Sign the We Won’t Go Back to the Back Alley petition at MoveOn.org

Sign the petition at Tiger Beatdown

Modify and send this form letter from Naral to your representative.

Sign the Redefining Rape petition at Moveon.org

Ask Nancy Pelosi to lead the fight against the anti-choice agenda

Send a message to your representative through NNAF

Also related things you can do to protect reproductive rights:

Take the Naral oath to stand up to Speaker Boehner

Tell Congress you want Birth Control to be free under the new healthcare law

Sign the petition to Repeal the Hyde Amendment

Defend Planned Parenthood against right-wing smear campaign

And you can always donate to Planned Parenthood, the National Network for Abortion Funds, Naral Pro-Choice America, and National Abortion Federation.

If I’ve forgotten anything, and I’m sure I have, feel free to link in the comments!

Dear Congressman;

As a Democrat and a woman I am deeply disappointed by your support of House bills H.R. 3 the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” and H.R. 358 the “Protect Life Act.”  Each bill is a profound attack on women’s reproductive rights and goes against the Democratic principles we hold so dear. I understand that you are pro-life and I respect your determination to protect fetal life even though I do not necessarily agree with it. I hope you recognize that a woman’s right to control and make decisions about her own body is equally important. No one knows the struggle a woman goes through in deciding whether or not to continue a pregnancy but the woman herself. Each time is different and I believe sincerely that women are fully capable of making decisions that include a full awareness of what is best for herself, her family, and the fetus. I hope that soon you will come to recognize this as well.

H.R. 3 the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” goes far beyond existing law to deny coverage through private insurance, denying use of funds from a Health Savings Account, and denying tax deductions for the self-employed and employers. This bill would prevent employers from making their own decisions about what coverage to offer their employees. It would harm small businesses by removing a tax incentive they depend on. It would force insurance companies to strip abortion coverage out of their plans, which is the opposite goal of health insurance reform. In these difficult economic times we should not be removing the safeguards that low-income women and small businesses depend on in order to survive, we should be extending them.

H.R. 3 would make permanent the Hyde Amendment, which disproportionately harms low-income women, preventing them from managing their families as they see fit. Each additional child is a financial burden that she and her family may be unable to bear making it harder to survive and making them more dependent on government programs like Welfare, Unemployment, and Medicaid.

HR3 will make it harder for rape victims to seek justice, by creating a hierarchy of rape that is based on the worst elements of rape culture. HR3 is based on the idea that “good” people are only raped by strangers and “good” people are the only ones deserving of medical care.* Even with the “forcible rape” language removed H.R. 3 continues to put women in the position of having to prove their rape in order to have access to abortion. In a culture where rape is difficult to report due to attitudes such as the above, this is placing an undue burden on rape survivors. 1 in 6 women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Only 6% of rapists are ever convicted. Hyde and H.R.3 will force many women to carry pregnancies resulting from rape to term because they are unable to prove to the government’s satisfaction that they have been raped. This is a psychological and physical ordeal no one should have to suffer through. A rape is traumatic enough without having the violation continue for months due to an unwanted pregnancy your government will not allow you to terminate. This is doubly true for women in the military where sexual assault is a growing problem and access to abortion is next to impossible. Furthermore abusers often force a pregnancy on their victim as a means of control. This law, and existing law, aids perpetrators of domestic violence in abusing and controlling their victim through forced pregnancy. Victims often don’t have access to their own money and it is impossible for them to pay for an abortion out of pocket. The ban on federal funds keeps victims dependent on their abuser.

“Conscience protections” in both H.R. 3 and H.R. 358 go beyond allowing a healthcare provider to refuse to provide abortions, if that is against their beliefs. It allows pharmacists to refuse to provide contraception, which is an important means of preventing unwanted pregnancies. As a result, more women end up seeking abortions because they were unable to prevent pregnancy due to someone’s “conscience.” It allows them to also refuse Plan B, a pill that does not induce abortion, but merely prevents a pregnancy from starting. These two provisions of “conscience protections” allow abortions to become more frequent and necessary. Not less. Furthermore, H.R. 358 the “Protect Life Act” does quite the opposite. It allows ER doctors to refuse to treat women with life threatening pregnancies by both refusing to provide an abortion, and refusing to refer her to a hospital that will perform one. This goes against longstanding law mandating that in an emergency, doctors must provide lifesaving care without regard to the patient’s ability to pay. This bill would allow doctors to let pregnant women die because the life saving medical procedure is against their personal beliefs. I hope that this provision merely escaped your attention and that now you will withdraw your support for this heinous bill.

Abortion is a legal medical procedure that many women require access to in their lives. Democrats have purported to support women’s reproductive rights and as a Democrat I call on you to stand behind those words and vote no on H.R. 3 and H.R. 358. There are many things our government can do to reduce the need for abortion. Effectively banning it is not one of them. That will only lead to more dangerous and deadly abortions, or suicide, for those desperately seeking to end a pregnancy. To reduce the need for abortion we can provide comprehensive sex education so that young people can make more informed and responsible decisions about sex, whether that is to wait or use contraceptives when having sex. We can provide more accessible and affordable contraceptives, including Plan B, so that an unwanted pregnancy becomes less frequent. We can strongly pursue and prosecute rapists and abusers so that no woman is forced to have sex or become pregnant against her will. We can provide universal healthcare so that carrying a pregnancy to term becomes less dangerous and expensive. I am sure that as someone who values life that you value the lives of women equally to that of a fetus. Please remember that as you make your decision on H.R.3 and H.R. 358. Thank you for your time.

*This section I borrowed from Sady Doyle at Tiger Beatdown. She organized the #DearJohn protest and has been vocal and determined in opposing these bills. She is also a damn good writer and you should definitely be reading her blog.

Here is a list of the Democrats supporting each bill:

Dems supporting H.R. 3:

Dan Boren

Jerry Costello

Mark Critz

Joe Donnelly

Daniel Lipinski

Mike McIntyre

Collin Peterson

Nick Rahall

Mike Ross

Heath Shuler

Dems supporting H.R. 358

Jerry Costello

Mark Critz

Daniel Lipinski

Mike Ross

Heath Shuler

If these are your representatives please contact them and let them know that you oppose these bills. Here is their contact info:

Dan Boren

2447 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20515

(202) 225-2701

(202) 225-3038 fax

Jerry Costello

2408 Rayburn HOB

Washington, D.C. 20515

Phone : (202) 225-5661

Fax: (202) 225-0285

Mark Critz

1022 Longworth HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-2065

Fax: (202) 225-5709

Joe Donnelly

U.S. House of Representatives

1530 Longworth House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

Phone: (202) 225-3915

Fax: (202) 225-6798

Daniel Lipinski

1717 Longworth House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

Phone: (202) 225-5701

Fax: (202) 225-1012

Toll free from IL (866) 822-5701

Mike McIntyre

2133 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

(202) 225-2731 phone

(202) 225-5773 fax

Collin Peterson

2211 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515

phone: (202) 225-2165

fax: (202) 225-1593

Nick Rahall

2307 Rayburn HOB

Washington,DC 20515

(202) 225-3452

Mike Ross

2436 Rayburn House Office Bldg*

Washington, DC 20515

1-800-223-2220

(202) 225-1314 Fax

Heath Shuler

229 Cannon House Office Bldg.

Washington, DC, 20515

Phone: (202) 225-6401

Fax: (202) 226-6422

The tradition of the heist film is well known; a charismatic outlaw cleverly evades police, on a spree of robbery and violence until he goes down shooting in a dramatic showdown at the end of the film while shouting his defiance. Michael Mann’s Public Enemies breaks this mold. Mann’s film is subtle and dark with outbursts of violence unfolding across stunning visual compositions. The story follows the devolution of John Dillinger, public enemy number one, as the newly formed FBI closes in on him.

A lone man stands against the desert and blue sky. Pops of gunfire flash in the night. Scenes takes place at night or in low light and shadow. Mann’s brilliance is in creating quiet moments of tension. When Dillinger escapes from jail he sits at a stoplight next to army men who could easily capture him. We wait in suspense with him until the light changes and he drives out of town. He sits in a movie theater as the screen flashes a picture of his face and tells the audience to look around for him. Later Dillinger walks into the headquarters for the man hunt and checks out their bulletin board and asks the score of the game.

Johnny Depp shines as the polite bank robber whose quiet charisma drives the film. Like other anti-heroes before him, Depp’s Dillinger has a strong ethical code, though it is not that of society at large, making him more sympathetic than others around him. Though Dillinger is public enemy number one, Mann paints Baby Face Nelson as more violent and impulsive, therefore deserving of the audience’s censure. Dillinger seems a victim of events beyond his control. The world is changing and there is no longer a place for him. The film moves inexorably to his downfall, yet the audience wants him to escape. It is a tribute to Depp’s skill that he draws the viewer in unaware until one is brought nearly to tears at the end. He robs banks, escapes from jail and romances Billie with a similar panache; bold, confident and secure in the fact that no one can stop him. Even caged he is in control and imperturbable, giving him the power to escape from jail with only a soap gun. It is when his certainty begins to fail that we see his vulnerability and desperation.

The heart of the film is the relationship between Dillinger and Billie Frechette. Marion Cotillard is stunning as Dillinger’s lover. Cotillard has a mastery of combining vulnerability and toughness that makes her all the more enchanting in this role. She catches Dillinger’s eye from across the room in a crowded nightclub, drawing him and the audience to her. Like Billie, the viewer is won over by Dillinger’s sincerity and raw devotion. The scenes between them sparkle with undeniable chemistry. This is where the film truly succeeds and captures your heart.

The main flaw in the film is that there are too many minor characters that are all indistinguishable from one another. It is difficult to keep the names and faces straight as there is nothing significant about any of them.  I assume this is a nod to history, and the real people involved, but the film would have been better served with an amalgam. It would have also added another dimension to the film if we had seen more of Dillinger’s success to make his unraveling more palpable (similar to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) but as is typical of Mann the film begins dark and spirals down from there.

A large part of the film follows the growing disillusionment of Melvin Purvis, played by Christian Bale as he goes father out on a moral limb to catch Dillinger. Bale’s Purvis begins tough and arrogant, certain what he’s doing is right, and shows no pause coolly shooting down Pretty Boy Floyd in the orchard with a shotgun. His attitude starts to change as his men die due to the fledgling FBI’s failed tactics. When one young man is killed by Baby face Nelson during an attempt to trap Dillinger,  their attempted ambush turns into a shootout. Purvis is deeply shaken and tells J. Edgar Hoover, “Our type cannot get the job done” asking for lawmen from Texas to aid him, “otherwise I am leading my men to slaughter.” In a lovely moment of tension, Purvis and Dillinger face off through the bars of a cell. It is the only time throughout the film the two characters meet. Dillinger sees to the root of Purvis’ fears; watching his men die in front of him, which Purvis’ mask of bravado fails to cover.

As the FBI struggles to capture Dillinger their tactics spin out of control. Agents withhold pain killers from a gangster with a bullet in his head to force him to reveal Dillinger’s location; while trying to apprehend Dillinger, Purvis and his men shoot up a car with a family inside, killing them. When Purvis’ men arrest Billie and interrogate her an agent beats her until she pretends to break and give him Dillinger’s location. She is defiant and unwavering while beaten and shaking, calling him a coward and telling him “you walked right past him.” In the end, even the agents who kill him seem dismayed at Dillinger’s death and give his final message to Billie: bye bye blackbird.

[Hollywood Reporter]

[Roger Ebert]

Mark Harris [NY Times]

Mahnola Dargis [NY Times]

Whatever CBS’s motivations were, the sheer fury that this decision alone [has caused] is a sign of how badly viewers want strong roles for women on television — and how rare they seem to be, at least on networks.

The cast of the show expressed their disgust via twitter:

“Creative Reasons” has been an Executive Bulls— excuse for DECADES. It IS financial. AJ is a dreamboat. And yes, I am hurt, too,” Paget tweeted. “Thanks to all the fans. From me, AJ and the cast. We love you. We will always appreciate your support. You are kind and wonderful. KISSES!!”

“To say we’re all mystified and disappointed is an understatement…all the fan support is much appreciated!” Gibson tweeted. “Stay tuned…”

Mantegna and Vaughness stuck to tweeting a petition to keep Cook and Brewster. Despite the negative reaction, CBS and the show’s producers aren’t backing off the decision. Their response has been but we are bringing on a new woman! Therefore we are not sexist, give us a cookie! This is just par for the course in a culture that values men over women. To anyone who doesn’t understand the sexism inherent in this decision, let me break it down for you. In evaluating how to trim their budget, (or spice up the show as CBS has suggested) they decided to fire a cast member. This cast member was female. They decided to cut another cast member’s episodes. This cast member was also female. You know whose hours they didn’t cut? The four male characters. CBS assumes the show’s success owes nothing to JJ (who has been part of Criminal Minds since the pilot) and that her absence will not only not hurt the show, but will help it. CBS also assumes the show does not have a female audience, that a female audience is unnecessary for the show, and that any female viewers they do have will not care that female representation on the show is down from 3 to 1.5 or that one woman is the same as another and female viewers will not notice the difference. So we have #1 women are less important than men, #2 women have no buying power as consumers, #3 women are interchangeable, #4 women have no value.

Firing a cast member on an ensemble show with high ratings may seem insane, and kind of self-destructive. Until you consider the idea that the executives view women as expendable, unimportant to the success of the show. If JJ is just there to give the male viewers something to look at and is valuable only for her appearance then another woman of similar attractiveness would have the same impact. A Criminal Minds promotional image shows us exactly how CBS views the relative importance of these characters:

The three most masculine presenting characters are foregrounded, while Reid (arguably the most interesting and popular character on the show), Garcia, Jareau, and Prentiss are in the background. Hotch, Rossi, and Morgan also get more screen time than these characters, and more episodes devoted to developing their background and inner life. This speaks to a culture that values men’s stories over women’s. Hollywood and television court a male audience, and see a female audience as a sign of trouble. Yet most franchises with overwhelming success are backed by a female audience, as explained by Sady Doyle :

Yet, if the numbers are any indication, you don’t need male fans to dominate the marketplace. In this decade, teen girls have backed the success of Taylor Swift (who ranks above every artist on the pop charts except for Michael Jackson), Miley Cyrus (responsible for multiple best-selling albums, a television series, a concert film, a movie, and various merchandise including a best-selling book), and the blockbuster movie franchise High School Musical. In the 1990s, teenage girls were responsible for the runaway success of Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, and Titanic, the top-grossing movie of all time. A fan base of teen girls launched Madonna’s multi-decade career. And there was that 1960s boy band — the one with all the catchy, cheery pop songs and the cute, nonthreatening members who made girls squeal. I believe they called themselves The Beatles.

Yet shows created by and about women are assumed to fail. Women are just not interesting.

In 2010 – 3 out of 33 comedy scripts that went to pilot were written by women. That is 9%.
In 2010 – 6 out of 36 drama scripts went to pilot were written by women.  That is 16%.

Networks are typically owned and run by men. Television shows are mainly created, written and produced by men. CBS and Criminal Minds are no different. Out of CBS’s Board of Directors there are two women. There is only one female CBS Executive. Two women directed a combined total of 4 Criminal Minds episodes. Six female writers are credited with a maximum of 16 episodes out of the series. Most have written 2 or 4 compared to series creator Jeff Davis who has written 109. While there are many female producers, the majority are male, and the executive producers (i.e. the ones with decision making power) are overwhelmingly male.

Now let’s get down to the heart of it, which is what these two women bring to the show.

Here are some clips to get you started:

Jennifer Jareau is the anchor of the show. She is our guide into the world of Criminal Minds and carries the perspective of the viewer. In contrast to the SSAs, JJ is affected by the darkness and the horror of their jobs. She humanizes the show and the team, highlighting voices of the victims and their families over the unsub. Though often underappreciated, her role in the team is essential. She chooses their cases, she manipulates the press and speaks for the team; communicating with the unsub who they know is watching. Several times throughout the series she has advocated for a case that her colleagues wanted to pass over and every time she has been right. These tend to be the most dire and difficult to solve cases: the couple that kidnapped dozens of children over decades without detection in “Mosley Lane,” the three soccer players who were kidnapped and forced to kill one of their own in “North Mammon,” and a serial killer taking homeless people and prostitutes through a sadistic game with the illusion of escape in “Legacy.” Her absence during her maternity leave was deeply felt, and Agent Todd was unable to fill the void.

Prentiss is dark, cynical, sarcastic, and scathing. She is fluent in Arabic, Italian, and Russian. She is a sometime geek and goth. She brings a humor and mocking comradery to the show that is sorely needed when dealing with such dark subject matter. She is tough, smart, and doesn’t take shit from anyone. Whenever they enter a hostile situation she is right up front with the boys. “In Birth and Death” Prentiss goes into the unsub’s house alone to get the team reasonable cause to enter, as she is not currently employed by the BAU. In “Seven Seconds” she breaks the woman who has kidnapped and left her niece to die. Prentiss is full of heart, determination, insight, and courage. Basically Emily Prentiss is an incredible badass and deserves every bit as much air time as the men.

The chemistry between the cast members has always been the key to the show’s success. CBS apparently has failed to realize this, even after making keeping the team together a staple theme. Hotchner is prepared to step down as the leader to keep the team from being broken-up. Prentiss was willing to quit the BAU (when this job has been established as her passion and goal she has been working toward for years) rather than be used against Hotch by his boss. The team’s devotion to their jobs and each other knows no bounds. Hotch lost his family, and his wife died because of this job yet he will not stop. Each member will and has risked their own life to protect each other and catch the unsub. The show is about a team that has become something more. This job is their life, the office their home, the team their family. To suggest anything else is dishonest and a disservice to the characters the cast and crew have spent five years building.

It is important to see a woman like Jennifer Jareau on television, who can fall in love, get married, get pregnant and have a baby without compromising her demanding and often dangerous job, who when faced with the choice to warn her child of potential danger or follow the protocol of her job, chooses to do her job. Though she is not a field agent, when an unsub holds the BAU at gunpoint, JJ shoots him in the head with no hesitation. Likewise Prentiss is a kickass agent who is never condescended to by the team or in need of “saving” anymore than her male colleagues and takes a beating to protect Reid when their cover is blown inside a cult stronghold. “Demonology,” the episode dealing with her childhood abortion is done without blame or shame and even critiques the church’s stance on abortion. If CBS actually wants to spice up the show they should give these women more to do. Not less.

Without Jennifer Jareau I know I for one will not be watching. Will you?

The purpose of playing,

whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to

hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue

her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and

body of the time his form and pressure.

Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet addresses the self-reflexivity of the Shakespearean text in an innovative way. As the play comments on theater’s function in society, the film is equally aware of itself as cinema. Hamlet‘s self-awareness allows Shakespeare to comment on art’s reflection of life. Almereyda’s version homes in on Hamlet’s character and underlines Hamlet’s self-reflexivity applying it to film.

Hawke’s Hamlet is a filmmaker instead of an actor, a creator, who wants to control his own destiny and the performance of others. He seeks their honesty and truth while continuing to dissemble and manipulate them. He does not want others to “play upon” him yet he feigns madness and uses double meanings to assert his intelligence. The camera’s proximity and intimacy allow performance to mirror life as Hamlet desires.

Almeredya transforms Hamlet’s preoccupation with theater and “seeming” into an obsession with film. Hamlet watches himself philosophize about the nature of man and the world, entranced by his image. Hamlet’s soliloquies work as pieces of autobiographical playback on his camera. Hamlet’s self-reflection takes the place of action. Almeredya shows him mainly alone with his camera and television. The films he makes incite his anger and hatred for Claudius and Gertrude. Furthermore, as he rages about “incestuous sheets” it is not Gertrude who appears in his film but Ophelia, conflating the two in his mind’s eye as an example of the frailty of women. Hamlet accepts his reading of Gertrude as the oversexed woman. She clings to Claudius and they are shown in bed together, though not in the act. The Ghost’s corporeality confirms him as real, not merely Hamlet’s hallucination. He touches and even embraces his son, though in the presence of others he seems less substantial. Almeredya privileges Hamlet’s perspective and we see events through his eyes.

Seeking a “motive and cue for passion,” Hamlet turns to Blockbuster for answers. As he stands in Blockbuster confronted with rows of ACTION! films, he remains immobilized by inner conflict. Viewing James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause as a model for action, Hamlet passively watches gun shots, comparing his own behavior with Dean who “in a fiction, in a dream of passion” takes action while Hamlet can’t. His camera becomes a gun visually. Hamlet speaks of “guilty creatures” caught by a play as Laurence Oliver’s Hamlet appears on his television. He learns from Olivier’s Hamlet how to discover Claudius’ guilt. The close up of his eyes as he works demonstrates the power of his gaze. He is seeking out truth with his look using film as his weapon.

Hamlet presents images of childhood, poisoning, lust, and crowning taken from other films. The scene of lust is taken from Deep Throat, equating Gertrude’s appetite with pornography. A reaction shot reveals her aversion to Hamlet’s representation. “The Mousetrap” visually translates the text. “The natural” is the happy nuclear family. Nature motifs describe the time before King Hamlet’s death with a blooming rose. After the poisoning comes a stream of death images, culminating in a dying rose. The film presents King Hamlet’s murder as the death of nature, beauty, and health in Denmark. Likewise in Ophelia’s insanity, she gives away roses.

Almeredya delivers a visual punch through representation of suicide. Hamlet speaks the words “to be, or not to be” holding a gun to his head, then in his mouth. He continually watches a video of this, giving us a window to his state of mind. Almeredya lets us glimpse Ophelia’s consciousness in her fantasy of drowning. Without a cue to distinguish between the narrative and her fantasy, we believe she is drowning until the film cuts back to her standing on the edge of the pool. The film suggests the definition of madness is crossing the line between thought and action. Both Hamlet and Ophelia are constrained by roles they do not want to play: Hamlet the revenger, Ophelia the submissive woman. Neither can escape their role, but Hamlet chooses to embrace it, while Ophelia chooses to die. Her action makes her madness real while Hamlet’s remains only in thought.

A meta-filmic instance replaces a Shakespearean aside. When Polonius discovers Hamlet’s madness, his observations about Hamlet’s behavior are relayed to the viewer through a security camera. Whose point of view the shot portrays is unclear. It achieves the same effect as the Shakespearean aside; making the audience aware of their role as spectators. Almeredya, while Hamlet is dying, replays black and white images from earlier in the film, as if filmed by Hamlet. It both expresses Hamlet’s desire for Horatio to tell his story, and his own subjectivity (his subconscious is a film). His life flashes before his eyes and the eyes of the viewer as he dies. We are invited to share his perspective in this final instant as we have throughout the film.

Beyond the meta-filmic aspects of Hamlet, there is an intriguing use of photography and mirrors. Ophelia’s preferred mode of representation is photography, as Hamlet’s is film. Reflecting her character, photography is more passive and still. It is about capturing the image instead of creating it. Photographs capture a fleeting instance, while film is movement in time. Film is able to convey more with its progression of images and their juxtaposition than photography can with one image (though one image can be powerful and poignant). Each character’s choice of representation reveals the difference between them. Hamlet wants the power to make a statement and express himself, while Ophelia seeks beauty and truth in life and crumbles when she can no longer find it. In her madness she gives out photographs of flowers; their “seeming” instead of the reality. She can no longer distinguish between representation and reality, or perhaps prefers representation since reality has failed her. When Hamlet fails her, she burns his image. She destroys the “seeming” that has deceived her, but what she truly destroys is her conception of him that has proved false.

Hamlet destroys and confronts his own image, and only after this can he finally act. In the first confrontation with his image, he destroys it. He shoots Polonius through a mirror, that reflects his own face, shattering his “seeming.” His intent in this film is to destroy himself, or at least the part of himself that restrains him from action. Yet in this hit he misses, killing “the unseen good old man” professing it madness. He denies responsibility for his action, negating its value. His defining moment is when he confronts his own reflection. It marks a change in his character from fighting his fate, to acceptance. As he travels to England he realizes there is no reason to hold back, he has cause, means, will, and strength to achieve his revenge, and he must. He faces his reflection with the camera behind him, so the viewer sees his face only in the mirror, and incites himself to action. He will find greatness in the path he has been given and not stand frozen by “thinking too precisely on th’ event.” From this point on Hamlet is fatalistic, accepting that “a man’s life’s no more than to say ‘one’” and that “there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.” He must end the conflict within him, uniting all his “seeming” to one purpose: to act. The destruction of his image in the broken mirror, and his fractured state as his image incites him to action, resolve this division resulting in acceptance.

“See the Rolling Stones and die“

Gimme Shelter, the Maysles brothers’ documentary on the Rolling Stones, has been named “the most harrowing rock ‘n’ roll movie ever made.” Critics, especially around the film’s release, considered both the Maysles and the Rolling Stones complicit in the murders at the Altamont Speedway. During the concert (and therefore the film) there were 850 injured, 2 dead in a hit and run, one drowned, and Meredith Hunter was killed by a Hell’s Angel after he pulled a gun. This murder became the central event of the film, and is the climax that the film builds around. The careful structuring of the film is perhaps the reason it was thought to exploit events or even stage them for the benefit of the camera. The murder seems the inevitable conclusion of the film, raising questions about the ethics of documentary and the media in general.

Gimme Shelter begins with a photo shoot that cuts straight to a concert at Madison Square Garden on the Stones’ 1969 US Tour setting up the mold for a typical rock documentary. The filmmakers break this mold revealing the Stones in the editing room, viewing an early version of the film. We briefly see David Maysles as he tells Mick that the shots of them in the editing room will be useful because they can cut from that to anything anywhere in the film, revealing the process of filmmaking and a bit of the filmmakers themselves, though their role is only suggested not overtly integrated into the film. These shots in the editing room become a thread of self-reflexivity throughout the film, reminding the viewer that this is a film and commenting as well on the act of viewing. It also reveals the Stones reaction to their own representation. Using the editing room as the spine the first half of the film moves between footage of the Madison Square Garden concert, the set-up for the Altamont (Mick in press conferences, the lawyer and organizers who set it up, etc.) and the Stones’ down time in the recording studio and at the hotel. The second half of the film begins with a tracking shot from a helicopter over a street flooded with people and lined with cars, and continues, focusing more on the fans and the chaos that begins to erupt at the Altamont, leading to the Rolling Stones’ performance and the murder of Meredith Hunter.

The murder is introduced immediately and hangs over the rest of the film with a sense of impending doom. Closely framed shots of Mick give the film a tight, almost claustrophobic feel. The viewer is uncomfortably close to the action, implying a complicity in the murder we know is coming. Extreme close-ups on Mick’s lips or Keith Richards’ worn out boots have a dehumanizing effect, though not painting them as villains it makes them a symbol of rock and roll decadence and indicts their playful fooling around as irresponsibility and naïveté that leads to the tragedy. For example, Mick’s assertion that the free concert will set an “example for how people can behave in large gatherings.” A shot of Mick delightedly clapping his hands after listening to “Wild Horses” in the context of the film becomes disturbing because “we know, almost from the beginning, what happens at the end. And this advance knowledge creates an undercurrent of dread that pervades even the most carefree sequences.” Though the Stones had no way of knowing then what would occur a few days later “the violence at Altamont, being completely unexpected, came afterwards to seem inevitable” especially in the structure of the film. Thus, these carefree moments in contrast to the violence we know is coming feels inappropriate and somehow wrong.

The film “begins with innocence” but as the film moves along the crowd pulls the focus off the Rolling Stones becoming  more violent and disturbed as the film progresses. During the first song the camera moves between close shots of Mick, crowd shots, and shots from the crowd’s point of view. The camera places us with the fans and we watch Mick from within the crowd. When we come back to the concert after the scene in the editing room the energy is up, fans seems a little crazier, the camera more frantic moving in zooms and pans, with shots from behind the Stones that reveal the scope of the crowd. From there we see the build up to the Altamont, Mick talks about it at a press conference, the lawyers and the organizers are setting it up, we see the Stones in the studio and at their hotel, they get into a helicopter, and then the film cuts back to the concert. It is a slow number shot in slow motion with the sound disconnected from the image. The only connection is between Mick and the crowd who move together in slow motion to the music. It is a beautiful sequence superimposing images of Mick onto one another, yet it has a weirdly disturbing effect, and suggests for the first time “[Mick’s] sense of control—of himself and the thousands who hang on his every gesture and sound.” This feeling of control explains both why Mick thought the murders could never happen, and why the Stones were blamed for them. The film continues with more build up towards the Altamont, telling the size of the crowd expected and the intentions behind the concert. When we return to the stage at Madison Square Garden we see, for the first time in the film, fans jumping onstage, trying to touch Mick and having to be pulled away. The crowd is shot in clearer focus and more brightly lit, seeming almost to overpower Mick at times, like a force. When we next come back to the concert, the first shot is of the crowd instead of Mick. From there we cut to the Altamont where the fans take over the film. We wait for the Stones to take the stage with the fans, watching them become more and more drugged out and disturbing. Sometimes they are shot in fast motion, giving them an unreal and threatening quality. The first thing that happens when the Stones arrive at Altamont is “a kid ran up to Mick, said “I hate you,” and hit him in the face.” The sense of chaos grows as drugged out fans begin to freak out, we see a brief shot of someone covered in blood. The lead singer of Jefferson Airplane is knocked out by a Hell’s Angel. Then the Stones take the stage and all hell breaks loose. This subtle manipulation of the portrayal of the fans is part of what gives the film its feeling of inevitability. As the fans and Hell’s Angels become more threatening the only conclusion is violence.

These threads: the organizers, the Stones, and also the fans, come together when the murder is revealed. Like the Stones we cannot see what happens at first. The filmmakers have to show it to us (and the Stones) frozen on the image of the knife, and then again on the gun, and both must be pointed out to us to be made clear. This raises the question: How do you know in the moment what you have captured on film? Is it only later that the filmmakers discover what they have shot? And then how do they deal with it? Zwerin and the Maysles’ answer seems to be to center the film around it. Ignoring the murder and making a simple rock documentary, showing only the concert and footage preceding the Altamont, would be irresponsible. Considering that everyone knew what happened at the Altamont they would expect the film to deal with it. The Maysles stepped up, creating a film that addresses the events, the implied complicity of the Stones in creating the atmosphere for the event and witnessing it, suggests the filmmakers’ own complicity in it, and implicates the viewer as well in watching it. “Seeing Gimme Shelter today, I shudder to realize that I contributed to, and embraced, that chaos. Yet, like Mick and Charlie watching the raw footage, I can’t escape the fact: I was there, I did embrace the chaos.” Simply by witnessing the event, being there and “embracing the chaos,” even the viewer is made to feel complicit in the murder.

There were many negative reactions to the film, critically and otherwise. A notorious article in The New Yorker slammed the film as “an opportunistic snuff film, essentially saying that the filmmakers were complicit in the murder by having photographed it and subsequently profited from its theatrical release.” Sonny Barger, the Hell’s Angel who blames the events on Mick who used the Angel’s as “dupes,” indicts the Rolling Stones for having delayed their entrances to drive the crowd into a frenzy. The film, however, shows Mick helplessly begging the crowd to “be cool” and stop fighting. He appeals to the hippie ideal of everyone being one and “brothers and sisters” in vain, finally just imploring the crowd to sit down so they can continue playing. Even as the film implies complicity it has sympathy for the Stones. The film medium itself encourages identification and sympathy. Like the Stones we are powerless to control what is unfolding on the screen. Perhaps this sympathy is why the film was seen to absolve the Stones of guilt, like a paid for propaganda of innocence.

The question of ethics lies not in interference with events or manufacturing of them but instead in the concept of what is permissible to be shown. Is making a film about the Altamont an exploitation of the event and the victims or does it satisfy a need to know for the public? Is the privacy of the individual or the public’s right to know more important? Pryluck writes that “the right to privacy is the right to decide how much, to whom, and when disclosures about one’s self are to be made. There are some topics that one discusses with confidants; other thoughts are not disclosed to anyone; finally there are those private things that one is unwilling to consider even in the most private moments.” Though revealing private thoughts is not an issue in the film (aside from perhaps Mick’s reaction to the film and the murder in the editing room, though that does not reveal much of his personal thoughts either) the question is should a murder be shown and profited from?

I cannot answer this question on my own, but I think the film raises an important question that extends beyond the field of documentary into the media and the news. In the words of Anthony DeCurtis in his article “‘Gimme Shelter’ Goes Through the Past Darkly”:

As far as the media was concerned, [the Altamont] was the rock & roll Columbine, an occasion in which meaningless violence somehow suggested Hydra-headed meanings, with each new theory delivering few answers and inspiring only more fevered theorizing.

Since then the horror of Columbine has been extended to the shooting at Virginia Tech, not to mention September 11^th.  In the days, months, and years following the tragedy news stations were glutted with images of the Twin Towers burning, people running in smoke filled streets, videos taken from cell phones with the sound of gunshots, and specifically videos (like those from the shooters in Columbine) made by the shooter featuring himself with guns and blaming his actions on the rest of society. These tragedies become an obsession for the news stations and the viewers, used as a tool to get higher ratings. The exploitation of these tragedies seems to go beyond a “right to know” which could be satisfied by giving the facts, and extends to a morbid fascination that is almost insatiable. Part of the appeal of Gimme Shelter is exactly this fascination and the desire to know, to be present at the Altamont, and to see the murder unfold is what makes the viewer complicit. The question remains where do we draw the line?

Agnès Varda’s career as a feminist filmmaker moves from the French New Wave and Left Bank movements to political modernism, portraying with sincerity the lives of women. From her first film, La Pointe Courte (1956), she combines realism with subjective stylized editing and abstract compositions which continue throughout her work. Her feminist agenda is best represented in Le Bonheur (1965), a modernist attack on traditional morality that disturbed viewers by suggesting that one woman can easily take the place of another, and One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977), which traces the course of two women’s friendship from 1962-1974 to focus attention on abortion and childbearing from feminist viewpoint. Cleo from 5 to 7 (1961) and Vagabond (1985) epitomize her realist, documentary-like style intermingled with character subjectivity and authorial marks.

Cleo from 5 to 7 and Vagabond create a realistic aesthetic using aspects of a documentary and then break this illusion with the narrative structure. Cleo from 5 to 7 uses continuity of time and space, following her as she wanders through Paris in long shots or long tracking shots that allow the viewer to see through Cleo’s eyes. She pursues the Neorealist goal of portraying two hours of a woman’s life, giving equal emphasis to car rides, walking, and shopping as Hollywood does to explosions, gunfights and sex. Varda uses handheld camera, direct sound, and available light creating a realistic documentary-like style. In contrast to the realistic aesthetic the narrative is episodic and broken into thirteen chapters; breaking the illusion of reality in a Brechtian manner. The arbitrary chapters and flow of unlinked encounters show Cleo’s lack of purpose and direction. Vagabond employs the Cinema Vérité ideal of seeking truth and combines it with Art Cinema flashback structure to investigate the life of Mona Bergeron. The people who met her on the road speak directly to the camera about her, then we see it in a flashback. This structure unravels, revealing more of the lives of those who met Mona, not cutting directly between interview and flashback. It begins to show events no one had witnessed. The camera reveals not only Mona’s own life and personality but how she is perceived by and affects others. In her films, Varda gives her female protagonists the respect and integrity female characters rarely receive.

Varda captures Cleo’s Parisian lifestyle and Mona’s roving rural freedom with the appropriate camera movement. Cleo, who feels that she is constantly on display and judged, is shot with a handheld camera that follows her, jumping between close-up and long shot. Varda then reverses the gaze, revealing Cleo’s point of view as she watches others watching her. After she storms out of her apartment, we see her in a café, judging the reactions of the customers to a song she plays. Varda shows both her watching them and them watching her, placing emphasis on the idea of looking. Then in the next shot she walks through the street and all the passerby stare at her. The camera is Cleo, both looking and looked at, and we as spectators are in the place of Cleo, both subject and object of the gaze. Cleo, in a sense, is trapped by the gaze of the camera, while Mona is free from it. In Vagabond the camera finds and loses Mona in the frame, she is not bound by it. A shot will begin on an inanimate object or a photographic composition, then move to find Mona. A shot of a crosswalk moves up to reveal Mona standing by the side of the road. A house with trees lining the walk, appears to be a painting, until the scenery moves and the camera reveals Mona in a car. Even the beginning of the film is a search for Mona in the frame, slowly tracking through a field to find Mona’s body in a ditch. Like Cleo, tracking shots follow her but often the camera will continue past her or stop at an interesting composition. As she enters a building the camera follows a girl in a red jacket, then moves across the street to find branches reaching through metal bars. Even when the camera is still she is not bound by the frame. In Assoun’s apartment she paces into and out of the frame and while hitchhiking as she hails a car she walks out of the frame. Varda’s change in representation reflects the psychology of the characters more than a change in her style.

Several preoccupations remain constant in her work; the importance of mirrors, focus on hands, and close-ups of objects, stylistically unify Vagabond and Cleo from 5 to 7 and mark them as Agnès Varda films. Mirrors for Cleo represent the importance of appearance and her self-image. A zoom on her image in the mirror emphasizes its significance, and mirrors recur in the rest of the film. She examines herself in the café believing she will find traces of illness. She believes as long as her image is intact she is not ill. As she shops for a hat she is surrounded by mirrors fragmenting the shot. Finally her friend drops a mirror shattering the importance of image and allowing Cleo to find the calm she seeks. For Mona the mirror represents not how she sees herself but how others see her. She is the mirror reflecting their desires and prejudices back at them. She never looks at herself in the mirror but we see others looking at her in it. She like Cleo is the object of the gaze but she is unconcerned by it: the others do not control her. Hands also become important as representative of the whole. Cleo from 5 to 7 begins with hands in a tableau which echoes in Vagabond with a shot of Mona’s hands and an array of pictures, like the array of tarot cards in Cleo. Instead of the conventional style of filming a conversation (shot reverse shot) Varda chooses to focus on the hands and the cards. The dialogue and reactions are secondary. She distinguishes the shot of the hands from the rest of the scene by filming it in color, a jarring distinction between the hands and faces as she cuts between them. The hands seem to belong to another world. In Vagabond, Mona’s relationship with Assoun’ is represented in a shot of their hands: Assoun’ strokes her hand and she closes it. Symbolically representing her resistance to attachment. Close-ups of objects in Cleo represent the artificiality of beauty, and expectations of women. Point of view shots of hats reveal a preoccupation with image. A mannequin in a wedding dress symbolizes the role of a woman as wife and mother. African masks seem to suggest both the idea of being trapped by a mask and possible escape from it into an exotic “other” culture. In Vagabond close-up shots of modern technology: a radio, television, or farming equipment, always inactive, suggest the failure of modern life.

The two films, both in style and in content, contrast the freedom of Mona with Cleo who is still bound by appearance and perception, made all the more poignant by the shared imagery of hands and mirrors and the use of close-ups. Mona’s freedom is reflected by the camera, the frame cannot contain her, while Cleo must be either the object or subject of its gaze.

Varda’s style reflects a progression in the power of her characters, and their relationship to society. Mona’s escape is possible where Cleo’s was not. Though punished with death, she attains her freedom while Cleo must find peace within the structure of society.  Varda acknowledges reality and its limitations, but reaches for a time when death is not the price of freedom.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul [1974] achieves an empirical objectivity that breaks the system of visual pleasure described by Laura Mulvey using its forms to show, not efface, society’s objectification of the “other.” He focuses on characters marginalized by society: old women and foreigners, in a couple that breaks both age and race lines in post World War II Germany. Emmi deflects passive objectification by not fitting the standards of the erotic sexualized female and because she refuses to be silent and static. Ali, othered by his race, is sexualized in the manner usually reserved for women and is passive and silent unlike Emmi. The bearers of the gaze are often groups or women judging Emmi or the couple, instead of the man and the audience sexually objectifying the woman. The gaze presents society’s judgment of the “other” and by implicating the audience critiques society as a whole.

Laura Mulvey proposes that cinema is constructed to privilege the male protagonist and pleasure the male spectator. The mainstream film narrative constructs the woman as “signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.” Her role in film, like her role in society, subjects her to male desire:

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been spilt between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects phantasy on to the female figure…In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.

Emmi breaks the trope of female to-be-looked-at-ness and is not coded for strong visual and erotic impact. Instead of the ideal bombshell object of desire, she is an old, fat woman who speaks her mind. She is constructed as “other” and lacking a role since has already fulfilled that of wife and mother. She is outside the realm of sexual objectification and society expects her to quietly disappear. She cannot be objectified like the women in mainstream cinema. Making her the object of sexual gratification for the audience would only serve to make her ridiculous and grotesque. Instead she is portrayed with sensitivity to her emotional state and respect for her humanity. By focusing on her Fassbinder moves away from the image of the sexualized woman and sheds light on a group that rarely receives attention. He illuminates how society marginalizes aging women.

In Ali Emmi’s emotions are equally important as what she evokes in Ali, often more so because her emotions are clear while he remains impassive. Close-ups of Emmi reveal her anguish and fear, instead of connoting an erotic image for the male spectator to enjoy. Fassbinder contradicts the idea that “the presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation.” Emmi is not spectacle in Ali and moments that in a mainstream narrative film would be for “erotic contemplation” by the male spectator freezing the narrative instead further it, giving us a deeper awareness of Emmi’s subjectivity and the ways in which others’ prejudice affects her. It allows the audience to sympathize with her in a different way than mainstream film’s identification with the hero. Fassbinder uses the same techniques as mainstream cinema to achieve a different effect. The close-up of the woman is not an expression of scopophilic pleasure. Instead it connects the audience to her emotional situation. She is not idealized or objectified. The camera shows her in moments of greatest emotion, not as a damsel in distress but simply a person in tears. A close-up of Emmi at work, though it stops the narrative, reveals emotion: her reaction to the other German’s prejudice and the discrimination she foresees. The best example of this is where Emmi cries against the door frame as her landlord walks by, apathetically ignoring her pain. He views her public tears as indecent, perhaps even more so because she is not supposed to attract notice in general, but Emmi refuses to hide or give up on life merely because she has passed a certain age.

Unlike cult stars such as Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich her body is not fragmented in the film, but shown holistically in long shots. She is not reduced to her sex appeal, legs, or face. Her portrayal reveals her subjectivity more than her body and gives her a real space to control. “One part of a fragmented body destroys the Renaissance space, the illusion of depth demanded by the narrative, it gives flatness, the quality of a cut-out or icon rather than verisimilitude to the screen.” Instead of flattening the space Fassbinder distances the spectator from the image using long shots. Long shots allow audiences emotional distance and objectivity, giving them the opportunity to analyze the narrative instead of simply experiencing visual pleasure. Fassbinder gives both male and female characters a “three-dimensional space…[reproducing] as accurately as possible the so-called natural conditions of human perception” yet they seem as lost and incapable as the average human being. In contrast to the idealized power typical of the film character who “can make things happen and control events better than the subject/spectator” Ali and Emmi seem at the mercy of events and just as unable to control them as the subject/spectator, breaking the system of identification in mainstream cinema. The male spectator cannot receive pleasure from the “ego ideal” because the hero is not idealized, with no more control over events than the spectator.

Though the film is about a love story between Emmi and Ali, it does not follow the narrative structure of a mainstream film. In most films the man subjugates the woman. She loses her sexuality which is possessed only by the hero: “as the narrative progressed she falls in love with the main male protagonist and becomes his property, losing her outward glamorous characteristics, her generalized sexuality, her show-girl connotations; her eroticism is subjected to the male star alone.” In contrast, Emmi is sexualized only by her relationship with the male hero. Ali is the only character to perceive her sexuality in a positive way. The other characters in the film, such as Ali’s female friends, find their marriage disgusting, while the Germans believe any woman who chooses a foreigner is sexually perverted, a whore. Her children are disgusted as well by her marriage, abandoning her more than they already have and condemning her along with the rest of society. The camera moves across their faces as they stare at her, judging her. According to the expectations of society at her age she should be dying not falling in love.

As Emmi and Ali’s relationship becomes more accepted by those around them Ali is increasingly made the object of sexual objectification. He, unlike Emmi,  is shown naked, though not in the same manner as a female in mainstream film. Like the portrayal of Emmi, it allows the audience an empirical objectivity and the ability to analyze for themselves. There is an almost clinical distance, showing him first in the mirror and then later at the other woman’s apartment in a long shot. “According to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures that back it up, the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification” yet the film objectifies Ali more than anyone else. Emmi’s friends admire his youthful body and muscles, examining him like a show horse and Emmi encourages them. In the hallway of her building after their first meeting Emmi becomes the subject of the frame, talking while Ali watches passively. She is foregrounded while he is in the background, though normally the man would be active and emphasized in the frame. Throughout the film she remains active, taking on the “man’s role as the active one of forwarding the story, making things happen” while Ali takes on the feminine position of passive image. It is his construction as a passive sexual object, which seems to propel him to cheat on Emmi and causes his dissatisfaction with the relationship. As long as they as a couple are the object of scorn and disgust the adversity bonds them closer together, but when Ali becomes the emblem of young strong beautiful foreign man he loses his humanity. This is problematic since the dominant culture and mainstream cinema often push the male other into the subordinate female position, so in this area the film is not breaking with the dominant culture but enforcing it.

In Ali: Fear Eats the Soul someone is always watching. The bearers of the gaze are always completely still, negating the idea of the bearer of the look as the active male. Usually there is a group of people staring at Emmi, or Emmi and Ali together, and when there is only one gazer it is most often a woman. The gaze is an exchange, not simply a man staring at a woman. Emmi stares at the group and the group stares at her, but the way the film constructs the gaze equates it with judgment. The group judges her and she recognizes their judgment. Each character at times is both subject and object of the gaze and the shots trade back and forth. The camera establishes the gaze with eye-line matches between shots never showing the object of the gaze and the bearer of the gaze in the same shot. The first sequence sets the tone for the rest of the film. Emmi enters and sits down at a table, the camera cuts to a shot of the people in the bar looking at her, cuts back to a shot of Emmi, and back to the people looking at her. This simple construction of gazes conveys her position as “other,” her awareness of that position and her discomfort.

The entire film is built around looking and the idea of looking: most importantly how the gaze affects others and positions people as object and “other.” At first they do not acknowledge the gaze. In the café they dance, unaware of the appalled, frozen gaze of the people in the bar. The object of the gaze is active while the subject is static. Later Emmi is forced out of the bar by the gaze of the woman who owns it. The woman looks at her, she looks back then out at the door. They repeat this several times until Emmi, disheartened, leaves the bar. She is not welcome. Others perceive Emmi and Ali as a spectacle but throughout the film they only acknowledge this position once. The couple sits at a table outside and Emmi begins to cry, we see a shot of people staring at them, and she begins to yell at them. He is her husband and there should be nothing wrong with that. To observers they are strange and “other,” an indecent relationship that should be hidden, but they perceive themselves as merely a couple in love.

They are watched from a distance instead of close up and are often watched through harsh geometric patterns, barriers to the couple as well as to sight. The methods Fassbinder uses to reduce the screen field reveal the limitations of society for the couple, using harsher lines and shapes to limit them in the frame unlike Sternberg’s “light and shade, lace, steam, foliage, net, streamers” which idealize the woman. Her neighbor watches them climb the stairs and calls out to them through a window grating. The harsh lines cut up the figures and make them appear small. Fassbinder also limits the frame with walls or other objects narrowing our view of the couple. In the apartment we peer through the gap in the walls to observe the characters. Likewise in the restaurant the two are set up in a tableau, looking out at the audience, seemingly aware of our gaze. Even when the characters on screen are not watching them the audience is. The camera makes us intruders, but instead of giving way to unconscious voyeuristic pleasure as in mainstream cinema we feel the intrusion. This creates a “distancing awareness in the audience.” The framing seems set up for us to peer in on the characters, making the audience aware the importance of our gaze. Cinematic conventions demand a “hermetically sealed world” that is “indifferent to the presence of the audience.”  Ali delivers this, but through the framing and distant shots positions the audience to be aware of our intrusive gaze. Ali without breaking the illusion of “looking in on a private world” is aware of it, and makes the spectator aware of it. Though the film invites us to judge the characters along with the representatives of society in the film we recognize our position and are able to analyze it. Mainstream film does not give spectators that option.

Fassbinder suggests with this film that the cycle of judgment through looking will start again. As the Germans accept Emmi, the new foreign cleaning woman is pushed into the position of “other” that Emmi has escaped. Fassbinder shows that the need to eradicate the “other” has carried over into post-War Germany as fear and prejudice towards the “other.” “Formal preoccupations reflect the psychical obsessions of the society which produced it, and further, to stress that the alternative cinema must start specifically by reacting against these obsession and assumptions.” Mulvey and Fassbinder seem to agree that the only way to create an alternative cinema, or an alternative society is to break the system of prejudice encoded in its forms. Fassbinder creates a socially progressive film by bringing to light objectification of the “other” and contradicting the typical mainstream forms. He illuminates some areas of marginalization and invites us to criticize them while remaining influenced by the dominant culture’s perception of race and the beauty standards.

Chris Columbus’ 2002 film Rent translates the 1996 rock opera into cinematic language. The optimism and hope, combined with harsh social commentary, seething rock ballads and stirring human stories that is Jonathan Larson’s Rent is a challenge to modify for the screen. Using the original Broadway cast (plus a few new voices) and the visual backdrop of NYC instead of the community of artists, addicts, vendors, and homeless in the stage production, Columbus brings Rent into the new millennium. The stage play loses its edge on film without the focus on community, and a darkness that critiques the social injustices perpetrated on the homeless and the gay community. The film gains greater specificity by grounding the fantasy of the musical in the reality of New York City. We see the city in long shots, songs take place on the roof, the subway, and the streets of NYC. The essence of the show remains the same: finding hope and optimism in the harsh landscape of New York where love and living for the moment ultimately triumph over death.

The original cast members: Adam Pascal (Roger), Anthony Rapp (Mark), Jesse L. Martin (Collins), Idina Menzel (Maureen), Taye Diggs (Benny), and Wilson Jermaine Heredia (Angel) return for the film to play the characters they created in 1996 at the New York Theater Workshop. While the director, Chris Columbus, considered making the film with new young people/upcoming rock stars he ultimately decided the only way to make it work was with the original cast. He said that original cast members “were” these characters. In 1996 these actors were relative newcomers, with more or less theater experience, (Adam Pascal was the only raw talent) and as such none of them brought a pre-existing star persona to the stage. They were able to take on the characters, both defining and being defined by them. Using the original cast members in the film lends it authenticity because Rent is synonymous with these actors. They are recreating roles from their past, tapping into the energy and emotions that Rent evoked in them, bringing a sense of nostalgia to their roles and a joy in returning to them that a newcomer would not have. At the same time Rosario Dawson as Mimi and Tracy Thoms as Joanne bring a freshness and youth to the film that may have been lacking if all of the original cast returned. Rosario Dawson is less gritty and her voice less raw and raspy than Daphne Rubin-Vega and she brings a greater vulnerability and sweetness to the character underneath her tough, sassy veneer. Ultimately the combination of the old and new actors give the film a timelessness that the stage can never have, focusing on the universal themes of love, optimism, and living for today, while losing some of the specificity of the social issues depicted on stage.

The 1996 show was written and composed by Jonathan Larson in reaction to social problems in New York at the time, which form the backdrop to his adaptation of “La Bohème,” also determining the course of the plot. Billy Aronson, who developed the original concept said of the show:

When I first lived in New York I was in Hell’s Kitchen. I was struck by the sort of grisly strange scary world of being an artist in the 1980’s in New York. Where we were becoming more and more aware of the spread of AIDS and homelessness was skyrocketing. Where there were people who were so wealthy, stepping over people who were dying of disease on the street. So I got this idea that I wanted to take the basic story of Bohème, but setting it now where it’s not as glorious, its not as luscious. Finding beauty there, but in a different way.

Taking the New York scene and applying it to the Bohème story created the plot and characters of Rent. Marcello the painter becomes Mark the filmmaker, who isolates himself behind the camera while longing for a sense of community. Rodolfo the poet, becomes Roger the musician, diagnosed with HIV and recovering from a heroin addiction. He falls in love with Mimi, transformed from courtesan with consumption to a stripper with a heroin addiction and HIV.  The plot then hinges on the battle between gentrification and the homeless. Benny the wealthy representative of  “the twin specters of gentrification and generational sell-out” owns the building and wants to turn it and the lot next door into a recording/film studio, with condos on the top, and throw out the homeless in the process. It was originally set on the Upper West Side but Jonathan discovered more interesting issues on Lower East Side:

New York was a different New York then, it was grittier you didn’t go to Avenue C without watching your back. Really scary and desolate, and there were like shady drug people hanging out in doorways, the edgier gay and lesbian community, the funky, punk influence kind of community, young artists, young students were starting to move in, the post collegiate dormitory scene with style.

The Lower East Side culture of the 80’s is evident in both the film and stage version, though on stage it is contemporary and relevant while in the film it is communicated as a nostalgia for the bohemian Lower East Side, that has succumbed to gentrification, being taken over by yuppies and trendy restaurants and shops.

This view of bohemia was daring in 1996, bringing to light the AIDS epidemic and giving its victims a voice, putting us on the side of the homeless against the zero tolerance policy and the police who enforce it. There were many burnt out abandoned buildings on the Lower East Side, and because of the economy it seemed like a good idea to be a squatter – live illegally in a building that would otherwise be uninhabited. People slept in Tompkins Square Park (where “I’ll Cover You,” Angel and Collins’ love song takes place in the film), because there was nowhere to live. Landlords were furious with the squatters and the homeless in the park. They wanted people to pay rent. These people are represented in Rent through Benny and his “investors” (aka his father-in-law) who want to clear out the homeless from the lot on Christmas Eve, but “you can’t quietly wipe out an entire tent city then watch ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ on TV.” It became increasingly uncomfortable for the authorities to have poor folks around like that so they brought the police in to get them out, beginning a policy of zero tolerance of poor/homeless people in America. The police were like an army, it took days, there were fires/flares, cheering for poor people, cheering against, big brother, it was like watching a war. Rent is a dramatization of what happened little by little: people started to buy property on the Lower East Side, and turn it into cool fabulous bohemian style places (for a price) – gentrification. Jonathan wanted to address this social issue with Rent: the haves vs. the have-nots.

As La Bohème was about a plague, Rent is about the plague of AIDS. People were dying of it in a very short amount of time. Doctors told people they had two years at most. There was a sense that you did something bad to get AIDS; had sex with something or shot something up, so there was discrimination around it, hostility towards it, and an ignorance about it. Regan heard about disease when 10,000 people in this country had it, by the time he said the word over 100,000 people were dying of this sexually transmitted disease and no one seemed to care. People were afraid to talk about it, and since there was no one to help, you talked to your friends. Jonathan (though not gay and HIV positive as many people believe) was connected to the gay community. His high school best friend was gay and HIV positive. His friend said in “No Day But Today: The Story of Rent” that you think you’re going to be dead in two years, and that he was told by the doctor to get his affairs in order. AIDS was not just a headline; people you knew were dying. The characters in Rent that we see in the Life Support meetings are real friends of Jonathan’s that died of AIDS: Ali Gertz 1966-1992 diagnosed in 1988, Gordon Rogers 1963-1995 diagnosed a few months later, Pam Shaw 1963-1995. The disease did not discriminate, people you wouldn’t expect to have it, got it and died young. Jonathan went to Friends in Deed, a support group for people with AIDS and the basis for life support meetings, with his friend Matt, and ended up volunteering. It was a place to go be themselves, talk about the disease without feeling ashamed/being treated like something dirty, it offered understanding and love, and a nonjudgmental environment of support. These meetings served as inspiration in a greater sense, as someone in a meeting once said “I’m not really afraid of dying and I think I can handle suffering, but the thing I think about all the time is will I lose my dignity?” Jonathan wrote Rent to try to save people by bringing attention to this disease and to return their dignity.

The harshness of Larson’s social critique is softened in the film as Chris Columbus focuses more on the optimism and hope of the show, losing the darker edge and some of the humor that kept it from being overly sentimental and melodramatic. Explicit references to sex are removed (leaving only more acceptable innuendo), as well as April’s suicide (only referenced obliquely in the film). Benny and Mimi’s affair is diluted and the sex song “Contact” is removed (it was never even filmed unlike “Goodbye Love” and “Halloween”). Mimi’s strip tease becomes more explicit, but also exploitative as we see Mimi open her legs to the audience in the club and grab her crotch. Like the girls in Busby Berkley films she appears to enjoy it, until her drug addiction drags her down. Mimi’s reawakening in the finale is more self-aware onstage while in the film it slides into melodrama, and Roger’s song is too sickly sweet to take. Jonathan’s balance of darkness and hope in the play gets lost in the film, perhaps contributing to its failure in the box office.

To me “Rent” is a triumph of theater…Onstage the death of Angel, the endearing drag queen, is depicted abstractly with billowing sheets and a circle of bereft friends. In the film the scene is made literal, set in an intensive care unit. The filmed “Rent” seems a safer show than Mr. Larson may have intended.

The combination of sex and death onstage with the song “Contact” not only is more daring than showing Angel growing paler in an intensive care unit, but it reflects the complexities of AIDS, and the inherent connection between the passion they are singing about and the disease that kills Angel. It reflects a world where sex is never safe and the risk of expressing love is no longer just a broken heart. The song’s lyrics were shockingly straightforward for a Broadway show, “harder, faster, wetter, bastard, you whore, you cannibal, more, you animal” culminating in Angel’s death and ending in the “bad sex” that is almost never talked about in popular culture, “wait, slipped, shit, I think I missed, don’t get pissed. It was bad for me, was it bad for you? It’s over.” The words of Angel’s solo reflect this complexity even further by implicating the audience, “Today me tomorrow you” reminding us that this can in fact happen to anyone, and his last words in the show are “take me I love you.” Furthermore, it presents homosexual sex (as well as heterosexual) boldly in song, not as something that must be hidden in shame, but as something to be celebrated.

Mimi’s sexuality is placed in the more filmicly acceptable realm of exploitation. The crotch shot and the opening of her legs to the audience replaces the display of skill and athleticism we see onstage as she dances on her balcony and into Roger’s apartment. In the film instead, she is an object of male consumption and voyeurism, and enjoying it. She slinks down the street with bouncy enthusiasm, singing the same song from the strip club to seduce Roger, making her stripping seem all fun and games, in contrast with her quip that “it’s a living” to Roger in “Light My Candle.” In the play there is also more comedy to it, when she tells Roger that she works at the Cat Scratch Club he says “I didn’t recognize you without the handcuffs” and imitates her dance. The scene with Benny after New Years is also stripped of sexual meaning. In the play he implies that she slept with him to change his mind, which she vehemently denies. “Mimi since your ways are so seductive, persuade them not to be so counterproductive, why not tell ‘em what you wore to my place? Black leather and lace, my desk was a mess I think I’m still sore.” Mimi asserts that, “I kicked him and told him I wasn’t his whore” but Roger doesn’t believe her. The film removes the complexities of Mimi’s character making her just a woman to be exploited.

Though we see more of April and Roger’s relationship in the film through the flashbacks in “One Song Glory” the stark reality of her suicide is removed, which is very matter of fact and in your face in the show. Mark sings, “Close on Roger, his girlfriend April left a note saying we’ve got AIDS, before slitting her wrists in the bathroom.” Instead in the film you are left to think she died of AIDS. This is partially because at the time of the show AIDS was a death sentence, while today it is more manageable.

Mimi’s near death episode at the end of the film falls into melodrama, while in the show it is more comic. Her survival in the film merely takes on the impossibility allowed in musicals, and is thoroughly sentimental. In the show, on the other hand, some distance is placed between us and the spectacle by her line: “I jumped over the moon…a leap of mooooo” allowing us to realize the impossibility of her survival while still allowing us to enjoy it and celebrate it. We know as an audience in both the film and the show that in real life Mimi would die. In not acknowledging the ridiculousness of it, the sentimentality takes over and we feel that it is a typical Hollywood happy ending, a deus ex macchina, saving the character when she obviously should die. On the other hand, Jonathan saves Mimi to give the audience the happy ending we all want yet know isn’t real. In the play we are placed on the inside with the composer and the actors and it is clear that we are being given this ending because we want it. By acknowledging its impossibility he allows us to enjoy it and triumph in it.

The film appears to be tamed by the cultural expectations of American audiences, which the show defied. Instead of a challenge it becomes a feel good film with some social commentary on acceptable issues like gay marriage and drug addiction. Sex is replaced with violence (the riot). Supporting gay marriage and showing the ills of drug addiction is politically correct while depictions of suicide or gay sex are still deviant and swept under the table: we can allude to it on film but not show it. Chris Columbus takes the safe route, immortalizing the hope and optimism and celebrating the play and Jonathan’s work without taking on the social and cultural implications of it. It would be much more difficult and controversial to attempt to update the show, especially because of Jonathan’s death, making it more socially relevant to today’s audiences, and pushing the envelope as it did originally onstage.

In the spirit of capturing the truth at the heart of Rent, Chris Columbus shifts the focus from the social issues of the community to the individual human stories, which remain relevant and relatable. He focuses more on the three couples rather than Mark, who is pushed somewhat to the side in the film. Onstage he is our guide and narrator through the show, presenting the characters and situations with humor, reveling his own isolation and loneliness in the process. The film uses the point of view of his camera as part of the visual structure, but loses some of his voice. His solo “Halloween” reflecting on his own position as witness to all these events and his loneliness and separation was shot but cut out of the film. His argument with Roger at the end of “Goodbye Love” is removed as well, and the stark truths they throw at each other: “Mark hides in his work, from facing your failure, facing your loneliness, facing the fact you live a lie. Yes you live a lie, tell you why, you’re always preaching not to be numb when that’s how you thrive. You pretend to create and observe when you really detach from feeling alive.” The fact that Roger is running away because he’s afraid to watch Mimi die is also lost in the film with the removal of this song, taking the meaning out of his flight to Santa Fe.

The community that surrounds these individual stories is essentially lost in the film with the removal of most of the ensemble numbers aside from “Rent.” Even the way the stories of the individual characters weave together in the existing songs is reduced. Only the main characters in the film sing, the voice of the community is largely removed, boiled down to a few instances of dialogue, such as the interaction with the police and the homeless woman. The squeegee man does not chant “honest living,” the chorus of the homeless reminding us that there is no Christmas for them, is gone replaced by a documentary aesthetic that distances us from their plight. Without this larger scope of community Maureen’s protest is rendered meaningless and seems more selfish than politically active. Roger’s comment that “you’ve got plenty of customers” loses its punch when not backed by a chorus of drug addicts singing “I’m illing, I’ve gotta get my sickness off, gotta run gotta ride, gotta gun gotta hide gotta go!” In the song “Christmas Bells” New York is given a voice that is cacophonous, overlapping, and confused, but authentic. In it Jonathan critiques the consumerist culture through the vendors selling “hats, bats, shoes, booze, mountain bikes, potpourri, leather bags, girlie mags, forty-fives, AZT” not to mention Collins’ stolen coat. The police are also criticized for racism with their lyric: “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, Just like the ones I used to know, Jingle bells prison cells,
Fa la la la fa la la la,
You have the right to remain, Silent night holy night, Fall on your knees oh night divine, You’ll do some time,
Fa la la la la
Fa la la la la.” Finally, the idea of the seven main characters as a family is not fully expressed in the film. Onstage they struggle for unity with Angel as the constant advocate of love and unity, but on film that sense of community is broken up by the framing of characters in two shots, rather than as a group.

Columbus replaces this community with real locations in New York City. Roger and Mark’s building and block was shot on a back lot in LA, built to look like 1980’s New York, creating a backdrop of nostalgia for the group. He wanted to make sure there was a reality about it, that the clothing was authentic, and that people looked real. The rest was shot on location in NYC. Angel and Collins walk through Tompkins Square Park singing “I’ll Cover You,” and Mimi goes there to buy drugs. “Santa Fe” takes place on the F train with Collins and Angel dancing through the  poles, lamenting life in New York and dreaming of a new life in Santa Fe, though as Roger says in the end “you’d miss New York before you could unpack.” The film starts with documentary style shots of New York with Mark’s monologue over it, and transitions to him riding his bike through New York streets. Joanne, Mark, and Maureen go to Wall Street in the second half of the film, symbolizing Mark’s “selling out.” Roger sings “One Song Glory” on the roof and he and Mark reunite in “What You Own” on the roof as well. Columbus emphasizes the city location with extreme wide shots, revealing the scope of the city from the rooftop. His long sweeping camera motions stylize the film, and his beautiful use of foregrounding a character whose emotions are revealed to us, in tension with a character in the background, heighten the conflict. He uses many continuous takes (as in Fred Astaire films) to allow the musical numbers their full scope without distracting cuts. The most beautiful sequence in the film is the “Tango: Maureen” which starts in the performance space than transitions into Mark’s headspace while he is unconscious. The room is filled with black clad dancers doing the tango, with only Maureen in red. She does a three-way tango with Joanne and Mark before leaving them for another man and woman. Joanne in this scene alludes to Fred and Ginger, Mark says “it’s hard to do this backwards,” and Joanne responds “you should try it in heels.” The set of Maureen’s performance space is a homage to the original set of Rent: Paul Clay’s original grungy, deliberately makeshift-looking set, with its white paper lantern of a moon.

Chris Columbus’ film immortalizes the spirit of Rent and its creator Jonathan Larson, leaving behind some of its edge and criticism, opting instead to capture its optimism and hope. He creates a sense of nostalgia for an imagined bohemian past with the original cast and the back lot set, built to look like 1980’s New York. Yet he succeeds in visualizing the imagined world of Rent, celebrating its characters and its music. It is difficult to be anything other than faithful to the work of this composer, who died at the age of 35 of an aortic aneurysm on the eve of his success. The play has remained largely unchanged, paying tribute to Jonathan, and the film serves to do the same. In the end, the only words left (like at the New York Theater Workshop on the night Rent opened) are: “thank you Jonathan Larson.”

[Another Season of Love: The Original Cast Reassembles for a ‘Rent’ Anniversary]

[A.O. Scott, “New Tenants in Tinseltown]

[Enter Singing: Young, Hopeful and Taking on the Big Time]

Spike Lee has difficulty creating a female character that can be both sexual and a strong woman (though there are some exceptions). Almost every woman in Spike’s films fits into the virgin/whore complex (particularly in the films he wrote). Genius Bastard (reposted on Shadow And Act) has a run down of Spike’s 10 Worst Female Characters. Even Anna Paquin’s character in 25th Hour, though still a teenager, becomes a sexual object. She is described as jailbait and becomes the object of her teacher’s fantasy. Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, and He Got Game are the most overtly concerned with prostitution. In all three films prostitution depicts either a woman’s fall, or a fallen woman and it is usually combined with other social problems, such as drugs and abuse. In Jungle Fever, prostitution is portrayed as a side effect of drug addiction; women give blow jobs to be able to afford crack. It is seen as the lowest a woman can fall. In the last scene of the film a woman comes up to Flipper offering to “suck his dick” (as Halle Berry’s character did while he was with his daughter earlier in the film) and he screams “No!” breaking the fourth wall and implicating the audience. This is one of the more effective ways Spike critiques the issue of prostitution. In Malcolm X, we witness the fall of Malcolm’s first girlfriend Laura who he rejects for a white woman. In the beginning, she is a fairly strong woman, she refuses to “give it up” to Malcolm and sticks to her principles. The next time we see her she is being abused by her drug addicted boyfriend, and in the final shot of her in the film she kneels in front of a white man, exhibiting her fall into prostitution.

The way the film deals with this issue is to propose the Nation of Islam as a solution. While the tenets of the Nation of Islam solve some of the problems, moving away from drugs and towards self-respect, the women are still dominated by the men. Most explicitly, one of the banners at a rally reads “We must protect our women, our most valuable property.” While moving away from prostitution women still remain objects. Finally, Milla Jovovich’s character Dakota Burns is a prostitute in an abusive relationship with her pimp, Sweetness, who is redeemed in the end of the film through her relationship with Jake Shuttlesworth.  The first time we see her in the film she is being beaten by Sweetness. As her pimp and her lover/abuser he is dominating and exploiting her in two ways. When she meets Jake she rattles off a string of excuses for staying with him that ring false to the audience and we see the show she is putting on to become this commodity. She is the epitome of a fallen woman, both prostitute and victim of abuse, unable to break free because of the same conditions that brought her there, yet Jake treats her as a lady (though he pays her) and wants to at least pretend their relationship is something more. He admonishes the police officers for their derogatory terms for women, stating that she is a lady. In the end we see her leave town, perhaps having gained back a sense of self-respect, and the idea that she deserves better.

In opposition to the prostitutes and overly sexualized women in Spike’s film, there are the mother/sister characters, that while being stripped of any kind of sexuality, manage to be fairly strong women. The characters played by Joie Lee (Jade) and Ruby Dee (Mother Sister) in Do The Right Thing are strong women who express their opinions. Jade has herself together and admonishes Mookie to take care of his responsibilities, yet at the first threat of sexual attraction to her by Sal both Mookie and Pino flip out. She tells Bugging Out to leave Sal alone, but is largely ineffectual. Mother Sister argues with Da Mayor, likewise admonishing him for being a drunk, though she lightens up when he saves a child. She is unafraid to speak her mind, and her outraged voice is heard over the riot after the death of Radio Raheem. Yet, for the most part, her character sits passively in her windowsill watching the world go by. In He Got Game, Jesus’ mother and sister are strong female characters as well. His sister is spunky and smart, talking back to her brother, yet supporting him. His mother forms the basis of his moral compass and the strength of his decision to go to college, yet because she is dead we see her only through flashbacks and she cannot be a fully developed character.

The virgin/whore complex is made explicit in Summer of Sam with the character of Dionna and her husband Vinnie. Vinnie sees the world in terms of virgins and whores. He will not engage in certain sexual acts with his wife because in spite of their marriage he still sees her as virginal and chaste, so instead he has affairs with every other woman in town, doing things with them he would never do with his wife. Dionna wants her husband to see her as sexual and is unsatisfied with their sex life. She wants to get out of the virgin/whore dichotomy and be able to be a woman. She tries dressing up for him and pretending she is someone else, but he feels too guilty to follow through, yet still cannot stop cheating. He finally sees her as sexual when they end up at an orgy in New York City and he sees her get off with another man and woman. He is extremely jealous and they get into a fight in the car, the minute he is forced to see her as sexual she becomes a whore like the rest:

Vinny: Fuckin’ make me sick, you fuckin’ slut.

Dionna: I am a slut? You’re calling me a slut? You lowlife piece of shit- you fucked- my- cousin! You didn’t think I knew about that! I smelled her pussy juice all over your fuckin’ face! You fuckin’ sick bastard! How dare you? And all this time I’m thinking there’s something wrong with me. You perverted sick fuck!

She will no longer accept the roles of virgin and whore. She calls him a whore in return and he tells her “I can’t be a whore. I’m a man!” Masculinity, particularly Spike’s brand of masculinity will not accept the concept of whore. Vinnie can cheat as much as he wants and he can never be a whore or a slut. Meanwhile, the minute Dionna becomes sexual to him she is a “slut” and “whore.” Yet, Dionna is one of the strongest women in Spike’s films. She demands to be both sexual and respected, accepting neither the role of virgin nor whore, which her husband wants to place her in. Once he is revealed to her as the cheating man he is he no longer has any power over her. When he threatens her with violence she denies it, and by the end of the film she is more powerful than he is. While he falls apart and begs for her to take him back she refuses. Even when he threatens to kill himself, she makes him leave.

Ruby in Summer of Sam is also a strong woman, despite being somewhat lost and lacking in identity. She is unhappy with her life as it is, and takes the opportunity to change it through Richie. She takes on a different persona to have greater agency, strength and freedom. She wants to get out and Richie gives her the chance to do so. She is still somewhat stripped of her sexuality by doing so, though she asserts her desires to Richie. Most telling, Ruby is the only one who sees Richie for who he is and accepts him. She understands how ludicrous the idea of Richie as the Son of Sam is and she defends him to the Dead End Gang, even in the end when they are beating him. Another example of strong women in Spike Lee films comes from the war council scene in Jungle Fever (not written by Spike). The women in this scene strongly express their opinions, analyzing both women and men and calling the men out for their behavior. Finally Clockers is the first film where a woman acts as the voice of Spike Lee. Iris, Shorty’s mother, confronts the drug dealers calling them by their real names, saying that she knows them for who they are. She admonishes them for selling poison to their own people (taking on Spike Lee’s perspective). She threatens Strike, and tells him to stay away from her son, she does not want his influence over him. She stands up for herself and asserts her power.

For a female spectator it is difficult to accept Spike Lee’s message when it comes in a misogynistic package. While we may identify and agree with some of his characters and themes we are put off by the flat female characters and the roles that are given to us as women. Spike’s portrayal of women gets in the way of his point because it makes it inaccessible to us. There is no place for a liberated, strong, sexual woman in his film, there is no model for us to identify with. All there is for women in Spike’s films is to be objectified and weakened. We grow angry, or shrink down in our seats at the behavior/treatment of women on screen. We leave the theater with our identities battered, and our egos smashed. While we may have missed the message of Spike’s film, Spike himself missed the point. You cannot successfully assert the rights of one dominated people while misrepresenting another.