A Little Help From Manohla Dargis on What Women Want

"Like many women, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to move through the world. How to walk with confidence but not too much swing. How to stand with my shoulders back without sticking out my chest. How to smile, like a nice girl. How to cross my legs, like a lady. How to speak up, within reason. How to take up space but not too much. Yet I love watching women who take up space, who swagger and sometimes wildly crash."

That quote is the first paragraph of a recent article by New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis and it is interesting in the context of writing fiction. How should women be depicted (much, of course, depends upon the era in which a story is set) and what do they want?

In a nutshell, Dargis wants to see women in action and the more extreme, the better. She's an advocate of what one might call "the alpha-female." As is the case with respect to the proverbial alpha-male -- a stock character of popular fiction -- the alpha-female is a person who exerts control over other people and her environment. She makes things happen and if people get in her way, they better have more physical clout than she has.

Among others, Dargis points to actress Charlize Theron who she praises for kicking butt "again and again" in "Atomic Blonde," an action thriller released in 2017, and who now stars in "The Old Guard," described by Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday as "a violent, fantastical action thriller about a group of supernatural mercenaries."

"The Old Guard" has recently received a lot of critical attention because it is directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and as such, is said to be the first graphic, or comic book-based, film directed by a black woman.

The secret power of the supernatural mercenaries is that they are impossible to kill -- sort of like kick-boxing cockroaches, one suspects.

One of things Dargis said she liked to watch on YouTube were stunt videos from action films centered on women.

"Only recently did I grasp that the behind-the-scenes videos I was looking at were showing women kicking and punching their way to different kinds of female representation," she said.

This is in sharp contrast to women of the relatively recent past.

"In the films I saw growing up in the 1970s, including those from the classical era, women didn’t register as especially physical unless they were swimming, riding a horse or dancing, like Eleanor Powell and Ginger Rogers, whose athleticism was bound up with the feminine ideals of their era. Women in movies — the stars, at any rate, the desirable and desiring ones — were elegant, small, tidy and contained, even at their curviest," Dargis said.

"And then," she continued, "there was Shelley Winters, whose heroic swim in the 1972 disaster flick 'The Poseidon Adventure' destroyed me. Her matronly Belle, a former competitive swimmer, takes the plunge to save the leading man. She succeeds but dies."

We're all familiar with the objectification of women -- the male gaze. But it seems women can objectify women as well.

Here's Dargis again:

"There’s a potent feminist critique that women have long been made to be looked at for male pleasure in movies and elsewhere. But women also look, and the female gaze always complicates that dynamic. Winters’s big, powerful, fish-pale thighs complicated it for me."

There's more on that theme (the female gaze) in the article by Dargis plus and a lot more on how violence -- as brutal as possible -- becomes women. Who needs men at all, one begins to wonder, except perhaps as a punching bag when women aren't slugging it out with each other?

But back to "The Old Guard" and it's director.

In the above-referenced Washington Post article by Ann Hornaday, Prince Bythewood is quoted as that her identity as an African-American woman informed every decision she made, some of which involved making sure fight scenes were depicted from a different angle than the usual "white male gaze."

One scene in particular -- a fight between two women on a cargo plane -- was said to be particularly sensitive for the director.

"I didn't want anyone to look at that and say, 'That's a sexy cat fight' [as white, but not males of other races, apparently would]," Prince-Bythewood was quoted as saying. "No, I want you to see two badass women going toe-to-toe, but also see their vulnerability within that. Because for me that's what badass is: that swagger, that strength, but also empathy and vulnerability."

Anyway -- all of the above is offered by way of providing a few clues to help those interested in coming  up with a contemporary answer to the age-old question: "what do woman want?"

What Happened to Newspapers?

What Happened to Newspapers?

As a former journalist, I get asked from time to time to explain what happened to newspapers and where journalism is headed.  In that context, a friend recently sent me a book by Joe Strupp called “Killing Journalism: How greed, laziness [and Donald Trump] are destroying news and how we can save it.”

Suffice to say that while the book contains interesting insights, the title is misleading. This sort of sensationalism is exactly what Strupp accuses all too many publications of doing: in fact, it is one of his major themes. Why do it? Because it sells, which brings me to one point readers need to keep in mind: the old Pogo adage of “we have met the enemy and he is us.”

"Juno," Abortion, Elena Ferrante, "Gina/Diane" Linkage

“I never worry about constructing a story that illustrates, demonstrates, spreads some conviction, even if it’s a conviction that counted and counts for me,” Elena Ferrante told an interviewer who had questioned whether her first novel, “The Days of Abandonment,” was a feminist work.

I bring up that quote, which can be found in Ferrante’s “Frantumaglia,” because Diablo Cody recently expressed what might be considered regrets over having written the film-script for the 2007 Oscar-winning movie “Juno.”  That film was about a 16-year-old girl who becomes pregnant and decides to have the baby, and give it up for adoption, as opposed to having an abortion.

“I don’t even know if I would have written a movie like ‘Juno’ if I had known the world was going to spiral into this hellish alternative reality that we now seem to be stuck in,” she said in an interview on the “Keep-It”podcast. The interview was picked up by the Washington Post, which expanded on it.

Cody was referring to strict anti-abortion legislation that was very recently passed by legislators in states such as Alabama, Georgia and Missouri. 

The author said that when she initially wrote “Juno,” she was just trying to come up with “a story that’s never been told.”   

"I wasn't thinking as an activist. I wasn't thinking politically at all," she said.

But now, because the film has been depicted as sending a strong pro-life message in a highly charged political climate, Cody said “I think I probably would have just told a different story in general.” That's as opposed to the idea of changing the film so as to have its young protagonist grappling with legislation that would block a woman's right to choose.

From a literary point of view (and film scripts are literature), that’s the wrong attitude, as per the Ferrante quote that begins this posting. Stories should stand on their own inner truths.  If they don’t, they aren’t literature, they are propaganda. 

This issue is of interest to me because when I was writing my second novella, “Gina/Diane,” a story about a woman who had a life-affecting botched abortion when she was 17, I sent drafts to various friends for comment.  A couple women told me they didn’t like the story because it could be viewed as supporting the anti-abortion movement. In their opinion, publishing a book like “Gina/Diane” was an almost traitorous act.

I see the novella as one woman’s story, and the attempt of one man to come to terms with what happened to her. It is not a tract for or against the general proposition of a  woman’s right to choose.

Color Prejudice Can Be As Strong as That Based on Race

When I started writing this blog four years ago, my first post was about a short story in the New Yorker  by Toni Morrison called "Sweetness," which was actually the first chapter of a since-published novel called "God Help the Child."  Over the years, it has become one of my most-read posts and you can find it here.

In a nutshell, the story was about a light-skinned African-American woman who experiences a profound sense of prejudice against her much darker infant daughter.

I mention this because there was a report the other day that the African nation of Rwanda is moving to ban sin-bleaching agents, such as mercury, deemed to be harmful.  Skin-bleaching is a billion dollar industry in predominantly black countries, the article noted.

Why is that?

"In Rwanda and other countries, people use cosmetics to bleach their skin because they feel that lighter skin is the ideal or indicates higher social status. Dark-skinned people do not necessarily see people like them in billboards, movies and advertisements, and dark-skinned celebrities sometimes grow more popular after bleaching their skin. This all makes it easier to believe that darker skin is of lesser value or is not considered as beautiful," the article said.

Those interested can read the New York Times story from which that quote is taken or watch a video on the topic that appeared in the Washington Post.

You Are What You Wear as Well as What You Read and Eat

 

Who are we? Or, if one is an author, who exactly is that character I am trying to create?

It's no secret that the attire people wear tends to define them. Think about what royalties and aristocracies wore in comparison to the typical attire of ordinary subjects or peasants -- and how a king could often easily disguise himself simply by exchanging his royal vestments for clothing worn by a commoner.

"Dress for success," used to be a slogan of the American apparel industry, aimed at urging consumers to think that their chances of getting a good job, or perhaps a promotion, depended as much on how they visually presented themselves as on anything else. There was, of course, some truth to it: we are all influenced by what we see and the values we associate with images.

Above left one sees a "new" Michele Obama, making her entrance at Brooklyn's large arena known as the Barclay Center. This was part of her on-going book tour -- a landslide success, by all accounts.

As explained by Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan, Ms Obama appeared, quite out of character it seemed, in a "shimmery yellow shirt dress with a pair of gold, holographic thigh-high boots." The boots, as per the middle photo, were from Balenciaga's 2018 runway show while the dress was shown by the fashion house for 2019.

What's the message here?  According to Givhan, Michele's outfit says the role of First Lady was but a chapter in her life.

"Obama's book tour is the equivalent of a rock concert, so she dressed like a rock star," the Washington Post critic said. "Whether the ensemble is flattering is beside the point."

When Michelle was in the White House, the public wanted "a picture of understandable elegance -- aspirational, but not beyond the average person's wildest dreams." In contrast, the ensemble shown above suggests wants to move on to something else -- "a celebrity, which carries greater value in the broader culture."

You are what you wear.  That's one way to build character. And, after all, Michelle Obama's book is entitled "Becoming."

Reed College and the Ongoing Culture Wars

Recently, I seem to be writing more about the fact that this is a country of two different narratives, and about the associated culture wars, than about fiction.

In brief, one narrative has it that as diversity increases, in large part due to continuing, significant, non-white immigration, the country is going to change significantly, and for the better as more voices are heard and new populations acquire power, money and command of culture.

The other narrative is that America is great because it is, in effect, the culmination of European culture that traces its values and intellectual notions to ancient Greece and Rome. Certain numbers of non-white, non-Europeans are welcome, but they should accept and adapt to the long-standing white culture and political power.

Obama's Wall Street Fee: I Wish It Were Fiction

I've taken a couple of whacks at Donald Trump in the course of writing this blog and now I'm going to have to take one at his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Obama's apparent decision to accept a fee of $400,000 from Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street investment banking and financial services firm, for making a speech at a healthcare conference this coming September is disgusting and disgraceful.

Will Advanced Robots Recreate Us As Works of Art?

As I have previously noted, one of the purposes of fiction is to look into the future and try to imagine what the world might be like if, say, terrorism reigns supreme or climate change overwhelms us.

Then there is the much-discussed topic of artificial intelligence and whether it might get out of control. The Washington Post carried an op-ed piece on that topic last month and I've written about it in earlier blog posts that readers can find here and here.

All of which brings me to a short poem in the Dec. 21 & 28 New Yorker by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky entitled "The Robots."

In it, Pinsky, imagines a world in which exceptionally advanced robots ("Their judgement in its pure accuracy will resemble grace ...")  reign supreme. Man is gone, but the robots can comprehend the nature of humans through the dust that remains of them "and recreate the best and the worst of us, as though in art."

It's an arresting image. Picture yourself framed and hanging in a museum for the edification of a bunch of robots which "when they choose to take material form they will resemble dragonflies, not machines."

Test Driving Novels, In This Case “Purity”

I enjoy reading short stories in The New Yorker and then commenting on them – if and when I think I have anything to say. But some New Yorker stories are not really stand-alone fiction. Rather, they are excerpts from forthcoming novels.

For instance, back in March, I wrote about “Sweetness,” a story by Toni Morrison that was taken from her novel “God Help the Child,”  published soon thereafter. In that case, I wasn’t focused on sampling the book, but rather on the story's take on racial prejudice. 

 

Jonathan Fanzen, often hailed as the latest Great American Novelist, recently published “Purity,” a sweeping, 563-page tale of personal angst, inter-personal strife and great events. Reviews have been generally positive, but clearly, this isn’t a book for everyone.