LITTLE WOMEN, THE 'MEN PROBLEM' AND SFR

There’s a lot to talk about in this week’s Oscar nominations, but one controversy, in particular, should make science fiction authors think twice. Because if Greta Gerwig’s film LITTLE WOMEN has a “men problem,” as Vanity Fair asserts and Constance Grady in Vox explains here, then SFR has one, too, for a lot of the same reasons.

 

LITTLE WOMEN: A uniquely feminine POV.

As Grady points out, this latest film adaptation of the beloved novel by Louisa May Alcott has a 95 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a 91 percent Metacritic score and earned $60 million at the box office even before garnering a Best Picture Oscar nomination and a Best Actress nomination for Saoirse Ronan, who plays aspiring-author-sister Jo, a role previously, and famously, taken on at different times by Katharine Hepburn and Wynona Ryder. Yet director Greta Gerwig herself was passed over for Best Director nominations not only by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but also by the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild and the Golden Globes. Indeed, all except the Oscars ignored the film as a whole. (The Academy gave LITTLE WOMEN six nominations in total.) Only the Writers Guild recognized Gerwig herself with a nomination for the screenplay.

The problem—the “men problem,” if you will—is that two-thirds of those 60 million bucks being spent to see this film were being spent by women. Guys, apparently, were outright refusing to see the movie, or were being dragged kicking and screaming to the theater by wives or girlfriends. And because men still dominate the film industry, not only in production, but also in marketing and, most especially in this case, in the awards voting process, no “girly” film like this was ever going to get the recognition it deserved.

Other films with women in the lead have attracted a male (or a mixed) audience. WONDER WOMAN comes to mind, a film after our own hearts, or MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. But as Grady so well explains, these are heroines who act like male action heroes. TERMINATOR’s Sarah Conner, ALIEN’s Ripley, every Marvel superheroine, all share these same masculine characteristics—physical strength and agility, stoic determination, a square-jawed lack of words. The only difference is they look better in tight clothes (or bustiers, or underwear, as the case may be).

Part of this is a function of "fanboy" culture, the result of the influence of comic books and video games, long the purview of teenage males, on the wider film world. The avatars in those types of media accentuate unrealistic female physical characteristics coupled with supernatural male abilities. 

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The male POV, despite all efforts to broaden it or open it, is still dominant. Girls are expected to read and relate to Huckleberry Finn, Call of the Wild, Red Badge of Courage, but boys are no longer expected to read and relate to Heidi, Black Beauty or Little Women, as they once were. 

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But Grady argues the problem runs deeper and further back, to the way we are taught to embrace or reject “masculine” and “feminine” ways of viewing the world. (And, even though I frame this discussion in stark binary terms, it shouldn’t go without saying that the real sexual world is NOT binary at all and any attempts to squeeze real life into that framework are doomed to failure.) The male POV, despite all efforts to broaden it or open it, is still dominant. Girls are expected to read and relate to Huckleberry Finn, Call of the Wild, Red Badge of Courage, but boys are no longer expected to read and relate to Heidi, Black Beauty or Little Women, as they once were. Perhaps this change was a result of mid-twentieth-century sexual stereotyping or maybe it was just plain laziness. But a book like Little Women, centered as it is on uniquely female interaction, has lost popularity, even though as modern and muscular a writer as Stephen King counts it as a seminal influence.

This “female-blindness” is a big problem for us in SFR, not only because men think because there is romance in our books, our books must be for “girls,” but also because some of us play into that stereotype by creating one-dimensional “kickass” heroines that are no more than Mel Gibson-in- leather-with-boobs. I admit I love my two most kickass heroines—undercover Rescue agent Rayna Carver (Fools Rush In, Interstellar Rescue Book 3) and FBI Special Agent Lana Matheson(Trouble in Mind, Interstellar Rescue Book 2)—but the heroines of my first novel, Asia Burdette (Unchained Memory, Interstellar Rescue Book 1), and my most recent one, Charlie McIntyre (Not Fade Away, Interstellar Rescue Book 4), are more nurturing, communicating types. And in all cases I try to make my heroines genuine full-featured women, with all the talents and flaws a real person would have.

Kickass heroine?

Nurturing heroine?

  I have always found that if I can get men to pick up my books, they really like them. They like my heroines (and my heroes), because—guess what? –the women in their lives are multifaceted, too.  Grady says this, too, in her article on LITTLE WOMEN. If you can just get the men to see the film, suddenly the scales fall from their beady little eyes.

Still, it begs the question. We may lead the horses to water, but what in the universe will make them drink? 

Cheers, Donna

MY TAKE ON THE OSCARS

Well, the Oscars have been awarded, but the controversies linger like cheap perfume in the air. The Twitterverse is still alive with outrage that this movie or the other one was chosen, this actor or another one was dissed, even that one sequined gown outshone another. It seems the only thing anyone can agree on is that no host is better than any host you can name for the ceremonies. At least we got out of there almost on time.

As my Faithful Readers, you know I’m in the multiplex almost every week of the year. Honestly, someone in Hollywood should pay me—I may well be the Last Traditional Moviegoer. So, I have opinions, most of which I’ve managed to keep to myself until now. But the volume of negative reaction to some of the Academy’s decisions this year has gone over the top, like a lot of our national discourse these days, and balance is required.

As Jim Kirk says a famous alien author will someday write: Let me help.

GREEN BOOK as Best Picture: I’ll admit right up front that I loved this movie. I loved the old-school narrative “road trip” structure; the acting was brilliant, showcasing two actors at the top of their game; the dialogue was funny in spots, touching in others; there are at least four visually and emotionally memorable scenes. I saw the film twice and got more out of it at each viewing, always a telling characteristic of a great movie. And the moral of the film—that we can learn from each other if we will only move past the stereotypes we have of other people—is a lesson we need to learn in these fraught times. The point is made with a light touch in this film.

Much of the criticism of GREEN BOOK revolves around its point of view. The screenplay was written primarily by Nick Villelonga, son of Tony “Tony Lip” Villelonga, the character Viggo Mortensen plays in the film. In 1962, Tony Lip was an out-of-work bouncer hired by African-American classical pianist Dr. Donald Shirley to drive him on a three-month tour of the South. Both of these men were extraordinary personalities in their own right—Tony Lip went on to be an actor (“The Sopranos”) and a chef; Dr. Shirley was an acclaimed musician in both jazz and classical music—but it happened that Tony’s son wrote the screenplay, and Hollywood director Peter Farrelly picked it up. Thus GREEN BOOK is a story about two men crossing race and culture to become friends in a time when that was not an easy thing to do. (That last point is too often forgotten in an age when some people insist “racism no longer exists.” We need a reminder.)

 Critics, both within the black community and outside it, have complained that this predominantly white perspective skews the story and robs it of its truth. They argue that Dr. Shirley deserves to star in the story of his own life—that of a brilliant gay black man succeeding despite all the many roadblocks thrown in his way. While I don’t disagree, I think that would have been a much less interesting film, a one-dimensional film, like so many of the movies made these days. Like our music or our reading choices or our Netflix options selected for us by an algorithm based on what we watched last night, films are more and more made for niche audiences—teenagers or gay audiences or world market audiences (ie. lots of action, little dialogue).

GREEN BOOK was written to appeal to a wider, if a more traditional audience. Black and white. Gay and straight. As Tony Lip himself says in the film “It’s a . . . (Latin shrug) complicated world.” 

Of course, the film’s director, Peter Farrelly, complicated it even more with his sleazy past, and Viggo Mortensen took himself out of Best Actor contention by stumbling in the early days of the PR for the movie. Still, GREEN BOOK deserved the Oscar, especially when you look at the competition.

BLACKKLANSMAN: This is probably Spike Lee’s best film to date, so it was a shame it didn’t do better at the Oscars. But this true story of a black FBI agent who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado in the 70s had one drawback: it hit you over the head with its message in an emotionally effective, but ultimately preachy ending of real footage from the Charlottesville riots. A little would have gone a long way, but Spike is not known for restraint as a filmmaker.

BLACK PANTHER: As all SF fans know, this would have been a long shot anyway, but BP wasn’t even the best Marvel had to offer. Yes, it had a great cast, an admirable black hero and some kickass female warriors, but the effects were lacking and the story only average. Bring on WONDER WOMAN.

ROMA: I can’t even begin to tell you how disappointed I was in this autobiographical outing by Alphonso Cuaron. ROMA’s housekeeper heroine literally goes nowhere, while the family she works for falls apart. A metaphor for Mexico? The world? Who knows? I agree wholeheartedly with Stephen Spielberg that Netflix movies should not be eligible for Oscar contention. They are television movies. Oscar-eligible films should be made for the big screen.

A STAR IS BORN: This was a fantastic film, with two great actors (Lady Gaga, what a surprise!) showing amazing chemistry. But it was a third-time remake in the classic style, making it difficult to award the Oscar. Definitely see the film, though!

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY: I’m not a fan of Queen so I didn’t see this one, but from all I read, this film was a mess except for Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury. And what did I say about niche films? 

THE FAVOURITE; VICE: Again, I’m showing my prejudices here, but these historical niche films were not up my alley, so I didn’t see them. A lesbian farce set in 17^th Century England and a biopic about Dick Cheney, no matter how good the acting, will just not be on my list. But, hey, they may sound like fun to you, so enjoy!

I fully expect that some of you will disagree with the opinions expressed here. Let’s discuss!

Cheers, Donna