Pretty Little Liars Roundtable: “My Name Is Trouble” Season 2, Episode 3

Pretty Little Liars: “My Name Is Trouble” Season 2, Episode 3

This week, engagement rings got lost, found and pawned; scholarship offers got forged; Red Delicious apples got rightly insulted; and suspicious characters gained new dimensions.

Best Moments from “My Name is Trouble”

 Sarah: So, just to get the ball rolling: How cool was the shot where the PLLs all burst simultaneously out of the bathroom stalls?

 Phoebe:  Wonderful. That may or may not have been my favorite part of the episode! A little campy and sleuthy at the same time.

 Sarah:  YES totally. And that scene also gave us the gift of Hannah’s pronouncement that shoplifting moisturizer from the mall is “not a life, it’s a hobby”

 Phoebe:  Also, a great moment courtesy of Hanna.

 Sarah: And two things from my notes as I watched the episode:

     Me:  It bugs me so much how people on TV have Red Delicious apples, nobody buys those. Ali, on the TV: “Your family has the worst apples.”

    Me: YAAAAY.

    And also: Emily: “Sometimes when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Spencer: “Why are you talking to me like Ben Franklin?”

    Me: Hahahaha

Phoebe:  That was an awesome moment. The latter that is.  And I totally agree about the apples. Red delicious =gross!

 Aria  <3s Pottery Class & Sympathizing with the Enemy

 Phoebe: What is going on with the Jenna, Aria, pottery class (like in Ghost) story line?

 Sarah  Yeah let’s talk about that! The reason I loved this episode so much is that we saw humanization of some of the toughest-to-love characters including Jenna (and also Melissa and Ali who we can get to later).

 Phoebe:  Interesting … :  I agree about Jenna, but totally didn’t feel that way about Melissa

 Sarah:  But I thought the scene where Jenna is talking to Aria about the light was so moving.

 Phoebe: I thought that scene was moving too, but then also was suspicious of Jenna. And I feel like something was supposed to happen when the lights went off, but then nothing did. But she totally figured it out. (And I would venture to say that she knew as she is quite clever and has her ways, but also likely better at voice recognition than Aria gave her credit for.)

 Sarah:  I don’t think Jenna knew it was Aria. I think it’s more the second in this particular scene, which is what I liked so much. To me, the Jenna Is Creepy storyline is played out. I’m much more interested in the Jenna Is a Person storyline. Ooh and what I loved about the blowing out the light moment is that I felt like something scary was going to happen too, because that’s how PLL trains us—but I think the real reason Jenna wanted Aria to blow it out…

Phoebe:  Was it so she could understand Jenna’s world?

 Sarah: …Was because she didn’t want Aria sharing in this beautiful thing she’d made and infringing upon her in this place that’s supposed to be safe. Like, for Aria to get to see this beautiful light that’s all about how Jenna remembers sight  is a really gross encroachment.

 Sarah: Ooh I like your reading of how it’s about Aria understanding what it’s like to be Jenna too, because I feel like that’s a major problem with the way the PLLs see her, is they can’t put themselves in her place.

 Phoebe:  Yeah I sort of felt that it was about Jenna forcing Aria into a vulnerable position. But I was also certain (despite that it didn’t happen) that something bad was going to happen. Oh and I just got to the candle part as I am re-watching and I think too that there is something about Jenna sharing herself and her sadness, and that you are definitely on to something.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Like Legally Blonde

Sarah Todd

The other night I was searching for some background television and ended up settling on that old chestnut Legally Blonde. Legally Blonde is one of those movies I’ve kind of absorbed into my system naturally, the way the Swamp Thing absorbs flood waters and human memories. Nonetheless, I’d never developed much affection for it; actually enjoying the movie seemed like too much of a cliche.

But this time around, the Legally Blonde bend and snap scene really got to me. And here’s why: I started thinking about how rare it is to see a big group of women genuinely having fun together in the movies. Films tend to represent female friendship–and women in groups–as fundamentally competitive and/or stupid. Either women are stabbing each other in the back as they jockey for men or jobs or queen bee titles, or else they’re having vapid conversations about bubbles.

But in the bend and snap scene, the women in the salon are being so goofy together, improvising their own flourishes to the routine, and Reese Witherspoon’s character Elle is being so supportive and encouraging and sweetly peppy. There’s no back-stabbing in sight. And while the idea of bending-and-snapping itself could be characterized as somewhat vapid, the whole point of Legally Blonde is that just because people are interested in flirting or shoes or celebrity gossip doesn’t mean they’re not smart.

Some people look down their noses at movies like Legally Blonde–and the interests of  people like Elle–because they think they’re just about dumb girly stuff. But the truth is that our culture positions girly stuff as dumb. In reality, liking the color pink doesn’t make you an airhead, owning a chihuahua doesn’t make you high-maintenance, and belonging to a sorority doesn’t make you mean. Conversely, being interested in subjects like federal interest rates and medieval poetry doesn’t make you a superior human.

People can be airheaded or high-maintenance or mean whether they’re men or women, dressed in powersuits or skinny jeans or nerd glasses or prom dresses. What’s more, Legally Blonde dares to suggest that there may even be value in possessing a knowledge of perming techniques and fashion designers. Like Elle, you might spot a lie or catch a contradiction. You might crack a case wide open.

It’s fine to like Legally Blonde, just like it’s fine to like Pretty Little Liars and 90210. It’s equally fine to prefer Downtown Abbey or The Hangover or The Daily Show or Die Hard or some combination of the above--whatever floats our particular boats. The important thing is recognizing that what we like doesn’t have a one-to-one correspondence with who we are.  For showing that, Legally Blonde deserves some snaps.

The Big Bad Bentley & The Bachelorette

Phoebe Bronstein

So tonight on The Bachelorette Ashley finally had the long overdue confrontation with Bentley. This is my first season of The Bachelorette and I am not a yell at the screen television viewer, and Bentley brought out my worst television behavior and I was sad to see his face again. Okay sometimes I yell at the screen when I watch Gossip Girl or Pretty Little Liars, but it is because I am so excited. However, Bentley. He is just so awful, perhaps even the most villainous of all villains (thanks for this way of putting it Sarah Todd). Granted the interwebs are now full of other Bentley haters, but I wanted to throw my hat (it’s cute and is newsboy style) in the blogging ring.

There are many problems with Bentley. Firstly he is manipulative and a jerk. Secondly, I am pretty sure that me and everyone I know (girls who like boys at least) have all dated him, or rather his type. He is the guy that won’t give you a straight answer, that really just wants to have sex with you, that makes you chase him, and that leaves you with the “dot dot dot.” He does this because he isn’t man enough to tell you he is just not that into you. Clearly, this stuff makes me angry. It is because of men like Bentley that all my girlfriends in college felt compelled to read He’s Just Not That Into You and why, I imagine, that very book became a Hollywood film (it was a bad film I might add and I never read the book).

Bentley ... he is not even that hot. Ugh.

I’m really glad Ashley finally gave him the boot and even mentioned that he should have called rather than flown all the way around the world to tell her that their relationship had come to a “period.” Yet another punctuation mark. One among the many obnoxious things about Bentley is his need to use punctuation marks to describe what he is saying about Ashley. But the point is, that Ashley’s pursuit of him and her feelings for him, which we saw he did no reciprocate, have made great drama and great television. This final fact upsets me and is why I yelled at the television and cringed every time Bentley was on the screen or each time Ashley talked about him.

Bentley is the bad boy you like in middle school, the one that pushes you into the locker, and the one many romantic comedies tell women that as adults we can reform, refine, bring out his true nature, and make him the man we wish him to be. But also, those same tropes tell us that he wants to be this person, but can only learn how with the help of a good woman. Because ladies, that is our job. Ridiculous.

I can’t say how glad I am that Bentley is off The Bachelorette and now no more screaming at the television (at least this season). As the season heads towards its conclusion and an inevitable proposal, I’m just rooting for the cute and sweet J.P.

P.S. I am going to be pissed if Bentley comes back next week. Seriously.

Who’s Laughing? Race and Gender in Hall Pass

Promotions for the 2001 Farrelly brothers film Shallow Hal probably only appealed to like five people on the planet. I was one of those five people. Somehow I was like, “Offensive-seeming premise check, George Costanza with a tail check, boring Gwyneth Paltrow starring in a comedy check, I’m all in, ten tickets please.” Partly this had to do with my abiding love for Jack Black, which also led me to make one of the biggest film-going mistakes of my life: seeing Year One in theaters. (In my defense, I saw it at the discount theater. In my prosecution, I still put dollars into a person’s hand in order to see Year One, which is just an unfathomable decision any way you look at it. But Jack Black also gave me School of Rock, aka one of my top ten movies of all time. You win some, you lose some.) As it turned out, Shallow Hal was warm and silly and big-hearted, and possibly I still cry at the ending even after having seen the movie at least six times over. I’ve liked the Farrelly brothers ever since; generally, I think, they only make fun of people if they’re going to embrace them.

However, I question what the Farrelly brothers are up to in their most recent venture, Hall Pass. Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis (who I cannot for the life of me tell apart from Ed Helms) star as two hot-to-trot husbands married to Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate, respectively. Fischer and Applegate are lovely and funny as usual, and the film treats them with respect by acknowledging that they, too, experience both sexual desire and sexual frustration. Rather, it’s Hall Pass‘s representation of men that seems unfair to all the good husbands out there in the world. Here, Wilson and Sudeikis play crass oglers who are lackeys to their own worst instincts. Their ideas of female beauty are largely limited to thin, white women under 30, and they regularly deride the looks of women who don’t meet those standards. This is exactly the kind of thinking that Shallow Hal challenges, but Hall Pass plays the husbands’ derogatory view of women for laughs.

A related problem is the film’s treatment of race. Sudeikis’s character visits a Korean massage parlor in the hopes of a happy ending and greets a table of women who might or might not be Latina with “Hola,” striking a stereotypical Latin dance pose. Meanwhile, a scene in which Wilson’s character must be saved from a jacuzzi by two naked gym-goers relies on stereotypes of African-American masculinty in full-frontal compare-and-contrast shots. One could argue that the scenes with Sudeikis’s character, at least, are intended to satirize his character’s racial stereotyping rather than to suggest the stereotypes are themselves funny–the kind of technique The Office regularly employs with Michael Scott. However, Hall Pass doesn’t provide its characters of color with the opportunity to reveal the falsehood of those stereotypes, or even to respond to them in any way. They merely play bit, exoticized parts in the husbands’ sexual misadventures.

As a whole, Hall Pass feels far less eccentrically human than other Farrelly films; it’s as flat as Wilson’s pressed khakis. Where did their usual gross-yet-lovable heart go? Potentially, like the husbands, it fell asleep at a Chili’s. Here’s hoping it wakes up soon.

Hey Ladies! The women of NBC’s The Voice

Phoebe Bronstein

The Voice is one of the many reality television shows I have just recently started watching. It started with Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Millionaire Matchmaker. Then I moved on to Real Housewives of Atlanta, The Sing Off, and currently The Voice, The Glee Project, and my favorite, The Bachelorette. Until about three months ago, I had never watched a full episode of any reality TV program, and now I can’t stop! And aside from The Bachelorette, most of the shows I am into now revolve around singing (though I cannot handle American Idol mostly because of the mean spirited judging/hazing). I loved The Sing Off, plus the University of Oregon men’s acapella group On the Rocks was on it for a while, and I do love my Ducks. And The Glee Project is pretty fun so far. I really only watch these shows for the singing.

For some reason, even though I don’t really like The Voice, I keep watching it—maybe because I am still waiting for summer premiers or more likely because I love Cee Lo Green. But since I can’t stop watching, what I’ve noticed recently is that The Voice has some of the most interesting racial and sexual politics on television. And perhaps the most liberal. Unlike American Idol, where the last four winners have been white men from the Midwest or South, on The Voice the final eight contestants were one of the most diverse casts I’ve seen on television: people of all shapes, sizes, styles, sexual preferences, and races.

Nakia and Frenchie Davis before leaving The Voice

The final four—Javier Colon, Beverley McClellan, Vicci Martinez, and my favorite Dia Frampton—are most certainly the best singers from the show, but they also reflect the diversity of the show. Three out of the final four are women, two of them are openly gay, and only one of them is white. And the best part is (for me at least) that “America” voted for all of them, and I think that is cool and exciting. For example, “America” voted for Bev the badass, beautiful, and bald rocker, and Bev is not a type we normally get to see on network television. In my last post, I wrote that it feels like there is only one option in the way of female role models on TV, but on The Voice there are so many different kinds of interesting, successful, and bad ass women.

Beverly McClellan does her thing on The Voice

So maybe I watch for Cee Lo (I do adore him), or maybe I watch for lack of something better, or perhaps I watch because The Voice presents options not available on regular network programming. At the end of the day, I would like to think it is the latter.

PS After writing this post I found out that both Cee Lo and Blake Shelton have gotten into trouble recently for homophobic tweets (both apologized profusely). However, I just think this adds a strange (and upsetting) twist some of the cool stuff I see happening on the show.

Pretty Little Liars Roundtable: “The Goodbye Look,” Season 2 Episode 2

Each week, we’ll be sitting down to chat (or Gchat) about the latest episode of Pretty Little Liars. This week: Aria’s divisive fashion sense, no-good fathers, and why we don’t want A coming near any more puppies.

Friend Breakups and Make-ups

Sarah:  What are your thoughts on the enforced friend breakup on the recommendation of the therapist in this episode?

Phoebe:  Good question! I feel weird about it … I feel like don’t completely trust the therapist, although we have no clear reason not to yet. Although there was that one shot last week when she left her office as she was getting in her car that made her feel creepy. AND I feel like the parents are too on board or something.

Sarah:  Right! Also suspicious was the way Hanna kept saying you could tell a lot about a person by their shoes, and then seemed to imply that the therapist’s shoes were fake.

Phoebe:  I am guessing that the shoes are fake, therefore the therapist is fake.

Sarah: Totally—I trust Hanna’s instincts. Also, the recommendation that the girls not see each other doesn’t really make sense to me in any case even if the therapist was a legit human being. If the girls are suffering a terrible post-traumatic loss from the death of their friend, why would you rip away their support base?

Phoebe:  Exactly. I understand perhaps not all going to therapy together or even the same therapist. But splitting them up seems unwise.

Sarah:  I do think it will be interesting to see the fallout of the friend breakup. Of course, it’s not really working because they’re still meeting in secret (and I love how Hanna is the one who’s like, “You guys we don’t have to actually do what our parents/the therapist say, they are not dictators”).

Phoebe:  Me too. Especially now that they have decided to go against their parents. I feel like Hanna going back to Mona is weird. I do not trust that Mona character at all. Also, speaking of make-ups, that Aria and Fitz kiss was ridiculous!

Sarah:  You were not moved to tears by the sunlight streaming through the window and the swelling orchestra??

Mona Is Terrifying

Sarah: But yes, also Mona: how much do you think she knows?

Phoebe:  Too much I think. Her deal with Noel is still creeping me out.

Sarah: Yeah, and I definitely thought Mona asking Aria to pick out the Fitz goodbye present was sketchy. But the trick with Mona is that since her personality is naturally fake, you can’t tell when she’s being fake! Which is smart.

Phoebe:  She is too wily for my tastes.

Sarah:  Mona might be a genius. If she has a baby with Noel, that baby will take over the world with its dimples and tricks.

Phoebe:  Perhaps. But an evil genius.

Why So Vague, Melissa?

Sarah: Also speaking of babies, what do you think about Melissa and motherhood? I was thinking about it a lot in this episode, how her whole identity is Ian and the baby.

Phoebe:  I think bad things. I found myself wondering last night if the baby is even real, or if it is a fake pregnancy?! Like Terri on Glee. I realize it is super conspiracy theorist. But Melissa is super sketchy.

Sarah: But at the hospital did the nurses and doctors say something about the baby?

Phoebe:  Yes true. Okay so perhaps it is not a fake baby. But she is so shady.

Sarah:  I feel like she seems like she’s on anti-anxiety drugs constantly since Ian came back. Do you think Ian is drugging her? Or does motherhood make you kind of vague.

Don’t Call It A Comeback: Britney Spears and “I Wanna Go”

Don’t Call It A Comeback: Britney Spears and “I Wanna Go”

Sarah Todd

On the record, did Britney end up making a comeback or not? I can’t tell from the way people talk about her. At the moment, she seems somewhat in the middle: nowhere near her early-2000s popularity heights, but not getting ridiculed in the tabloids on a daily basis either. Anyway, the truth is that Britney’s never coming back. At least, she’ll never be what she once was, and why should anyone expect her to be? She can’t be a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl somehow made responsible for working out the entire country’s virgin/whore complex again. Although she’s still young, she’s a different person now. It would be worrisome and far more disturbing if she wasn’t. If she wasn’t getting older, she’d be a vampire, and I’d be frightened.

Her new video “I Wanna Go” is pretty fun and self-aware. Britney jokes about tabloid rumors and fights off paparazzi-robots and makes excellent Half-Baked references. Her boots look like they’re good for making people bleed. I imagine that’s what she’s going for: the woman has plenty to be mad about. I would definitely see Crossroads 2: Cross Harder. I mean that one hundred percent un-ironically.

Although Britney is awesome throughout the video, smashing cameras left and right, the best parts are her reactions to Guillermo Diaz as he pours milk all over his face. At first she’s bewildered but trying to convince herself it’s kind of sexy…

Then she’s like, “Really, Guillermo? More milk? Okay, I guess. You do your thing.”

Finally, she just starts laughing: she’s in a car with a lunatic, but he’s a fun lunatic. No big deal.

Of course, eventually it turns out he’s a robot, just like basically everyone else in this video except Britney. Which is interesting, because Britney herself seemed like a robot before her breakdown. She had precise dance moves, superhuman abdominal muscles, and a vacant gaze. To all appearances, she was the kind of girl Warren from Buffy would have built.

However: just because we can’t readily see the evidence of a person’s interior life doesn’t mean they don’t have one. When Britney shaved her head and walked barefoot in gas stations, people ganged up on her. A big part of the reason they were so quick to do so was because her breakdown showed that she was a human being, not a robot, after all. The moment she was vulnerable, the public went right for her jugular–almost as if we’d been programmed that way. Maybe the real robots were us all along.

My other favorite part of the video is when Britney walks away from cop, spinning his handcuffs in one hand. She’s got hot-pink streaks in her hair and shoes that double as attack dogs. She’s wearing the smile of a woman who’s beaten a system that’s determined to pull her over. For the moment, she steps away free.

Shooting Britney (The Atlantic)

Hollaback: Rye Rye’s “Hardcore Girls”

Hollaback: Rye Rye’s “Hardcore Girls”

Sarah Todd

Have you met young Baltimore rapper Rye Rye? She is amazing, as her single “Hardcore Girls” clearly demonstrates. While the song’s club-ready electronica sample isn’t my favorite, Rye Rye’s supertight rhythm and lyrics like “Can’t you see I’m the baddest chick / Even Superwoman couldn’t put her hands on this” put me squarely in the “Hardcore Girls” corner. But the best part about this particular song is the music video.

In “Hardcore Girls,” Rye Rye manages to be both exuberant and totally cool, breaking into brilliant smiles and casually twirling a baseball bat. The lady has star power, and the ability to persuade susceptible audiences that perhaps they too should invest in a handprint jumpsuit.

But Rye Rye isn’t the only hardcore girl in the music video; she shares the screen with ladies of a variety of ages, ethnicities, and personal styles. The lineup includes a female bodybuilder doing pull-ups on a fire escape, an older woman with some serious dance moves, a strikingly beautiful woman with a shaved head chilling by a pay phone, and an adorable yet tough little girl who crosses her arms with defiance. A big part of what makes the music video so exciting is that it shows such a multitude of diverse ladies being awesome in different ways. They’re all strong and beautiful and quite evidently hardcore. When the music video flashes through all of their faces at 2:15–and I know this sound may sound like I’m a giant cheeseball and/or overly invested in music videos, both of which are true–my heart lifted just to see them.

There are men in “Hardcore Girls” too; mostly, they’re looking at the women, with varying degrees of awe and lasciviousness. The guy half-smiling at 1:35 looks like he’s both attracted to and impressed by Rye Rye, a perfectly understandable response. Also, he is cute. On the other hand, the lecherous eyebrow-wiggle of the older man at 1:37 looks kind of creepy. While the men are looking at the women, the women don’t seem to be looking back, nor do they give any signs that they’re performing for the men’s benefit.

Since most of the video takes place on city streets (I think it’s Baltimore, but never having been there I can’t swear it), “Hardcore Girls” shows what navigating public spaces can be like for women who are the objects of unwanted attention.  At 1:16, when two women pass by two men with a pitbull, they keep their heads down and their long hair swept in curtains over their faces; the blonde woman holds her hands protectively at her collarbone. It’s clear that they’re trying to ward off any interaction. While we don’t hear cat calls, that may well be because all the women here could beat the men up.

In fact, most of the women in the music video show that they can defend themselves. There’s a reason Rye Rye carries a baseball bat. A woman pushes away a guy who’s getting in her face, while he falls to his knees in mock-worship.  The two women at 1:09 have a very protective dog who lunges, barking, at the screen. The female bodybuilder can certainly take care of herself, and even the little girl knows how to kick box.

“Hardcore Girls” isn’t saying that it’s always bad to look: after all, Rye Rye boasts of her killer moves, “All the honeys in the club keep watchin.” But the video does show that women have the right to move through the streets freely, without having anyone bother them or make them uncomfortable. Hardcore girls don’t just know how to dance; they also know how to fight.

TV’s Mistresses of Crime: Bones, Body of Proof, etc.

TV’s Mistresses of Crime
Phoebe Bronstein

I am a murder mystery and crime television junkie, and lucky for me every other show on television fits this bill. And in a new turn of events, a lot of the recent crime shows feature an extra smart female detective type. To name just a few: Brennan (Emily Deschanel) on Bones (2005-present), Deputy Chief Brenda Lee Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) on The Closer (2005-present), Detective Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) on The Killing (2011-present), the badass female duo of Jane Rizzoli and Sasha Isles (Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander) on Rizzoli and Isles (2010-present), and Dana Delaney as a brilliant former neurosurgeon turned medical examiner on Body of Proof (2011-present). At once, the presence of strong female characters over the age of 25 on television is exciting and perhaps promising. However, before we get too excited a few crucial observations …

First, all these women are white. Although there are quite a few African American women on these shows, they are often side characters; for example, Cam, the head of the forensic team at the Jeffersonian on Bones (Tamara Taylor) is African American; Sonja Sohn from The Wire (2002-2008) is now a detective on Body of Proof; and Lieutenant Daniels (Gina Ravera) used to be the only other woman, and the only African American woman, in the Priority Homicide unit on The Closer. It seems worth mentioning here, that Ravera is also part Puerto Rican but as Daniels she plays and is coded as African American.

a glamorous looking Rizzoli and Isles from the TNT website.

Second, all the leads on these shows are educated and upper middle class. Put another way, they are privileged, perhaps save for Angie Harmon’s character on Rizzoli and Isles and Sarah Linden on The Killing. However, if you’re like me you can’t help remembering Harmon as a young lawyer on Law & Order which when combined with TNT’s marketing of her, trumps her working class image on the show. But for the other women (who are for the most part styled rather alike), class and classiness are connoted with expensive clothes, big jewelry, being in great shape, and giant (not to mention snazzy) heels. In fact, I’ve noticed a recent fascination (or should I say fetishization) of women’s shoes on television; the higher the heel the more intimidating she will be. It seems that television believes you can learn a lot about a women from her shoes. Ugh.

on of the many shots of Dr. Hunt's shoes (and legs) in Body of Proof

Dr. Hunt arrives at a crime scene with Peter

Third, almost all these white women are straight and absolutely incapable of being in relationships. But they still need male partners to protect them and regulate their independence. For example, Bones and Booth (David Boreanaz. So hot.) on Bones or Megan Hunt (Dana Delaney) and Peter (Nicholas Bishop) on Body of Proof. It seems these shows are reminding us that as women we can only still have it one way or the other (ie love or career), however, if we choose a career at least we’ll be able to buy ourselves great shoes.

So I guess my point is that I’m sad about these realizations. I love Bones and its quirky humor and at least Brennan (aka Bones) knows self-defense and carries a gun I suppose. However, the racial stuff is still there and she is after all paired with a very manly man (and now they’re going to have a baby?!). Where are the dramas centered around African American or Latina or Asian or even Jewish women? And why can’t these women have relationships with men and/or women? What if a woman smashed through that TV glass ceiling while wearing sneakers? I mean seriously do they think their viewers would all just stop watching? I’m just curious.

SUPER 8: Where the girls at?

SUPER 8: Where the girls at?

Phoebe Bronstein

This afternoon I went and saw Super 8, the new J.J. Abrams summer blockbuster, in the theaters and I must say I rather enjoyed it. The film is about a group of middle school boys, sort of Goonies style, who are trying to make a zombie movie when quite suddenly a train crash unleashes an alien upon the unsuspecting town. Great parts included, but were not limited to, hilarious 1970s middle school style banter, a murderous yet sympathetic alien that was mistreated by the government, an unexplicable section where all the dogs flee from the town of Lilian, and an odd reference to Three Mile Island.

However, upon leaving the theater I wondered why are there not any movies about girlfriends kicking butt and saving the world? And I do not think Sucker Punch counts. Seriously, why can’t a group of five hilarious young women protect a town from a mean and misunderstood alien? As it stands in Super 8, the only young lady, Alice, that we other young ladies might sympathize with winds up in need of saving and the romantic interest of the main young lad, Joe Lamb (delightfully played by newcomer Joel Courtney). Further, the town itself is absent of women: Joe’s mother dies before the film starts, Alice’s mother left her father long ago, and some of the other boys don’t even appear to have parents. The only grown up woman we encounter is Joe’s friend Charlie’s mom and she is the picture of 1950s housewife perfection, although her children seem a little lacking in the discipline category.

This is all to say that I am rather looking forward to Katniss kicking some butt in The Hunger Games. And I think that it just might be rather refreshing to see some bad ass young ladies minus the sex kitten leather saving the world up on the silver screen.