My year in three films

By Lani

So you all might be saying, “What have you been doing with your life since August, Lani?”
(Just kidding... none of you are saying that, but I am going to tell you anyways).

I Am Not Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

By:
Eryca

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (or MPDG) is a fictional character stereo type that has been pushed around the entertainment industry for years. The term MPDG was coined fairly recently, after A.V. Club writer Nathan Rabin  saw Kirsten Dunst in  Elizabethtown (a movie I was never quite able to sit through) 

The MPDG is described as "...that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and it's infinite mysteries and adventures."  

This is a problem. To continuously perpetuate the notion that women are only there as character foils. Even if they are the main character in cases like Amélie (yes, I just called Amélie a MPDG)

But I'm not here to argue the validity of the MPDG. Or the fact that it's completely anti-feminist and pretty sexist if I do say so myself. I'm here to make it very clear that I am not, nor will I ever be, your Manic Pixie Dream Girl. 

For most of my teen years, I looked and dressed something like this:

and when I say "something like this" I mean, this is a picture of me when I was 15.

What can I say? I hated high school and this was my small little way of making the day to day awfulness ever so slightly bearable. 

Now, because of this "look" (which I have since grown out of, however I still wear those boots constantly) I have been perceived as somewhat "aloof" or "bubbly" as Nathan Rabin put it. Which, at 15, isn't such a big deal, except for the fact that I was trying so hard for every authority figure to take me seriously as I was galavanting around town with bubblegum pink hair. 

But as a 20 year old member of American culture it pisses me off that to most of the world, I am perceived as a real life version of the MPDG. 

"You like Indie Music? OH MY GOD YOU'RE JUST LIKE NATALIE PORTMAN IN GARDEN STATE" 

"You dyed your hair crazy colors? OH MY GOD YOU'RE JUST LIKE KATE WINSLET IN ETERNAL SUNSHINE"

"You're a bit manic and actually say what you're thinking? OH MY GOD YOU'RE JUST LIKE DIANE KEATON IN ANNIE HALL"

"You don't want to get super serious but you like hanging out with me? OH MY GOD YOU'RE JUST LIKE ZOOEY DESCHANEL IN 500 DAYS OF SUMMER"

Okay, so no one has actually said these things to me, and I am not claiming to be as attractive, or talented as any of those actresses. 

But every time I meet a guy who likes me in any capacity, that is what I imagine their internal monologue to be. 

(if you are a guy I've dated who is reading this right now, please, feel free to argue with me, I would be highly amused) 

Now, I'm not going to get into all this personal mumbo jumbo, but let me say this; I have a very strong feeling that part of the reason every single one of my "relationships" (or what not) has ended was partially due to the fact that I have been minimized to a movie character that does not exist in real life! 

I feel like I speak for all women who have ever been called "quirky" or "weird" as a compliment, when I say that we do not want to be boxed in your MPDG mind-box where you store all the qualities you think you want in a woman based on sexist stereotypes that help our society continue to place these "quirky" women on ridiculous pedestals based on the fact that they are cute, and the guy always gets them in the end (in some way or another) 

Why would any woman want to be reduced to a two dimensional fixture of the male imagination? Haven't we moved past this as a society? Women are (obviously) just as dynamic and interesting as men, why do we constantly need to be categorized  by the male writer-directors? The MPDG ultimately becomes this helpless female, a modern day damsel in distress. 

the A.V. Club illustrates it so perfectly "the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype is largely defined by secondary status and lack of an inner life. She's on hand to lift a gloomy male protagonist out of the doldrums, not to pursue her own happiness."

All women have an inner-life, come on now! Do we really need to see another movie with the MPDG? And do we really need to introduce the MPDG to a whole new generation of impressionable minds? I think it's about time we started writing better, more dynamic female characters! and not ones that are quintessentially adorable and run through IKEA in pastel colored clothing thankyouverymuch.

So just because I'm a tad neurotic, shorter than average, and on the cute side does not mean I am your dream girl. 

Okay, so I may be a walking clichè. I was born with dimples (which is kind of a deformity if you think about it) and I have a unique sense of style. But, this should not make me "that girl" this should not make any real person "that girl" 

So, for the last time, I am not, nor will I ever be, your Manic Pixie Dream Girl. 

On that note, I'm single and accepting applications on a temporary basis.

~Eryca 

Whit Stillman V. Common People

By: Lani

If you’re my age, you remember certain things about the 90’s. A lot of these things transcend generational lines, like Titanic, the Macarena and owning a pair of Guess jeans (I got my pair at a resale shop). But mainly you remember things marketed towards children, things on Nickelodeon, or if you’re parents were loaded (or like me, your dad worked for the cable company), Cartoon Network.

We don't even like each other!

However, if you’re in your early 20’s, I’m willing to bet, you definitely don’t remember the Whit Stillman movie The Last Days of Disco. Actually, I’m not sure if anyone remembers it. Well, besides the Criterion people, who added it to their DVD collection (supposedly one of the best collections in the world… supposedly) and the programming people on the Style Network, who’ve been playing it in the late night slot for the past month. I’ve caught the movie (from different random points) a few times.

Jarvis is judging you.

The Last Days of Disco is one of those things from the 90’s that I’m just now experiencing, over 10 years after the fact, like the band Pulp. I had heard of Pulp a few times, mainly mentions of the William Shatner version of ‘Common People’ on Vh1, (did you know buying into something for the sake of irony existed before 2003? ME EITHER).  I had to come around to listening to them (and loving them) on my own. Now I can’t stop listening to Pulp. Once I had a revelation while listening to “Common People”, but I don’t remember it now. Unlike my affection for Pulp, The Last Days of Disco did not fill me with second hand nostalgia.

What do you mean you don't remember us?!

The Last Days of Disco is supposed to take place in the “very early 80’s,” but it’s totally 90’s. It stars Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale for Christ’s sake… and that guy that dated Lorelei in ‘Gilmore Girls’ …and that other guy that was Mandy Moore’s future brother-in-law in How to Deal… you know, people who hold zero social relevance anymore.

Like almost all of Pulp’s songs, The Last Days of Disco tells the [melodramatic, boring] stories of a small group of young people: their trials, their tribulations, their love affairs. And in an attempt to add more subtext, the whole thing is set against New York City in the disco days of Studio 54.

Chloe Sevigny plays Alice, the “narrator” of the story. She says less than the assholes that surround her, but we get to see Stillman torment her the most. Alice and her coworker/roommate Charlotte (Beckinsale), both work at a publishing house and spend their free time going to the discos. They have a third roommate, but she says nothing of value. Because she’s a woman, duh… She just goes on dates with assholes that make Alice and Charlotte ~judge~ her - not that they really have any room to do so.

Can't you see the torment in her eyes?! ... or at least the boredum...

Alice has a one-night-stand with another disco goer, played by Dr. Wilson, I mean Robert Sean Leonard, and Alice contracts herpes and gonorrhea from him. It’s later revealed that Alice was a virgin before this roll in the hay with Dr. Wilson.:

Alice Kinnon: If when making love, the man... *spurts*... outside the woman, does that count as sexual intercourse?

Tom Platt: "Spurts"?

Alice Kinnon: If it... *squirts* outside, without getting in... does that count as losing your virginity?

Tom Platt: No part of the man got in at any time?

Alice Kinnon: I don't think so.

Tom Platt: I think part has to get in to be considered sexual intercourse.

Alice Kinnon: So then I was a virgin.

That’s right, if you surrender your purity, you must suffer! Alice tries to keep her V.D. on the D.L., but Charlotte, the bitch, blows her cover. Right in front of all their “friends” too.

Charlotte, Queen Bitch Face

And that’s the thing that struck me most about this film; Charlotte and Alice pretty much hate each other. They are each other’s foils and they’re companions with each other because they went to [a “prestigious”/expensive] college together and work together, but they don’t really like each other at all.  It’s all about convenience with them. Honestly, I have been in a relationship like that. My best friend growing up and I were exactly like this. We grew to not even like each other, have almost nothing in common, but we couldn’t face school alone. We just needed someone to commiserate with and it didn’t hurt that the other person lived on the same block. Of course our friendship ended in a big blow-out, just like Alice and Charlotte.

Actually it’s hard to believe that anyone in this film likes each other. The characters are just not  likeable. They’re not even endearing in the quirky-amusing way that Juno and every other character is today.  They’re all just assholes and I guess that’s a form of “realism.” They’re all just like the people in Pulp’s songs. Except, because Jarvis Cocker isn’t narrating, it’s hard to feel anything for these hollow shells called people. The dialog is painful, but not because it’s particularly bad (except for Charlotte’s line: “You and Holly are the first female friends I’ve ever had!”), but because it’s hard to watch these people interact so rudely with each other.  

 ...I'm so ashamed to be seen with you...

The whole thing is set in the Disco Clubs of the late 70’s and early 80’s, but that becomes inconsequential, because the characters never dance on screen (except in the subway), they’re never shown enjoying the fun parts of “clubbing” (assuming that there are fun aspects of it). They usually lounge around languorously, drink and bullshit. They talk about the kind of stuff you’d expect from recent college grads, gossip, drugs, and one particularly “deep” conversation about whether or not people can “really” change and the effects of media.

[Josh describes Lady and the Tramp]

Josh Neff: [referring to Lady and the Tramp] There is something depressing about it, and it's not really about dogs. Except for some superficial bow-wow stuff at the start, the dogs all represent human types, which is where it gets into real trouble. Lady, the ostensible protagonist, is a fluffy blond Cocker Spaniel with absolutely nothing on her brain. She's great-looking, but - let's be honest - incredibly insipid. Tramp, the love interest, is a smarmy braggart of the most obnoxious kind - an oily jailbird out for a piece of tail, or... whatever he can get.

Charlotte Pingress: Oh, come on.

Josh Neff: No, he's a self-confessed chicken thief, and all-around sleazeball. What's the function of a film of this kind? Essentially as a primer on love and marriage directed at very young people, imprinting on their little psyches the idea that smooth-talking delinquents recently escaped from the local pound are a good match for nice girls from sheltered homes. When in ten years the icky human version of Tramp shows up around the house, their hormones will be racing and no one will understand why. Films like this program women to adore jerks.

Well, in that case, films like The Last Days of Disco program young people to adore the sounds of their own bullshit, write it down and make a movie out of it. (That is what mumblecore is right)? Whit Stillman has had an influence on some formally young people, who are now formidable directors. Stillman is said to have influenced Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, and I get it, but I feel like this is the best case of Godard’s idea of “It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.” Sure, both Anderson and Baumbach write about upper-middle/upper class white people with emotional problems, but they take Stillman-esque characters to a different place than Stillman. Anderson takes them to the story-book absurd and Baumbach takes them to a place where they can be emotionally “real” (instead of just assholes spouting opinions).

I only went with him 'cause he looks like you.

It’s not hard to picture any of these characters being taken aside, by JC (no not that one, this one) and told to pretend they don’t have money, pretend they never went to school. And that’s what it boils down to: these people have enough money to live in the city (even if they have a few roommates) and they have jobs and they are upwardly mobile (ie- not common people). They do cocaine and they don’t have to pay for it. They dance and drink and screw, but not because there is nothing left to do, or because their lives have slipped out of view. They do all this because they can afford it and nothing more is expected of them. And because it is Disco.

No matter how much Alice and Charlotte and the gang hate each other, I hope they can resolve their issues enough to meet up at some point in the future, say The Year 2000.

Listen to Whit Stillman talk about the commercial failure of The Last Days of Disco.

 

Finding Catharsis in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988)

By: 
Kimberly

This is just a guesstimate, but I'm certain that about 99.99% of all cinephiles have that go-to movie to watch upon feeling lovesick, unstable, or, as Mexican singer Lola Beltrán warbles in one of her painfully exquisite ballads, infeliz (unhappy.) For most red-blooded American women born after 1968 or so, that movie has been one of the John Hughes variety (Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, blah blah blah.) While I'm unashamedly guilty of eating a bag of popcorn in bed and watching only the scenes that contain Duckie, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a large part of me that identified with Pepa from Pedro Almodóvar's 1988 comedy Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

Yes, I know, it's a foreign film. The fact that I'm even writing an entire article on some hot-shot "furn" director in my debut post is enough to get some eyes rolling and some voices muttering, "pretentious." But after watching this film several times over the past four or so years, it still amazes me the lack of recognition and popularity it has gained, despite its inclusion in the Viva Pedro DVD box set and a number of other reasons I will get to - but I musn't get too ahead of myself.

Set amongst the background of a brightly-colored, bustling Madrid, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (WOTV) tells the story of Pepa, a television actress and voice-dubber desperately trying to contact her estranged (and married) lover  and co-worker Iván before he sets off for Stockholm. Her attempts, however, are continually thwarted by Iván's wife and Pepa's distraught supermodel friend Candela, who seeks help from Pepa after realizing that she has become romantically involved with a wanted Shiite terrorist. Coincidentally, as she is also in the process of hopefully renting out her penthouse apartment, Iván's son and his fiancé visit the place as prospective residents. All of these appear to be distractions and roadblocks preventing Pepa from getting to Iván, but the (supposedly) feminist lawyer whom Pepa seeks to defend Candela happens to be - *gasp* - Iván's new lover!

While Almodóvar is known for cleverly switching the genre of a film without the audience realizing the shift*, WOTV seems to consistently be two genres at once. "It's a comedy, but no one is laughing," quips the narrator in the English-language trailer. It is a comedy, but not so much so that we don't become detached from Pepa, making her a punching bag for which to relieve our romantic fallouts. (That's pretty much Decent Screenwriting 101, but I can appreciate and point out the small accomplishments to make my argument, can't I?)

I don't want to imitate life in movies; I want to represent it. -Pedro Almodóvar (via)

Another thing Almodóvar is known for is his familiarity and understanding of the wild and wonderful World of Women. With a majority of his oeuvre containing films centered around female characters, his insatiable fascination is undeniable. He admits that he doesn't quite know where his interest stems from, but the important part is that it's apparent, and that, as a member of the female sex, I happen to think he's right on the button when it comes to sympathetically and understandably portraying Pepa's distress.


For a large part of the film, Pepa struggles to remain emotionally, mentally, and, at times, physically stable. In order to sleep at night, she takes barbiturates and misses a dubbing session with Iván, who, of course, she's been trying to contact since their break-up. She faints, calls his home and curses out his wife, wanders the city at night searching for him, tosses a telephone out the window, and accidentally sets the bed she and Iván shared on fire, despite her prospects of renting out the apartment as soon as possible. We watch her as she weeps, mopes, and stuffs Iván's remaining possessions and silly gifts into a suitcase. "Soy infeliz", the Lola Beltrán song mentioned above, is the gut-wrenching theme to Pepa's unhappiness, and plays during the opening credits.

But there comes a point in Pepa's hysteric state of being (which comes before the bed fire) when she decides to face her problems head on, whether on the verge of a nervous breakdown or not (and, hell, she has every right to be.) "I'm sick of being good," she proclaims, as she chucks a handful of sleeping pills into a blender of gazpacho. When I'm fed up with something, I often repeat this line to myself in the original Spanish: Estoy harta de ser buena. (It's quite therapeutic - I highly recommend doing it.) 

Like most of you probably reading this, I've been through my fair share of heartbreaks and romantic torments. While I may not have stood outside an ex-lover's apartment at night, hurled a rotary telephone out the window of a swank penthouse apartment I'm hoping to sublet, or felt the need to take sleeping pills in order to get some shut-eye, I wouldn't blame Pepa for doing it. Also, it's just so cathartic to watch Pepa go to the lengths that we only wish we had to guts to go to. In this sense, Almodóvar seems to have tapped into this desire that I, at least, can relate to. As the auteur so insightfully says, "Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness." (via) In the case of WOTV, he certainly has done that,  using his understanding and interest of the World of Women to make a film that allows us to cheer on and sympathize with a character who, in any other film, would likely be portrayed as a "crazy ex-girlfriend" - an all-too-common and extremely condescending theme in most movies.

After all, life is both a comedy and a drama - especially when it comes to breaking up with douche bags who most likely don't deserve us anyway. (We can surely agree on that, right?) Almodóvar just chooses to represent it as it is - both, while using that signature bright color palette to accurately depict those burning emotions one gets as s/he suffers a break-up/rejection/any other romantic failure. And it's this representation of life, of desperation and lovesickness, that makes me slip this DVD into the player whenever something major-ly shitty happens in my so-called love life and makes wonder why I feel like the only 20-year-old American college student who has seen this movie and cherishes it like any Sixteen Candles or Pretty in Pink.


SO WHY AREN'T ANY OF YOU PATHETIC, LONELY PEOPLE WATCHING IT?!