My Birthday Books for #ReadingOnlyBooksWrittenByWomen

These are all the lovely books I got for my birthday:

Vandana Shiva' Soil Not Oil: Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food Insecurity

Carol Adams' The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory

Elaine Showalter' The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture 1830-1980

Marina Warner's From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers

Karen Boyle's Everyday Pornography

Phyllis Chesler' Women and Madness

Susan Sontag' Regarding the Pain of Others

Carole Pateman' The Sexual Contract

The Radical Women Manifesto: Socialist-Feminist Theory, Program and Organisational Structure

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Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty

I love the ballet. I love the sounds of pointe shoes thumping on the stage. I love the artistry and the strength of the women dancers. I know ballet is one of the least-feminist friendly sports going because of the physical toll on women's, and it's mostly women's, bodies. I know and agree with all of the feminist arguments against  ballet; from it's origins with its relationship to prostitution to the quite serious long-term health implications for dancers, particularly in relation to the fetishisation of eating disorders within the industry. Yet, I still love ballet. I know I shouldn't but it's one of those things I can't *quite* give up.

I've been taking my eldest daughter to the ballet for years. It's one of the best parts of living in this city: the sheer number of brilliant dance companies that tour here. Scottish Ballet's The Nutcracker and anything by Northern Ballet Company remain my favourites. Recently, I took my daughter to see Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty: A Gothic Romance. It's the first production I've seen by the company and I have to say I found it really quite disturbing. The story of Sleeping Beauty is the story of sexualised violence and the control of women's bodies. I've just not seen it performed in quite so blatant a manner without any attempt to deconstruct the myths. 

There is so much wrong with this version that it's hard to know where to start. It still uses the modern telling of the myths of "Patriarchal Love" but rather felt like Twilight with tutus.  The "evil fairy" dies quickly after cursing the princess Aurora so it is her son who makes the curse come true by pricking her finger. Aurora is not awoken by a kiss from a stranger but rather by the gardner she'd been fooling around with before pricking her finger. He lives for a 100 years because the good male fairy bites him and turns the gardner into another fairy. The erotic connotations of that "kiss" go unremarked. The son of the evil fairy guards Aurora's body for a 100 years desperately kissing her to bring her back to life now that he has decided he wants to fuck her. There is a rather lot of rolling about on the stage between the son and the unconscious body of Aurora. In the original fairy tale, Aurora is awoken by the twins she conceived after being rape whilst unconscious by the king. I don't know if Bourne was actively trying to reference that version but the implications of rape were very obvious. After a 100 years the son tricks the gardner into waking Aurora and then the son tries to ritually sacrifice her. She is saved

by the gardner/ new fairy whilst the other fairies kill the son. Then, Aurora gives birth to a half baby/ half angel.

I don't expect much from productions of Sleeping Beauty. There is no way to reclaim the story from its original construction of rape but I have never seen a version so utterly problematic before. I'm actually surprised their was no trigger warning or child-viewing warning to the production. The dancing was beautiful but the story Bourne chose to show wasn't.

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Ice Age 4: Another Kids Film, More Asinine Gender Stereotypes

I'm not sure why I even bother taking the kids to the pictures anymore. They inevitably serve to make unbearably cantankerous with the constant gendered stereotyping and, frequently, the erasure of female characters. However, it was pissing with rain and my house already looks like  a Turner prize installation art project what with the layer of paper mache, painted shoe boxes and toilet paper tube mobiles and that's without mentioning the cat who bears more than a passing resemblance to a disco ball with the amount of glitter stuck to her. So, off to the pictures we went. And, yeah, I'm cheap so it was the kids club movie which is why I'm reviewing a film that's been out for several months already.

Ice Age 4 has, at least, a few female characters. You know, the ubiquitous ones: the crazy old bat, self-sacrificing mother, and the "evil" temptress who falls in love with a cock and then learns to be good. Plus, there's the whole rebellious teenage daughter who learns that doing exactly what Daddy tells you to do is the only way to be "good". And, yeah, a character actually does refer to the grandmother as a "crazy old bat" because there is nothing funnier that disablist comments about dementia. She's also spiteful because  it wouldn't be funny if a character with dementia wasn't spiteful too.

Ice Age 4 had some funny moments but the female characters were just awful. Some of the worst written characters I've seen in a while. The evil, stubborn temptress who just needs to be rescued and fall in love with her rescuer to become a "real" woman is just so tedious and repetitive. As is the story of a teenage girl dumping her best friend to go off with the "cool dude", slags off her friend and then everyone, miraculously, becomes best mates. That's bullying. It isn't something we should be showing young children. 

Yeah, there are places where the female characters "rescue" someone but it is never as important as being rescued by Daddy/ Lover. Because Daddy/ Lover knows best. Daddy/ Lover always knows best and where would we be without the Anxious Patriarch trope? I mean, kids might actually learn to engage critically with the Patriarchy. And, then kick the ever living shit out of it. And, we couldn't have that. Nope. Not at all.

Oh, and from a completely non-feminist perspective, what is it with kids movies and lame song interludes? Sure, if the movie is supposed to be a musical but one random and seriously fucking stupid song in the middle? Just, why? Are there no competent musicians in LA who could be brought in to write non-stupid songs for children? Or, better yet, just skip the musical interlude all together.

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Brave: Not Quite the Feminist Film I Imagined

I'm not going to lie. I was disappointed by Brave. I liked Merida as proto-feminist heroine but the rest of the characters were really just tedious gendered stereotypes. The men, including the king, were all irresponsible and prone to violence. Merida's younger brothers were incredibly badly behaved but rewarded for it. I find the "men are all stupid and violent and irresponsible" cliche tedious and dull. The maid was silly and prone to hysterics. The kingdom itself is held together by the Queen who suppresses her whole personality and needs into ensuring that the others don't kill one another in an orgy of violence. Yep, that tired old "women have to be extra special good to compensate for the men being arseholes" trope so beloved in victim-blaming. 

I really, really wanted to like Brave. As a heroine, she is one of the best Disney Princesses; possibly second only to Mulan but the rest of the film lets Merida down. And, that's without getting into the way Merida saves her mother by learning to darn. I mean, seriously, what's with that? Yeah, darning is an important skill to have and no doubt has saved many a soldier but when you're trying to stop gendering fictional characters for children, a girl saving someone through darning isn't a step in the right direction. Merida is a warrior queen. Warrior Queens do not save people by fixing tapestries. And, the end isn't really a brilliant one for Merida. After all, she winds up weaving with her mother which isn't what she wanted. It was an unnecessary compromise that should never have been required because Merida's demands weren't unreasonable. Everyone else needed to learn to compromise [and the father to actually act like one instead of being a drunken bore] but Merida herself should not have had to change.

Plus, the love story is still there. The last scene is of the "ugly" laird kissing her hand. The implication is that Merida ends up with him which isn't really losing the princess marries the prince storyline so much as holding out for a sequel a la Tangled.

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Snow White and the Huntsman: It was Pretty. And, Erm, It was Pretty.

Snow White and the Huntsman is an interesting film attempting to play against the Disneyfication of the Princess genre. Supposedly, it's closer to the Grimms version but, frankly, everyone claims that. Even Disney. It's been years since I read the Grimms version but I don't remember Snow White running about it chain mail. Maybe, I just skipped that bit of the fairy tale. My brain was drifting a bit during the film so I may have had a nap at some point and missed some extremely important Feminist point. But, I'm guessing not.

Despite claims to the contrary, it is most certainly not a feminist film; unless you watched the entire thing wearing headphones playing Reclaim the Night anthems. Over and over again. Or, someone reading Andrea Dworkin's Intercourse. It was pretty though; especially fairy land with lolloping bunnies and flittering butterflies. That bit was like watching In the Night Garden without the ghastly music. Being pretty isn't generally considered a requirement to attain feminist approval what with feminists normally being concerned with destroying the Patriarchy so I'm not entirely sure why the film's being advertised in the way it is.

The film would have seriously stunk without Charlize Theron as the Queen. Theron is such an incredibly talented actress and really carried the entire film herself. How they managed to land such a talented actress to star in such a stupid film is beyond me. The only possible reason is that Theron is now considered "old" by Hollywood standards and the only available roles for her are "character parts". The failure of Hollywood to capitalise on Theron's talent is just depressing. She's talented and beautiful [not to mention a campaigner for domestic violence services]; I'd have thought production companies would be standing outside her front door begging her to take on their projects.

However, the Queen was an unbelievably problematic character with the whole "women have no value unless they are beautiful" trope being played out. She commits heinous crimes in order to preserve her beauty because, as the Queen's mother tells her in a flashback, the only power women have over men is to be beautiful. Yeah, thanks for that. Perhaps, a little bit of contextualisation there could have helped since the soon-to-be-Queen is promptly kidnapped [weirdly along with her brother] by an invading force because of her beauty. And, in the evil women stakes, the-soon-to-be-Queens mother is the one who curses her with the whole "be beautiful or die" trope; blaming the mother for her daughter's subsequent behaviour": a well-known Patriarchal trick.

The Queen kills Snow White's father the day of their marriage in the wedding bed after tricking the king into marrying her. That's a pretty nasty message about women's sexuality and beauty being used for evil. The fact that the Queen kills him after saying: "Men use women. They ruin us and when they are finished with us, they offer us to the dogs like scraps." At first glance, this can be seen as the evil man-hating feminist trope which is even more tedious than the "evil beautiful woman" trope. Except, there is something else going on. At least, it is slightly more nuanced than evil man-hating feminist as there are several mentions of the abuse the Queen had received at the hands of her first husband. Yes, committing mass murder isn't the general trauma response to serious domestic violence and the film could have done more with this story line, particularly at the end when Snow White kills the Queen, but it was there. Generally, Hollywood films don't bother with a back story for why women might be angry at men. Of course, nothing is actually done with the male violence sub-theme and what could have been an intriguing feminist critique of fairy tales went straight out the window.

Snow White as the Virgin Queen trope was as equally dire as it is in every other retelling of the story. In this one, the cast kept blithering on about Snow White being "pure of heart" and that her "fair blood" the only thing that could destroy the Queen. All those montages in the adverts with Kristen Stewart leading her knights into battle, like Joan of Arc, lasted about 2 minutes of the film. With the exception of one rousing speech, Snow White spends most of the film being virginal and kind and super-dooper lovey-dovey with even the cantankerous dwarves falling for her innocent charm. She runs through forests and mountains quite a bit. The scenery, at least, was worth admiring.

Possibly the most interesting not-actually feminist but could have been was the Huntsman rousing Snow White from her sleep with "true love's kiss". Big clap for not going with the Prince, who hadn't seen her since she was 8 being her true love, but the drunken Huntsman isn't exactly my idea of a good man. Except, the Huntsman's character is a drunk after losing his beloved wife to the Queen's machinations and the speech he gives before kissing Snow White is about his love for his wife. Apparently, Snow White reminds the Huntsman of his wife. And, this is where the story could have gone for an intriguing plot change with the Huntsman raising Snow White from the dead not because he's fallen in love with her pretty face but rather the Huntsman's love for his wife brings Snow White back from the dead. That would have broken the dire love story subplot.

It's not a Feminist-friendly film. Snow White hits on a number of themes which could have been explored in a Feminist fashion [and made it a better film] but the director clearly pulled his punches all the way through. All things considered, Chris Hemsworth's Thor was far more feminist-friendly insofar as the love interest is actually an astrophysicist and not, you know, a princess renown for being beautiful and the bringer of life. Being an astrophysicist is way more fun than being a princess. This is why my youngest daughter wants to be a superhero mermaid when she grows up: mermaids have lovely tails but its incredibly boring sitting about brushing one's hair all day. Poor Snow White gets to spend the rest of her life sitting about being "pretty". Can't see the Feminist message in that.

Some other Interesting Critiques:

Snow White and the Huntsman: A Feminist Fairytale?

Snow White and the Huntsman: Shitting Crikey

10 Reasons Not to See Snow White and the Huntsman

Why Feminists Should See Snow White and the Huntsman

McCoyed, Snow White, Huntsman, Feminism

Snow White and Attempted Feminism

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: Snow White and the Huntsman

Has Anyone Seen Snow White and the Huntsman?

Snow White and the Huntsman: Where do I begin?

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