This post contains spoilers.
In an earlier post (April 10, 2019) I wrote about Jaws (1975), The Shallows (2016) and The Meg (2018). Since then I have analysed 47 Meters Down (2017) and 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019), two more shark vs. humans movies. They merit discussion because a worrying escalation has occurred. Women in particular should be paying attention to the escalating misogyny in these movies. These five can all be considered horror movies, and they were all directed by men. There are similarities between them, but in terms of what they have to offer female viewers they were not created equal. Jaws boasts just one named female character that appears throughout—Lorraine Gary as Ellen Brody, the lead male’s wife—and she makes it out alive. She is never in any danger, never hunted by a shark. Just one woman (Susan Backlinie) is chased by a shark in open water and killed and this scene is short. The Shallows, too, boasts just one significant female character (Blake Lively) but here she is the only character that appears throughout and the story revolves around her being relentlessly hunted by a shark while she is stuck on a rock in the ocean. So Gary fares better than Lively. In The Meg there are four significant female characters, and three of them make it out alive. It is lighter than The Shallows and much less agonizing to watch. 47 Meters Down (2017), released the year after The Shallows, has not one but two women trapped in open water, terrified of being killed by a shark (Mandy Moore and Claire Holt). Instead of being trapped on a rock they are trapped in an underwater cage in the ocean. One of the two is killed by a shark—in front of her sister—and the second barely makes it out alive. 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, released two years later, has not two but four females trapped underwater (in a very dark cave), terrified of being killed by a shark. Two of the four are killed by a shark (one ripped apart by two sharks) and the other two just barely make it out alive, after having each been grabbed by the waist by a great white shark. Of the five shark movies it is the most disturbing and misogynistic. Whereas the director of Jaws (Steven Spielberg) lingered more on the male characters’ terror the directors of The Shallows, 47 Meters Down and 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (Jaume Collet-Serra for the former and Johannes Roberts for the two latter) lingered very little on their male characters’ terror. Their males, who play very small parts, are killed quickly and there is minimal focus on their terrified expressions. Their female characters’ terror, on the other hand, receives much attention for the lion’s share of their movie. It is also noteworthy that whereas the terrified females in The Shallows and 47 Meters Down are young women the terrified females in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged are teenage girls still in high school. They whimper, shriek, scream, cry… They are chased repeatedly, the camera focusing again and again on their bare legs. There are close-ups of their screaming faces and slow motion shots of their agonies. It would seem that Johannes Roberts took some kind of sick pleasure in their terror. Female viewers may find it torturous to watch. I certainly found it unenjoyable. Which brings me to this question: who did/would find this enjoyable? Who gets enjoyment out of seeing teenage girls sexualized (e.g. they sunbathe in bikinis), terrified and killed? One group comes to mind: men who consume child pornography. It is a slim consolation that female characters get to act heroically in 47 Meters Down: Uncaged. The girls’ terror begins somewhere around the 30-35-minute mark and continues until the last 30 seconds or so of the movie. So for well over half of the movie female viewers are shown terrified girls, and after all that all we get is less than one peaceful minute at the very end. I would like to believe that this is not a frightening trend, that rather it is a coincidence, only observable in shark vs. humans movies. The trouble is that I have analysed over 750 films spanning a century of traditional cinema and I have observed an escalating misogyny elsewhere in film, perhaps most obviously in the horror genre. Women should take note of this. Misogyny on the big screen bodes ill for women. Also, if you’re in the mood for a woman in open water movie I recommend Adrift (2018); it has the most to offer female viewers. Copyright © 2021 Alline Cormier
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Earlier today I took a picture of a stack of my movies that have much to offer female viewers and it got me thinking about the movies I own that do not even pass the Bechdel test—a test that serves as an indicator of the active presence of women in movies. Passing this test should be ridiculously easy. All a movie needs is to have two named female characters that speak to each other about something besides a male. And yet, tons of movies fail this test, including critically acclaimed films and huge box office hits—including the movies pictured below. If it does not strike you as odd that no two women speak in a two-hour movie ask yourself this: how many movies can you name in which no two men ever speak? This is just one of the dozens of things I report on in my upcoming film guide for women.
Copyright © 2021 Alline Cormier SPOILERS! If you don’t want the ending spoiled you should stop here.
The latest addition to the evil-b*tch-who-gets-punished club is Rosamund Pike in crime thriller I Care a Lot (2020), written and directed by J. Blakeson. Pike plays the lead female, an American legal guardian to the elderly, whom she robs blind after heartlessly depriving of their freedom. She is portrayed as such a selfish, self-serving and cruel person that viewers are led not to mind so much when a man spits in her face. After all, she is portrayed as a sort of monster, a threat to all, someone we would want to protect the elderly from—the type of person we want to protect ourselves from. Some viewers, while watching this, will likely be tempted to put legal mechanisms in place to ensure they retain control over their life. Pike’s character makes you want to take steps to avoid being vulnerable to her brand of predation. We are meant to dislike her immensely. Unfortunately, she is far from the first female character in a position of power/authority over other people to be portrayed as a horrible b*tch (e.g. Louise Fletcher in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1975)—and likely far from the last—which is why it wasn’t rocket science to predict what would happen to Pike. The treatment reserved for horrible/evil b*tches in Hollywood movies is predictable. I’ve seen it numerous times in the course of analysing 750 feature films. There is little deviation from this misogynist path: a woman is portrayed as evil/horrible and then she is humiliated, physically harmed and oftentimes murdered. The moment I saw the man spit in Pike’s face I thought her chances of making it out alive were slim. And because she was portrayed as such a horrible person (‘evil b*tch’) she would likely be harmed before being murdered. Indeed, she is drugged, stuffed in the trunk of a car (abduction), punched in the face by a man (assault), while she is bound to a chair, a man puts a plastic bag over her head and tries to choke her to death (attempted murder), she is drugged again… and ultimately, a man shoots her dead (murder—the VAW really adds up in this one). Moreover, to scare her a woman she knows is murdered in her workplace and men break into her home and punch her girlfriend before trying to kill the girlfriend. As I watched this woman (Pike) be harmed repeatedly—not to mention the harm that comes to four other women (I haven’t even touched on the treatment reserved for Dianne Wiest)—I wondered what purpose this all served. As a woman I got very little enjoyment out of this movie. Male viewers, especially those who hate women, are much better served here. The other remarkable thing about Pike’s character is her strength and ambition. She is much stronger and more ambitious than most female characters and women would do well to note how these traits are portrayed: negatively. They are not positive traits here; they appear unnatural and abhorrent. Yet another thing I have seen far too often in mainstream movies (i.e. women’s strength and ambition portrayed negatively). When I add it all up I come to the conclusion that I Care a Lot does not care about female viewers. If you took a pass on this one you would probably be doing yourself a kindness. Copyright © 2021 Alline Cormier I am overjoyed to announce that British political cartoonist Stella Perrett has created some illustrations for my upcoming film guide! Stella is very talented, and I cannot wait to share her wonderful illustrations. In the meantime here is a sneak peak.
Film guide update: I have managed to edit my 700-page guide down to 600 pages without losing a single film review (by deleting examples and details). Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will be able to cut another 50 pages. Stay tuned! Copyright © 2021 Alline Cormier |
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