Trans for the Masses

Movies: The Danish Girl

The Danish Girl is a movie that is difficult to judge for a few reasons. Directed by Tom Hooper, who previously directed The King's Speech and Les Miserables, The Danish Girl feels very refined and tasteful. I'm not so sure that this is a good thing.

Other reviews have suggested that The Danish Girl's main problem is that it's too "safe". It's the story of Lili Elbe, the first person to undergo gender-confirmation surgery. Born Einar Wegener, Elbe was a landscape painter. Her wife, Gerda, was also a painter (and painted some VERY NSFW art, btw). In the film, Gerda asks Einar to sit for her while wearing a pair of stockings and heeled shoes, since the model for the painting she's working on cancelled. As Einar sits and looks down at his own stockinged legs, something comes alive in him (note: I'll use "him" along with "Einar" and "her" along with "Lili" to avoid confusion).

Einar begins to sit as Gerda's model on a regular basis and to wear women's clothing and makeup in public. While Gerda thinks of this a game--maybe even with a sexual component--Einar understands that it's something much deeper and life-altering: Einar is dying and Lili is taking his place. While this is difficult for Gerda to understand and accept, she eventually supports Lili, who is now living fully as a woman, in her quest to have surgery so that her outsides match her insides.

I don't really know if I agree that The Danish Girl is "safe"...and I don't really know that I care if it is. In 1993 Tom Hanks--America's male sweetheart--played a gay man with AIDS in Philadelphia. It's a classic example of a difficult, and, to many, terrifying issue being made "safe" for mainstream audiences. But Philadelphia was one of many works of art, safe and unsafe, that made mainstream people care about AIDS. Yeah, it would be great if everyone was born caring about everyone else, but in reality most people have to actively learn how to be empathic to people who are different from them, and film and entertainment help a lot with that.

Also, look at this this way: when you teach a 6 year old about sex, you teach them the names of body parts and how a stranger shouldn't touch them in their "bathing suit areas". You start with the basics. The essentials. You don't read Fifty Shades of Grey to them. That's for the graduate-level lessons, right? For people who literally never heard the word "transgender" until Caitlyn Jenner appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair--they are the 6 year olds of trans rights! They need to start with the basics: trans people are human beings like everyone else who have feelings and should be treated with respect. Gotta have kindergarten before you get to college, right? The Danish Girl is, in many ways, kindergarten.

Ok, I digress. "Safe" or not, there's definitely something lacking in The Danish Girl--especially the second half, which gets very melodramatic. The first half is exciting and fun--and a little edgy. We're seeing Einar's awakening through both his and his wife's eyes. There are so many mixed feelings. When Gerda undresses Einar only to discover that he has her slip on underneath his clothes, it's a dangerous (will she be mad?) and sexy (oh, she's definitely not mad) moment, filled with possibility. When Einar appears at a party as Lili and is propositioned by Henrick, a friend of the Wegener's, Eddie Redmayne's (more on his performance below) face is a canvas of emotions: confusion, fear, disgust, curiosity, and desire all at once. The film hints at but never really fully explores the intersections between sexuality and gender. In the early stages of Einar's "coming out" (for lack of a better term), it's possible to read his interest in women's clothing as a sexual thing, or an adult form of make-believe. Einar is trying to figure out who exactly he is and what he wants right along with the audience.

It's a testament to Eddie Redmayne's acting skills that we are able to see and understand the full range  of emotions during Einar's transition into Lili. When Gerda suggests he dress as Lili and attend a party, he is breathless with excitement, but also freaked out. It's like a teenager losing their virginity--the absolute desire for it to happen coupled with nausea-inducing fear of the unknown. But once Einar starts living as Lili full time, she can't "go back" to being Einar for Gerda's sake, even as Gerda pleads for her to "Go get Einar. I need my husband." It's an incredibly emotional scene that cements Lili's true nature: she is a woman and can't just go back to being a man.

The filmmakers got flack for casting a cis-gender man as a trans character and I agree that it was a missed opportunity to have a trans actor play a trans role. But I really enjoyed Redmayne's performance and thought he did an excellent job, especially in portraying Lili's efforts to learn feminine posture and mannerisms. I think my favorite scene in the movie is when Einar visits a peep show to watch and model the mannerisms of the nude woman behind the curtain. I dunno. The scene was a little "Film School 101", but it just was a beautiful melding of Einar's erotic and emotional journey.

But, as I mentioned above, the film kind of goes limp in the second half. It becomes cringe-inducingly earnest and loses all of its honesty in the process. It becomes Lifetime movie material, with lots of sobbing, running away dramatically, bedside reunions, and the like. It tries very hard to get the audience to FEEL ALL THE FEELS that it ends up feeling only one thing: forced.

Ultimately, The Danish Girl is a tease. It's a good enough film, with excellent performances (I didn't even get around to mentioning Alicia Vikander's AWESOME, natural, earthy performance as Gerda Wegener), but not a great film. It does its part to educate audiences in trans history and why trans rights are important, but it kinda hedges its bets there too. It's one of those movies where you leave thinking, "That was good. But it could have been so much better."

Grade: C+

Eddie Redmayne is prettier than you...and prettier than your boyfriend. 

Lifestyles of the Rich and Communist

Movies: Trumbo

We like to think that we learn from past mistakes, but clearly we don't. Here we are on the verge of 2016 and the frontrunner of the Republican Party is calling for a ban on a particular group of people entering the country, as well as a database to keep track of those same people who are actual US citizens. We're scared shitless of Muslims, y'all, and so we look to the very bullies and blowhards who took our lunch money in elementary school for protection. LOL. We're not any different than we were 60 years ago, when we were scared shitless of communists and allowed bullies to trample First Amendment rights in order to "protect" us from...what? Ideas? Different decade, same bullshit.

Trumbo isn't a great movie. It's very on the nose. Its protagonist, Dalton Trumbo (played with equal parts grit and intellectual snobbery by Bryan Cranston), speaks more in soundbites than actual dialogue. And it asks us to look with pity upon rich, Hollywood people. It's hard to feel bad when actor Edward G. Robinson, whose walls are decked in paintings by Monet and Van Gogh, moans about being out of work for a year and then see a note at the end of the film detailing how average Americans who were suspected of communist activities also lost their jobs. School teachers lost their jobs, for pete's sake--and I bet most of them didn't have Monets to sell.

But although Trumbo isn't a masterpiece, it does do a very good job at pointing out the absurdity of attempting to criminalize and punish people for their political beliefs in a country that also prides itself on the democratic process. We're all about that freedom of speech--until someone says something we don't like. And this desire to censor and chastise others transcends party lines. Conservatives and liberals--they're all annoying as fuck when they get "outraged" over whatever stupid thing someone else says, or does, or jokes about. But outrage is one thing. Systematically hunting down, categorizing, and labeling people based on their beliefs--be they political beliefs, religious beliefs, whatever--and threatening violence against them, denying them work. Well, now that's just plain un-American. And the very people doing this hunting and punishing claim to be the most patriotic of them all.

Oh my, I feel just as much of an angry old coot as Dalton Trumbo was (at least as portrayed by Cranston). Trumbo was a screenwriter, hailed as a genius (he won Oscars for writing Roman Holiday and The Brave One), who ended up blacklisted for his allegiance to the Communist Party (which still exists, btw. Take a look). He and his fellow communist screenwriters tried to take on the House Un-American Activities Committee and were found to be in contempt of Congress. Trumbo served a year in prison. After he got out, he took to writing screenplays under pseudonyms to pay the bills...but also to, you know, stick it to the man. Eventually, with the support of Kirk Douglas, Trumbo was billed as the screenwriter of Spartacus under his own name. While some people boycotted the film, it was too good and too popular--JFK himself made a public show of support by seeing the film. The blacklist was effectively over.

Trumbo has a lot of excellent actors, but the show is 100% stolen by Helen Mirren, who plays gossip columnist Hedda Hopper--a flashy broad with a strong hatred of communists and a surprising amount of power to wield. She brings so much to this film. Although she's ostensibly one of the "bad guys", she's such a fabulous bitch, you almost want her to win (especially when she tells Louis B. Mayer that she's going to fuck him over). She also adds depth to the anti-communist viewpoint. She feels so strongly for the young American soldiers (including her son) who are fighting communists in Europe, that she allows herself to hate people who have similar political beliefs in her own country. Her character humanizes the antagonists, something many "message" films fail to do. Filmgoers aren't used to being encouraged to sympathize with the bad guys, as well as the good guys. But as Trumbo says in a speech at the end of the film, there were no heroes and villains during the time of the blacklist--only victims.

I think this message--that a culture of fear and suspicion hurts us all--is a good one to remember in current times. The United States has a peculiar history of being freakishly open to diversity and also freakishly paranoid of whatever group du jour we're supposed to be afraid of--witches, communists, black people, Muslims, gays. Jesus Christ people, calm the fuck down. Go see Trumbo (or better yet, rent it from Redbox, since it's just an OK movie) and remember that the beauty--and the agony--of being an American means that because you get to have your beliefs and your opinions, others do as well. And it could just as easily be you who Donald Trump wants to put in a database.

Grade: C

Caged Birds

Movies: Room

 Spoilers in this review

Woof. You guys, Room is a challenging--yet so rewarding--film.

To be clear, I'm not taking about auteur Tommy Wiseau's film The Room, which is also "challenging" and "rewarding" in its own ways, but rather the film based on Emma Donoghue's wonderful novel about a woman and her child who are held captive in a garden shed by a monsterous man.

Directed by Lenny Abrahamson and written by Emma Donoghue herself, Room is both an emotional gut punch and also a deeply moving ode to the relationship between a mother and her child, as well as the joys and aches of growing up.

Like the novel, Room is told primarily from Jack's five-year-old perspective. To him, the 10x10 ft room he inhabits with Ma (a stunning Brie Larson) is the entire world and contains everything he will ever need. It's a paradise filled with time for play, TV (which he doesn't understand is pictures of actual things in the world), and cuddling with Ma.

For Ma--whose real name is Joy--the room is hell on earth. Kidnapped by "Old Nick" (Sean Bridgers), a man whose real name she doesn't know, at age 17, Joy has been in the room for 7 years. Jack is obviously Old Nick's biological son, the product of the nearly daily rapes Joy endures, but instead of hating and resenting the child, Jack is Joy's entire reason for living.

Joy lets Jack believe that there is nothing outside the room and Old Nick brings them groceries and clothes via 'magic'. Jack's way of thinking goes like this: "Spiders are real. And that mosquito that once was sucking my blood. But squirrels and dogs are just TV." But once Jack turns five, Joy begins to tell him the truth--there's a whole world outside their little room and they are not in the room by choice. Jack rejects this thinking at first, but Joy keeps pushing him in the hopes that she can hatch an escape plan by tricking Old Nick into taking Jack to the hospital.

The first half of Room focuses on Jack and Joy's life in the room. The second half is their reorientation to society after their escape. I mentioned spoilers at the beginning of this review, but the fact that they do escape is simply the plot. Life outside the room is still relatively traumatic for both Joy and Jack. Joy is very depressed, mainly because she has been depressed her entire time in the room and can't magically snap out of it now that she's free. Larson understands what depression looks like: both in the room and out of it, Joy rarely cries. Instead, she maintains a blank expression and sleeps a lot. Back in the room, she would have entire days where she wouldn't get out of bed--Jack referred to those as "gone days"--but she would pull it together for the sake of her son. She also trained herself to be docile and agreeable to Old Nick when he showed up, not wanting to incite violence in him. Joy puts her mind and emotions on autopilot just to get through each day as a captive. I love that Larson doesn't overplay the intense emotions her character must be feeling--there are no crying jags or screams of despair. Just a lot of surviving.

As for Jack (played by the remarkable Jacob Tremblay), he adjusts with a little more ease since he is, as a psychologist puts it, "still plastic". He's young enough to basically have his entire world turned upside down and still adapt pretty easily. At first, he doesn't understand that there are new rules to go with his new world, and some of the old rules he followed in the room don't apply any more. He also insightfully points out that that there is less time in the outside world than in the room because "[time] has to be stretched out over all the new places". Pretty smart!

There are a lot of issues that novel covers more deeply than the film--for example, Joy's father has a difficult time accepting Jack as his grandson, given that Jack's father is the man who took his daughter away and brutalized her for years. William H. Macy plays the rather thankless role of Joy's dad, showing up to make this point, then exiting the film. Joan Allen plays Joy's mom, who bonds beautifully with Jack.

Another issue the book explored that the film only touched on is Joy's experience with speaking to the media about her captivity. A talk show host feigns sympathy, only to ask Joy if keeping Jack in the room with her instead of trying to convince Old Nick to drop him at a hospital was "best for Jack". The absurd cruelty of this question--i.e. you might have been the victim of captivity and daily rape, but gosh, why weren't you a good enough mother?--skewers the culture of shame and judgement mothers face no matter what decisions they make. Donoghue spends more time exploring this issue in the book, but we only get a taste of it in the movie.

Instead of exploring these issues, Room focuses on Jack and Joy's relationship. One thing I really liked is that once they're out of the room, Old Nick is basically gone from the movie. There's a mention of his arrest on TV, but we don't see him again or learn his name or any details about him. I think this was a conscious choice on the part of Donoghue--once Jack and Joy escape his clutches, he has no power over them (I mean, other than the lingering power of the trauma he caused). But by refusing to focus on him, Room solidly remains about Jack and Joy.

What keeps Room from being completely devastating is Jack's perspective. As I mentioned above, the room itself is not a cage to Jack, but literally the whole world. When he escapes into the actual world it overwhelms him at first. But soon he sees the excitement and adventure in exploring a universe that is larger than he ever could have imagined. There are times when Jack misses Room (as he refers to it, with no "the" in front)--the way a child with a new bed might miss his childhood crib. That sense of security is gone. While Room is a story of survival and motherly devotion for Joy, it's a story of growing up and out of the fantasies of childhood for Jack--and the acute sadness that accompaniesthis maturity.

I highly recommend this movie to anyone, although it may be harder for some people to watch than others. If you think the movie might not be for you, then instead try reading the book. It might be easier to absorb the story through words rather than images. And it's a story worth reading.

Grade: A

Reading Material: A Review of Books I Read in 2015

I rarely review the books I read on this blog, so I figured I'd take this opportunity to look back at some of the books I read this past year. This is not a comprehensive list. You'd be surprised, but a lot of what I read is trash I don't want my mom to know about. These are the more intelligent, dignified books I read this year:

Wild
By Cheryl Strayed

At the very end of 2014, I broke up with a guy who wasn't right for me. Although it wasn't a long relationship, it threw me for a loop. Was I throwing away something awesome because I was being "too picky", or was I simply following my gut?

Part of what spurred me to end it was seeing the film Wild, based on the memoir by Cheryl Strayed. Wild is about a woman's relationship with herself. When her mom dies, Cheryl loses control of herself. She drinks too much, sleeps with strangers (despite being married), and eventually succumbs to drug addiction. After getting a divorce, she has a revelation that she needs to do something so physically demanding that it will reset her life. She decides to hike the arduous Pacific Crest Trail from Southern California to Oregon--alone. She tells her friend, "I'm going to walk myself back to the woman my mother thought I was." And she does.

I have to admit that while I thoroughly enjoyed Wild the memoir, I loved the movie more. Maybe there was something about the visuals or the soundtrack (the use of Simon and Garfunkel's "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)" in that film makes me want to fucking weep, it's so beautiful), that helped me connect with the story in a way the book did not. However, I still highly recommend the book--as well as Tiny Beautiful Things, Strayed's collection of essays from her "Dear Sugar" advice column.

Wild--the book and the film--helped me begin 2015 with a commitment to choose what and who I want, even when that means being unsure or ambivalent. The closing passage in both the film and the book states,

It was my life--like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be. 

Grade: A-

***

Bad Feminist
By Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay is a writer who has a magical ability to make people feel welcome and comfortable with her writing. Bad Feminist is--duh--a collection of essays about feminism, which cover everything from pop culture to racism to why women should be friends with other women. While I'm a feminist who eats this kind of thing up, many folks feel alienated from feminism--as if they're going to be scolded by a cluster of scary, mean women.

While Gay never condescends to those new to feminism, her writing is like a welcome wagon of feminist thought: she's straightforward, easy to understand, and never judgy. While some of her essays will inevitably become outdated (even I, a longtime fan of Lena Dunham, tire of the debate about whether it's "ok" for a feminist to like Girls), others, such as the one about the problem with "likeable" female characters, are more likely to stay relevant.

Overall, Bad Feminist is great if you call yourself a feminist, or if you shy away from that label (as Gay points out, she is hardly the "perfect" feminist anyway). It's also a good book for the precocious niece or young girl in your life whom you want to nudge in the, ahem, right direction.

Grade: A
***

Dietland
By Sarai Walker

Now, here's a "scary" feminist book. The novel Dietland has two plot lines that run parallel. The first concerns Plum Kettle, a thirty-something woman who weighs 300 pounds. Sick of being stared at and taunted, she's a few months away from gastric bypass surgery, after which she is convinced her "real" life will begin. Because life as an obese woman is nothing less than a nightmare.

Plum meets and becomes involved with a group of feminist writers who challenge her about her beliefs about looks and weight. Eventually, Plum comes to embrace her fatness--but not for reasons you might think. This is *not* a feel-good book. Instead of accepting herself as she is for positive, "you go girl!" reasons, Plum realizes that her fat is a way to reveal the ugliness of other people. If she were skinny, a guy at a bar might treat her nicely--flirt, pay for drinks, be a decent human, But since she is fat, that same guy will laugh at her and mock her. Plum comes to see her fat body as a bullshit detector that separates the few decent people from the hordes of shitheads. And then she begins getting into physical altercations with said shitheads, who all assume fat girls won't throw a punch.

The other plot line is about a terrorist group that calls itself "Jennifer" (one of the most common female names--could be your daughter, coworker, or best friend) and does things like kidnap rapists and throw them out of airplanes at 20,000 feet. Or kidnap imams and force them at gunpoint to encourage the male followers of their religion to pour acid into their eyes instead of requiring women to cover their bodies and heads for "modesty's sake". As Plum becomes more radicalized in her everyday life, the news gleefully reports on the insane (or...completely justified?) acts of "Jennifer".

Dietland was a fucking wild ride. It upended my expectations. It scared me and depressed me. It also made me laugh at its insane audacity. This book kicks you right in the balls. It *wants* you to be uncomfortable, and it wants you to grin with glee at a world in which men who commit acts of violence against women get painful comeuppance.

Grade: A+

***

The Girl on the Train
By Paula Hawkins

The Girl on the Train wants so desperately to be Gone Girl...but it's no Gone Girl. While Gillian Flynn's novel of extreme marital discord hurt so good, with its acid wit and intelligence, The Girl on the Train feels more like acid reflux. Now, that's not to say the novel wasn't entertaining--it got me through a flight to from the east coast to Colorado--but, for all its success as a bestseller, it never felt like much more than a generic potboiler crime novel.

The main character, Rachel, is spiraling out of control. Unhappily divorced, she has become a blackout drunk who loses her job, comes home shitfaced every night, and is generally an object of pity and disdain among the few people in her life. The train she takes everyday passes by a home that Rachel becomes fixated on. In it live the "perfect couple": attractive, happy, and healthy. Rachel names this couple Jess and Jason and looks forward to spying on them for a few minutes everyday when the train stops near their house. But one day, Rachel observes that Jess is no longer there. The books becomes a mystery in the spirit of Hitchcock when she decides to do a little sleuthing on her own.

There are definitely many twists along the way. However, The Girl on the Train never felt surprising enough or intelligent enough to realy grab my attention. It's a good plane (or...train) read for sure, but probably not one that will haunt you afterward.

Grade: B-

***

Modern Romance
By Aziz Ansari

Oh Aziz, you're a national treasure. The first time I watched Aziz's stand-up (I think is was his "Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening" special) I was like, eh, this guy's just ok. But after watching more of his stuff, I really started to like him. In particular, I loved his "Live at Madison Square Garden" special--which is basically a preview of Modern Romance, a book he co-wrote with sociologist Eric Klinenberg.

Modern Romance can be summed up by the book's cover photo: Aziz staring down at his phone with giant pink hearts plastered on his eyeballs. Aziz sets out to explore what it means to look for love in 2015. He interviews people at an old folks' home, where he finds that many people who got married in the 1950's and 60's met their partner in their neighborhood, church, or school--in other words, proximity was key. And these oldsters rarely described their spouse as "the love of my life" or "my perfect match", instead saying things like "She seemed like a nice girl" and "he had a good job". These interviews set the stage for the book's thesis which in essence is: we are overflowing with dating and mating options--and sometimes that's a good thing, but sometimes it's a terrible thing.

Aziz also looks into other cultures--the trend of "herbivore men" in Japan and the high tolerance for marital infidelity in France,

The book is infused with Aziz's voice, such as when he adds "damn!" to emphasize a statistic or writes "peep this graph above". After I read this book, I let a friend borrow it and she in turn lent it to another, who lent it to another, who I think lent it to another. So that just goes to show how great Modern Romance is.

Grade: A+

***

The Secret History of Wonder Woman
By Jill Lepore

I really wanted to like this book, which is a deep historical dive into the man who created Wonder Woman, his personal life, and the historical events and atmosphere that made Wonder Woman such a sensation when she premiered in the early 1940's. Although I wouldn't say the resulting book is "bad", it's actually pretty boring. Ok, and I'm saying this as a feminist who has a nosy interest in people's salacious love and sex lives--and The Secret History of Wonder Woman is chock full of feminist history and William Moulton Marston, who genuinely believed women should be the dominant gender and also lived a polyamorous lifestyle. What's not to like!?

Yet, somehow, against all odds...Jill Lepore manages to make a story filled with suffragists, sexual bondage, and bigamy dry as a desert. There's no humor in this book. No personal touch. And any trace of anything sexy or truly shocking has been sandpapered and lysol-ed into a clean, smooth surface. Bah! I don't want the PG-13 version of the secret history of goddamn Wonder Woman when it's not a PG-13 story!

So, although this book does have a lot of interesting facts and backstory (too much backstory, I'd say) about the creation and popularity of Wonder Woman, Lepore's inability to suck the reader in results in just an average grade.

Grade: C

***

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief
By Lawrence Wright

Now, with this book I made the mistake of watching the documentary based on it first. Also titled Going Clear, the documentary provided all the information I needed about Scientology. It covers L. Ron Hubbard's life and his creation of what is basically the biggest (and wealthiest) cult of all time, as well as all the horrible things done to Sea Org (Scientology's version of clergy people), such as starvation, forced labor, and beatings. And, of course, all the juice on Tom Cruise.

The book covers all of the above and more. I ended up skipping giant chunks about L. Ron Hubbard's life and instead investing more time in the chapters about Tom Cruise and his relationship with current leader of the church David Miscavige (who is a textbook psychopath). These later chapters were absolutely fascinating and reveal how Cruise really is a true believer in Scientology. We also get to hear the detailed account of how director Paul Haggis left the church--spurred on by the church's intolerance for gay people (Haggis has two gay daughters).

A line of thought occurred to me while reading the book and watching the film: people love to mock Scientology because it's soooooo crazy. Yet, basically every established religion is nuts too. A virgin gives birth to a man who is also a God, and who is also the Son of God. Mormons believe that when you die, you get your own planet. If you die in battle on behalf of Allah, you are rewarded with 72 virgins in paradise. You get the picture. (And full disclaimer: I respect everyone's right to religious belief blah blah blah) I think Scientology is a special case since the church leaders demand an insane amount of money from their followers in addition to blind faith. At least most of the established religions, even if you count tithing, don't require their followers to give thousands to the church.

But the point is that the anthropologist in me goes back to what I was taught in college: make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Scientology is bat-shit crazy and their practices are not only unethical, but criminal. And yet, people do horrible and bizarre shit in the name of religion every day, from murdering innocent people to disowning their children to attending formal balls where they pledge abstinence until marriage. I guess it has something to do with how we're wired. We seek meaning, and the craziest beliefs and actions can make perfect sense if you need that meaning deeply enough. So I guess my advice is: believe what you want, but never stop questioning.

Grade: A-

***

Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own
By Kate Bolick

And finally, the year comes full circle. Where I started out reading the story of a woman who goes on an extreme adventure to rediscover herself, I end it by reading about a woman with a less-harrowing but equally eye-opening self-discovery. Spinster is by Kate Bolick, a writer for The Atlantic who wrote the excellent article "All the Single Ladies" a couple years ago, which is basically about quote unquote "the end of traditional marriage". While I don't think we're quite there yet, it's undeniable that this is one of, if not the best times in history to be a single woman (at least in Western societies). You can support yourself. You can have sex. You can even have a baby on your own (if you got the dollas). Which means...you don't have to settle. You can wait until you find "true love" or whatever. You don't need to grab on to the man you're with at X age and never let go. You don't need to grab on to any man.

After years of serious relationships that never end in marriage (usually by her choice) followed by years of living alone and focusing on her writing, Bolick realizes that she maybe actually doesn't want to be married. To anyone. Ever. Not that she doesn't want sex and companionship occasionally--who doesn't? But she never wants the closeness that comes with marriage, which always feels suffocating to her. In Spinster, Bolick weaves the life stories of her "awakeners"--female writers, who mostly lived around the turn of the twentieth century, who may or may not have been married, but spent long portions of their life alone--with her own life story. She examines her relationship with her mother, her relationships with men (all positive, I should add. Bolick is no "man-hater"), and her relationship with her jobs. The result is part-memoir, part-cultural history. It's a very intellectual book, yet accessible. If you're a single woman, in particular, and you have a sense that you're "meant" to be single or you still feel single even while in a relationship, I think you'll relate to a lot of the sentiments expressed in Spinster. I know I did. What's great about the book is that it's not a polemic. Bolick isn't claiming being single is better, she's claiming that it's equally valid.

Grade: A

***

So there you have it, folks! Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more movie reviews of what are likely to be some of the best films of the year (it's Oscar season!) and, sometime in January, a rundown of my fave films of 2015.

Abuse of Faith

Movies: Spotlight

A decade and a half ago, the sexual abuse of children by priests in the Boston archdiocese was all but an open secret. Accusations of priests abusing the children in their charge (many of them boys, but some girls as well) date back to the mid-twentieth century or even earlier. However, as disgusting and shocking as these crimes were, there wasn't a large-scale investigation into the culture of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church until fairly recently. The events depicted in Tom McCarthy's unflinching film Spotlight caused the dam to burst, not just in Boston but around the globe.

"Spotlight" is the name of a investigative journalism unit at the Boston Globe newspaper. In the summer of 2001, the team, composed of Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), Matt Carroll (Brian d'Arcy James), and led by Walter "Robby" Robinson (Michael Keaton), started a project to look into the accusations against a priest named John Geoghan who was accused of molesting vulnerable children in his church. They quickly discovered that the scandal was much more widespread than just one priest and, in fact, had been covered up by Cardinal Bernard Law.

At the urging of Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), the new editor of the Globe, the Spotlight team engaged in a months-long investigation of the Catholic Church in Boston, ultimately shining a light on abuse perpetrated by as many as 75 priests in the Boston area that was swept under the rug all the way up the Catholic hierarchy to the Archbishop.

Spotlight is an intellectual, methodical film. It focuses primarily on the day-to-day work of the journalists who scoured archives, knocked on doors, and hob-knobbed with Boston's elite to get all the pieces of the puzzle together before delivering the devastating story to Boston's doorstep on January 6th, 2002 (appropriately, the fest of the Epiphany). Along the way, they are told to shut the hell up by a number of people who would rather keep the rampant culture of abuse in the Catholic Church quiet. Church officials, politicians, heads of Catholic schools--all seem to have a vested interest in simply moving pedophile priests from parish to parish instead of removing them completely and actually confronting their crimes head on.

Although the film doesn't linger on the lurid details of the abuse, there is a dark undercurrent of the horrors that the victims endured. One man, the head of a victim's support group, points out that for a poor, Catholic kid, having a priest take an interest in you can be life-changing. It's as if God Himself has taken an interest in you. And how do you say no to "God"? This same character points out when a priest assaults a child, it goes beyond physical abuse--it's also spiritual abuse that can destroy a person's faith for life.

Another victim says explains that he knew he was gay as a kid. When his priest asked him for a blow job, it was the first time someone--and not just "someone", but a priest--told him it was ok to be gay. So he was simultaneously grateful to be seen and understood as a gay person, but confused and sickened by the abuse. 

Perhaps the most interesting moment in the film, which is not explored in depth, is when the team talks to Richard Sipe, an ex-priest who left the church (and married a nun!) and dedicated his career to studying sexuality in the church. Sipe points out that his studies indicate that sex abuse among the clergy is shockingly common (he estimates that 6% of priests have abused children), to the point that pedophilia among the clergy is an observable psychological phenomenon. One of his theories is that the celibacy mandate can cripple a person's normal sexual development and outlets, so that abusers are on the emotional level of the children they abuse. I'm definitely not an expert in this and have no idea how accurate these theories are, but it intrigued me to learn more. Here's a link to the book Sipe wrote, which is referenced in Spotlight.

With an all-star ensemble cast, Spotlight is both heart-breaking and heartening. It shows that average people can actually make a difference and stand up to injustice. I also liked the message that sometimes outsiders (like the Jewish, non-Boston native Marty Baron) have to be the ones to overturn the rocks in insular institutions. Certain religious denominations claim to be inclusive, but are often cold--and even hateful--to those outside of their system of belief. But sometimes those who "don't understand" are the ones who can most clearly see the problems within such institutions. Spotlight reminds us that no one--not even men of God--are above doing evil...nor can they get away with it in the end.

Grade: A