Mad Men, Megan Draper, and the Skyler White Effect

Mad Men is back in a week, and I am extremely excited. (Big surprise - I think I write more about this show than anything else.) The promotional pictures are just opulently sexy - Megan's hair! Pete's...hair! Joan's dress! But I'm also apprehensive, particularly about what's going to happen to the latest woman in Don's life. 

Things don't look good for her.

The Skyler White effect takes its name from Breaking Bad's lead female character. It goes like this: a female character judges the male protagonist's bad behavior in a completely rational way, and the audience hates her for it. Walter White is a murderous meth dealer whose ultimate goal is meth underworld domination. There's nothing actually appealing or noble about that. But when Skyler does anything in response to his behavior, she's labeled as the worst. If she tells Walter to stop dealing drugs, she's a nagging harpy; if she decides to support Walter's drug kingpin aspirations, she's a hypocritical gold digger. The same thing happened to Carmela in The Sopranos and Alison in Knocked Up, and it's still happening to the past and future Mrs. Drapers. 

Let's quickly lay out Don's horribleness. He's an army deserter and fraud. He is a constant and flagrant adulterer. He's an alcoholic with a history of sexual and domestic abuse threats. Finally, he's an occasional plagiarist. But, because he's great at his job and thinks his kids are ok, he's still fine as a flawed hero. 

Betty Hofstadt Draper Francis, on the other hand, is a bitch. Betty, who tried to seek psychiatric help only to discover that her shrink was giving Don reports on what she had said. Who suffered through and then was blamed for sexual harassment from Don's boss. Who told Don she was unhappy, and got yelled at on a bad day and dismissed on a good day. 

Honestly, I don't think the writing teams are immune to the Skyler White effect. The female characters who aren't married to Don get rich, easy character development, but Betty's is much more subtle. You have to pay close attention to throwaway lines like "Mommy doesn't like to eat" to get that she had an eating disorder for the first few seasons, or to pick up on the fact that she's a textbook child abuse survivor. Almost every story she tells about her mother speaks to severe emotional abuse, which informs her increasingly horrible relationship with Sally. She was raised by one bully and married another, a man who flaunted his infidelity and made her feel inadequate, then turned around and called her a whore for buying a bikini. 

The woman is trying so hard, Don. Jesus. 

When she finally freed herself from that terrible marriage, she spent an entire year letting her anger boil over at everyone. Finally in a position of (relative) power, she began abusing everyone she could. Unfortunately for Betty, the writers made her the one thing audiences will never forgive - a bad mother. So she's stuck in Skyler White hell. 

Now former receptionist and copywriter/future actress Megan Calvet has assumed the dreaded "Mrs. Draper" role. She's already done such detestable things as ask Don to be emotionally available, tell him to take her job seriously, and use his connections to land a national commercial. (The fact that he balked at that last one, when he had no qualms about creating a copywriter job despite her lack of qualifications, speaks volumes about how stingy Don gets when women reject his image of them.) Meanwhile, at one point Don abandons Megan at some pokey rest stop motel because she doesn't like orange sherbet. He then kicks their front door in, chases her around their apartment, and tackles her to the ground. 

She is tiny. He is a monster. 

If Megan reacts to his bullying in a relatively independent and well-adjusted way - in other words, not like a meek doormat - she's a bitch. 

The Skyler White effect is a pretty warped set-up. It speaks to the overwhelming preference for a male perspective over a female one, and for a male hero free from any woman's "interference." I hope the Mad Men writers don't yield to whatever negative feedback they do get about Megan, the way they clearly did with Betty. Don needs someone to stand up to his array of bullshit, and Megan is his strongest partner yet. 

Review: House of Cards

I had to take a couple of weeks after I finished House of Cards before I could write about it. It sucked me in so completely, even as it grew increasingly absurd, that by the end I was just overwhelmed. Plus, with an intricately plotted show like this, it takes a while to pull the narrative strings apart.

But I'm already making House of Cards sound better than it is. What it is is a sleek, manipulative, and very good show that thinks it's great. Its confidence is probably one of its most compelling features, actually. Every performance and every frame is sure-footed and self-assured, and they can wrap you up in their conviction that you're watching something groundbreaking. Kate Mara, Robin Wright, and Corey Stoll (who I last saw with way more hair as Ernest Hemingway in Midnight in Paris) do especially notable work. Their performances elevate their characters - the spunky cub reporter, the frosty Lady Macbeth, the rags-to-riches Congressman with powerful demons - above their cliches.

But seriously, where is his hair? AND HIS MUSTACHE?

There is something odd about all of these roles, though. For roughly the first six chapters (episodes are listed as Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc, as though you're watching a novel unfold) they are all most interesting when they're in lead character Frank Underwood's orbit. I didn't care about Claire's non-profit or relationship with a "sexy" British photographer, and I didn't want to see Zoe the reporter's ascension or watch her deal with office politics (more on that later). I really wanted to know how they would affect or interact with Frank. But about halfway through, that began to change for me. The more Zoe, Claire, and Stoll's Peter Russo spiraled away from Frank, the more dynamic they became.

Kevin Spacey's performance as Frank, the world-class manipulator/House Majority Whip, is partly to blame. He practically assaults you with his charisma, dominating all of his scenes and making florid asides straight to the camera. A performance like his makes it hard for other characters to breathe alongside him. And after a certain point, his linguistic pyrotechnics become exhausting. I might feel differently if I hadn't binge-watched this show, so I'd only get one hour of exposure rather than...more than that...at a time. But as I watched, I tired of his constant barbs, elaborate metaphors, and ultimately empty turns of phrase. His conversations weren't conversations so much as competing mini-monologues. It wasn't until well into the season - maybe even Chapter 13 - that I felt a real dynamism and connection between Frank and Claire. You only get one chapter in which Frank is at all vulnerable, and I think it was after that chapter that things began to fall apart for me and Frank. Seeing him tear up at the memories of his old school, which was NOT the Citadel at ALL, made everything else he did before and after that episode feel too slick to be interesting.

Also he keeps making this face at me. Yeesh.

But I think the plotting also has a lot to do with my pivoting interests. For a huge chunk of the show, solutions to most problems, and Frank's in particular, are frustratingly easy. House of Cards paints a strange picture of the Hill, where over-the-top manipulation rules, but only a handful of people are doing it to a network of unsuspecting dummies. Frank somehow manages to be ruthless and cruel to people's faces, but still maintain his reputation as a trustworthy gentleman who can get stuff done. After Peter lets a shipyard close in his district, destroying 12,000 jobs in the process, he manages to win the unemployed shipyard workers over by  giving an inspiring speech about a new bill. This same superficiality plagues almost every political drama there is, and I have a feeling it's because these dramas are written by writers. That sounds stupid, but who else in the world believes in the transformative power of words than professional writers? They believe that the right speech can convince people whose jobs will never come back that a water purification bill (or something?) is the new great hope. It's childish, and really does the whole political process a disservice.

Zoe's entire narrative also desperately needed to change in order for me to enjoy it, so that her office nemesis Janine stopped being an office nemesis. The disappointing "jealous crone versus hot young thing in the office" trope really marred the season's first half. In my experience, older female co-workers aren't resentful jerks who try to stymie their young counterparts and call them fiercely gendered slurs like "twat" in the office. Those older women tend to reach out to serve as role models, especially in a male-dominated filed like journalism. Automatically putting two women in violent opposition is just anti-feminist. Fortunately, Janine and Zoe eventually put their feud to rest, and Janine ends up being the mentor that Zoe needed - someone who can teach her the merits of investigative journalism over being fed information by an anonymous and morally compromised source.

But while I'm complaining about the way Hollywood portrays journalism, can we stop assuming that all journalists over the age of 24 just HATE bloggers? The division is really not that severe - probably hasn't been for at least 10 years now - and it's fueled more by middle-aged confusion about the internet than anything else. People don't spit the word "blog" at 20-something-year-old upstarts like the word itself is drenched in acid. Again, this is the problem with letting writers write things! All of them probably have an axe to grind against some horrible editor from their past, and he gets written into a lot of newspaper offices. (One of the most egregious examples of this from an otherwise excellent show was Season 5 of The Wire, so it's especially hilarious to me that the House of Cards version is played by The Wire's horrible Lt. Marimow, who was named after David Simon's horrible editor from the Baltimore Sun. Round and round it goes!)

And now I've managed to make the show sound worse than it is. It really is terrifically acted, and compelling all the way through. I think I'm in favour of Netflix's idea here, releasing a new show all at once so that people can watch it in big chunks. And I'm very excited for the second (and final!) season, whenever that will happen. I just hope they're wise enough to give the most interesting characters some space from Frank, and give Frank the human some space from Frank the Machiavellian overlord.

Email addresses I got spam from this week

contact@sherlocksleuth.com 

contact@imissquigon.com

contact@quigoncameback.com 

contact@quigonwhy.com

contact@obiwanfailed.com

contact@whyobiwan.com

contact@toomaymidichlorians.com

Masquerading as:

Zoosk

Match.com

MAGIC by Magic Johnson

Saffron Slim

Christian Mingle

Provide Auto Insurance

Tire Coupons

There is one really upset Qui-Gon Jinn fan out there, and s/he is taking his/her rage out on any email address s/he can find. You've been warned, internet. 

Django Unchained - Review

Synopsis: Bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) buys Django (Jamie Foxx) from two slavers so he (Django) can eyeball three men with a bounty on their heads. Eventually, Schultz frees Django and promotes him to partner in bounty hunting, promising to help him find and free his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) when the winter ends. About halfway through the film, Django and Schulz find Broomhilda's new owner, the ostentatious, criminally self-absorbed, and brutal Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). At that point, our buddies concoct an unnecessarily complicated plan to trick Candie, whose favourite hobby is Mandingo fighting*, into selling Broomhilda. Further complicating matters is Candie's head of house Stephen, played with toxic ferocity by Samuel Jackson.

The main performances, while extremely varied, are tremendous across the board. Waltz is as twinkling and delightful as he was in Inglourious Basterds, taking an almost sensual pleasure in his dialogue. Jamie Foxx necessarily has to play things much closer to the vest. As a slave living and travelling in unfriendly territory, Django can't allow any of his real emotions to come to the surface. Still, Foxx does an excellent job of showing Django's constant fear and growing sense of self. Meanwhile, DiCaprio seems to be having fun playing someone who isn't suffering from some sort of inner torment for the first time in years. (That doesn't mean he doesn't get angry - at one point, he slams his hand down on a table so hard his hand starts bleeding.)

He also gets to hold a jaunty coconut.

Django Unchained almost seems like it could be a good two-parter, since the two halves of the film - pre- and post-Candie - are so tonally different. The first half is funnier and more playful, and since Christoph Waltz dominates that half it makes sense. The second half moves a lot slower and is generally darker, as Waltz cedes the ground to darker characters like Candie and Stephen. Instead of hilariously inept Klansmen bumbling around, we get Francophile dandies explaining the finer points of phrenology. The second half is also much more violent, starting with the gruesome Mandingo fight and building to an epic Grand Guignol slaughterfest. I don't usually do this in graphic movies, but I found myself covering my eyes at several scenes.


As always, Tarantino's desire to tell a story is in fierce competition with his obsession with reminding his audience of the awesomeness of cinema. So, the powerful narrative gets interrupted and distracted from by masturbatory flourishes and ostentatious casting choices. One of the funnier and more ridiculous scenes involves a proto-KKK gang with some problems with their badly constructed hoods. On its own, the scene already distracts from the story we care about, but it becomes even more distracting when Jonah Hill pulls off his hood. We're no longer watching an unexpectedly funny interaction between characters, but a funny scene with Jonah Hill. His presence is totally unnecessary. On a similar vein, the less said about Tarantino's offensively unnecessary cameo as an Australian slave trader (??), the better. He should feel really shitty for bringing his own movie to a screeching halt like that. 

But the story he's telling is so interesting, and so necessarily complex, that even with the film's numerous Tarantino-related problems it's still terrific. Naturally, the most compelling and complicated aspect was the way racism affected each character. Stephen has clearly internalized his society's racism to a severe degree, to the point that he is legitimately outraged at Django sleeping in a bed meant for white guests, and hated to see a free black man anyway. The courtly Big Daddy may call his slaves "sugar," but he still a) keeps slaves, b) insists that while Django isn't a slave, he shouldn't be treated like a white man (he finally settles on treating Django like white trash), and c) was apparently a founding member of the KKK. Unlike in Gone with the Wind, there is no such thing as a benevolent slaveowner. 

Not even ones who are Colonel Sanders impersonators.

But Django himself has clearly internalized slavery's racial hierarchy as well. He tells Dr. Schultz that his wife is too pretty (and, he leaves out, light-skinned) to be a field slave. Meanwhile, Dr. Schultz clearly thinks of himself as a racially tolerant man, but his objection to slavery seems to be largely intellectual. He refers to slavery offhandedly as "this slavery malarkey," and appears genuinely baffled at the resentment engendered when he lets Django ride a horse or drink beer in a saloon. When Django first tells Schultz about his wife, he responds "I didn't know slaves believed in marriage," as though it was a personal choice on the slaves' part rather than a right denied them by their status as slaves. His position doesn't really change until he meets Candie and gets introduced to Mandingo fighting. It seems that seeing the real horrors of slavery up close - seeing a slave torn apart by dogs because Candie can't use him anymore, for instance - makes him realize that slavery isn't just a silly or misguided idea, but is truly evil.

I also have a problem with Kerry Washington's role as Broomhilda. As usual with Tarantino films that aren't starring badass women (Jackie Brown, Kill Bill), Broomhilda is tragically underwritten. She fills a pretty traditional role, the beautiful damsel in distress whose distress is that much more affecting because she's beautiful. On the other hand, it's incredibly rare to see a black woman in the beautiful damsel in distress role. I know it's weird to say, but black women are rarely allowed to be the decorative subject of a chivalrous quest. Even in the realm of the Disney princesses, the white princesses are whisked away by their princes charming while the colored princesses learn the value of hard work. Having a black man go through hell for an angelic black woman sure does diversify our on-screen representation. 

Django Unchained is simultaneously awkward and elegant, superficial and complicated, disturbing and entertaining. If nothing else, I'm glad that Tarantino hasn't lost his intense ambition to make something challenging and important. 

*The myth of Mandingo fighting persists because it's such a vivid distillation of what racism and slavery do to black men. It reduces them to nothing more than bodies, sets them in competition with each other, and rewards them with a substantially diminished life and sometimes a paltry recognition. The Mandingo fight scene in Django Unchained illustrates all of that with breathtaking brutality and a fair bit of elegance.

Brief musings on Tarantino and "the n-word"

After I've had some time to really digest it, I'll speak with a lot more detail and (hopefully) insight about Django Unchained, which I thought was excellent and deeply flawed. But right now I just want to talk about Quentin Tarantino and the word nigger. 

('Nigger' will come up a lot in this post. I won't be going in to how the word itself makes me feel as a black woman, because I don't have energy for that conversation. But you've been warned.) 

I crunched some numbers and tallied the uses of 'nigger' in all of Tarantino's movies (not including Four Rooms, which he only directed part of). I split the usage up by the actor's race.

No real surprises here.

Tarantino's liberal use of the word has always bothered me, especially (really, almost exclusively) when his white characters use it. It tells us something when the white criminals in Reservoir Dogs refer to niggers when they're talking to each other - we know we're dealing with men who use it when black people aren't around, and who absolutely mean it as an epithet - but is this really something we need to know about them? Why do we need to know something so racially charged? Same goes for Pulp Fiction's Lance - we already know this is a skeezy dude who sells heroin and (worse) lives his life in a mildewed bathrobe. I don't feel particularly enlightened, nor do I think his character is at all enriched, by him also being a racist who thinks only 'niggers' in Inglewood sell shitty heroin and don't know the difference. 

A more troubling example is Pulp Fiction's Jimmy, played with his usual surplus of conviction and debit of acting skill by Tarantino himself. This is a man with a black wife, talking to his black friend/ly acquaintance Jules (Samuel Jackson) about 'dead nigger storage'? Why? What is this man's deal? 

Tarantino has never given a satisfactory answer. Honestly, he only seems to respond to people's understandable aggravation when either only black actors are saying it or the entire point of the movie is racism. (See his interview with Henry Louis Gates, which touches on the subject.) White people saying 'nigger' is completely justified when your movie is set in 1858. It's much less so in 1992 and 1994. The man still has some 'splainin to do. 

This is what happens when I try to make tally marks in the dark.

Review: Skyfall is (mostly) awesome

James Bond is getting old. The man has been killing baddies and bedding ladies for 50 years now, and the physical, emotional, and psychological wear is starting to show. Even though we've only known Daniel Craig's version for 3 movies now, from the beginning of Skyfall we can see he's exhausted. 

Interestingly, Skyfall isn't only about Bond's existential crisis. Instead we have a dual focus on him and his boss/mentor, M. M, who we've gotten to know as Judi Dench for the past 17 years, has to deal with aging as well. Both she and her department, not to mention the very idea of James Bond, become less relevant as we continue to move away from the Cold War, but nobody is willing to go quietly. Her relationship with Bond comes under scrutiny as well, from outsiders as well as Bond himself. It's all very emotionally potent stuff, but, true to the spirit of Bond movies, it doesn't skimp on the action at all. 

I'm not often surprised by or even interested in action sequences. After 60 seconds, I typically start to tune out - the stakes rarely seem real, and if there are robots or aliens involved, everything becomes interchangeable. Not so in Skyfall. Several scenes actually shocked me with their audacity and scope. I never would have expected Sam Mendes to be such a fearless action director, but I'm glad to have Skyfall prove me wrong. 

Skyfall managed to surprise me in another way: I didn't think I'd love any Bond girl as much as I do Vesper Lynd, but Naomie Harris's Eve kind of blows Vesper out of the water. She simply fizzles with energy - badass energy, intellectual energy, and sexual energy. 

Presented without comment.

But really there's a sexy type for just about everyone. As always, there's the aggressive and brutish Bond. Bérénice Marlohe plays our exotic and damaged femme fatale. The new Q (Ben Whishaw) pioneers new frontiers of tweedy hipster sexiness with a posh British accent. And Judi Dench continues to hold it down for the stern, matronly cougars. 

With all of that said, there are two glaring problems I had with the movie. The first is with Javier Bardem's character, the nihilistic Silva. On the one hand, it's exciting to have an over-the-top Bond villain again. Our last two villains were (as I remember them) a chartered accountant with defective tear ducts and a French environmental capitalist (??). They skewed closer to real world villains, yeah, but they hardly got the blood going. But here, Javier Bardem brings a sort of operatic theatricality to his role that really raises Skyfall's stakes. 

I didn't even mention that Max Zorin hairstyle. Fucking terrifying.

On the other hand, I am so fucking tired of what Brian Safi calls the homo-cidal maniac. Queering the villain in order to (ostensibly) up the creep factor is lazy, cliche, and downright harmful. Why should the male villain's stated or implied attraction to our hero be so problematic? Why does his first scene, almost an hour into the movie, introduce his bisexuality as a psychosexual threat to Bond? It's really quite tiresome, and that scene really stuck in my craw. 

My second problem is the way the women in this movie end up. I know that marginalization of female characters in a Bond movie seems almost too easy a subject to complain about, but these new movies had set a higher bar, so I'm feeling a bit betrayed. (Not terribly significant spoilers coming.) Marlohe's Sévérine falls victim to what must have been a truncated plot arc, and gets relegated to a role somewhere beneath that of Connery-era Bond girls. Meanwhile, Harris's Eve, who opens the movie demonstrating her significant skills in the field, ends the movie working a familiar secretarial job (hint: her last name is Moneypenny). I so would have liked to see her develop through the series as a badass female spy.

Still, Skyfall works as a terrific bridge between the brawny realism of Casino Royale and the silkier (but cheesier) fantasy of Goldfinger. There are more witty one-liners, more improbable action sequences, and more aggressively sexual quips than we're used to seeing from this era. There's also more darkness, more introspection, and more emotional complication than any other Bond movie. It'll be interesting to see what direction the series will take from here, and whether that direction will include an obviously exhausted Craig. But either way, I'm all in. 

Movies to watch on Halloween (update!)

(Previously.)

If you want strong female characters...The Descent

A rare quality horror movie with an all-female cast (except for one character who barely has lines and vanishes after the second scene), and zero objectification. Every woman in the movie is someone you know and understand, and their relationships with each other foster as much tension and interest as the terrors they meet in the cave. I'd watch this one with the lights on. 

Synopsis: A year after she survives a traumatic accident, Sarah and her five friends go on a restorative hiking/spelunking trip. When they get trapped in an unexplored cave, they start to suffer from limited oxygen, delusions (OR ARE THEY?), and rapidly fraying relationships.
Starring: Shauna MacDonald, Natalie Mendoza, Alex Reid
Money shot: Sarah crawling out of an underwater lake that may or may not consist entirely of blood.


If you need a retro fix...The House of the Devil
This movie does an excellent job of 3 things: looking, sounding, and feeling exactly like a late-70s thriller; making you fall in love with Samantha, the adorable button of a protagonist; and creeping you the fuck out for an hour until letting loose in a balls-out bloodletting spectacular. 

She listens to a Discman! Look at her feathered hair! I'm in love!

Synopsis: Samantha, desperate to pay the security deposit on her dream apartment and get away from her shitty roommate, takes on a suspiciously fortuitous and lucrative babysitting job. The house is well-appointed and a little spooky. The parents are well-appointed and extremely spooky. You may well guess that Angela winds up regretting her decision.
Starring: Joceline Donahue, Tom Noonan
Money shot: The entire last 10 minutes.


If you want camp done right...Little Shop of Horrors

This movie is everything. It's a spoof of and loving homage to corny musicals of the 50s and 60s, with terrifically catchy music. It's a time capsule of 80s talent, with people like Steve Martin, John Candy, and Bill Murray all making perfect appearances. And it's a straight-up puppeteering virtuoso. Audrey II is one of the most impressive puppets of all time, with a hell of a voice. 

And a scorching case of gingivitis, from the looks of it.

There's nothing particularly scary about this movie, with the exception of the "Suppertime" scene, but there's something kind of Halloween-y about it. Maybe the whole "talking plant who wants to take over the world" thing. 

Synopsis: A talking plant wants to take over the world.
Starring: Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops (that's exactly how he's billed)
Money shot: Almost innumerable, but I'd say the scene in which a talking plant pulls himself across the room to use a rotary phone.


If you're going old-old school...Les Diaboliques

This one is hella old, and hella creepy. I know that saying this goes against our spoiler-oriented culture, but I think the less you know about the plot, the more you'll enjoy it. (More about that here.) 

Synopsis: The ailing spouse and manhandled mistress of a sadistic boarding school headmaster plan and execute the man's murder -- but their plan goes haywire when the corpse vanishes. 
Starring: Véra Clouzot, Simone Signoret, Paul Meurisse
Money shot: The bathtub scene. You'll know it when you see it.


If you're going new school...The Cabin in the Woods

Absolutely one of my favourite movies of the year. I had always been on the fence about Joss Whedon - I love Firefly, but can't stand Buffy - but The Cabin in the Woods really tipped the scales for me. This is a horror movie for and by people who love horror but perhaps want something new from it. While Scream told us that horror movies had to be a certain way, CITW tries to make us ask why. Do we horror fans crave order and tradition so much that we forcibly reject anything that tries to be different? Do we like watching sexy people get gruesomely punished for their sexiness? Does it even matter to us how they die, as long as they do it in the right order? What does a merman actually look like, anyway? 

Synopsis: 5 friends - a jock, a stoner, a brain, a slut ,and a virgin - set out for a weekend in a small house in the forest. As the movie unfolds, we learn that these friends may not fit into these familiar archetypes so naturally, and something more sinister than usual is afoot.
Starring: Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Fran Kranz
Money shot: The demons from our nightmares are unleashed.

These are the demons.