Update: Whoops! I originally posted that Raya Green was played by Vanessa Oryema. I was wrong - she’s played by Rutina Wesley. Sorry!

Ok, I’ll admit it, I kind of have a teen dance movie problem. One of my favourite movies of last year was Stomp the Yard (I will make an honest case for why I truly believe it is a passionate appeal for gender and racial equality! Also it is full of hot babes).

But while I understand why some might not quite agree that Stick It is among one of the most rousing and anti-establishment pieces of cinema of the early ‘00s, with ZERO guilty pleasure quotient I highly, heartily recommend How She Move.

In a word, what distinguishes How She Move from all the other teen dance movies that I hold dear to my heart, is how Real it is. And Realness is pretty unusual for a genre that can rarely hold itself back when it comes to fulfilling stereotypes about poor neighbourhoods, teenagers, men and women and physically impossible dance sequences.

Both the female and male characters span a broad spectrum of personalities, instead of falling into socially sanctioned roles of what it means to be a man or a woman. Or when they do fall into those roles, the motivations and reasons for why they choose to follow that path is clear - demonstrating (intentionally or not) that gender is learned rather than biological. That’s a pretty hefty topic for a movie featuring Keyshia Cole in a cameo.

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The Guerrilla Girls take on the problems of Hollywood. (gurerrillagirls.com)

A few weeks ago, filmmaker Erin Laing sent me an e-mail about the lack of attention female directors have been getting by mainstream bloggers. What pissed her off, specifically, was Filmshowing’s list Why 2008 Will be an Awesome Year for Movies. Fifty-four films, and not a one made by a woman. (You can read Erin’s own blog about the list here).

Other most-anticipated lists are not very different. Slash Film’s list of 55 must-see films does include one woman: Mira Nair’s film Shantaram, set for release this fall. At least The Times’ list of 50 biggest movies of 2008 includes a whopping three pictures: Persepolis, 27 Dresses and Mamma Mia!)

Clearly, the criteria used to make these lists are, well, pretty subjective. (I know I can’t wait until the April release of Repo! The Genetic Opera!, a paranoid apocalypic musical starring Paris Hilton [no, not really].)

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I’m a lucky guy. As part of my job this week I was creating a workshop for teens about images of masculinity in the media. Someone I know from the school board asked me if I’d seen Byron Hurt’s documentary, “Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes” because they now had a copy if I wanted to check it out. Well…I’ve been wanting to see this film since I first heard about it a couple of years ago.

If you have any interest in masculinity, music, hip hop, life as we know it, you should see this film. I was blown away.
Byron Hurt has been educating around gender and masculinity for years but was always sticking up for hip hop music because he loved it so much. At some point he started to feel like a hypocrite for speaking out against sexism but still listening to and supporting artists who spout hateful lyrics. He decided to make this film to explore issues of masculinity, homophobia, violence, and sexism in the musical genre he loves most.

With amazing access to hip hops biggest music producers and some of its biggests stars, as well as academics and activists he tackles these issues head on without being preachy or self-righteous. I was nervous that this film might support, what I see as, racist attacks against hip hop but Hurt addresses this and clearly shows how much of the messaging in music is driven by the industry and money rather than black American culture.

In a society where sexism is almost never addressed in the mainstream, and even more rarely examined in relation to homophobia and race, this film is a must-see and a must-share.

If you haven’t yet read Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis books, you now have the chance to see it on the big screen. The two graphic novels detail her life growing up in Iran during the Islamic revolution as well as her schooldays in Vienna at a French lycée. The film was produced in France (Satrapi’s adopted country) and has English subtitles.

In Persepolis the film, nothing from the original books is lost. The stark black and white images are cleverly reproduced on the big screen. The whole film is hand-drawn, not computer generated, and you can tell.

I would say that the film enriches the books. And music, which plays a big part in Marjane’s youth, brings depth to the story. Watching prepubescent Marjane listen to black market heavy metal tapes produces a moment of cognitive dissonance that is simply priceless! Fluid movement boosts the emotional meanings of Satrapi’s images. The scenes where she floats towards God and Karl Marx to discuss her dreams and disappointments are particularly moving, in both senses of the word. When her father attempts to right her formal education about the Shah, Satrapi animates the historical leaders of his tale as mechanical marionettes, giving visual representation to the idea of “puppet dictator”.

But really, as I’m not an artist and I know nothing about how animation is achieved, I really can’t debate the technology of the film. All I know is that it looks and feels genuine. But as a feminist, I CAN debate how the film represents women. (Take that, all you family members and friends who wonder what skills my women’s studies degree has wrought upon the world!!!)
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Previously, on the Shameless blog: Judd Apatow’s keeping mum on abortion. At the time I wrote that post, Juno hadn’t yet arrived in theatres, though if you were lucky you could’ve caught it at the Toronto International Film Festival or at one of many test screenings across North America. Since then the movie has raked in decent box office and a whole lot of accolades; Roger Ebert named Juno his favourite movie of 2007, and whether or not you agree with Ebert’s reviews, it’s a pretty hefty bit of praise.

Now that I’ve seen the movie twice (including just now, which is my excuse for why this Film Friday’s going up on Saturday), it seems like a good time to come back to Juno and see how it measures up. Let’s get that abortion issue out of the way first, since I brought it up so many months ago: Juno is not a movie about abortion, and whether you appreciate the movie’s treatment of abortion as a possible choice for a pregnant teenaged girl will probably depend on whether you want it to be a movie about abortion or if you’re willing to let Juno stand on its own merits.

(Quick note: the post is spoiler-free, but the comments aren’t!)

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Is lecherous trash more or less excusable when it comes wrapped in witty dialogue? I saw Charlie Wilson’s War last week, and I laughed and enjoyed myself plenty. But in this “literate, wryly sophisticated parable of American politics” about one Texan congressman’s campaign to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, nearly every shot begins with an extreme close-up on cleavage or tightly-clad ass.

And let’s talk about characters. The men of this movie are politicians, spies, weapons experts, freedom fighters, and chess masters. They are powerful and witty – dashing and arrogant one moment, charming and self-deprecating the next. The women are anonymous breasts in a hot tub, strippers, Playboy models, and a team of aides referred to as “jailbait.” Julia Roberts’ rich heiress pursues her political goals by manipulating and sleeping with powerful men, and is out-of-touch and reckless when she speaks on her own. All women have to offer the world is sex.

I know that this is a satire, a cartoon version of Washington. Wilson sees arming the mujahideen as a noble, uncomplicated goal, but the audience understands that the story is more ambiguous. Wilson sees the women around him as shiny objects, and perhaps the audience is expected to understand that he is a slimy creep. But the ridiculous camera work continues whether Wilson is in the scene or not.

I also understand that some of this is realistic – powerful figures in Washington tend to be male, and there’s no point airbrushing their culture in an already unflattering film. But Aaron Sorkin has done so much better in the past. On The West Wing, most of the women are secretaries, but Sorkin didn’t resort to objectification, or even neglect – in fact, I think he really sunk his teeth into the challenges faced by women in or near political power. Characters on The West Wing argue openly about sexism, and it’s some of the wittiest television ever made.

There’s no excuse for this nonsense.

The Shameless Team would like to wish you and yours a shameless holiday season. Thanks to everyone who supported us this year! As a season greeting, I’ve included one of my fave holiday movie moments. What’s yours?

I have a suspicion that everyone has a piece of pop culture they don’t want to look at too closely. Something you love so much and have derived such pleasure from that you just can’t face being analytical about it, in case it all comes apart on you. I mostly feel that way about childhood icons. She-Ra/He-Man, Thundercats (holy proselytizing batman!), Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, The Muppets.

So because I can’t do it, I’m going to invite your comments and insights on a short list of childhood holiday movies. I’m not assuming there are feminist faults to be found, but I’m interested in other people’s associations with these movies — positive or negative. Did the muppets eating a vegetarian Christmas dinner warm the bunny-loving cockles of your heart? Did Hermey the gay dentist elf make you more comfortable in your sexuality?

I preface this by saying that I’m a die-hard atheist (it’s my dream to be banned one day by the Halton Catholic school board). I watch these movies from the secular side of the holidays, so I won’t be pointing out any missing baby Jesuses.

* A Muppet Family Christmas *
Muppets in a truck driving up to the farm? Forget about it. You had me at “haul out the holly”. The icy patch? Kermit in a plaid vest? A fraggle rock tie-in?!

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Last night on The Hour, George had on Tricia Helfer, of model/Battlestar Galactica fame. She’s promoting a new movie, Walk All Over Me, in which she plays a professional dominatrix. While George and her had a chat about the challenges of playing a dominatrix (which she likened to playing a robot, like her BSG role,) it got me thinking about how Hollywood depicts the relationship between female dominants and submissives and how it deals with “kink” in general. Mainstream film and television has never been very good at depicting the BDSM community, pushing characters who participate into the fringes and only increasing the stigma that surround their personal and professional choices. I’m curious to see how Walk All Over Me, also starring LeeLee Sobieski, tackles the issue.

Admittedly, I’m facinated with how intimate power dynamics can completely contradict or emphasize one’s own personal political ideologies. Specifically; can a submissive be a feminist? Where does the dominatrix identity fall into feminist politics, if at all? Frankly, in writing this I found it difficult to find SM characters in film and television that weren’t caricatures, added only for laughs, or damaged victims needing to be saved.

For the interest of my analysis of some more “feminist” SM characterizations, I’ve picked one indie film’s personal life submissive and one mainstream television professional dominant.

The Submissive:

Only highlighting my fascination with the question of feminist ideology and kink, my list of favourite films includes Steven Shainberg’s Secretary, the 2002 indie black comedy starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader. (Notably, Shainberg also directed Fur, also worth a look if you’re interested in the idea of less than traditional attractions.) Based on a Mary Gaitskill short story, Secretary centres around (the completely charming) Lee Holloway, a young woman recently released from a mental hospital after being admitted for self-harm, who subsequently gets a job as a secretary for lawyer E. Edward Grey.

The relationship between Lee and her demanding boss quickly becomes sadomasochistic in nature, although not immediately sexual. (more inside…)