), too, for only loving the idea of her, but resenting her when she gains weight and is no longer sexually available to him--and for that, she slashes his throat.

Best of all, Amy is not even punished at the end of the film. Instead, she manipulates Nick into staying with her, and she will torture him for the rest of their marriage. On top of that, Nick is forced to live with the actual woman he married--not the Cool Girl he thought she was, but the real her. And it's beyond satisfying.

FEMINIST FILM/TV RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK: BEFORE SUNRISE, BEFORE SUNSET, BEFORE MIDNIGHT

Check out Richard Linklater's masterful Before Sunrise trilogy, which depicts the development of a relationship over time, as each of the films takes place over the course of a single day. Julie Delpy's character is one of the most nuanced, realistic, and strong female characters ever written, and the films do such a beautiful job depicting the highs and lows of falling in love, settling down, and growing old with your partner. 

My Social Bookmarking Soulmate

I recently stumbled upon my "social bookmarking soulmate"--that is, someone else researching and sharing articles related to women in film--on Diigo. Her name is Jenni Young.

I LOVE YOU, JENNI!

I know it might sound crazy, but I feel like Jenni and I are already friends. When trying to find other "social bookmakers" who also research women in film like I do, I naively thought it would be easy to find someone like-minded on Reddit. Boy, was I wrong. Shockingly, any search I made on Reddit with the tags "feminism" and "film" mostly lead to Men's Rights Activists posting disturbing and profoundly upsetting views regarding a woman's place in mainstream film or even pornography. While there were certainly feminists standing up to these bigots,  those feminists seemed more involved in general "/feminism" subreddits, and didn't cross over into the film subreddits much at all. Conversely, most of the posts in the film-related posts on the film subreddit had little to do with feminism.

All of this frantic searching for a like-minded person online really illustrates just how uncommon it is to find other people who are truly invested in studying and promoting progressive changes in terms of women's roles in the film industry. It's easy to get caught up in the liberal, educated bubble of my film school and think that everyone cares about or is even aware of these issues, but the truth is that most people don't seem to care.

On to Jenni, though...

I was SO relieved when I finally stumbled upon Jenni's Diigo profile and realized there is another person out there interested in sharing articles about women in film! Even better, her Diigo profile actually exposed me to some incredible articles I would never have discovered otherwise.

First, and perhaps most importantly, she shared a Washington Post article dissecting violence against women in movies that could actually work as a source in a paper I am currently writing about violence against women in Hitchcock's films. This provocative article essentially argues that recent films A Walk Among the Tombstones and The Equalizer use horrific violence against women as an excuse for their male protagonists to go on a quest for revenge; thus, the film employs this narrative device so that filmmakers can indulge in their most "luridly toxic fantasies" while pretending to abhor them. The article wonderfully breaks down the "damsel in distress" trope in a fresh and thought-provoking manner, providing me with some new food for thought on films that claim to be against violence against women but still allow the filmmaker and audience to take pleasure in watching it...

Secondly, she posted another Washington Post article that sheds new light on the Bechdel Test which I introduced a few weeks ago. To summarize, the article reports findings that the median gross for films that passed the Bechdel test was $2.68 for every dollar spent, whereas films that failed made only $2.45 for every dollar spent. Thus, the article adds a whole new dimension to the discussion on the Bechdel Test, now that there is seemingly no financial reason for Hollywood to be making films that are so exclusive towards women. In fact, recent hits like Gravity, Divergent, Lucy, and The Hunger Games illustrate that female-driven blockbusters tend to dominate at the box office. So, why isn't there a standalone female superhero movie yet? Why was only one summer blockbuster this year starring a female lead? We now know that money is not the answer behind these tough questions.

Finally, she shared a recent New York Times article interviewing the fabulous actress Viola Davis. This fascinating piece raises very interesting food for thought on how race intersects with the issues of gender I have been exploring. In particular, Viola Davis comments on how it is especially hard for her to find challenging, complex roles where she can play flawed, well-rounded women as a black woman over the age of 40. Considering women are already cast in mainstream Hollywood films as sexual objects/love interests, most female stars booking big roles are white, skinny 20somethings. Thus, Viola brings up an interesting part that it is even MORE difficult as a woman of color to play complex roles. As Viola puts it, "I'll never get cast as Bradley Cooper's love interest." Until her Oscar nominations, mot of her roles were as a maid, a "mammy," or a nameless cop/government employee. The interview is a fascinating read in which Viola very eloquently voices her concerns about the lack of compelling roles for black women, which adds an entirely new layer to the discourse on women in film.

Overall, it was a great experience searching for (and finding!) my social bookmarking soulmate, and I was able to discover some wonderful articles along the way. (Also: Jenni's Diigo profile has an amazing speech by Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy, on female equality you should check out, a great article on why there hasn't been a female superhero movie yet, and so many more gems...) I strongly encourage anyone passionate about women in film to connect with like-minded individuals who can help expand our knowledge of this imporant issue.

And now, drumroll...

FEMINIST MOVIE/TV RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK: TRANSPARENT

Transparent is Amazon's hot new critically acclaimed show (available to those with Amazon Prime) about Laura Pfefferman, a father who comes out to her children about her decision to start transitioning from being a male to a female. It's a touching, unique, hilarious, and very emotionally honest show about how this dysfunctional family copes with such a shocking revelation. Most importantly, Gaby Hoffmann and Amy Landecker are absolutely extraordinary in their roles as Laura's two somewhat flawed and self-centered but loveable daughters. This show has some of the best, most complex roles for women I have ever come across and it offers such a realistic, nuanced portrait of a family living in modern day L.A. Plus, it shines a much-needed light on the struggles transgendered women face, and Jeffrey Tambor is a revelation in the lead role. Check it out!

Sexism and the MPAA

The MPAA is a dated, arguably Medieval organization that needs to be disbanded. While its intention is to keep parents informed of adult content in movies, it actually censors films and unfairly wields the power to determine a film's box office success. If a film receives an NC17 rating, most theaters will refuse to play it, and the film cannot receive enough mainstream attention to even compete for an Oscar. Plus, at the few art house theaters that will play the film, moviegoers under the age of 17 cannot be admitted (even if they are accompanied by an adult), and many adult moviegoers will not see the film due to the taboo associated with an NC17 rating, thus ensuring that the film will flop at the box office. And the worst part? The standards used to determine a film's rating are arbitrary and unfair. 

In particular, the criteria behind the MPAA's ratings is abhorrently sexist. While the MPAA is incredibly lenient when it comes to violence and gore--or even the sexualized torture of women--any depiction of female sexuality is almost guaranteed to get slapped with the kiss of death: an NC17 rating.

Here are just a few of the egregious MPAA ratings controversies of late:

1. In 2010, Blue Valentine was initially slapped with an NC17 rating because it depicted a male character (Ryan Gosling) performing oral sex on a female (Michelle Williams). Despite the fact that there was no nudity during this brief one-minute scene, the MPAA argued that the film's "explicit content... makes viewers uncomfortable," and thus claimed that the film was deserving of its NC17 rating. Fortunately, intimidating studio head Harvey Weinstein appealed the rating, and after a lengthy, highly-publicized battle with the MPAA, the rating was lowered to an R. It's bizarre and unfortunate that the MPAA seems so afraid of females being the sole recipient of pleasure during sex, since countless films depicting females perform oral sex on males receive R ratings without question.

2. In 2013, indie flick The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman also received an NC17 rating due to a scene in which a male (Shia LaBeouf) performs oral sex on a female (Evan Rachel Wood). Unfortunately, due to the film's low budget, the filmmakers could not appeal the decision, and the director ultimately had to cut the oral sex scene to receive an R rating, although scenes of gruesome, explicit violence got to remain intact. This controversy is especially upsetting because it highlights the way independent filmmakers are the real victims when it comes to the MPAA. As explored in the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, the MPAA is significantly more lenient when rating studio films, and the major film studios can afford to appeal any undesirable ratings, while indie filmmakers without Harvey Weinstein crusading on their behalf are forced to censor their films to please the narrow-minded MPAA.

At least Evan Rachel Wood took to Twitter to tell the MPAA what she really thought:

3. Perhaps most appallingly, masterpiece and recent Palme D'Or (for those who don't know, that's first prize at the Cannes Film Festival and arguably the most prestigious filmmaking award in the world) winner Blue is the Warmest Color was banned in Idaho in part due to the MPAA. It's no surprise that the film received an NC17 rating due to its lengthy scene depicting passionate lesbian sex between its two female leads. (I could probably go on a 20 page rant about the MPAA's homophobia as well, but that's for another blog.) Despite the fact that the film is one of the most moving and honest portraits of growing up and young love, it could not be shown in Iowa's only art house theater, the Flicks Theater, due to its MPAA rating. Apparently, because Flicks serves alcohol, Blue is the Warmest Color was banned since there is a law in Iowa that forbids theaters with an alcohol license to show NC17 or Not Rated films featuring "acts or simulated acts of sexual intercourse, masturbation, sodomy, bestiality, oral copulation, flagellation or any sexual acts which are prohibited by law" and "any person being touched, caressed or fondled on the breast, buttocks, anus or genitals." Due to outdated laws regarding the U.S.'s fear of sex, an entire state of people was deprived of the best art house film of the year, but they can see Transformers blow each other up any night of the week.

Now, let's compare these three NC17 films to recent R-rated films.

I adore Martin Scorsese, and The Wolf of Wall Street was one of my favorites films of last year. However, I think its undeniable that sexism led to Wolf receiving an R rating while Blue is the Warmest Color, a tender, gentler, and realistic portrait of female sexuality, was slapped with an NC17. Wolf features numerous explicit sexual acts, including Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) actually blowing cocaine into a stripper's ass! The film also depicts prostitutes, gang bangs, and full frontal nudity throughout, but the sex in the film always exists as a means to pleasure male characters. To Jordan Belfort and the other male investment bankers in the film, sex is not about pleasuring women but about using, objectifying, and demeaning them. And Wolf gets an R rating.

I also think the U.S.'s unhealthy obsession with and desensitization to violence is concerning. Violent slasher films where victims are tortured and butchered to death like Scream and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre easily skate by with R ratings and films meant to titillate audiences by sexualizing the torture of women like Hostel are rated R as well. In Hostel, all of the thrills are derived from watching naked, gagged women get tied up, raped, and tortured.

I think Ryan Gosling said it best when discussing the Blue Valentine NC17 scandal:

Gosling rants, "How is it possible that these movies that torture women in a sexual context can have an R rating but a husband and wife making love is inappropriate?" I think we should all be asking ourselves that very question.

FEMINIST FILM/TV RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK: OBVIOUS CHILD

Obvious Child is a moving and hilarious portrayal of a single woman working as a stand-up comedian in New York whose one-night stand leads to an accidental pregnancy. The film is progressive due to the fact that it never questions her decision to get an abortion and it offers an insightful and funny examination of contemporary dating and hookup culture. It's a refreshing romantic comedy that proves the genre is still alive and can challenge or surprise us.