I wrote earlier this year about the controversy swirling around Lucky McKee’s film The Woman. After a midnight showing at Sundance last January, one angry man in the audience stood up and denounced the film as a “disgusting movie” that “degrades women.” Given McKee’s nuanced treatment of gender issues in his previous films May and The Woods, I suspected that this outraged critic had completely missed the point.
Now I’ve finally gotten to see the film and, yep, he did. The Woman isn’t a misogynist film; it’s a film about misogyny. The Woman revolves around a cheerful , self-satisfied and and superficially charming country lawyer who captures a ferocious feral woman he spots on a hunting trip and chains her in the cellar in what he perversely sees as an attempt to “civilize” her. A patriarchal king of his castle, he introduces her to the rest of the family and assigns them all chores relating to her upkeep.
I don’t really want to give away much more than this; suffice it to say that as the film progresses we learn just how much of an odious psychopath this “family man” really is. But while the film offers a savage critique of his cruelty, and his misogyny, none of the women in the film are unambiguously noble victims, and when they begin to fight back the story is no simple tale of feminist empowerment. It’s a bit more subtle and unsettling than that.
While less overtly violent than, say, your typical Saw film, The Woman is a film that’s often, and by design, hard to take. Yes, there are some grisly deaths, but this isn’t a film that glories in gore for gore’s sake; it’s really about cruelty and complicity and feeling trapped, the ways in which fucked-up families can ensnare even outsiders in their toxic dynamics.
Naturally, the film has drawn sharply mixed reactions from critics. It got a glowing review from Andy Webster in the New York Times, who described the cast as “remarkable” and praised the way McKee invests the film’s “a powerful parable with an abundance of closely observed details.” Marc Holcomb of the Village Voice, meanwhile, dismissed it as “torture porn for people who’d never admit to liking torture porn.” (He also noted sardonically that the feral woman is “apparently tame enough to shave her armpits.” And her legs too, I might add; under the caked-on-grime, she’s what the PUAs would probably rate a HB10. )
But the strangest review I’ve seen so far is one by Rene Rodriguez in the Miami Herald, who perversely describes the film as, er, fun. While acknowledging the film’s feminist themes, she dismisses them as mere window-dressing:
[C]ome on: You want a feminist movie, go rent Norma Rae. The Woman is the sort of horror picture designed to make you throw popcorn at the screen, groan with disgust and shriek out loud when McKee springs a shock on you. … Good times.
Really? Were you throwing popcorn at the screen during Antichrist too?
Of course, it doesn’t exactly help – as Rodriguez and a couple of other reviewers have noted – that the film’s publicists sent out the DVD screener with a barf bag “just in case.” The Woman deserves better than that.
EDITED TO ADD: Regular Man Boobz commenters might want to check out this thread on the IMDb forums, in which a (somewhat oversimplified) discussion of the feminist themes in the film is quickly derailed by a dude who thinks it laughable that a mere woman could possibly overpower the family patriarch:
I feel sorry for you and any other woman who truly believes that they can physically overpower a man.
You know, if women are just as physically capable as men, I’d love to start my own inter-gender boxing league. Sign me up, baby! Equality at its finest. 🙂
And the trailer:
I can’t go round and round with worries all the time.
Such a pretty song lyric that makes… 🙂
@zhinxy
The CIA did start and sponsor ms mag, and good old gloria.
Kyrie – perhaps what you need is stingless bees. Apparently you can buy them:
http://www.aussiebee.com.au/buy-stingless-bees.html#CoolerNSW
…
Pinkie Pie
Tea
The Room
Bad movies in general
MST3K
Pictures and videos of cute animals
Rifftrax
Movies/TV shows/cartoons/comics with wacky theatrical Nazis as the villains
My Illuminati overlords
Oops. I’ve said too much.
In case you haven’t understood, I’m trying to make *you* say what *you* believe make other people’s life so worthy of shame, since you believe you should shame them.
But just to be even clearer, none of what I said relate to me in a private matter, it’s just my moral believes I gave you.
Ms. Magazine got DC to change Wonder Woman back to her classic costume and powers. All I can say is, “go CIA!”
My cat
My budgies
but the cat likes the budgies a little bit too much
That’s fascinating. I’d like to learn more about that. Do you have somewhere I could read about it? You know, wherever you got that information! I’d really love to see the source so I could learn more!
…
Broadway shows.
ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS.
Tumblr.
Magic: the Gathering.
Roleplaying.
Getting paid for my writing.
Dancing around my room.
Naked potlucks.
Glitter.
Vegan Scavenger Hunt.
Ethical debates.
Mockery of the stupid.
80s music.
Lady Gaga.
Elizabeth Bear.
The Dresden Files.
Alan Moore.
Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.
Sandman.
Amanda Palmer.
Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer’s marriage.
Neil Gaiman’s library.
Neil Gaiman’s short stories and poetry.
Neil Gaiman’s voice.
Neil Gaiman’s snarkiness.
[next fifty items redacted for being variations on ‘Neil Gaiman’]
…
The CIA started and sponsored Ms Magazine? That is funnier and more asinine than the Flouride being planted by the Rothschilds.
How do you “start” a person? Was Steinem bred in a CIA lab, or was someone in the CIA her father? Please explain.
Magpie: I’m afraid that would diminish their ability to survive, which is most important that a little scare, especially since they all seem to be dying. (we lost our two hives)
NWO, do tell me if that’s too private, I will censor myself.
And I like amand’s milk. And cooking pastries. And taekwondo.
I’m sorry about your hives. Do you know what is killing them?
I love that show!
“Back in the 1980s, I wrote, directed and starred in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, a television program so radical, so risky, so dangerous, so goddamn crazy, that the so-called powers that be became too scared to show it, and gypped me. Much in the same way women have done ever since they sniffed out my money.”
Sunsets.
Pedophiliac vampire incest.
Not having to leave the house.
Pomegranates.
Blueberries.
Cheese.
Pizza Fusion.
Fried rice.
Johnny Weir.
Elaborate makeup.
Bad emo music.
Johnny Cash.
Lovecraftian fantasy.
Vests.
Plaid shirts.
Sparkly shirts.
My girlfriend.
Being called “sir.”
Orchids.
Concerts in shitty clubs.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
The Room.
Fight Club.
Zombieland.
Zack Snyder.
Giving money to charity.
Lord of the Rings, both movies and books.
The Hobbit, same.
Firefly.
Dr. Horrible.
You missed being slowly drawn into a completely immersive fantasy world that has no resemblance to reality. But worse graphics, and it’s full of NWO.
When comics use literal sound effects. Examples: Punch! Glance! Notice! Referring to vampires as “draculas”. Neither of these things ever fails to crack me up.
@zhinxy
The guys with the money of course.
If you don’t pay your taxes, the cops come to collect. So who do the cops work for? That’s a lotta power if you can command any police force in the nation.
So why are you here, NWO? Feminism in general doesn’t tend to think it’s in the service of “the guys with the money” – And yes, most feminists are for taxation, but look around you. People like me and… Maybe you, you still haven’t told me what you think about taxes… Well, we’re pretty damn rare. How are feminists specifically in their thrall. Yeah, I think that it is, in the ultimate moral sense, wrong to fund a state with taxation at the point of a gun. But most people don’t see it that way, and it’s not just feminists. That’s me, the pretty small minority. Most feminists and most people think “getting something done, helping people” involves the state. I don’t. But “the guys at the top” in my paranoid vision are more interested in getting you yelling at people for the small crutches the government hands out for breaking our legs. Like I said, all these “entitlements” don’t add up to much.
Come on, give this a read
http://c4ss.org/content/8942
“Stop Licking The Boot That Kicks You”
Which is what you’re doing, as far as I can tell.
When comics use literal sound effects. Examples: Punch! Glance! Notice! Referring to vampires as “draculas”. Neither of these things ever fails to crack me up. – What about “draculinas” for the girlys, a-la hellsing again?
Leaves. Leaves are so pretty.
Spearhafoc: It’s the BEST. Noah told me about it this weekend and I swear every conversation since has involved me mentioning SO DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS SHOW IT HAS A SCOTTISH MIST IN IT.
I think my favorite bit is the woman turning into broccoli that is a metaphor for AIDS because why not. Or the King Lear citation on “page 46.” Or the music “based on tunes whistled by Garth Marenghi.”
I would recommend it to NWO, but I’m afraid he (a) wouldn’t get the joke and (b) would like it.
We’re not sure. Apparently bugs, but it’s probably more than that, an external factor (like pollution maybe) that weakened them and left them to the mercy of others bugs. (and very few animals actually show mercy ^_^’)
But though it is a little sad, I’m more worried about the speed at which bees and bee races seem to disappear.
Considering the wacky hijinks that the US government has been up to (example: about every six months to a year I hear about a new DARPA project involving “researching the potential of World of Warcraft as a terr’ist communication mechanism” and can only conclude that there is a team of geeks somewhere who are laughing all the way to the bank), I can well imagine that there might be some sort of story involving the CIA and Ms. magazine and that, if one exists, it must be comedy gold.
You know what’s awesome? Celtic punk. It’s like punk, but there are BAGPIPES.
NWO, do you like bagpipes?
Actually despite the gender gap in voting, women still do not out vote men so rarely have an impact on races beyond local ones.
I do know that when Speaker Pelosi was in charge of the House, there were hundreds of bills passed. When Boehner took over there has been um…5?