Feminist Film Moments - Rules of Engagement

In celebration of Women’s History Month 2013, I’ll be posting what I call a Feminist Film Moment every Tuesday and Friday for the month of March. I welcome comments and suggestions. However, I ask that you keep in mind the following rules of engagement.

1. A selection is not an endorsement of the overall film in general neither with respect to content nor craft.  Chances are if I deeply appreciate the film, I’ll most likely say so in my summary.  If I can’t stand the movie otherwise, I’ll probably say that, too.  Suffice it to say, the only thing you can presume is I do appreciate the moment as an image that advances gender equality even if that's all the movie has going for it. 
2. Don't assume that the clip I selected is reflective of the film's feminist bona fides.  This moment might be all the film has to offer in that regard. And it may just be the case that if you put the moment in its narrative context, it just might not be that feminist at all. None of this means, however, that the film lacks other elements of sociopolitical or artistic merit. 
3.  Just because I deem this to be a feminist moment does not mean it gets a pass with respect to other social constructions and identities.  Sometimes I'll speak to this in my summary if I have the time and inclination. I'd like these posts both to be short and leave room for discussion. Hence, my intention is not to write thorough cinematic essays that cover all the intersections or lack thereof.  If anything, I encourage you to post comments and have discussions in that regard.  All I ask is that you don’t assume that by my posting the clip and not commenting on something like race, class, sexual orientation etc. necessarily means I missed it. I mean, I might have...  which is why I invite you to comment. What you're not allowed to do is attack me on the assumption that I don't "get" it.
4. You’re not allowed to attack me or anyone else at all. Point, blank, period. Respectfully and even vigorously disagree, question, challenge… all of this is a great. If I think your tone or language is any way trolly, I'll publish your comment just to call you out and warn you to check yourself. I won’t boot you without a warning, and I'll do my best to be nice about it, but you’ll only get that treatment once. 
5. I like the Bechdel test. As a screenwriter, I use it. I’m not using it, however, to choose clips.  While a good exercise to begin discussion, it's not a fail-proof litmus test for rating the depth of female characters in film.

6.  The clip may be a spoiler or contain triggers. When it comes to the latter, I'll make a good faith effort to consider that and warn you. As for spoilers, you read the blog and watch the clips at your own risk. We’re grown here.

7.  By all means, share and comment via Twitter. Please mention me @sofiaquintero so I see it and use the hashtag #feministfilmmoment. If you’re inspired to elaborate on your own blog, awesome. It’d be a tremendously appreciative show of integrity to acknowledge what sparked your musings with a mention and link back to the posting. 

8.   Have fun with this! Sure, I’d love for these blogs to be a springboard to thorough and critical discussions about media literacy, depictions of women in popular media, and all that good stuff. There’s no reason, however, that we can’t have a few laughs as we respectfully push each other to expand our understanding of these things.

9.  The rules of engagement are subject to change because, you know, it’s my blog and shit.

10.  Of course, I welcome suggestions, especially those that are strong on intersectionality, complexly depict underrerepresented communities, are well-crafted etc. I mean, just because I’m not going to narrowly restrict myself to these criteria (‘cause you know what that’d mean if I did) doesn't mean I don't care about these things. So if you have a recommendation fill out this survey. Please be concise and precise.

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A (Feminist) Job for Tyrese

Lately, I’ve been inspired to explore the “ride or die chick” archetype. According to the best rated definition in the Urban Dictionary, this is “a chick that ain’t afraid to be down with her man, she’ll do anything her man needs her to do.”

From what I see, she’s the only female in mainstream hip hop that gets any love on a regular basis (mothers and daughters don’t fare nearly as well.) Rappers write odes to RDC, and she has become a staple in predominantly male “urban” films (as if Sex and the City, Gossip Girls, et al aren’t urban, but that’s for another blog.) I wanted to see just what a sister has to do get any respect in a genre roundly criticized for its misogyny.

So I head over to Hollywood Video and stock up on videos I ordinarily wouldn’t go near (the sacrifices one makes for social justice.) Most of these were trashed by critics and tanked at the box office only to rack up on the video market. In other words, plenty of folks are spending time and money on these movies without a half-damn for the opinions of J. Hoberman., A.O.Scott or any of these cats with initials for first names.

First into the DVD player is Waist Deep starring Tyrese Gibson and Meagan Good. Meagan is second on my list of Sisters Who Are Better Actresses Than the Roles They Get (Vivica Fox has been hard to dethrone, but let her keep on with the excessive and unnecessary surgery, hoochie antics and the WTF? flings with dudes like 50 Cent…) Despite a breakthrough performance in Kasi Lemmons classy debut Eve’s Bayou, Meagan has become a preternaturally beautiful young woman who appears regularly in films that range from the tolerably mediocre to the laughably awful. But the sister’s a goddess in hip hop circles. In fact, I select Waist Deep because she is the female lead. Gwendolyn Pough once argued that Jada Pinkett Smith was a “hip hop” film icon because by merely casting her in a role, filmmakers immediately evoked that girl who was “in” the hood yet not “of” the hood. As I settle in while the opening montage plays, I suspect that Meagan Good is on her way to becoming the symbol of the “ride or die chick” archetype.

Yes, overall Waist Deep is crappy. Sure enough, Meagan is your classic RDC who does everything her man Tyrese says so they can hustle up the loot he needs to pay off the street urchin who has kidnapped his son. And as to be expected from most films in this genre, there’s just enough visual oomph, bumping music, and crispy dialogue (Larenz Tate just skyrocketed to the top of my Brothers Who Are Better Actors Than the Roles They Get list) to make it entertaining enough for you to see it through the end, forestalling the inevitable recognition of how terrible it actually is.

But here’s the craziness. Right or wrong, I watched Waist Deep expecting all the aforementioned to be true. That said, I expected I would have to push myself to don a more sophisticated lens when deconstructing Meagan’s character CoCo, understanding that very few films can be fairly described as irredeemably sexist or thoroughly progressive.

What I didn’t expect was for Tyrese’s character Otis to be the most feminist character in the movie.

[Note: Waist Deep was co-written and directed by Vondie Curtis Hall who is also married to Kasi Lemmons so maybe their union plays a role in what I’m about to discuss.]

Not because he relinquishes male privilege, overtly stands up for women’s equality or anything radical like that. (C’mon now… this is the Game’s acting debut. Playing a thug named Big Meat, no less.) Otis stands out in the small but explicit ways he challenges traditional ideas of masculinity. For example, he is the primary caretaker of his son, stands up against violence towards women and doesn’t feel entitled to sex with CoCo simply because she’s in his line of sight.

OK, let me keep it real. Otis’s is only a slightly kindler, gentler patriarchy. He’s left with his son because his babymama’s a treacherous ‘itch, and he intervenes when some dude hits CoCo by issuing a merciless beatdown (yelling the entire time between kick and punches What the !@#$ is wrong with you, boy? Don’t you ever beat on no mother!@#$ing woman like that!) Hey, this is still the ‘hood, and Otis aka O2 is still is a down-ass thug nucca, ya feel me. For this genre, such male behavior is kinda sorta progress.

[Spoiler alert: If you haven’t yet but want to see Waist Deep, stop reading. Yeah, I figured you’d keep going. I ain’t mad atcha.]

Aw, hell. Maybe all that’s BS, and I just got taken in by the ending. Whether it’s an homage or a ripoff, there’s no denying that the climax of Waist Deep was inspired by both Set It Off and Thelma & Louise, two films wildly popular by feminists of all stripes from the street corner to the ivory tower. After smirking through much of the film, I found myself perched on the edge of my recliner when Otis, surrounded by police, drives his car off an open bridge. “Oh, no, they didn’t!” I yelled at the television. “No, you did NOT bite off of Thelma and Louise!” And let me ‘fess up. As I watched O2’s car sink into the river, I said it.




“That boy better be dead.”

Because if he was a woman, that’s the way the film would end. The tropes of feminist popular culture deems that it go like this:

1. Woman breaks out of suffocating traditional sex role.

2. Woman is deemed outlaw for such defiance and is sought out for punishment.

3. Woman gives the patriarchy one last fuck you by refusing to submit to punishment.

Therefore, unless, this is sci-fi, fantasy or some other genre not rooted in contemporary realism, homegirl must die.

So for a few moments, I was a bit heated that a film in which the female lead is little more than a plot device, the male protagnist not only gets to appropriate the bittersweet chick flick convention where the true RDC only makes the ultimate sacrifice for herself and other women, he also gets to live. He makes it to Mexico. And he has a family waiting for him to boot.

And yet if not for this appropriation, I might not have ever gone back and reexamine the character of Otis and noticed some of the other things about him that are unusual -- in a good way -- for a male character in this genre. Rather I was focused on what messages were conveyed through the female character CoCo. Yet I always preach to young men of the hip hop generation that feminism is for everybody and can liberate them from debilitating ideas of masculinity.



So this ending reminded me that part of the feminist project must include seeking out men – and representations of them in the media – that challenge archaic notions of masculinity, big and small. Like I said, Waist Deep stays overwhelmingly loyal to the tropes of its genre which implicitly necessitates the marginalization of women, and ain't changing no time soon. Within those narrow confines, however, it does engage in tiny betrayals and even, steals, er, borrows from the best of pro-women popular cinema.

So if the RDC for the cause of women’s liberation can sometimes be a man, then maybe sometimes we have to send Tyrese to do a feminist’s job.