On (Rest of the) Net.

Rachel Hills’ TEDx Talk on the sex myth, the topic of her upcoming book of the same name. [YouTube]

Defending The Onion‘s Chris-Brown-”I-Always-Thought-Rihanna-Was-the-Woman-I’d-Beat-to-Death” joke. [The Frisky]

Stop calling Amanda Bynes crazy. [TheVine]

What did Tony Abbott mean when he said “women of calibre” should be encouraged to have children and should feminists be speaking out in favour of the Coalition’s superior paid parental leave scheme? [Daily Life]

“Panels Full of Women”: on fetishising female news voices. [News Junkee]

Debunking the prevalence of sex-selective abortions in Australia. [Daily Life]

“See a Woman Reading? Leave Her Alone.” The perils of reading and subsequent street harassment. [Gender Focus]

The Great Gatsby doesn’t do the “newly liberated” flapper justice. [Collectors Weekly]

Manic pixie dream guy? [Nerve]

The sexism of Star‘s Most Annoying Celebrities list. [The Times Magazine]

Denmark’s latest televisual offering: women stripping naked in front of a panel of two men who critique their bodies. Obviously, this is a crazy and sexist idea for a TV show, but is it any crazier or more sexist than, say, Snog Marry Avoid? Both have an underlying message that women aren’t good enough, with one referring to the naked body whilst the other takes aim at how and with what a woman cloaks herself. Your thoughts? [Bust]

Books: Marilyn Monroe as Manic Pixie Dream Girl?

As with yesterday’s post, this comes from Gloria Steinem’s Outrageous Acts & Everyday Rebellions in an article entitled “Marilyn Monroe: The Woman Who Died Too Soon”:

“[Marilyn Monroe disliked] to be interpreted by them [her male admirers] in writing because she feared that sexual competition made women dislike her… In films, photographs, and books, even after her death as well as before, she has been mainly seen through men’s eyes.”

Just like our favourite Manic Pixie Dream Girls Holly Golightly, Ruby Sparks, Annie Hall, and Zooey Deschanel.

Related: Procrastination Proclamation.

Posts Tagged “Ruby Sparks”.

Manic Pixie Dream Girly Girls & Not-So-Girly Girls.

Image via Discount Poster Sale.

Movies: Ruby Sparks & The Catcher in the Rye*.

As I have written over the past week or so, there are many ways to interpret Ruby Sparks, whether as a commentary on the indie movie phenomenon of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl or the abusive nature of protagonist Calvin and title character Ruby’s relationship.

But I also picked up on the use of Catcher in the Rye as a sort of metaphor for Calvin’s tortured soul and his equally tortured relationship with Ruby. The intertwining of Calvin’s obsession with the way people perceive his dog, Scotty, and thereby perceive him, is made all the more symbolic in the scene where Calvin comes home late to discover Scotty’s trashed his room, peed in his bed and eaten a copy of J.D. Salinger’s seminal work.

It’s not really until the end of the movie that all the subtle references to the book come together as pieces of the puzzle. For those of you who have read Catcher in the Rye (I would assume everyone has, but those who I’ve spoken to about the movie in the hopes of getting their thoughts on the inclusion of the book as a theme have been unenlightened as to Holden Caulfield’s story), it could be interpreted that none of what Holden describes throughout the novel actually happened, as his mental capacity is questionable. Calvin is akin to a modern day Holden Caulfield, if only in terms of mental health, in that he sees a shrink (though in the creative world, who doesn’t?), has skewed views of what women should be and literally imagines his dream girl into existence.

This calls into question the turn of events depicted in the movie. Did Calvin imagine Ruby and their whole relationship? Did he black out around the time he met her, wrote about her and, reading back over his work, doesn’t remember how he met her, thereby making himself believe that she came to life from his writing? We know his family met and loved Ruby, but could that be a construction of his imagination? Holden concludes Catcher in the Rye in a mental facility; is that were Calvin tells his story from, too?

To further support the notion that something’s not right with Calvin’s account of his relationship with Ruby, his shrink, Dr. Rosenthal, asks him if he’s sure Ruby’s not real…

To employ the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope here, too, Ruby initially functions as a female version of Calvin to somehow narcissistically improve his existence. That he writes her to be depressed, then euphoric, then back again, and looks at her with pity when she expresses these extreme emotions could be seen as Calvin dealing with his own emotional ups and downs.

I don’t have the answers and there’s a good chance that I’m overthinking Ruby Sparks too much, but from my point of view there are endless realms of possibility the film could be taken in to.

What do you think?

Related: Ruby Sparks & the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Ruby Sparks & the Abusive Relationship.

*Blanket spoiler alert for both Ruby Sparks AND The Catcher in the Rye.

Image via The Thousands.

Movies: Ruby Sparks & the Abusive Relationship*.

I first went into Ruby Sparks thinking it was going to be just another quirky, indie (500) Days of Summer-esque vehicle to cement writer and star Zoe Kazan as the newest Manic Pixie Dream Girl of the same first name to watch.

For the first third of the movie, I wasn’t wrong. It deals with main character Calvin’s decade-long writers block and feelings of “inadequacy” at not being able to live up to his “genius” and “boy wonder” monikers upon the release of his first (and only) novel when he was in his late teens. Naturally, the role of titular character and token MPDG, Ruby, is to come into Calvin’s life in a whirlwind of “messy”-ness, complication and coloured tights and help him out of his creative rut. Ruby Sparks is the exception to the MPDG rule, though, as where (500) Days’ Summer and Sam of Garden State are real women (though “girls” would be a more accurate description) whom the male protagonists envision as their ideal mates, Ruby is literally Calvin’s dream lover: he wrote her on his pretentious typewriter.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Kazan responds to the idea of Ruby Sparks as a critique of the MPDG and how she didn’t initially have that goal when she wrote the screenplay. She also talks about the twist in the third act in which Calvin’s need to have Ruby conform to his dream girl stereotype turns into an abusive obsession with controlling her:

“I think if you’re going to make a movie in which a man can control a woman, if you don’t push it to the extreme, it’s going to be sexist.”

It’s funny she said that, as I had trouble reconciling the fact that a seemingly switched-on woman wrote Ruby Sparks with the first half of it which, as I mentioned above, had one of the only female characters succumb to the idea of what a certain kind of woman should be. (Then again, men don’t have a monopoly on sexism.) “You haven’t written a person; you’ve written a girl,” Calvin’s brother, Harry, tells him upon reading his first draft.

Ruby is a girl who at first seems like a fun-loving, spirited artist with no threatening aspirations of capitalising on her illustrative talents (she admits she’s “super good”) by parlaying them into a career. When Ruby does express a desire to get out of the house more, meet some people and maybe get a job, Calvin begs her to stay with him because “I don’t need anyone else”, and neither should she.

It emerges that Calvin’s last serious lover was a novelist, too, whom he bumps into at a book party at which Ruby frolics in her underwear in the pool with Calvin’s agent and subsequently gets slut-shamed by her boyfriend for it. Calvin’s ex tells him that “it’s like you had this image of me and anything I did to contradict it you just ignored… The only person you wanted to be in a relationship with was you.”

Ruby in her original form, before Calvin starts making “tweaks” the moment she develops some autonomy, is essentially a female version of her creator. Not only has Kazan taken the notion of the MPDG and the trope’s traditional role in shaping and changing her male counterparts’ life and turned it on its head, but she has indeed taken Ruby and Calvin’s relationship to the extreme in the ultimate spin on intimate partner abuse.

When Ruby’s had enough and suggests she stay at her apartment after the book party, Calvin reveals he has utter control over her because she’s not real. While on the surface the suspension of disbelief required by the audience makes this a true statement in the context of the film, the more insidious subtext is that Calvin has such a skewed view of what women should be that it seems he’s saying that not only does Ruby not exist in real life, but nor do real women in his. In fact, they’re more like domestic animals to be controlled, as with Calvin’s written manipulation of Ruby in this scene where he types her on all fours barking like a dog: the ultimate act of degradation.

Speaking of dogs, Calvin’s inferiority complex which so many abusive partners have is evident in his treatment of his dog, Scotty, named for fellow tortured soul and wife-beater, F. Scott Fitzgerald. He prefers the idea of a dog as opposed to actually being a pet owner, because he’d like fellow park-goers to “stop to pet him and I would meet them but Scotty gets scared when people try to pet him”. He gets defensive when Scotty goes to the toilet like a female canine as, by extension, it threatens Calvin’s masculinity. Of course Calvin appropriates Ruby’s shine to Scotty despite or perhaps because of his oddities into a metaphor for her feelings towards her future abuser.

If it wasn’t for the happily-ever-after cop-out of an ending, what initially seemed like the indie movie du jour has turned into a commentary on Manic Pixie Dream Girls and the danger of emotionally abusive relationships.

Related: Ruby Sparks & the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

Elsewhere: [HuffPo] Zoe Kazan, Ruby Sparks Writer & Star: “Quirky” Means Nothing.

*Blanket spoiler alert.

Image via Groucho Reviews.

Movies: Ruby Sparks & the Manic Pixie Dream Girl*.

Below is the original post I had in mind when first going to see indie movie Ruby Sparks, written by and staring who I perceived to be the token Manic Pixie Dream Girl of the moment, Zoe Kazan.

Two screenings later and Ruby Sparks is anything but the cliché Garden State/Elizabethtown/(500) Days of Summer flick I thought it was going to be. In fact, I was so inspired by the movie that there will be several articles about it appearing on this here blog over the next week or two, dealing with its take on abusive relationships, the psychology of its protagonist, Calvin, and the inspiration the film draws from Catcher in the Rye. But first, let’s examine Ruby Sparks as the anti-MPDG.

*

I know this girl who wears quirky owl-print dresses and is into obscure strains of literature. She’s not a friend per se, and her tendency to cry at the drop of a hat rubs me the wrong way, but I don’t not like her. More to the point, her existence puzzles me.

I have a few male acquaintances who worship the ground she walks on, and who RSVP to her Facebook invites to attend human rights marches and to go bushwalking when they’ve never spent a day in nature or in non-white, non-straight male shoes in their lives. To them, I think she embodies their idea of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a feminist film phenomenon I’m sure they’ve never heard of but that has been dominating the indie movie scene (read: anything Zooey Deschanel’s been in) for the past few years.

I don’t know this girl too well, but I don’t think she herself is a MPDG. Her hard-for-other-women-to-get-to-know façade and seemingly archetypal attributes make her the perfect canvas for twenty-something men struggling to find themselves to project their hopes and desires onto (despite the small fact that she has a boyfriend!), much like Calvin does to the titular character in the movie Ruby Sparks. The difference is, though, that Calvin literally created Ruby to be his perfect girlfriend via his pretentious typewriter.

Ruby is one of those annoying, “quirky” (though don’t let writer-star Zoe Kazan hear you say that; she told The Huffington Post that she hates that word. “[Quirky] means nothing,” Kazan said.), sunshiney girls who floats around in an artistic (she’s an illustrator, of course, and “super good” at it), hipster-esque existence. She may be a “motherfucking product of my imagination”, marvels Calvin, but she’s from Dayton, Ohio, because the location “sounds romantic”. She got kicked out of school for sleeping with her “art or Spanish teacher”. Ruby doesn’t own a computer or drive, and she’s “complicated” because she “forgets to open bills”. She’s “such a mess”, but not to worry: Calvin loves her mess. Ever the voice of reason, Calvin’s brother, Harry deposes that “quirky messy women whose problems only make them more endearing are not real.” The MPDG fetishisation of incapability is something I’ll never understand: isn’t the hallmark of being a together, grown-up person and, indeed, partner, to be able to take care of yourself and, at the very least, pay your bills? Maybe I should ask my abovementioned man boy friends to enlighten me on the allure…

What Ruby isn’t in her original form is a whole person. She’s just an extension of Calvin’s indie man-child persona: the ultimate MPDG who breaks with tradition to make the observation that “we’re the same person”. Again, Harry enlightens Calvin with his words of wisdom: “You haven’t written a person; you’ve written a girl.”

As Calvin stops writing Ruby she evolves into an individual, with desires and feelings that don’t always conform to Calvin’s “platonic ideal of Your Girlfriend”. A film that from the Kaiser Chiefs-infused trailer could be presumed to be about the MPDG du jour evolves into somewhat of a critique of the restrictions of the Pygmalion myth, even though that might not be what Kazan set out to do. On the trope:

“I just think the [MPDG] term really means nothing; it’s just a way of reducing people’s individuality down to a type, and I think that’s always a bad thing. And I think that’s part of what the movie is about, how dangerous it is to reduce a person down to an idea of a person.”

In a signature Ruby Sparks meta moment of self-awareness, Calvin expresses to his therapist that girls only want to date the author of his one-hit-wonder novel they read in high school, not him. “They’re not interested in me. They’re interested in some idea of me.” Hmm, sounds familiar doesn’t it, Calvin?

Perhaps my mates who trail along after their dream girl like a puppy dog as she attends pottery class and dates with her boyfriend could take a page out of Kazan’s book as opposed to Calvin’s…

Elsewhere: [HuffPo] Zoe Kazan, Ruby Sparks Writer & Star: “Quirky” Means Nothing.

[Vulture] Zoe Kazan Does Not Write Manic Pixie Dream Girls.

*Blanket spoiler alert.

Image via Enthunder.

TV: Dermot Mulroney is New Girl’s Knight in Shining Armour.

One could argue that a rich guy helping out a girl whose car has broken down is the act of a good Samaritan. But when the friend of said girl whose car has broken down suggests she should be open to the fact that his display of kindness could have been a ploy to pick her up and she should want to date him because he can take care of her instead of her always having to take care of the guys she dates, you might argue that he could be seen as a knight in shining armor coming to rescue her from her broken-down-car-ridden existence.

I’m all for a bit of Dermot Mulroney, and I would totally hit that if I was in Jess’ position, but I’m having problems with his introduction into the series.

Mulroney’s character, Russell, is a wealthy philanthropist and the father of one of Jess’ students. He’s also the polar opposite of Jess’ other potential love interest, Nick, who is becoming the male version of Jess more with each episode.

Now, I also love me a man with a job and some career direction, but to suggest that a man who possesses these things will “rescue” you from your troubles is patriarchal and gross. It seems everyone in Jess’ life tries to coax her away from marching to the beat of her own manic pixie dream girl drum, but does she really need rescuing?

Related: Sexual Harassment is Just a Myth. You Just Need to Give People a Chance to Show You How Good They Are.

Manic Pixie Dream Girly Girls & Not-So-Girly Girls.

New Girl Should Attend a SlutWalk Sometime…

Body Acceptance on New Girl.

Who’s That Girl? It’s the New Girl.

Image via Zimbio.

On the (Rest of the) Net.

Don’t take your anger and befuddlement on Matthew Newton out on his parents, says Mia Freedman. [MamaMia]

Where are all the older women and people of colour in movies? [Jezebel]

Funny or Die finally gave R&B crooner Brian McKnight’s “How Your Pussy Works” (“I bet you didn’t know that it could squirt!” is a sample line) a chance, even making a hilarious sock puppet video to go with!

Obama amps up his reelection campaign with his “Life of Julia” website, a project that highlights his pro-women stance and shows what a woman can expect over her lifetime with an Obama administration. [Barack Obama]

Still with American politics, how can we convince Hillary Clinton to run for President? [Jezebel]

And, still with Hillary Clinton, what her make-up-free and glasses-clad face tells us about beauty. [Jezebel]

Stella Young on the National Disability Insurance Scheme. [MamaMia]

What exactly constitutes “losing your virginity”? [Daily Life]

It’s not just Arab men who hate women. [The Age]

Where are all the manic pixie dream guys? [Jezebel]

TV: New Girl—Manic Pixie Dream Girly Girls & Not-So-Girly Girls.

I was pleasantly surprised to see New Girl seemingly dealing with the hullabaloo surrounding Zooey Deschanel’s manic pixie dream girl status and the feminist media uproar that occurred late last year.

Now, New Girl has touched on some pertinent issues in its past episodes, but I’m wondering if this was done intentionally. Writer Liz Meriwether is part of the feminist writing “fempire”, so who knows if this was something she incorporated into the show consciously, or if it’s just a meditation on “how girls can be”.

Nick’s new girlfriend Julia, played by Mean Girls alum Lizzy Caplan, can’t stand Jess and makes it very clear when she criticises her “blankie”, the (manic pixie dream girl) “thing” Jess has going on, and the cupcakes Jess bakes, saying she’s “not a dessert person”. Jess takes issue with this, finding it hard to believe that anyone (much less a woman!) “isn’t a dessert person” and doesn’t like her ribbon hats. I have to say I don’t find it that hard to believe…

When Jess brings up Julia’s dislike of her to Nick, he rationalises it by saying Julia’s never had many girl friends and she’s not really a “girly girl”. Jess’ girl friends, CeCe and June, whom we’ve never met up til now, get on the defensive, marveling at how she couldn’t like Jess (again, not that hard to believe…).

By episode’s end, Julia has come around (both literally and figuratively) and joins Jess et al in a yarn group, lamenting how she’s never been good with girls. CeCe says her and Jess used to hide in the bathroom throughout high school because “girls can be so mean to each other”. Um, wasn’t it CeCe who just five minutes before was saying Julia was a bitch for not liking Jess?

Just because someone doesn’t like someone else doesn’t make them a bitch. It makes the two non-compatible. Isn’t it bitchier of CeCe to say things behind Julia’s back and then welcome her into the fold when Julia changes her opinion of Jess? I’m all for loyalty, but…

So, did you watch New Girl? What did you think about Jess’ struggle to find acceptance from Julia as a metaphor for Deschanel to find acceptance in the feminist blogosphere? Or don’t you think that’s what the episode was trying to get across?

Related: Manic Pixie Dream Girl Bitch.

New Girl Should Attend a SlutWalk Sometime…

Body Acceptance on New Girl.

Who’s That Girl? It’s The New Girl.

Image via Wet Paint.

TV: Who’s That Girl? It’s the New Girl.

I’m not the biggest Zooey Deschanel fan. I’ve only really seen her in Failure to Launch (she was the saving grace in that unintentional horror movie) and some of Tin Man, which I wanted to like but couldn’t bring myself to get through.

But, after reading a few different takes on Deschanel’s television leading lady debut in New Girl (especially this New York magazine cover profile), I decided to give the show a shot.

I was expecting manic pixie dream girlishness galore, which there is a lot of, but I think the three guys, a girl and a pizza place apartment format makes it a bit more palatable for the mainstream sitcom crowd.

In a bid to better understand the Deschanel obsession, I borrowed (500) Days of Summer off a friend and watched it yesterday afternoon. I have to say, I quite enjoyed it; whether that was down to Deschanel’s acting or simply the storyline and filmmaking, I can’t say.

While I feel like Dechanel’s character, the titular Summer, was portrayed as the “saviour” to Joseph Gordon Levitt’s Tom, New Girl Jess is the one that needs to be saved from her social awkwardness, bad relationship and fashion faux pas. In real life I don’t see why people would need saving from these situations, but that’s the way the plot crumbles.

So, three episodes in, I’m still not really sure what I think about New Girl, or Deschanel herself. I’ll probably stick the season out (at only 12 half-hour episodes, it’s a small commitment to make) as I have a hard time not finishing things, no matter how tedious or non-enjoyable they are.

If Jess is able to break out of the mold of quirky girly girl who shows emotion and sings publicly at inopportune times, and Deschanel is able to prove her worth as a top notch TV actress who appeals to the mainstream instead of being seen as the manic pixie dream girl du jour, the New Girl might just be one I can come to know and love.

What do you think of New Girl so far?

Related: Manic Pixie Dream Girl Bitch.

Elsewhere: [New York Magazine] The Pinup of Williamsburg.

[HuffPo] Women in Hollywood: Is “Girliness” the Real Problem?

[Jezebel] New Girl is Likeable, Though Strangely Familiar.

[Musings of an Inappropriate Woman] Elizabethtown, Garden State & the Alternative Flat Fantasy Female.

Image via New Girl Things.

On the (Rest of the) Net.

Post of the week: Catherine Deveny on body love. [MamaMia]

On sexual harassment and “nightclub feminist success”. [Musings of an Inappropriate Woman]

Atheists are just as bad as rapists… and feminists. [Jezebel]

Lingerie football. What do you think? Personally, I’m not a huge fan of playing sports in underwear, but I don’t have much of a problem with it. [MamaMia]

“The Problem with My Week with Marilyn.” [Jezebel]

All long-term monogamous relationships are a transaction, says Ms. Elouise, so what’s the big problem with “paying your wife for sex”? [Feminaust]

Facebook, girl-hate and “I’m a better feminist than you” tête-à-têtes. [Howling Clementine]

XOJane on the message Breaking Dawn sends to virgins.

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope extends to indie films, too. [The Atlantic]

iPhone 4S’ Siri is pro-life, apparently. [Gizmodo]

When hemlines rise, so does bitchiness. [Jezebel]

Stella Young on the disability pension myth. [MamaMia]

Former Wordsmith Laner Sarah Ayoub-Christie tries to reconcile her modern marriage with her traditional Lebanese upbringing. [MamaMia]

“Teaching Good Sex” in school. What a novel idea! [New York Times]

Men in porn:

“The straight male performer must be attractive enough to serve as a prop, but not so attractive that he becomes the object of desire. As [porn publicist, Adella] Curry puts it, ‘No one wants to alienate the male audience’.” [Good]

Image via MamaMia.