A Dolly, Bred and Buttered

Now that it’s Hunger Games season again, it’s difficult to go anywhere without seeing Jennifer Lawrence. Her image can be found on buses and T-shirts, and her perfect archery form and eccentric interview style have made her the darling of a massive online fanbase. However, before playing the 74th Hunger Games victor made her famous, her portrayal of another strong female character made people take notice.

In Winter’s Bone, Lawrence plays Ree Dolly, a teenage girl in the Ozarks who is left to care for her younger siblings after her mother descends into a catatonic state and her often absent father disappears. When her father, Jessup, misses a court date, the sheriff informs her that their house and land are forfeit as part of his bail. Desperate to save her home and her family, Ree vows to find her father, alive or dead, and hand him over to the law. Unfortunately, while family is Ree’s greatest motivation, it is also her greatest hindrance and, more often than not, her greatest enemy.

The entire first act of the film establishes Ree’s strength of character, showing us the enormity of the challenge she faces in merely keeping things running. Over the first few scenes is overlaid the sound of a woman’s voice singing “Missouri Waltz”; while its mournful singer nostalgically recalls being a child on her mother’s knee, we see the seventeen-year-old Ree acting as a maternal figure for her younger siblings while her own mother is essentially dead to the world. She does the laundry and her mother’s hair, and she makes the meals as well as the decisions to keep or get rid of pets. She has had to grow up too fast, and this is made abundantly clear when she walks Sonny and Ashlee to school. After dropping them off, she wanders the halls, looking in on the classes that she should be taking. In one, the students are receiving dolls to teach them how to take care of children; while they are learning responsibility in practice, Ree is practicing it in reality.

The most poignant moment in this sequence, however, involves Ree looking in on her old JROTC drill team practicing a routine. Here we see just what she’s lost: the future she wanted. We learn over the course of the film that Ree had hoped to join the army, but those dreams were dashed when she took over caring for her siblings. Later, she tries to join up in desperation, hoping to use the money to provide for her family. She is denied, rejected according to a set of age restrictions that deem her a minor even as she acts as a parent.

Ultimately, it is poverty that is Ree’s worst enemy and her driving force. She provides for her family using the hunting skills that her father taught her, but it is clear that squirrels can only feed them for so long. Their meager supplies are supplemented by neighbours, but Ree warns her siblings not to rely too heavily on their kindness, as they should “never ask for what ought to be offered.” It turns out that these neighbours are motivated by more than the thought of a friend in need; they want to know how much Ree has told the police. In addition, we later learn that Sonny is the man’s biological son, and their donations appear to be almost a form of child support. The code that these characters live by is not one based on altruism, but of taking care of one’s own.

When Ree learns of her father’s betrayal, she begins to learn just how weak even these loyalties can be. Because Jessup mostly worked with his relatives in the meth-making business, Ree must ask them about his whereabouts, increasingly aware that they may be to blame for his disappearance. Ree promises the bail bondsman that she’s a Dolly, “bred and buttered,” and that is what allows her to realize that her father is not just missing, but dead. This certainty isn’t due to any particular psychic talent common to Dollys, but to the fact that her kinship grants Ree familiarity with their brutal code of honour. Familial ties are sacrificed the moment someone violates this code, and Ree quickly realizes that Jessup stepped out of line. However, to save her home, she herself has to risk committing the same violation that got her father killed. As she learns, “come the neck-cutting, blood don’t really mean shit to the big man.”

It turns out that Jessup’s crime was becoming a snitch. He couldn’t handle ten years in prison, so he sacrificed both his standing with the Dollys and the family that he didn’t want to lose for a decade. Much of the other characters’ hostility toward Ree can be traced to their assumption that she will crack as her father did. This complicates Ree’s quest, as she has to get proof for the sheriff, while ensuring that she doesn’t lead the law back to her father’s murderers. Also complicating her quest is her uneasy alliance with her father’s brother, Teardrop. Teardrop initially respects the code, discouraging Ree’s search. As she gets closer to the truth, however, he takes responsibility for her in order to protect her from the others. He aches for vengeance, and the last time we see him, he departs on a suicidal mission to kill Jessup’s killer. The film juxtaposes Ree with these two men, whose respective weaknesses led to their demise. Jessup betrays the family’s secrets, while Ree is able to hold her tongue, even under immense emotional pressure. Teardrop’s need for vengeance is his undoing, but Ree makes a point of not seeking the kind of firm answers that would allow her to punish those responsible. She is willing to keep quiet and move on, and in this way proves herself to be stronger than either of the two men. She may not be a righteous avenger of wrongs, but she is alive at the end of the film.

The code by which all Dollys must abide is not the only governing force in their community; operating alongside these rigid guidelines is an equally rigid, if untraditional, set of gender roles. Because the people Jessup worked with were mostly men, Ree seeks them out to ask her questions. At no time, however, does she speak directly to any of them without first talking to a woman acting as gatekeeper. In this community, it is the women who form the first line of defense against intruders. When Ree refuses to give up the search for her father’s body, the wife of the man in charge of the drug operation, Merab, enlists the help of her sisters in beating her up. Because the violence occurs between women, Teardrop cannot punish Ree’s attackers for their brutality.

Unfortunately, this does not mean that women are safe from men’s violence and control. Teardrop himself physically threatens Ree when he thinks she’s out of line, and he operates within an environment of overt domestic abuse, telling his wife, “I said ‘shut up’ once already with my mouth.” The extent of men’s control over women is evident in the case of Ree’s best friend, Gail, who has to ask her husband to borrow his truck. When he refuses, she tells Ree, “He never says why not to me, Ree, he just says no.” Ree responds that “it’s so sad to hear you say he won’t let you do something, and then you don’t do it.” Gail explains that it’s different when you’re married, and that is clearly true. In this community, the formation of close bonds is a double-edged sword: you may gain protection, but you also risk harm at the hands of the person who offers it. At the same time, the protection that women offer men does not necessarily extend to themselves.

Still, in this film, the women are the plot’s movers and shakers. Ree sets out on a quest through a familiar landscape made alien by the other characters’ hostility. Gail provides her with transportation and tends to her wounds after the beating. Merab and her sisters discourage her from her task, but when word of Ree’s mission spreads across the area, they help her in order to avoid further talk about their illicit activities. The men cause the problems, and the women solve them.

One of the things that sets Ree apart from the other female characters is her ability to occupy a kind of liminal gender space. At their first meeting, Merab asks Ree, “Ain’t you got no men to do this?” “No, ma’am, I don’t,” Ree replies. With her father gone, she must take his place in order to look for him. She informs her siblings that Jessup taught her how to shoot, and she inherits this task from him, preparing them for a time when they will help provide food for the family. She also performs the tough physical labour often considered to be men’s work, like chopping wood, and hopes to embark on a typically masculine career path. At the same time, she occupies the traditionally maternal space left vacant by their mother, cooking and doing other domestic chores. Ree’s characterization strikes a near perfect balance between nurturing softness and stalwart toughness, without gendering either aspect of her personality.

Because Ree is such a pillar of strength, some of her most compelling moments occur when she is weak or vulnerable. Throughout the film, we see the toll her situation takes on her, as she soldiers on while admitting on several occasions that she’s reaching the end of her rope. One particularly effective instance involves Ree taking her catatonic mother out into the woods and crying in desperation, “Can you please help me this one time?” That moment reminds us that Ree is still only a teenage girl, taking on responsibilities and challenges that have destroyed the adults in her life. After the beating, Ree can barely move, but she still engages in sarcastic banter from the floor; to Merab’s question of what they’re going to do with her, she says, “Help me. Ain’t nobody’s said that idea yet, have they?”

Her most difficult trial occurs at the climactic moment of the film, when she is arguably at her most vulnerable. The women who beat her show up, claiming to be taking her to her father’s bones, which essentially means that they will be taking a defenseless Ree out to a secret burial location where they could easily kill her and dispose of her body. Still, Ree accompanies them. They take her out onto a swamp in a small boat, stopping by a tree. Then Merab tells Ree to reach in and grab Jessup’s wrist. Finally, she hands her a chainsaw.

This is where Ree fails, though it’s hard to count it as a failure. She holds her father’s hand, but she cannot bring herself to cut it off. Merab wields the chainsaw instead. It’s difficult to overstate the visceral horror of this scene. The young woman who has faced every other challenge head-on, no matter the danger or unpleasantness, hesitates at the thought of carving up her father’s corpse. This is the one obstacle that she cannot entirely bring herself to overcome, and it is obviously the most traumatic. Sitting there in the boat, Ree initially sobs, then tries (and utterly fails) to distance herself from the horrific act in which she takes part. Later, when the bail bondsman asks her how she did it, she reiterates that she’s “bred and buttered.” In order to save her siblings, she must maim the body of the man who helped give them life; in order to challenge the brutal actions of her extended family, she must draw on the resilience that they share.

Although the original novel was written by a man, Daniel Woodrell, a fair portion of Ree’s onscreen strength can be attributed to the film’s director and co-screenwriter, Debra Granik. The scenes following the beating, in particular, appear to bear the mark of a woman’s lens. Unlike the majority of Western media, which often fetishizes women’s battered bodies and glamourizes the violence that caused their bruises, Winter’s Bone doesn’t show most of the beating. When it shows Ree afterward, her pose is not sexualized, and the process of tending to her wounds does not include a voyeuristic moment in the shower to wash away the blood. The focus rests firmly on her pain, not the pleasure that a viewer might derive from it.

Winter’s Bone is the portrait of a young woman who is born and bred to survive the harshness of her environment. Still, for all Ree’s claims that it is the Dolly blood that empowers her, the death and corruption of almost every other Dolly suggests that Ree is more than the blood that flows through her veins. She may be “bred and buttered” but she has also adapted, grown, and resisted. In the film’s final scene, Ree tells Sonny and Ashlee that she would be lost without their weight on her back. By that point, it’s hard to imagine anything she couldn’t carry.

Verdict: Actual strong female character

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The Roughest, Toughest Cowgirl in the Whole West

(Note: This is definitely being posted in time for late Hallowe’en parties, as promised. Unfortunately, those parties are being thrown by people who have been stuck in a time loop for the better part of two weeks and are nevertheless determined to celebrate the holiday of sugar, fireworks, and societally sanctioned cosplay.)

It took thirteen films and seventeen years for Pixar to make a movie about a female protagonist. Despite a host of notable ladies, for most of the studio’s feature filmmaking history, the real focus has been on the men. Dory is arguably the best part of Finding Nemo, but the story is about the father-son bond. Up gave us Ellie, but took her away a few minutes later to jump-start her husband’s adventure. While Helen and Violet get more focus than a lot of other female characters, The Incredibles reserves most of its screentime for Bob’s mid-life crisis and Dash’s frustration at his forced normality. Toy Story, the film franchise that started it all, revolves around Buzz and Woody’s friendship and their bond with Andy. Still, there has been some progress over the years, and that progress can be traced through the Toy Story series and the development of its principal female character, Jessie.

For those who haven’t seen it, Toy Story posits a world in which toys come alive when people aren’t looking. The films revolve around the adventures of a group of toys owned by a boy named Andy, focusing on Woody and Buzz, a sheriff and a space ranger who overcome their initial rivalry to become best friends. In the first film, the accidentally abandoned Buzz and Woody must find their way back to Andy’s house before moving day. In the second, Woody is stolen by a toy vendor intent on selling the complete Woody’s Roundup collection to a museum in Tokyo. The third film takes place as Andy prepares to leave for college and his neglected toys decide to donate themselves to a daycare, only to find that they may have been better off gathering dust in the attic. The movies are well-written, well-regarded, and well populated with compelling characters.

The problem is that the vast majority of these characters are men. Even given a world of possibility -- the toys are sentient chunks of plastic, after all -- the writers default to male in just about every case. T-rex? Male. Piggy bank? Male. Telephone? Male. Even baby dolls are gendered male. In fact, in the first film, the only female toy of note is Bo Peep, and she’s basically kept around to be Woody’s love interest. It’s not until Toy Story 2 that the series gives any real focus to a female character.

Jessie the yodelling cowgirl is one of the supporting characters on Woody’s Roundup; based on the short snippets we see of the show, she exists primarily to be saved by Woody and marketed in toy form to little girls. Her toy self is introduced welcoming Woody to the group via attack hug. Jessie is Bo Peep’s polar opposite; while the latter tends to be quiet and passive, Jessie is loud, enthusiastic, and prone to invasions of other people’s personal space. In the context of the show, she’s Woody’s right-hand woman, and they hit it off almost immediately. Unlike the other female characters, Bo Peep and Mrs. Potato Head, Jessie is linked to a male character through the bonds of friendship. Indeed, the film suggests that a set of toys is something like a family.

In completing the set, Woody’s arrival assures that the set will remain together forever, stored in a Japanese toy museum. When Woody balks at this idea, Jessie turns on him; his departure would force her to go back into storage and, as she says, “I won’t go back in the dark!” Over the course of the film, we learn the extent of the trauma that drives her to have panic attacks at the mere thought of being boxed up. In a song that gives us the least compatible voice actor-singing voice match-up since Garrett in Quest for Camelot, Jessie tells Woody about her former owner, a girl named Emily. Emily adored Jessie until adolescence struck and Emily replaced her favourite toy with make-up. Jessie waited years for Emily to play with her but, when Emily finally found her under the bed, she abandoned Jessie by the roadside in a donation box. It’s implied in this film and its sequel that Jessie spends most, if not all, of the time between Emily’s departure and the film’s present moment in storage. Because Woody’s Roundup aired in the mid-fifties and the donation appears to have occurred in the mid-sixties, Jessie may have spent over thirty years in a box.

As we see in this film and its sequel, trauma of this magnitude tends to make good toys go bad. Stinky Pete’s issues stem from never being purchased and played with -- hence his mint condition packaging -- while Lotso’s reign of terror at Sunnyside has its origins in his accidental abandonment and subsequent replacement. Jessie arguably suffers even more acutely, having not only had the love of a child, but finding herself abandoned by this same child, implicitly figured as the love of Jessie’s life. The fact that Jessie doesn’t make others suffer for her pain speaks to the strength of her character.

Jessie finishes her story by observing that “you never forget kids like Emily or Andy, but they forget you.” This drives her to reject Woody’s initial proposal that she and the rest of the set accompany him back to Andy’s house. However, the series’ thesis is that a toy’s life is only worth living if it’s loved by a kid, so Jessie must make a choice: protect herself by going to the museum and never connecting directly to a single kid again, or risk abandonment to enjoy a few years of one child’s love. Ultimately, she chooses the latter, and Andy adds another girl to his toy collection.

Toy Story 3 begins as Jessie and the rest of the gang face the prospect of this abandonment. Andy is preparing to leave for college, and he must decide what to do with the childhood toys that he hasn’t played with in years. When the garbage bag he intended to take up to the attic unsurprisingly ends up in the garbage, all the toys (save for Woody, who witnessed the mix-up) believe that Andy was throwing them out. It is Jessie who suggests that they place themselves in the box for donation to Sunnyside Daycare; as she says, “I should have seen this coming. It’s Emily all over again.” This time, however, she takes charge and acts to save herself and her friends.

As events unfold, it becomes clear that Sunnyside is not the peaceful retirement home the toys were hoping for, but a totalitarian dictatorship where toys are controlled through surveillance and torture. This is where things get a little dubious in terms of Jessie’s portrayal. Woody and Jessie are the spokespeople for their respective sides in the debate over Andy’s intentions. While Jessie advocates for Sunnyside and self-preservation, Woody defends Andy and argues that their duty is to be there for him. While the film offers some evidence to undermine Woody’s argument -- Andy has already neglected them for years, and that’s unlikely to change -- it shows us that Woody is right. Andy did intend to put the toys in the attic. Sunnyside is a terrible place and they were foolish to go there. Jessie was wrong. This wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself, but it remains that we spend a large portion of the movie waiting for the inevitable moment when Jessie will admit that Woody was right all along, and that her experience was less dependable than his faith.

The dubiousness doesn’t stop there, as Toy Story 3 also witnesses Jessie’s transformation into a love interest and a damsel in distress. The previous film showed Buzz as having an immediate attraction to Jessie, to which she remains mostly oblivious until the latter half of the third film. It’s only when he is put in Spanish mode that Jessie seems to return his affections, and this seems particularly disturbing because that version of Buzz is not the one she knows. Spanish Mode Buzz is essentially a different person, as illustrated when he sees Jessie for the first time and the soft focus of love at first sight alters her image. While Jessie did have a damsel in distress moment in the second film, she played an active role in her own rescue. In the third, Spanish Mode Buzz risks his life to save hers, as her usual competence conveniently deserts her long enough for him to prove his love. Finally, when they are back in the safety of Andy’s room, Woody asks Jessie if she’ll be okay in the attic, and she replies, “Of course I will. Besides, I know about Buzz’s Spanish mode.” While Woody is showing concern for his friend by making reference to the traumatic experiences that have heretofore shaped her character, the new Jessie dismisses his concern on the grounds that she has a distraction, as if her new romance has magically healed her trauma.

Interestingly, while Jessie is undergoing this change, Barbie, another addition to the female character roster, demonstrates character growth in the opposite direction. When we first meet her, she is crying over Molly’s decision to donate her as if it were a horrible break-up, including an admission that she and Molly were “growing apart.” At Sunnyside, however, Molly is quickly replaced by Ken, the man who was literally made for her. When he imprisons her friends, she dumps him and joins them in solidarity, knowing that she is sacrificing her safety and status in the daycare hierarchy. She also plays an integral part in the escape plan as she exploits her connection with Ken in order to get information about restoring Buzz’s memories and personality. Finally, she assists Jessie in confronting Lotso and dispels any misconceptions about her intelligence as she states that “authority should derive from the consent of the governed, not from the threat of force.” Ultimately, it is Ken, not Barbie, who chooses love over status, lending support to her statement and claiming this Barbie to be one in one hundred million.

Still, there are some subtle moments of character development for Jessie as well. The best of these happens at the end of the film, as Andy gives his toys to Bonnie. Andy pulls Jessie from the box first, introducing her as “the roughest, toughest cowgirl in the whole West.” When he passes her to Bonnie, she takes a moment to adjust her hat and brush her hand across her face in an affectionate gesture. No other toy receives this intimate treatment, and it appears to be an indication of Jessie’s importance to her new owner. In Bonnie, she may have found a replacement for Emily.

One of the more unpleasant aspects of the Toy Story films is their treatment of the concept of “girls’ toys.” When Buzz learns that he is a toy in the first movie, his existential despair is demonstrated by his willing submission to a tea party with Sid’s sister. In the second film, Stinky Pete’s punishment is to be left with a girl who draws on her toys. In the third, Ken is heckled by Lotso’s other cronies for being a girls’ toy, to which he responds, “Why do you guys keep saying that? I’m not a girls’ toy, I’m not!” The film even joins in, treating Ken’s obsession with fashion as ridiculous. While Buzz undergoes torture in the form of brainwashing, Barbie torments Ken by ripping his clothing.

The treatment of Jessie’s bond with her female owners, however, subtly undermines this criticism. Jessie clearly loves being a girls’ toy. She was devoted to Emily and, despite her betrayal, upheld her as a wonderful owner. When Woody tries to convince her to go back to Andy’s house with him at the end of the second film, it only takes one mention of Molly to get her to agree. Bonnie, the successor to Andy’s legacy of imaginative play, treasures her from the first instant, proving her value. Even the shift in the series’ focus from Andy to Bonnie suggests that there is no shame in being either a girls’ toy or a girl’s toy, which even Buzz and Woody become.

In Toy Story of Terror, Jessie herself demonstrates the potential awesomeness of a girls’ toy. A half-hour long Hallowe’en special that aired this year, Toy Story of Terror features Jessie as its protagonist. When a flat tire causes Bonnie and her mother to take refuge in a motel, Jessie and the others find themselves getting picked off one by one by an unseen creature. Eventually, the creature is revealed to be an iguana who fetches toys for his owner to sell online. Woody and Jessie -- decades-old collector’s items -- sell quickly, and Jessie takes it upon herself to prevent not only them, but all the rest of the toys, from being shipped away from their rightful owners.

In order to do this, Jessie must overcome her fear of being boxed up (which, it turns out, was not magically cured by Buzz’s love or his sexy Spanish accent). She is assisted in this endeavour by Combat Carl, a Black soldier toy with a missing hand, who encourages her to believe in herself. Telling herself that “Jessie never gives up, Jessie finds a way,” she makes her way out of a sealed box, saves Woody, and reveals the other toys to Bonnie and her mother. It is thanks to Jessie that the hotel manager’s side business is discovered and her friends saved. Both Buzz and Woody, the series’ usual protagonists, commend her for her brave deeds. Bonnie adjusts her hat and hugs her, further supporting the idea that, while Andy and Woody’s bond formed the foundation of the first three films, Jessie and Bonnie’s connection may take centre stage in future additions to the Toy Story franchise.

Jessie’s increasing importance and the franchise’s changing focus appear to be part of an ongoing shift at Pixar. Last year, Brave marked the end of the studio’s female protagonist drought and became their first film to focus on the relationship between two women. Their 2015 release, Inside Out, is set to feature not only a girl in the lead, but two more female characters going on a journey through that girl’s head. While this is good news, the fact remains that Pixar still has a long way to go. The studio has yet to feature people of colour, people with disabilities, or LGBTQ* people as protagonists. They trust their audience to identify with toys, monsters, robots, rats, and fish, but anyone not coded as straight, able-bodied, white, and male still seems to be a bit of a stretch.

Verdict: Strong Female Character™ who is on her way to becoming an actual strong female character

 

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Recommendation: Gravity

I had originally planned to write this post as soon as I got home from seeing Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. Aha, thought I, in the dramatic way one always claims to have spoken their internal monologue when recounting its content to others, I shall deliver a post not only on time, but early, and thereby redeem myself in the eyes of my readers! Then I actually saw the film, and those plans changed.

Watching Gravity is an intense experience; I spent a solid couple of hours on something of an adrenaline high after the credits rolled. Most of that time was spent gushing about the film’s many strengths -- stunning visual effects, strong characterization, and tight plotting among them. What really stuck with me, though, was the fact that the character that all of this was built around was a woman.

Gravity tells the story of a space mission that goes disastrously awry when a freak accident knocks out communication with ground control, kills the majority of the mission’s crew, and leaves first-time astronaut Dr. Ryan Stone (played by Sandra Bullock) stranded in the vacuum of space. The rest of the film focuses on the remaining crew members’ fight for survival in, as the film’s opening title card describes, the harshest environment possible.

There’s a lot to say about the character of Dr. Ryan Stone, and it took me very little time to decide to dedicate a full post to her when the film is released on Blu-ray. For now, however, I want to stick to a fascinating and relatively spoiler-free aspect of her treatment: her point-of-view character status. Unlike Alien, which leaves the reveal of its protagonist until pretty late in the game, this sci-fi thriller lets you know very early on that you’re supposed to identify with its female lead. Even before the audience receives confirmation of the deaths of just about everyone else in the movie, we are quite literally aligned with Dr. Stone’s perspective. We see her surroundings through her eyes, through the plastic of her helmet. We don’t just identify with her; we are her. Even beyond the literal point-of-view shots, this character-audience alignment is built into the structure of the film itself. At one point, Dr. Stone is running out of oxygen and on the verge of passing out, madly scrambling to get into a space station just to take a breath. We feel her barely controlled panic, just as we feel cathartic relief when she manages to get inside. The film takes a moment to ease the audience’s tension as well as hers, and we take that first breath with her.

In a recent interview, Sandra Bullock said, “I’d like to think at some point instead of it being a woman’s film or a man’s film, it is just a great story, and both sexes can go and get the same enjoyment out of it. It’s entertainment, you’re not curing cancer. And I would love for it to get to a place where it’s not about the gender of the actor. With Gravity we get as close as you can to that, because there’s nothing about my character that screams female.” While I agree with her main point, I actually think there is something about Ryan Stone that “screams female”: Bullock herself. Sandra Bullock is largely known for her roles in romantic comedies, and there is no genre as implicitly and explicitly feminine-coded as the rom-com. Far from disproving Bullock’s point, however, I think this history supports it. What better way to prove that women can and should be the lead in films in traditionally masculine genres than to make an excellent sci-fi film that crushes box office records starring a woman who made her name in “chick flicks”?

Dear readers,

Lately it seems that half the things I post are apologies for not posting. This is, admittedly, more of the same. I’ve had an incredibly busy couple of months, and as the winter holidays loom, I don’t foresee any changes. As such, I’m formally announcing a switch to posting every ten days to two weeks. This way I’ll be able to give the analyses the time that they (and you) deserve.

Now on to some better news. I’m seeing Gravity tomorrow and will likely be able to post some of my thoughts about it this weekend. Just in time for Hallowe’en (or at least some rather late Hallowe’en parties), I’ll also be discussing Jessie’s role in Toy Story of Terror. After that, it’s time for Winter’s Bone, one of the films that we recommended last November. If you haven’t seen it yet, you might want to consider doing so before the post goes up. It’s well worth your time. Rounding out the rest of November will be posts analyzing Black Widow and the women of James Cameron’s Avatar.

I’m not going to tell you what I have planned for December, though you may rest assured that a review of Frozen will be kicking things off. That accursed snowman is already haunting my dreams.

    Sincerely,

                                       The Management

Evelyn Carnahan O'Connell

(Note: This post will focus on The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. As far as I’m concerned, there is no third movie.)

Between the trip to Disneyland and a selection of concerts featuring the most influential artists of my childhood, the past few months have been a bit of a whirlwind of nostalgia. Just when I thought I could escape its pull, I checked out the next request and promptly gave up any hope of surfacing.

When I recount the formative narratives of my childhood, The Mummy rarely gets a mention. It’s all superheroes and princesses and cats who eat pizza before and after doing martial arts. Still, whenever I adopt a zombie pose, I get the urge to to chant “Imhotep! Imhotep!” instead of “Brains!” When I thank people for their hospitality, I have to bite back the words, “And your eyes, and your tongue.” I even have the film to thank for my short-lived desire to become an Egyptologist. Looking back now, however, I see that it was also the source of one of the most important strong female characters of my childhood: Evelyn “Evie” Carnahan O’Connell. Although the marketing department clearly thought that Rick O’Connell was the film’s hero, I would argue that Evelyn is the actual protagonist. It is her quest, her dream, her mistake, and her decision to set it right.

First, some background: the eponymous mummy is Imhotep, a high priest who falls in love with the Pharaoh’s mistress, Anck-su-namun. When the Pharaoh discovers her infidelity, the two lovers murder him. When his guards arrive, she kills herself, confident that Imhotep will resurrect her. Just before he restores her to life, however, he is discovered; for his crime, he is cursed and buried alive to be eaten by insects. The curse is less a punishment for Imhotep than a punishment for the people who awaken him, as he comes back with the ability to conjure not only the plagues of Egypt, but sandstorms in the shape of his face.

Screencaps: fight-tomorrow.net

Thousands of years later, Evelyn’s brother, Jonathan, finds a key and a map to the lost city of Hamunaptra, a place that Evelyn has researched extensively. When they decide to locate the city, they take as their guide Rick O’Connell, a former Colonel of the French Foreign Legion and obvious leading man. In Hamunaptra, they find Imhotep, the Book of the Dead, and a whole heap of trouble.

Evie is introduced as a fascinating combination of ultra-competence and utter hopelessness, the kind of woman brilliant enough to understand multiple forms of ancient languages, yet clumsy enough to demolish an entire library’s worth of shelves while replacing a single book. She owes her job at the library not to her own talents, but to her late parents’ patronage of the institution. Her application to join the Bembridge scholars has been rejected multiple times, always with the explanation of a lack of field experience. She’s a woman with something to prove, and The Mummy is the story of how she does it.

While Rick gets the big action-filled set pieces, it is Evie who controls most of the plot. She saves Rick’s life soon after meeting him, and he later mentions this as the only reason he has chosen to return to Hamunaptra. The quest itself is intended as a search for the Book of Amun-Ra, the artifact that first interested Evelyn in Egypt, the hunt for which she calls her “life’s pursuit.” When they find the Book of the Dead, it’s Evie who decides to read from it, saying, “It’s just a book. No harm ever came from reading a book.” When this ostensibly harmless bit of reading leads to the release of an ancient evil, Rick plans to make it someone else’s problem. Evelyn refuses to run away, takes ownership of her mistake, and vows to set things right. Even her eventual capture is proof of her agency; she chooses to go with Imhotep in order to save her companions. In almost every situation, Evelyn is the one making the decisions and dealing with the consequences.

One of the things that I most appreciate about her is the fact that the narrative allows her to make mistakes. She’s introduced doing something foolish that ultimately causes significant damage and prompts her boss to compare her unfavourably to the Egyptian plagues. Later, she resurrects a being with potentially apocalyptic power. Where the film succeeds is in not condemning her -- or even judging her too harshly, really -- for these decisions. She combats her boss’s assertion of her ineptitude with proof of her competence. Instead of claiming ignorance as an excuse to get out of dealing with the Imhotep problem, she assumes the responsibility to vanquish him.

The way she goes about doing this sets her apart from many of the strong female characters that populate action films today. Evelyn is basically all brains and very little brawn. When she has to fight other characters, her first reaction is not to launch into a perfectly choreographed battle, but to shove a lit candle into her attacker’s eye. In the climactic scene, when the leading lady would usually fight the villain’s girlfriend or female partner in crime, Evie spends most of her time running away from Anck-su-namun. She’s the anti-Action Girl.

Evelyn prefers to lay an intellectual smackdown. In Hamunaptra, one of the members of the rival expedition observes, “They are led by a woman. What does a woman know?” As it turns out, basically everything. The characters’ survival and their progress through the plot often relies on Evie’s deductive skills as well as her ability to translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs in high stress situations. It is her translation skills that allow Jonathan to gain control of the Pharaoh’s guards, who rob Imhotep of his immortality. Without her, Rick couldn’t have killed him. While Rick performs all the swashbuckling antics, Evie does all the intellectual heavy lifting.

Even as Evelyn plays an integral role in defeating Imhotep, the film gives her another victory: intellectual superiority over the Bembridge scholars. They claimed that the two incantation books were in Hamunaptra, the Book of Amun-Ra at the base of the statue of Anubis and the Book of the Dead hidden in the statue of Horus. Evie discovers that they mistranslated the source of this information, and in her own translation, she finds that the two locations should be switched. Upon finding this, she exclaims, “Take that, Bembridge scholars!” Even with an army of zombified people and a nearly restored mummy outside, urging the plot onwards, you still want to take a moment to bask in her joy at being better than the people who rejected her.

What makes Evie’s portrayal in the first film even more extraordinary is the fact that she is canonically biracial. Unsurprisingly, her actor isn’t. The film’s treatment of race tends to be quite dubious, painting most of its characters of colour as villains, greedy, immoral cowards, or cannon fodder. The Medjai warrior, Ardeth Bay, manages to defy this characterization, but he still sacrifices himself to save the white and half-white people (even if his death doesn’t stick). Setting aside the casting issues, the fact that Evie is biracial makes her an even more progressive character. In American cinema, where the smartest guy in the room is almost always white and male, it is very cool to see that distinction go to someone like Evelyn.

Unfortunately, all of this changes in The Mummy Returns. The sequel takes place ten years after the original, in 1933, when the reincarnation of Anck-su-namun and the curator of the British Museum decide to resurrect Imhotep to fight a new Big Bad, the Scorpion King. Evie and Rick get involved when their eight-year-old son, Alex, gets his hand stuck in an artifact that the villains need and is therefore kidnapped. Then it’s a race against time to save Alex and stop the Scorpion King from conquering the world with his supernatural army.

For my purposes, there are two things that matter in this movie: the reincarnation storyline that turns Evelyn into an Action Girl, and her fridging. In this film, Evelyn gets all those choreographed fight scenes that were conspicuously and gloriously missing from the first one. While she explains that she’s picked up some combat moves from Rick, it’s revealed that most of her new tricks are remnants of her past self. It turns out that she was once Nefertiri, the daughter of the Pharaoh who was killed by Imhotep and Anck-su-namun. Her issues with them therefore date back thousands of years, when she witnessed them killing her father.

The Evelyn of the first film was refreshing partially because she wasn’t a badass fighter who could hold her own against men in combat. Too often, that kind of character displays the appearance of power with none of the agency that should accompany it. The same is true of this new Evie. She’s controlled by the memories of her past life, to the extent that she almost falls out of a flying dirigible. She’s driven by the need to protect the Bracelet of Anubis and the boy who wears it, and her duties as both the ancient guardian of the artifact and a mother supersede the thirst for knowledge that defined her character in the first film. It eventually turns out that Rick and Evie are just playing predetermined parts in the defeat of the Scorpion King. The agency of a clever librarian is replaced by the destiny of a warrior princess, and Evelyn’s character suffers a tremendous loss.

As is often the case in stories of destiny, the focus is on the men. Evie’s brilliance is transplanted into her son, and he gets to shine as one of the principal characters. Rick takes centre stage as a father who saves his son and the whitest Medjai ever, destined to kill the Scorpion King. When Alex stands up to Imhotep, the mummy says, “You have strength, little one. You are your father’s son.” Apparently Imhotep forgot that it was Evie, not Rick, who most often defied him and tried to trick him.

Evelyn’s destiny, it appears, is to be killed. Out of the blue, Anck-su-namun stabs her, and Evelyn dies. I don’t mean to be repetitive, but there is so much wrong with this moment that it’s like my brain gets stuck on it. Evelyn, who was the protagonist in the first film, gets fridged in order to fuel Rick’s manpain. She lacks narrative value beyond her role as Alex’s mother and Rick’s wife, and this is confirmed with her last words, with which she tells Rick that she loves him and that he has to take care of Alex. With the possible end of the world looming, the woman who was willing to face an ancient evil on her own because it was the right thing to do doesn’t even mention it? I might understand this scene if she were heroically sacrificing herself to save the world, but she really does just get randomly stabbed out of nowhere before the job’s done. Even her resurrection can’t make up for this.

All you really need to know about Evie is summed up in one of her own lines: “Look, I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure-seeker, or a gunfighter … but I am proud of what I am! … I am a librarian.” In the first film, this is the greatest thing about her: she is a knowledge-seeker, and she doesn’t need fighting skills to be awesome. The second film feels like a betrayal of the essence of Evelyn, replacing her agency with an ostensibly cool backstory that seems to make her stronger even as it weakens her character.

Verdict: Actual strong female character who devolved into a Strong Female Character™ in the sequel

Disneyland

I’d like to kick off this post with an assurance that I will be publishing the next installment of Reader Request Month: 2 Fast 2 Furious in the next day or two. I foolishly thought that I could keep up with my blogging even when, over the course of a week, my niece was born, I started a new job, and I departed for “the happiest place on Earth.” When I returned from Disneyland, I needed some time to settle into my new routine, but I should be on track to resume my regular schedule of weekend posts.

Back when I was a kid, I used to watch a commercial for Disney World on our Lion King VHS. As a five-year-old, I didn’t really understand the irony that made the ad funny, but I did know that I wanted to go to that park… or maybe the other one. I wasn’t sure at the time whether Disneyland or Disney World was actually closer. Not that it mattered; all I knew was that one day, I was going to visit Mickey and my beloved princesses.

Nineteen years later, that day arrived. I was initially worried that going to Disneyland for the first time as an adult would ruin my experience. This seemed even more likely in light of the fact that I’ve analyzed the very same princesses that I grew up blindly idolizing. Faced with the Disney machine, would I be able to enjoy the magical kingdom populated by characters I’ve loved for decades, or would I see only the money-making ploys of a corporate giant cashing in on manufactured nostalgia? The answer, it turns out, was both. Often at the same time. (In the interest of staying on topic, I’ll talk about only those things that relate to the characters we’ve discussed here on the blog.)

When I arrived at my hotel, one of the first things that caught my attention was a framed picture of the first six princesses: five white women and Jasmine. That proved to be the case throughout the park; most products only acknowledged the existence of eight princesses, invariably excluding Pocahontas and Mulan. Merida, having debuted after the success of Tangled made Rapunzel a necessary addition to any group photo, was left out, but still featured on a lot of Brave-specific merchandise. I knew that I would be leaving with some of it. But from the time I walked into the World of Disney store on the first day, I also knew that I was going to make it my mission to find things relating to Mulan and Pocahontas. When it came to merchandise, I was largely unsuccessful. Even in the land of imagination, it seems that no one can imagine people wanting products depicting all the princesses.

In the park’s major shows, however, I managed to find an interesting trend. In Mickey’s Soundsational Parade, Tiana gets her own float. In the abbreviated live musical version of Aladdin, Jasmine has a solo, “To Be Free”. Pocahontas has a featured segment in the World of Color show. She, Mulan, and Tiana all make an appearance in Mickey and the Magical Map. Disney is fine marketing an overwhelmingly white set of princesses to the masses, but when it comes to the parks, it seems that the company feels a need to stand by its claims of diversity and imagination. Sort of.

Mickey and the Magical Map involves Mickey, a mapmaker’s apprentice, trying to fill in an unfinished spot on said map. The dot jumps around the world, taking Mickey to the locations of several Disney films. After King Louie finished telling the audience how much he wanted to be like us, the dot took Mickey to the setting of Pocahontas… and Mulan… and Tangled… simultaneously. Having seen only a few items of merchandise featuring Mulan and absolutely no mention of her otherwise, I was willing to ignore the seeming collapse of time and space in order to hear “Reflection,” one of my all-time favourite Disney songs. Then Rapunzel and Flynn showed up, and both Mulan and Pocahontas were suddenly incorporated into a love song and lost in a sea of lanterns. Mickey’s final destination was Hawaii, where Stitch appeared without Lilo or Nani, despite the fact that they, and not he, are native to the area. It’s a bit of a mess, and it proves that even in a show intended to illustrate Disney’s diversity, they still prefer to feature the popular characters that are already featured elsewhere.

Yet I found that some of my favourite memories of the trip came as a result of Disney’s marketing machine. All around the park, I saw hundreds of little girls wearing princess costumes. Those who wore Tiana’s outfit reminded me that, despite the film’s flaws, Tiana herself is worth looking up to. One particularly memorable group of girls stood in front of me in the line to meet Merida, each one sporting dyed red hair and an official dress, clearly excited to meet their favourite character. I myself made a Build-a-Bear and named her after the princess of the Clan Dunbroch.

My favourite memory, however, is of standing in the audience for World of Color, watching scenes from the films of my childhood, when suddenly there was the image of a red-haired girl and dozens of little voices exclaiming, “Merida!” As an adult, I connected to Merida immediately, but I found her more compelling the more profoundly I considered the critical work being performed by her story. Hearing a bunch of kids express such utter joy at seeing her made me remember what it was like to love Belle, simply because she was awesome. Like the older brother said in that commercial, it really brought out the kid in me.