Sex and Sexuality 2: Concussion (2013).

Warning: Spoilers

Concussion is a film about a bored lesbian housewife who becomes a sex worker. For me the last part almost made it something I didn’t want to watch, I’m not really here for films that go all Pretty Woman and pretend that being a ‘sex worker’ is totally awesome and has no problems that getting rid of stigma can’t fix. But luckily Concussion isn’t that. Now it doesn’t explicitly talk about the violence inherent in prostitution but it is hinted at here and there throughout. Concussion shows a very specific type of sex worker and oddly enough it’s the one that people are so quick to defend: a white, well off woman who purely does sex work because she chooses to. Whilst the film doesn’t exactly preach that this is the epitome of sex work it doesn’t really mention all the women whose experience of prostitution is nothing like hers. For information on the myths surrounding prostitution, decriminalisation and the Nordic Model go here, here and here.

It was refreshing to watch a film about lesbian women, found in the LGBT section of Netflix, that, whilst yes was about sex, was about them as people. No one died, no one seduced their student or went jealous and killed someone. It could have easily been about a straight woman doing the same thing except it wasn’t. It showed that no one really likes housework, no one is really fulfilled cleaning up the house and taking care of the kids – despite how much they love & care about those kids. At its core it’s about women needing a hobby, needing an outlet for the boredom that is the necessary and boring day to day stuff. Nothing would get done if we were all walking around in un-ironed un-washed clothes, hungry and in a house covered in filth after all but that doesn’t mean its inspiring and fascinating – for anyone who wants to read more about this you should buy this book.

So Abby decides to go back to work as an interior decorator, who renovates homes and apartments to sell them. As she works with her contractor they talk and one thing apparently leads to another and she’s paying for sex in the apartment they are renovating. Afterwards she’s complimented on her skills and so she decides to become one herself. As she never really explains it to her wife it’s not really clear what she does with the money she gets but it’s clear the money isn’t needed; her wife works as a lawyer and despite their house and two kids they seemed to be fine financially when she was unemployed, her going to work was to get out of the house more than anything. She works out of this white, clean apartment, she completely chooses her own clients and the closest she gets to having a pimp is her contractor getting her clients who is later replaced by his girlfriend – named The Girl – who is a fresh faced young woman getting her degree who needs the money for student loans.

The only real showing of a woman in this industry who perhaps is struggling and does need the money is when Abby visits a prostitute who appears to be addicted to drugs. The second she walks in a less fancy motel room she sees the woman taking drugs, she offers them to Abby who declines. Then the woman bends her over the bed and the scene changes. It’s not really talked about but it is the catalyst for her choosing a more expensive sex worker next, and for her to give herself more options in future. It’s made clear that Abby doesn’t want to be like this woman, nor does she want to sleep with this woman or women like her and because of her money and status she happily does neither.

The choice and freedom that Abby has is a luxury and it is plentiful. She doesn’t choose her clients but she does choose that they only be women – not an option for most lesbian sex workers, especially considering the money is with men who are the vast (so vast) majority of people who buy sex. She chooses where to conduct her business, again not something seen in sex work – especially considering the dangers of inviting a stranger back to a place where you know you’re alone; contrast this to brothels in decriminalised places like Germany where women have options like mega brothels, or colour coded places that look like stables. Then there’s one client who is particularly violent, she throws her around and strangles her but she just never invites them back; she says no and that’s that, she says she ‘has to protect herself’ but again due to not needing the money it is a luxury she can literally afford.

Abby also does something unusual that is specific to her own brand of sex work, something that prostitutes who need money quickly and efficiently can’t do, she meets her clients for coffee first. She sits in a nice looking coffee shop and she asks them questions about herself, she wants to know them as people before she sleeps with them; some clients don’t seem happy about that, they just want to have sex and be done with it. But others, such as one woman who is in her twenties who has never had sex or kissed anyone, come to enjoy it and it helps them break the ice. This is a key thing Concussion does as well, it really wants to reinforce that this film is about women as people not women as sex objects, something that it so easily could have fallen into; I would attribute that to the female writer and director, Stacie Passon, as it shows how easily the female gaze can change film.

Ultimately Concussion is about desire, about the exploration of female sexuality, how family can change you as a person and how a desire to be a person, to be a woman doesn’t have to conflict and rip it apart. It shows it has feminist roots in a character who recommends The Second Sex – ‘it was crazy’ – to a woman who feels uncomfortable in her own body, and with Louise Bourgeois’ art hanging on the walls in the room where she sees clients. It shows women being shy, women being erotic, and women being human; it made me want to keep watching and existing in that world where women get to be all the things other films deny them. It’s not, I don’t think, asking for much to acknowledge that in a patriarchy the female gaze can mean a lot – it can mean a break in the drudgery of films that don’t like or respect women. When it comes to sex and sexuality, to films about lesbians having a lot of sex, I’d say the female gaze is pretty damn vital.

P.S.

After the film I briefly watched an interview with the actress who plays Abby, and the woman who plays a friend Abby knows, cough, called Sam. It starts with the male interviewer saying to the women 'it's not about the sex, it's about the story'; he repeats this because he maybe thinks that it's important to them that this man thinks that he didn't think about them having sex whilst watching a film where at least half of it is women having sex. I just wanted to mention it as it was a weird thing to clarify but also that maybe it was because he didn't feel like it was about sex because the sex wasn't for him, it wasn't aimed at him and it didn't include him. It was all about women. But I have to say as a bisexual woman watching the film it would be pretty hard to pretend that it wasn't at least a little (okay a lot) about the sex.

Sex & Sexuality 1: Felt.

In this history of cinema there are films about men in all their glory, all their flaws and everything in between. But when it comes to films about women that’s not quite true. Women are expected to look stunning, to be inhuman and to be what men want them to be. So I’m doing a project where I try and find films about women’s sex and sexuality that treat women as human beings who can be complex and erotic and all the rest. First in the list is Felt which looks at sex.

Warning: Spoilers (for all of the film).

Felt is a slightly autobiographical film about a woman called Amy who was sexually assaulted, it starts after the fact and shows her dealing with day to day life. We see her as she goes on dates, hangs out with her friends and it’s painful to watch people not understand her or how to deal with her. It would be reductive to call Amy weird, to say she’s just odd or messed up; she’s stuck in a process of trying to find her own way to heal, to figure out who should be in life, and how to interact with people again after something has shattered everything she thought she knew about people and herself.

Amy is an artist and she explores the female and male body using her art. She creates costumes that mimic the male body and it’s fascinating. Watching Amy walk around the woods wearing a skin tight suit with a fake penis on it is something to behold. It’s worth putting it in perspective too, remembering the many films that show men dressing in ‘women’s’ clothes, the documentaries on men wearing masks that are sick caricatures of female faces and remembering how little we see this reverse. But also worth remembering the societal context that makes what Amy is doing so different.

Amy isn’t, and this is my opinion here as she only explains it once, wearing a fake male body because she wants to be a man but because she wants to see what it’s like to have the thing that hurt her, a penis. She wants to see what power it supposedly has, how something so simple could shake her world so much, and what it’s like to explore nature in something she sees as destructive, and for her to be the opposite as she saves a dragonfly that is stuck in a spider’s web. She has many costumes in the film but it’s her exploration of the male body that’s so striking in the context of the rest of the film. Felt didn’t start with a rape, or a sexual assault – it didn’t feel the need to be like Irreversible, thinking that the only way you could understand rape is to brutally show it. Amy wants to show you what happens after, what a woman feels like when her own body is used against her.

When her own female anatomy is invaded she can hardly escape it, she can’t just not go back to the scene of the crime and so she gives herself a new body instead. Her friend doesn’t get what she’s doing, she gets annoyed and angry as Amy sits across from her wearing a lyrca mask to mimic a man’s face. She gets frustrated and sees Amy’s ‘acting out’ as something that is selfish, she wants her to be ‘normal’ so she doesn’t have to try & understand Amy or think about what she’s going through. People often hate the word victim because it reminds us that we live in a world full of perpetrators. It’s easier to want people to call themselves survivors, to pretend that they were spontaneously hurt and that they’re braver for it. No one wants to admit that men are hurting women.

So Amy explores instead, she reaches out with felt and lyrca and padding and tries to understand how these differences in sex can be so vicious. At one point Amy goes to a photo shoot, a naked photo shoot and we see a woman standing half naked on the bed; she is topless and wearing underwear and black lace tights – the man taking photos of her is fully clothed, with a big beard and hat. Then out comes Amy wearing another suit, a bra with fake nipples and underwear that has a plastic vulva on. It’s a sight to behold and the whole scene is really actually touching. The guy taking the photos tells her to stop, to leave, to end the joke as he doesn’t find it funny. However the woman who was already there loves it, she lets her walls down and she starts having fun.

Female friendship is something that has got feminism further than men want it to; this solidarity in the face of assault and oppression is something that men want to break and stop because it’s so powerful. This scene is a great expression of that, two women who have never met before in a situation that is not about them as people but purely about them as pretty objects with boobs. But there’s Amy showing the female anatomy in all its glory and the man taking the photos doesn’t want it. He wasn’t there to take photos of women, of the female body in its realness but in its fake-ness; he wanted the objectified version that lets men pretend that women aren’t human. Amy and her new friend, Roxanne, start messing around and farting and just generally being so great and real.

Afterwards they go out to a bar, they play pool and have fun. Then a guy comes along, so they be themselves and he gets uncomfortable. One of my favourite things about this film is that it features a fair few scenes of men looking uncomfortable and in a world where TV and film actively makes women feel uncomfortable it’s really great to watch. Then as the film progresses Amy meets the man from the bar again and they start dating. He tries to be the Nice Guy, the one man in the world who won’t hurt Amy, who sees her as she is and loves her for it. He takes her to see art of women – which is so great – and he throws her a vulva/vagina birthday which is amazing. She shows him her art, which is full of dildos and felt penises, she sits stabbing one with a felt needle and he asks her to stop as it’s painful for him to watch – she doesn’t.

Then Amy explains why so much of her work is about penises, as he asks, and she explains it’s because she lives in a rape culture. She tells him that the world wants her to be an object, it wants her body for its pieces and she hates it. It would be hard to find a woman who wouldn’t agree, even those who want to pretend it doesn’t exist must still have that feeling – that men see their greatest worth in their body. That there is always a suffocating wall around them of women’s breasts, of their arses and skin. That no matter where you turn you see men being human, being flawed, and then women being sexy and pretty no matter what situation they are in. So Amy turns to felt, she turns to plastic and she creates the things that patriarchy holds dear, and then she stabs it with needles.

As the film goes on we see her friend, Roxanne, driving and as she’s driving she sees Amy’s loving boyfriend Kenny. But he’s holding hands with another woman, so she takes a picture and she finds Amy and she shows her it. Amy asks her why she wants to hurt her, why she wants to break them up and Roxanne explains that she just wants her to be happy and that he won’t be that for her. But Kenny was meant to be different, and it’s hard at first for Amy to let go of that. Like any woman, on the internet or in real life, she’ll have been told, by some well-meaning man who lives in a world where women need correcting no matter how smart they are, that not all men are like that, not all men are abusive, and not all men objectify people. But they do, all men live in a patriarchy and all men in one way or another punch down. Whether it’s through seeing women as sexy objects, through watching porn, saying sexist jokes, calling women bitches, and the hundred and one options for screwing over women that they have at their disposal they will have done at least one.

So Amy takes him into the woods, she shows him her special place where she goes alone in her costumes to heal. She puts on her male costume and she gives him her female costume, he looks pained and uncomfortable as she makes him strip and get changed in a hollowed out tree in the woods. Just before this he tried to sit her down and explain how he hasn’t been quite truthful with her, she didn’t let him finish as she already knows what he’s going to say. So, walking through the woods in their costumes, she asks him to lie down on a tree and he looks so scared. She climbs on top of him, kissing him and then out of her bag she pulls out a pair of scissors – “they could cut through anything!” – and she stabs him repeatedly. Again, something that has been done to women in film since men realised they could film it and call it art. Then, as we all knew would happen watching the film, she takes those scissors and she cuts off his penis; she holds it against her body, an actual one to replace the plastic one, and she walks through the woods. The End.

It’s a film designed to make men feel uncomfortable, to make them feel embarrassed for the things they say, the way they act, and the abuses they commit. I hope men turn away when they watch it, that they wince as she brandishes the scissors and that they feel like I do regularly when I watch TV & film – that it’s not for them, it’s not there to be their friend, that it’s there to show them that their body is for consumption. Felt is a film that doesn’t shy away from saying the truth about the patriarchy we live in, and I love it. It’s a film that people call feminist that for once actually is feminist. It’s not about choice, it’s not about reclaiming sexy, it’s not even about showing how women are broken by men but that women are people who are human in a world that doesn’t want them to be.

The Z Word: 10 Badass Women in Zombie Films

After watching a zombie film that had an amazing female character in it that demoted her to being the sister of the protagonist who spent most of the film bound & gagged with her hands over her head it made me think, once again, about women's role in zombie films. It made me wonder how many times we'd seen the zombie film cliché of a killing your family after they've been turned but with women killing their husbands - Dawn of the Dead came to mind but that was about it. Then a lot of time was spent trying to think of zombie films I'd seen where a woman was definitely the protagonist and from what I could think there are only 7 – four of those are one franchise, 2 of those are the remake of said franchise, and one separate one. Zombie films, like most other horror films (and most films full stop), have a problem with women and often can’t find the balance between objectifying women and making them male badass characters with boobs. So I thought I’d write a list of some great female characters – and protagonists – in zombie films for those women like me who love zombie films and awesome female characters.

Zombieland: Wichita and Little Rock

Zombieland is a comedy horror that follows the weedy Jesse Eisenberg as he survives a zombie apocalypse by creating rules and following them. In his journey he meets the great Wichita and Little Rock played by Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin respectively. Both characters get the chance to be a bit complicated, a bit devious, and very human. It’s a staple of the genre and it’s pretty unlikely that if you’re reading this list you haven’t already seen this film.

Dawn of the Dead: Ana

Dawn of the Dead is a 2004 remake of Romero’s film, the third in his franchise. It’s a great film that looks at how different people fit together in times of crisis, and what would happen if you gave birth during a zombie apocalypse. Ana handles the whole thing in her pyjamas which in my opinion is how I want to experience an apocalypse, it might not be practical but I’d sure be comfortable. It’s not often remakes become brilliant films in their own right but this one certainly does.

Cockneys Vs Zombies: Katy, and others

Cockneys Vs Zombies is another great example of what happens when British people make a zombie film – see: Shaun of the Dead but disregard Doghouse. The protagonists, two brothers, start by trying to rob a bank to keep their Grandad’s care home open and they end up leaving the bank into, yep, a zombie apocalypse. It has its hilariously British moments and it’s a great film overall. Katy is that female character who has to keep stepping up to save her cousin’s lives because they’re useless and she’s awesome. I also just have to mention the amazing Peggy played by Honor Blackman who shows that age means nothing when there are zombies to fight.

Night of the Living Deb: Deb

I’ve mentioned this film before, here, as an alternative Valentine’s Day film but that doesn’t mean this film is first and foremost a romance film. It follows the totally unique Deb as she gets awkwardly forced out of the door by a one night stand and walks into a weirdly quiet town full of zombies. It has some sigh inducing sexist moments but Deb turns this film into something special. It’s definitely one for those who love their comedy mixed with horror and weird, wonderful women.

Fido: Helen Robinson

Fido is what would happen if after a zombie apocalypse in a world resembling the 1950s where they domesticated zombies and used them as servants. I’ve written about it in detail here because of the great Helen Robinson as played by Carrie Ann Moss. It is a weirdly lovely film, parts horror and comedy (you can tell I have a favourite genre), and it is quite a gem of the genre. Helen is a great example of what happens when you don’t disregard female characters and limit them by the limiting ideals of the time.

Pontypool: Sydney and Laurel-Ann

Pontypool is a seriously underrated film. It’s set in a radio station and follows a radio host as people around him get infected. It’s hard to talk about it without giving the plot away but if you love inventive zombie films I’d definitely give it a watch. Its slow burn nature is part of its beauty and all of the main characters involved play their parts brilliantly. It’s very loosely based off a book, mainly using its premise, which is also unique and has its moments that are pretty terrifying when they’re read in a creepy voice when you’re listening to the audiobook late at night like I was. Helen, Helen, Helen anyone?

Warm Bodies: Julie

Warm Bodies is basically Romeo and Juliet with zombies but also if zombies started to become more human, that old chestnut. It’s a really enjoyable film, with some pretty hilarious moments and though I haven’t read the book yet I all but guarantee it’s a great book too. Julie reacts kind of weirdly to what happens in the film when you remember that R is a zombie, who has murdered people, people she knows. But then you remember it is using Romeo and Juliet as its basis and it reinforces yet again how weird and inappropriate that play is. But either way Julie is a female character that manges to be a proper person the whole time and everything. The way films are these days I’m classing that as a win.

28 Days Later: Selena

Another great British zombie film, though this time pure horror. Selena is awesome and helps make this into the great film that it is. Though I, controversially, prefer 28 Weeks Later I still recommend this film for the lovers of fast zombies – even if they’re not technically zombies, hush. What I will also recommend you do after you’ve watched this film is play the game Left 4 Dead and play In the House, In a Heartbeat (“That was more than a heartbeat”) and it makes the finales of the maps something truly intense.

Rec 3: Genesis: Clara

This film sometimes gets a bad rap because it’s so different from the other Rec films but I think it’s a perfect example of how to expand an established universe. It’s a really enjoyable film, part horror and part romance. It follows Clara and Koldo at their wedding as their reception gets interrupted by zombies; the found footage style stops as we watch both Clara and Koldo get separated and try to find each other again. The moment where Clara has a chainsaw and she rips her wedding dress because it’s getting in the way is more than badass enough to earn her a spot on this list.

Rec: 1/2/4: Apocalipsis: Ángela

Rec is the Spanish found footage zombie film to rule all Spanish found footage zombie films. Some may know it as the film that inspired Quarantine, and the terrible Quarantine 2. Ángela is a news reporter who was filming a segment about firefighters when the building she is in gets quarantined due to, you guessed it, zombies. It’s an iconic film of the genre for a reason and as the films go on Ángela continues to be a tour de force. She is a perfect example of how amazing it can be when you let women be the protagonists of not just zombie films but any film. More of the same please.

Honourable Mentions

Kelly in Dead Set – a series by Charlie Brooker on Channel 4 that asks and answers what would happen to the Big Brother contestants if there was a sudden zombie apocalypse.

Many, many female characters (particularly Michonne and Carol) in The Walking Dead – both in the comic and in the show, they are badass and human at the same time.

Liv Moore in iZombie – loosely based on a comic this show looks at what would happen if eating someone’s brain (when you’re a zombie of course) helped you solve their murder.

Mia in Evil Dead (the 2013 remake) – the franchise has a very erm mixed relationship with female characters but the finale of this film shows why Mia is getting an honourable mention.

Amy in In the Flesh – a BBC three show about what might happen if, after the initial apocalypse we found a way to stop zombies being rabid and helped them assimilate back into the normal world. It’s an underrated show that sadly got cancelled on a cliff-hanger.

All the women, Julie in particular, in Les Revenants – A French TV show that looks at what would happen if people who had previously died came back from the dead. There’s also a French film that the show is based on, and a Canadian film of similar theme with a great female character too.

The Most Honourable Mention: Z Nation

Warren, Addy and Cassandra in Z Nation – my favourite zombie thing by far. Z Nation is a TV show that follows a group of people crossing American to get a man who might hold the cure to the zombie apocalypse to doctors who can do something about it. It’s just a shame that guy is a jerk. It is brilliant, hilarious, and it truly came into its own in the second season as its bigger budget allowed each episode to be explorations of how zombies would fit with aliens, Native Americans, and so much more. Not to mention that Warren and Addy are totally incredible.

Dishonourable Mentions

This is for those films that are pretty sexist but still managed to give us great female characters – even if time watching is spent wishing they were in a better film.

Brooke in Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead – a character that could have held an entire film herself, but sadly wasn’t given that chance. It's an Australian Mad Max style zombie film that has it's moments but ultimately didn't live up to it's potential.

Kim in Kill Zombie! – A Dutch comedy horror about a guy trying to save a female colleague, it has a fair amount of sexism but I really enjoyed Kim’s character as she kicked ass – one scene aside, ugh.

Aurore in La Horde – a French film about a group of police officers who are trying to get revenge for the murder of one of their own that very quickly turns into a fight to survive. It has one scene in particular that is disgustingly misogynistic, but Aurore stands strong with a great fight in a kitchen.

Cherry Darling in Planet Terror – a Tarantino zombie film that is terribly sexist, I really didn’t enjoy watching it at all but I will concede that Cherry is pretty badass, even if it is ultimately in a male wish fulfilment way; see: the line about her only having one leg making it easier to ‘get access’, gross.

'Little' Note about my love for zombie films and feminism:

A really annoying thing about films about the apocalypse is that they are often written by men – this is weirdly true for zombie films – and as such they tend not to know how to deal with women. They can quickly fall into boring exaggerations of patriarchy as though that’s the best they could come up with, see Doomsday (here). Zombie films can be have this problem too as they give us female characters that are either there to be saved, to be objectified/killed, and to fall into the Badass Female Character trope; the latter often being your standard action hero male character, but one they see as being great because they’re kicking ass whilst being a woman, as though that makes it fundamentally harder.

In all other non-apocalyptic films I talk about how male violence is a problem and that often it’s gratuitous and is a lot of the time there so men can watch women get hurt. With zombie films, and TV, this can also be the case such as in The Walking Dead where their biggest problem is not surviving in a decimated world, or protecting themselves from zombies but is in fact fighting violent men time and time again; this was evident in Fear the Walking Dead when even in the throes (ish) of the start of the apocalypse we’re still treated to men torturing others and it bored me half to death. So this is where zombie films get to be different, they need to be violent in order to live because zombies are strongest in numbers; if you don’t kill one zombie then chances are it will come back to literally bite you or it will get its friends and turn into a horde that will kill everyone.

But my main reason for loving zombie films, books and TV shows is nothing to do with the violence and the gore but for all the other things. It’s for the little moments of terror, that voice on the other end of the phone going “hang on? Steve? Are you alright?” and knowing exactly what is happening. It’s because I love the sheer creativity that can come out of the genre as people take all sorts of situations and add zombies. It can be a great genre for women too as it gives them a chance, despite what crappy male writers think, to shake off the daily sexism they experience and just focus on getting through the day in a world where it’s all humans versus zombies. Sexism, if you write zombies right, becomes a distraction. But mostly, I just really love zombies.

If you think there’s any women in zombie films - or TV - I’ve missed (mostly because I haven’t seen every zombie film ever, yet) then let me know in the comments or on Twitter at @FeministFilms! Or even if you just want any more recommendations of zombie related things, such as zombie books with great women in.

Suffragette: Votes for Women

Suffragette is a film that is so ridiculously overdue; in two years it will have been one hundred years since certain (over the age of 30, married – 8.4 million) women were given the vote. It wasn't even until 1928 women (who were over the age of 21) were given the same voting rights as men. As is shown at the end of the film there were a few countries before the UK that gave women voting rights and many more that didn't until afterwards. The thing that's important to remember that the vote for women wasn't simply about votes but about gaining legal standing in a lot of areas – such as the legal recognition that mothers have rights over their children, as is mentioned in the film. It's hard to imagine now being so powerless, having no right to be in government, to have a say in the world that affects them, not even having the law recognise that you should be able to look after your child or own your house and everything else that women were denied then.

The film follows Maud Watts a woman who gets involved in the suffragette movement; we see as she tries not to get involved as she has seen the consequences it has for other women. As the film goes on we see the consequences that fighting for women's rights has on women's personal lives; Maud loses her job, she gets kicked out of her home, and when her husband has no idea how to raise a child – that's Maud's job after all – he simply gets his son adopted instead. Many men around the world like to pretend that women are inconsequential, that they run the world and control everything but they forget that without women everything would fall apart. Capitalism relies on women's unpaid labour after all – feeding men, raising children, keeping the house clean and fresh; men would struggle if they had to do all of that and 'run the world' all on their own. Icelandic women proved this by almost all of them protesting and after the country all but collapsed under the weight of women striking change began to happen and they are now the most 'gender equal' country in the world.

One thing that's striking about the film is actually how little has changed despite the hundred years having passed. For instance, there is talk about women becoming MPs and as much as we have moved on and more and more women are elected 72% of the UK government is still male. The majority of board members, CEOs and all the rest of the powerful positions in the UK are male. This is called Patriarchy, men controlling the government and men also pretending that it's no big deal. But that's exactly what Suffragette shows, it is a really big deal. So much so that women were prepared to go to hell and back to get it. There were many moments in the film where I almost cried because of just how important it is. When Emmeline Pankhurst stands and gives a speech to women on a balcony it's hard not to understand. When she says never surrender it's hard not to feel the importance of being a woman and fighting for the women alive today and those who will come after us. Even now women are still fighting to keep creating a better future.

The film, rightly, emphasises the physical struggle suffragists went through. They were beaten by police despite their lack of violence against others, and they were brutally force fed in the jails by a government who didn't want blood on their hands but was happy to deny them basic human rights. I'd like to say I learnt about all of this in school, that as a teenager I was taught about the horribleness of the Cat and Mouse Act of 1913 but I wasn't because I wasn't taught about it in school; I remember having one English lesson where we read a play about the suffragette's but my Academy school didn't feel it pertinent to teach us about women – not in history but also not much in other subjects. Women grow up around the world not learning their history, as we as unlearning sexism women have to learn that they do in fact have a history and that it's an amazing one full of strong, courageous women.

Women's words are often seen as violence and as such men often react with actual violence – this isn't absent from Suffragette; from Violet's abusive husband to the police brutality it is clear that women's actions and dissent are taken to be way too far. As is pointed out in the film, the Suffragette's weren't killing people, they weren't setting out to start a war as many men have for many causes throughout history, and one thing that can be said of the fight for women's liberation is that it is not one built on the bodies of murdered people – though it does remember the women who have died at the hands of men. After all women are not taught to be violent, to be aggressive, and instead they are taught to be quiet, submissive, and timid. Even now when we praise strong women there are still many women who are punished for it with violence and ridicule. Regardless of the rift between the suffragists and suffragette's we can thank both of them for gaining the women's right to vote; after all, a large part of the government giving in was, after World War I ended, a desire not to return to a time of civil disobedience by suffragettes. For example, countries that too had suffragists like France had to wait longer for the right to vote.

A character in the film calls the suffragette's actions unjustifiable; he is referring to blowing up letterboxes and smashing window's with rocks but stands idly by while the police batter women right in front of him. Pankhurst's words are important as she points out that women want to be lawmakers but not lawbreakers, implying that the second one is the only way to get to be the first. In the film, as in real life, the suffragettes blew up MP David Lloyd George's house and it is said by many as going too far. Women who weren't even allowed to own property were taught to respect it more than their own rights; to see brick and mortar as more sacred than their place in creating the law. Anything is more important than women or their right to be seen as human beings; something that is still constantly evident in today's society. Maud points out war is the only language men seem to speak; though I think that violence is never the answer I do think that women can't politely ask their oppressors for change because they hold onto their power with such force that they would never happily and voluntarily give it up.

Suffragette's finale is the death of Emily Wilding Davidson, a tragic but pivotal moment in the fight for women's rights. It rightly focused on what that death would have meant to those who knew her, to women fighting the same fight, and as it changes to real footage from her funeral it is hard to fight back the tears. It struck me however that there are still those who would have been watching not knowing what was coming, that there are those who don't know her name, and that is a travesty. That these amazing women and their fight is still not recognised – statues that don't exist, women we are not taught about, and even those women of colour who were part of the movement that we still have to fight to recognise and remember. It must have been a great honour to play those women but we still have to so far to go. Even now feminists of all different types still have to fight for basic rights still to be recognised – in all countries, Western and otherwise. Men fight to denigrate women, to objectify them and insult them so we don't rise up; they want to keep us reliant on them, keep us uneducated and apart so we don't take what is ours.

For what Suffragette teaches us, as all of women's history does, is that things can change. Women can get more rights, they can get men to respect them more, and that we don't just have to accept things as they are. Men's oppression of women isn't the way things are supposed to be, it isn't natural and normal it's completely man made (emphasis on the men) and as such women can tear it all down. I look forward to watching it happen and I encourage women to keep the memories of the suffragettes alive. Most importantly we must keep their passion alive, their desire for change, and their power for taking what they are owed. I look forward in future to sitting my future children down – especially if I have a daughter – and showing her this film; of having them be proud that these women existed, that they can be and do just as much as they did, and that things are getting better and that them watching that film – even just it existing – is proof.

Carol: Kiss of Fire

Warning: Spoilers.

Carol is an adaptation of the book The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, starring the adorable Rooney Mara and stunning Cate Blanchett. It was adapted by Phyllis Nagy, who first wrote the script in 1996 and who won an award for adapting the book at the Alliance of Women Film Journalists awards amongst others, and it is directed by Todd Haynes. It is set in the early 1950s and it follows Mara's character Therese as she works in a department store, admiring their toy trains and it follows her as she instantly falls in love with the eponymous Carol, played by Blanchett. It is a stunning film, with a beautiful score, and brilliantly touching acting. It is a joy to watch but most importantly it's a, sadly rare, treat to watch a film about two women falling in love in a way that is respected, equal to other love stories, and that has a bloody happy ending.

The book was inspired by two things in Highsmith's life, a chance meeting she had similar to the one in the film with a woman when she worked in a department store and a relationship she had with an older woman who, just like Carol, had trouble with her divorce and child custody due to taped hotel room meetings and her sexuality as a lesbian. Highsmith wrote the outline for the book in a couple of hours, driven unbeknownst to her by a chicken pox fever. It's amazing to think that there is now an Oscar nominated film that exists because a beautiful woman inspired a young lesbian author into writing a great book, albeit one that her time was not ready for; it was published under a pseudonym, and it took her 38 years after it was published for her to admit it was her novel. I'm glad that we live in a time that is better for lesbians, though there is still a long way to go. I really hope many young lesbians went to see Carol, on first dates or date nights, and enjoyed getting to see a love like theirs on the big screen – one as respected as any other.

However, before I discuss Carol and Therese I want to discuss the men in the film as their presence is repeatedly one that many women experience: a nuisance. There's Therese's boyfriend, someone who thinks people of the same sex can't fall in love, who thinks the things he does for both of them are done because she demands them when she doesn't, and who acts like his feelings for her should outweigh whatever she feels about anything. Then there's the friend who kisses Therese, the man who investigates them – lies to them and helps shatter Carol's life – and it creates an atmopshere where anytime a man comes on screen you're just waiting for them to ruin things for our two female leads; so true to so many women's lives, so brilliant and infuriating. There's Carol's husband, the man who takes her daughter away from her over his anger at the fact she has feelings for people who aren't him, and that those people are women.

It's his possession of Carol that drives that plot in this film, her need to get away from him and the control he holds over their daughter, the control he tries to exercise over her. His jealousy comes out in anger and luckily for us as viewers it doesn't end in violence; though sadly this is not always true in real life, as lesbians are often killed by entitled men who think it is their right to have any woman and that any woman who not only doesn't want him but any man is a criminal who should be punished, who should be killed. It's understandable that a film set in the 50s would be about this conflict, the punishment lesbians faced due to their sexuality; we haven't come as far as perhaps we like to tell ourselves, with women who love women still being discriminated against simply for that very fact. But with time I hope that films, ones that exist in Hollywood, continue recognising the beauty of lesbian love, but that they show that lesbians lives aren't all about tragedy and male violence and anger but that they are as varied and complicated as the films we have been watching for decades.

Carol is a character that in lesser hands would become a two dimensional object, a beautiful enigmatic woman; she'd become a killer or as we saw in BBC's Sherlock a dominatrix, as happened to Irene Adler – The Woman because she was written in a time where no woman was expected to be capable of anything other than being a wife or a mother. But as she was written by someone with a deep love for women, driven by an infatuation with a passing stranger, and adapted by someone who loved this book so much she wrote the screenplay in 1996 she is a fully realised character who is flawed and human, something that is a lot to ask for in a world that thinks this is a lot to ask for. Carol is a great example too of the effort it takes to look effortless; the stress and emotional strain that it takes to appear to others as though you step out of bed stunning, glide through the streets without a care, and take lovers to bed in a swirl of magic and seduction. Instead she is wrapped in the love she has for her daughter, its cost casts a shadow over her new relationships, and almost ends up driving away a woman who makes her feel like she can truly be herself – something that is often the price of women who love men.

As that's what Therese let's Carol be, utterly herself: she lets her cry, lets her love her, lets her have her space when her world is crashing around her. She tells herself it's because she has no substance, because she lets people walk all over her and she doesn't stand up for herself; she might feel like that's true with her boyfriend but for her and Carol I don't see it that way at all. I think she becomes someone that Carol truly needs, someone who can hold her when she needs it and encourage her to be a human, to be a lesbian, and, when she finally gets the courage to be herself. If this film were about Carol and her husband it would have been a film about a broken women, alone in her own marriage, torn between being true to herself and being a mother and it would have tried to force what other films have: that she should swallow her identity, put her husband's wants first and sacrificed everything for a chance to see her daughter. It almost ends that way, it almost ends with her losing it all but Therese's love for her gives this film a happy ending, or as happy as it could get for two lesbian women in the 1950s.

It's a film you could walk away from hoping that that happy ending lasted, that those women found a way to live happily in a house somewhere, raising her daughter whilst Carol finds her calling in life; whilst Therese becomes a renowned photographer, where her favourite photographs are of Carol and Rindy opening their presents at Christmas. But as is always the bittersweet way with feminism it's worth remembering how cruel history has been to lesbians; how they were only really allowed to be close in public because society has little problem with women being friends in an intimate, non-sexual setting more so than men. It's something that needs to be remembered in feminism as we read texts like The Feminine Mystique – an important text for feminism but one that is marred by a woman believing the society she lived in at that time and putting lesbians and women of colour last. I believe it's so important to acknowledge the struggles our lesbian sisters have, that they bring so much to the world, and that they have problems unique to them and that we can help by being allies to them.

Though I am glad to say that Carol is another brick on the road to a better life for lesbians, a world where film understands women, and those who love them. With more room made for women in films - on the screen and behind the scenes - then we can keeping making more and more great films like Carol, more Hollywood films that are open about women's sexuality, and films that treat women like the people they are. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to read The Price of Salt.

Spotlight: It Takes a Village

Warning: Spoilers.

Spotlight is a film that follows the Boston Globe as they uncover the systematic abuse and cover up of young children by Catholic priests. It is a brilliant film that understands its topic well and the impact of the abuse and its cover up, rather than simply sensationalising it. It has a good cast and is well acted by all. The reason I’m writing about it for my feminist blog is because it understands abuse very well and what it does to people; but also it displays the systematic nature of abuse brilliantly which is something films can struggle with. Often when we talk about abuse people have a certain idea of it in their head, they think that it happens and you go to the police and they believe you, investigate, and if they can arrest the person and then that’s it. But unfortunately if anything that is the exception to the rule. As is shown in Spotlight it is more like you’re abused, continuously, you try to get help but those who should listen don’t, your friends tell you to stop talking about it, the very people who should be there for you are the ones who turn their backs on you because they’re people and they believe rape myths, or want to keep their power, or are simply so arrogant and entitled that they think you deserved it and that they have the right to abuse and get away with it.

The film covers the topic from many angles as it wasn’t simply about the abuse from priests, or about the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team investigating it, but about them uncovering a large cover up, first in Boston and then stretching all through the system of the Catholic Church, of this same abuse. It looks at how it was done, how it affected the victims, and how individual men time and again tried hard to brush it under the rug. As it was men, by and large, that this film focused on; when we talk about systems its important remembering we live in a patriarchal world and this means that almost all, if not all, institutions are run by men. That’s not a value judgement or a myth or conspiracy but simple fact. Men run everything, they’re in the top positions of power almost everywhere and even where they’re not they still make up the majority of the rest of the powerful positions and even non-powerful positions. It’s worth remembering this because men on a patriarchal level feel entitled to most everything and this translates to their desire to control, abuse, and not even question it or the cover up.

In the film there was one priest in particular who Rachel McAdam’s character spoke to who simply, with no shame clarified that yes he’d molested young boys but that the focus of his actions should not be on what he did but that he isn’t gay. It was important to him, as a Catholic man, that his sexuality not be questioned as being homosexual was a much worse crime than the systematic abuse of children. But this also brings up a very important point that the film also slightly touched upon, that this abuse isn’t about sexuality or sexual desire but about control and power.

Though there was a part where one person who had studied these men somewhat blamed priest’s forced celibacy on their abuse it is, in my opinion, a misplaced blame. Celibacy was brought about for priests simply to stop the nepotism that was happening within the church. It is a very big lie that men have told themselves, and the rest of us, that men need sex; water, air, warmth, shelter and food are the things humans need but notice how sex isn’t one of them? Women account for 1% of rapes, a small percent of paedophiles, and a small, small amount of those who pay for sex and that is because all of those things are nothing to do with sex but to do with power and control. There are many women not having sex and they aren’t abusing because humans don’t need sex and men are not some special case they’re just kidding themselves.

It is clearer then that the abuse of young boys and girls is about a desire to manipulate, ruin lives, exercise control and power over vulnerable – often the most vulnerable – children as you follow the cover up. These men in the Catholic Church, the news, and other institutions such as law, spent a lot of time, effort and no doubt money to hide what these men did because they had the power to do so and they didn’t want to lose that power and face the consequences of their actions. This desire for power, the abuse that stems from having this power, and the evading of the consequences is a very common theme in films it’s just often not named, pointed out or used as the focus point of the film.

In Spotlight it has its Bad Guys who have clearly done wrong time and again but also it makes clear how the people you thought were Nice Guys were horrible all along. For instance, there is a character who is in the church who is friends with one of the reporters, Michael Keaton’s character, and we watch them do simple things like play golf, attend an event, have a beer and all the while this man knows the=at what his friend is investigating is real, widespread, and he too has been complicit in the cover up. This is another thing that often gets caught up in the myth that systematic abuse is some strange, unique scandal, these men are ordinary men not monsters, they have friends and wives and eat toast and brush their teeth during the times they’re not covering up abuse or committing it. It is important to remember these are ordinary men because it means they can be stopped, they can be caught by the police and brought to justice – but only if the other ordinary people help.

This is where it’s important to note that systematic abuse relies on many things but most importantly it relies on others believing that abuse isn’t really that bad, that the victims brought it upon themselves, and that the problem is someone else’s to deal with. Often when a victim comes forward with an accusation of abuse large amount of the public can be very quick to accuse them of lying, to make them the villain, and to choose to live in a world where women and children are horrible liars rather than a world where a portion of men are horrible abusers. The reality is the second world but it won’t go away if we pretend we live in the first, it’s that simple. People responded to this scandal, as is shown in the film, with shock that all of this happened and that it got covered up time and again but when you see how victims are treated it’s not that shocking; it’s actually pretty standard, even when its children coming forward, and it just helps things like this happen again.

The film is set in 2001 and there have been jokes about it being a historical piece, with technology so out of date and something so established and acknowledged being new and shocking but in terms of how people respond to victims it may as well be set today. As a public, as the institutions of law, and of newspapers many still respond to victims with the automatic response that they are liars, out of money and fame – as though any of these things are what meet victims, instead of hatred, death threats, and ruined lives. We still have so far to go in believing survivors, listening to their stories and trying everything we can to get them help, justice and men being held accountable for their choices and actions. Until we do we are helping nourish a system that can abuse freely and hide it for decades. We need to be more like Spotlight, thinking critically and reaching out with empathy and listening to those who have important stories to tell.

Room: My Strong

Warning: Spoilers (For the film, and the book)

Room is a film based on the book of the same name, both written by Emma Donoghue, and directed by Lenny Abrahamson who was so passionate about directing the film that he wrote a letter to Donoghue herself to ask to make it. The start of the film is an almost perfect adaptation of the book that it was a total joy to watch; to see these things I'd read about come to life, with the perfectly cast Jacob Tremblay playing Jack and Brie Larson playing Ma, or Joy Newsome as we learn in the film. It's brilliantly acted, directed and though I was slightly distracted in the second act by the differences in plot and themes it was still brilliant to watch. So instead of just discussing the film I will talk about the things it missed out too, not as a value judgement of the film – any book adaptation with so much to cover is almost certainly going to lose a large portion of its plot – but as a need to discuss the book and how it relates to feminism.

I would obviously not read this if you haven't watched the film but especially if you want to read the book I'd come back afterwards, and then we can have a lovely little chat about how great it is. I read Room in two days so I could watch the film and it was extremely easy to do that because it reads so well. I admire Donoghue in how she adapted her work to the screen, the second half changes setting dramatically due to the fact that there is a lot of time spent in places, and with a lot of characters, and it simply wouldn't have worked. It changed a lot about the motivations for one of the key things in the film/book – seriously, spoilers: Ma's suicide attempt; for instance in the book it is the TV interview that causes her to question herself to the point of attempting to take her own life, the suggestion that she didn't do what was best for Jack whereas in the film it's a lot of things – from her fighting with her Mum, to a shortened interview, and to problems adjusting to her old life.

However, Room is an utterly brilliant adaptation as it captures the same themes that the book does: from Jack in all his glory, to Ma in all of hers, and to all the complexities of male violence and the damage it causes. I will say now however that my only problem with the film – aside from it removing characters of colour in one area for no apparent reason – is that it ever so slightly tries once to humanise Old Nick; it's only a brief moment, as Jack is pretending to be dead, but he stops in his garden and looks bad, looks sad for Joy and what's she's lost and to me that was unncessary. Film's understandably have a harder job than books do at getting certain themes and emotions across but this is one thing that should never, even slightly be in Room. Old Nick is not a redeemable character, and as much as it's is hard to hear there are men like him in the world who are just not redeemable either.

Old Nick is not based off nothing, he's based off quite a few men in the history of this world who have committed similar atrocities: abducting a woman, or fathering a woman and keeping her locked up in a room for a very, very long time – and often when that woman is in that room raping her repeatedly and, often, impregnating them as is our opening for Room. There are men who day in day out, second to second, happily keep a woman locked up, as though she is literally not human and use her as a plaything. It happens in a world that, yes, is patriachal and it happens because men are told each day, every day since birth that they are entitled to the half of the population that are weaker than them, and who are routinely dehumanised for times such as that. It's not rocket science, it's not complicated, there is no great humanity flaw that causes men to keep commiting violence – it's patriachy.

But what I would rather talk about when it comes to Room though is the brilliant Jack and Ma, those who are hurt the most by male violence but that, as Room shows, can still say fuck you and bloom all the same. Jack is five as we start the film, his fifth birthday even, and whilst he has spent his entire life in Room it is no problem for him; after all how can you miss what you never knew existed? As we see it is actually Jack coming into the world, his mind bursting at trying to understand an entire universe that he never knew was real that is Room's focus. Again, there are sadly humans in this world who have lived lives like Jack, who have been hidden from humanity and have had to learn to adjust – though not all were as lucky to have Ma. In the book Joy was adbucted when she was 19 though in the film, presumably to adjust for Brie Larson, it was when she was 17. Both of which are insanely admirable, as we get a teenager, thrown into an impossible situation and yet when her world is changed again she adapats and survives as women are wont to do. She uses what she learnt in school – bringing Track and Phys Ed into their world – and she teaches it to Jack.

It's this amazing mothering, this strength of mothers to do all they can in their power – no matter their lack of it – to raise their children that is a testemant to women. Ma teaches Jack how to talk, using the TV to help and increase his vocabulary, she teaches him maths, how to write and draw, and even teaches him how to sew and other things. It is this start in life that saves him, that helps him grow into an adorable narrator, if not one that still had the moods and tantrums that all children – and adults – have. As Ma grows up in that room she too learns new skills of survival, such as how to ask Old Nick for things that he will actually bring them, how to eat just enough to stay alive so Jack can eat more, and how to make do and mend in the most extreme of cases – Egg Snake anyone.

In a world where women are routinely and daily killed, abused, degraded, objectified in the most extreme and small sense it is important to recognise the strength that women have simply to survive; their ability to be human, and to keep what makes them human, in the face of male monsters. Women live in a world where acid is thrown on their faces and they still say fuck you you can't stop me. They're incredible, but they also shouldn't have to be as men shouldn't have created this world where they can abuse and get away with it, legally and socially in many senses. However, it's the times that women can't quite handle all of this that other women become so important, that feminism itself becomes a lifeline to help. In the book/film it's Jack that keeps her grounded, that keeps her going and in her darkest hour in the film it's what saves her, he's her strong.

Donoghue also understands the very real, physical and visceral aspect of being a mother, as is shown throughout the book. From the physical toil that her body takes from being abused by Old Nick just so Jack isn't touched, to the malnourishment she suffers to keep Jack as healthy as possible, and in a continuing theme in the book to the breastfeeding she does until not long after they've escaped. It's this last point that is only mentioned a few times in the film: her breastfeeding in Room, her mother being surprised that she still breastfeeds him – with Joy finding it ironic that out of all the things that she finds disturbing about what happened in Room it's that – and when she tells Jack that it's over. In the book Jack refers to it simply as 'some', it's never really mentioned as something that's different, and in fact the moment Jack is told that he can't have any again he simply kisses her breasts and says bye. Her body kept producing milk for years because Jack needed it, because there wasn't enough food for Jack to keep him going, and it's fitting with the rest of the book/film as Ma's literal being is what keeps Jack alive.

In the film rather than the book when they escape Jack and Ma go and live with her mother and her partner Leo; her father is briefly there though he doesn't stay as he selfishly puts his feelings at being weirded out by Jack's existence over being there for his daughter who has returned from, what he thought was, the grave. Whereas in the book Jack and Ma spend a couple of weeks in a rehab clinic – with Noreen and Dr Clay and all the rest- and then after the TV interview – done to get money for Jack's college fund – that causes Ma to attempt suicide Jack goes on his own to stay with Grandma and Leo. This changes the second act of the film dramatically, it causes us to see a different side of all characters; though it does mean Jack finally gets to hang out with a dog, make friends, and see his mother's room – unchanged since she was taken (though in the book it's a fitness suite as Joy's mother assumed she was dead).

In the book I enjoyed their time at the clinic is an as much as it was interesting to see Ma attempt to rediscover the world, who she was and how she fit into it – like when she tries to e-mail her old friends only to realise that they, and technology, moved on without her. But also the little things about what it does to a person to never go outside for the first five years of their life; Jack needs to wear special sunglasses, have vaccines, wear a mask. He suffers a cold for the first time, he is petrified of rain, and the wind freaks him out. It's as Dr Clay says in the book, he's like a baby but one who can add up and articulate his emotions. It's an extremely compelling read and as someone who has a degree in Childhood Studies it really reminds me why I love teaching, the sheer joy children can be and how amazing it is to show a big, often weird and wonderful world to them.

There are also lots of funny little things in the book that happen when Jack leaves Room and one of those is how often he's mistaken for a girl. It's understandable when one of our shortcuts for what sex a stranger is is long hair but it's one that Donoghue understands can be funny and arbitrary – though as I've mentioned sex is important as it is Ma's female sex that brought him into this world and thusly kept him alive. There is a moment in the book when Jack, whilst Ma is recovering away from him, that he goes to the shops with his Uncle Paul, his wife Deanna and their daughter Bronwyn – characters not in the film for time purposes I assume – and it's another moment that made me laugh, if not a little bitterly. Jack has his long hair as per and whilst they're shopping he sees a Dora backpack and it is the most amazing thing he has ever seen, he loves Dora the Explorer; he watched it a lot in Room, he loves that she knows his name, he hates naughty Swiper, and he sees any language that isn't English as being Spanish as a result. So he just has to have it, and there's a moment where Paul doesn't want him to have it because Dora is For Girls, he tries to wave a Spider-man bag at Jack but Jack is having none of it. It was amusing to think that gender is so arbitarily encoded into their adult brains that they thought a kid who'd grown up in one room would care that Dora is For Girls and that spider-man is For Boys. Jack is Jack, a boy because his body says so and that means nothing more than that.

Room is a brilliant film, so touching and entertaining despite it's horrific subject matter. Its a great display of how strong women and children are in the face of male violence, of how precious life can be, and of the bond between mother and child. If you haven't already I seriously suggest you read the book, it's a joy to see the world through Jack's unique eyes and it only betters the already amazing film. It's great to have a real, complicated woman on film – one who struggles, who survives, and who is thoroughly human. We don't get to see women be human on screen as much as we should, instead they're often see as disposable as Old Nick see's women, simply there for sex and not for talking or anything else. I look forward to see more from Larson and Tremblay and I hope that this film helps us get that little bit closer to getting rid of the Old Nick's of this world and creating it that little bit more in Jack's image.