Feminist
Film Takes...
...visits the
Oscars
By Laura J.
Weinstock
The Oscars have come and
gone. Although many of us remain greatly
disappointed each year by the typical selections
and winners, there were a few pleasant surprises
for feminists in this year's award ceremony. If
it is true that awarding Oscars to actors
dramatically increases attendance at the films
in which they appeared, then Angelina Jolie's
award for Best Supporting Actress will
thankfully encourage more people to see Girl,
Interrupted.
This wonderful movie,
which received no other awards and relatively
little notice, deserves to be seen. Produced by
and starring Winona Ryder, it is the first movie
she has appeared in as an adult where her
waif-like fragility has given way to an inner
grittiness and strength. This film is truly
about women. Everything is from a female point
of view, a rare and refreshing occurrence. All
the main characters are women who are portrayed
with depth and compassion. The one (male) love
interest is peripheral; Winona's character,
Susanna, does not go off with him when he asks,
but remains in a psychiatric institute until she
feels ready to make it on her own.
The movie, based on the
memoir of the same name, is about a sensitive
and creative woman, Susanna, who cannot cope
with the hypocrisy and cruelty of the world
around her. It is the 1960's, still very much a
man's world. Her mother is an immensely unhappy
woman who, like many women of that era, gave up
too much of her own life for her husband and
children, and creates suffering all around her
as a result. Her father is a totalitarian
academic who expected his wife to give up
everything for his career, at a great cost not
just to his wife, but also to his daughter. The
film begins with Susanna abruptly ending an
affair with her father's colleague. This man's
wife, aware of the affair, suffers silently. She
tells Susanna that she will let her daughter
choose which college she will attend. Later, we
discover that the mother forces the daughter to
go to the same college the mother attended. The
daughter is doomed, it seems, to the same
powerless life as the mother.
Susanna wants none of
it. She is the only student at her
academically-oriented high school who is not
going to college. She wants to be a writer. Her
parents, particularly her father, disapprove.
After she attempts to kill herself, a
psychiatrist examines her mental state and, with
the father's express authorization and no
advance warning to Susanna, commits her to an
elite mental institution. Susanna clearly needs
help. Unlikely as it seems, she transforms her
confusion and depression in the company of the
other disturbed women she befriends at the
institution. Among them are a woman with a
horribly disfigured face, a lesbian, a woman who
has been sexually abused by her father, a woman
who only exists in the land of Oz, and Angelina
Jolie's character, Lisa, who perpetually runs
away and gets tanked on drugs. Lisa has been in
the "inside" for years and has lost all hope of
ever leaving.
The movie succeeds
because of its artful portrayal of Susanna's
healing. From a feminist and compassionate
perspective, we are shown that insanity, or
mental illness, is often nothing more than a
"healthy" response to horribly oppressive and
discriminatory treatment. With so many women
(especially at that time but also to a great
extent in our own) being treated so badly, it is
a wonder that more of us aren't suffering from
similar symptoms of "craziness." It is
remarkable, that with the support of other
wounded women and a very tenacious therapist
(played marvelously by Vanessa Redgrave), a
woman can transform her depression and reach
again for the light beyond.
A quick word about the
other winners. The one movie I do not choose to
discuss in this review is American
Beauty, winner of 5 academy awards. Of the
big winners, it has received the most media
attention (far more than it deserved) and is, in
my opinion, the least feminist.
On the other end of the
feminist spectrum was the film, Boys Don't
Cry. Although I did not see this film, I was
still ecstatically happy to watch Hilary Swank
win the Best Actress Award for her role as a
butch lesbian passing as a boy. Based on the
true story of Teena Brandon who becomes Brandon
Teena and is brutally raped and murdered when
her/his female gender is discovered by the local
thugs, I didn't see the film because I didn't
think I could stomach the ending. But I have
seen excerpts of the movie, including scenes of
Swank with her girlfriend, played by Chloe
Sevigny (who was nominated for Best Supporting
Actress). Swank's performance is remarkable as a
woman passing as a man. I'm told the sex scene
is steamy and realistic. The director is an out
lesbian. Most important, Swank, when she
received her award, spoke up for the need for
more tolerance for people who are different. She
made an impassioned and heartfelt speech which
contrasted sharply with most of the other
speeches.
In an era when
Proposition 22 (the anti-gay marriage
initiative) recently passed overwhelmingly in
California, it is miraculous that Swank and
consequently the film in which she appeared were
rewarded by the Academy. Millions more will be
exposed to a film which highlights the danger
faced by marginalized people in this world. So
many more women (and men) will see that much of
how we physically move and present ourselves is
not biological fact but socially constructed and
learned behavior. To appear as feminine as Swank
did at the award ceremony and as masculine as
she did in the film shows us the sexual fluidity
we would all be capable of demonstrating, if
only gender roles were not so rigid (and the
cost for challenging them not so
high).
Lastly, Michael Caine
won the Best Supporting Actor Award for his
performance as a kindly and maternal doctor in
The Cider House Rules. The doctor lives
and works in an orphanage where he cares for the
children who are not adopted as if they were his
own. He also performs illegal but safe abortions
for the women who find him, the lucky ones whose
lives would otherwise have been ruined. It is a
wonderful boon to women everywhere that a
pro-choice movie received as much positive
acclaim as this film did. That said, it is
distressing how a film about a subject so
inherently female manages to be so completely
about men. We know far more about the boys than
the girls. The doctor spends more time with the
boys, reads them stories at night and calls them
"princes of Maine." There are no scenes in which
he calls the girls something equally
empowering.
The movie focuses on the
doctor's favorite orphan, Homer (played by Toby
Maguire). The doctor has trained Homer to follow
in his footsteps but Homer wants to see the
world. The film is really about Homer's
transformation. Will he decide to use the
medical skills he has learned and, in
particular, will he perform abortions when he
believes they are wrong? Only when Homer
discovers a young black woman who was made
pregnant by her father, does he begin to change
his mind. This young woman, a fellow apple
picker, displays formidable courage and
strength. But she plays a very minor part in the
movie. It is unfortunate but true that too often
a movie dealing with issues of paramount concern
to women, must focus almost entirely on men,
before it receives popular acclaim and Oscar
nominations.
Those were the feminist
moments in a far-from-feminist Award Ceremony.
Maybe one day, there will be just as many women
in tuxedoes as in gowns. Or men in gowns. (I've
always thought men look lovely in dresses.)
Perhaps we'll arrive at a time when the sea of
faces in the audience isn't mostly white. Or
when more lesbians and gays arrive openly with
their partners. The day has yet to come when a
woman wins the awards for Best Director and Best
Film. We can always hope. But we certainly won't
hold our breath.
[Laura Weinstock is
a Bay Area freelance writer. Feminist Filmtakes
will be a regular feature in Awakened
Woman.]
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