From January to April, things were moving along nicely. My goddaughter-niece turned one – despite the fact that I cannot remember life before she arrived – but then a few things rocked my little bubble and the people I hold the dearest. It has culminated in the twelve months of 2023 feeling like three years. It wasn’t all bad, there were some positives amid the… seizures… tears… pneumonia… the end of a friendship… cyst on the brain… a stenosis diagnosis… a healing trip to London to experience the shattering catharsis of A Little Life on stage… a Fringe & Bracket reunion… tears… fractured limbs… a much needed sunshine break… I started writing again… all those murdered babies and no ceasefire in sight… ‘Whoopi’ was vacated… relief… healing and self-care… stopped expecting a ‘me’ from anybody… I stopped writing again… boundaries… said enough… I am enough… oh, and Last Christmas finally made Christmas #1 39 years after initial release – RIP George x
Anyway. Phew. Shrugs, *blows raspberry at stress and worry*
I did manage to see some films this year albeit non-film festival ones courtesy of my Curzon and mubi memberships. Below are the twenty I admired the most, half of which excitedly were directed (and written) by women and depict the whole gamut of emotions experienced by a multitude of fully-rounded, complex humans. My favourite being the masterclass in misogyny, Justine Triet’s pitch perfect Anatomy of a Fall.
Favourites Films of 2023
Favourite Books of 2023
Thankfully, I also managed to read. Again, not as many as I’d have liked but personal distractions aside, 60 isn’t too bad. That’s 17,339 pages – actual pages too as I just don’t think I’m cut out for a Kindle. Absolute fave eleven are below left, on the right is a pile of honourable mentions: fiction and non, a volume of comics, women in translation, four blokes and a bit of poetry. If somebody was to make me choose just one, then today it would be Lagioia’s TheCity of the Living which I happened to review earlier in the year.
TV/streaming highlights of 2023
It was the year that bid farewell to The Marvellous Mrs Maisel (flashbacks, forwards and ageing make-up galore. Also, can’t spell it with just the one ‘l’, soz), Succession (AKA Wambsgans Win) and Happy Valley (bye-bye Tommy Lee Royce). There was a second series for Somebody Somewhere which is just the loveliest show in the world; gentle, tender, funny, and full of grace and warmth. Other TV highlights for me included:
Poker Face – Casino cocktail waitress Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) entangles herself with some shady people following the murder of her best friend. She goes on the run, solving crimes wherever she ends up. Made all the more interesting by her uncanny ability to spot a lie. Think Wonder Woman (sans lasso) meets Columbo via the quick-witted brain of Rian Johnson.
The Last of Us – Pedro! In the adaptation of a game I will never play! Yet more importantly, S1 E03: Long, Long Time – Survivalist Bill (Nick Offerman) makes an unlikely connection in Frank (Murray Bartlett). Perfection.
The Bear S2 E08, Forks. Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) finally comes into his own after Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) sends him to a posh restaurant to ultimately polish the cutlery.
Dark Winds – It’s 1971 and the discovery of three dead bodies in a motel coincide with an armoured bank heist. Navajo reservation cops Lt. Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) and Sgt. Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) investigate the brutal deaths of three of their own with the help of a new recruit, Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon). A revisionist western mini-series at its finest, re-appropriated from the perspective of indigenous Americans by indigenous Americans (producers Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin’s names add a little cash/cache). It’s brilliant and thankfully has been renewed for two more series. Whether we, in the UK get those remains to be seen but I sincerely hope so.
The Fall of the House Usher – I, admittedly, haven’t really been a fan of anything Mike Flanagan has done since The Haunting of Hill House (2018) but I think, he may have surpassed even that with this celebration of all things Edgar Allan. The whole cast bring their A-game and it is deliciously dark, twisted and utterly compelling from the first ten minutes. Poe-etic even (ugh). As an aside, I bloody love Bruce Greenwood – the perfect replacement for the other guy.
Based upon Kris Straub’s creepypasta short story, Candle Cove was the first anthology in Syfy’s Channel Zero series with the second No End House, Butcher’s Block (S3) and The Dream Door (S4) swiftly following before announcement of its cancellation. Its creator Nick Antosca and producers Don Mancini (Child’s Play) and Harley Peyton (Twin Peaks) brought a unique experience to the small screen, most of which are now available on DVD and Blu-ray.
Candle Cove opens during two months in 1988, five children: Jacob Booth, Sadie Williams, Carl Cutter, Gene Hazel and Eddie Painter go missing with four later found murdered. Only one – Eddie – was never returned nor remains discovered for burial. The Iron Hill Murders were never solved and now, 28 years later, Eddie’s identical twin brother Mike (Paul Schneider) a child psychologist is recovering from a breakdown and plagued by nightmares that eventually make him head home to mother Marla (Fiona Shaw) and the childhood home and friends he left behind. Once there, he realises that a TV show has started to air again called Candle Cove, an eerie puppet-led programme that only children seem to be able to see and which brainwashes them into participating in some deeply disturbing antics.
As more children go missing and start acting strangely, losing teeth along the way, Mike, – even finding himself a suspect at one point – must embrace his repressed memories, childhood traumas and nightmares head-on if he is ever going to discover the truth about Eddie. His creepy journey will see him recollect the bullying, the paralysing fear, and meet the mysterious Jawbone, its merry band of shipmates aboard the happy ship on the way to Candle Cove, and prevent history repeating itself.
While some shows tend to tell their stories from the child’s perspective, the world between adults and kids separated, here they interlink; childhood fear enforces adulthood and that trauma never leaves – all those things that grown-ups dismiss as an overactive imagination manifest and are all the more real and frightening. What makes Candle Cove so effective is its thoughtful and understated – even mundane – approach to horror. Yes, it uses tropes familiar in the world of Stephen King but there are also elements of The Twilight Zone, The X-Files, America Gothic and even Mystic River (2009), with additional (and repetitious) layers of intrigue. The fact that Winnipeg (doubling for Iron Hill) is so green, lush and naturally shot only enhances the supernatural.
There are nods to Treasure Island, The Muppets and an all-too terrifying version of the tooth fairy but not like you’ve ever seen. Childhood fears are its emotional backbone but it uses guilt, grief, dream logic and some surreal and whimsical imagery to really sell the deeply unsettling. The performances particularly those of Schneider, Shaw and two of the children, Abigail Pniowsky (Arrival) as Lily Painter and Luca Villacis, who portrays the Painter twins beautifully and skilfully relays two very separate personalities, elevates the subject matter. The thing about murderous children is that they are utterly terrifying; corrupted innocence disturbs and distresses on such a profound level. The lack of gratuitous violence is refreshing also, it’s not completely absent but tends to be distancing, quick and almost always off-screen.
Told over six episodes this anthology is an atmospheric and quietly unique experience, it builds the dread and truly unsettles staying with you long after the denouement. It’ll haunt your dreams especially the child made entirely of human teeth but never fear, head to bravery cave, all your secrets will be safe in Candle Cove…
After six seasons, sixty-two episodes, one thousand, eight hundred and sixty minutes (give or take), it’s over. Girls is no more. Hannah et al have moved on, to pastures new, not necessarily together but what joy, cynicism and dark, comedic delights they left behind. Also, it’s probably still in Sky box sets too if you just can’t say goodbye yet.
Following on from her success with semi-autobiographical Tiny Furniture (2010), Lena Dunham turned to television and created Girls. It never sat comfortably within a specific genre, part drama, part sitcom, like an anti-Sex and the City despite covering some occasional, similar ground. Realism wasn’t always its strongest suit but the writing always felt authentic even when certain situations seemed implausible. It dealt with the complications of women (those four with the alliterative names mostly) between the ages of 24-27 – that weird age where you never feel fully adult, have left girlhood behind but still need to navigate the choppy waters of self-discovery and finding your place in the world. These were young women who had all the self-confidence but little to no self-worth, they made each other’s problems about themselves and allowed their selfish anxiety to dictate their emotions. They attempted to be independent yet were reluctant to cut the apron strings entirely.
The series covered many topics including drug addiction, STIs, unwanted pregnancy, alcoholism, abortion, motherhood, infidelity, loneliness, death, and mental health. Whilst attempting to combat or even approach some of these issues, they all – Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham), Marnie Michaels (Allison Williams), Jessa Johansson (Jemima Kirke), and Shoshanna Shapiro (Zosia Mamet) – made mistakes. Sometimes horribly, a lot of the time irreparably but that just made us root for them all all the more. Or many of you bailed on them around season 2/3 and have yet to go back…
Much criticism stemmed from the characters’ likability. That’s women for you. We’re not all sunshine and light, not all of the time, there are multiple facets, complexities that not many shows manage to depict quite so vividly. The girls’ fallibility and often cringeworthy behaviour (sometimes age appropriate, mostly grossly immature) is what made me latch on. Men have been getting away with being unapologetically “men” onscreen since the dawn of time, apparently women pose a greater problem.
Let’s not pull punches; Hannah Horvath was an annoying character, the one based on Dunham, she who often spoke before thinking, she who, nine times out of ten needed that extra bit of attention. We’ve all had at least one friend like her, probably, we’re not even friends anymore. It happens. The others weren’t perfect, not by a long shot, hello Marnie?but Hannah, for all her flaws and foibles was the heart of the show. She and her friends became a talking point between you and yours – the question of their friendship and why they were friends was never far from our minds, they never did seem completely compatible but something worked. Until they didn’t. Hey ho, that’s life.
Hannah lived outside of her sexual experiences, she saw her ‘job’ to fulfil certain things so she had something to write about; situations with which to glean as much experience from. Her sex scenes were nothing if not honest, hilarious and convincing. She was weird, surrounded by a cast of weirdos; characters we all empathised with time and again. All they ever wanted was to be happy; being loved was a bonus.
For its duration Girls never seemed far from censure – too privileged, too white, too much nudity (specifically Dunham). Most moans seemed to spend a little too much time on Hannah/Lena’s body. Unapologetic in her own skin, and why not, she doesn’t look like your typical TV star, certainly not the kind of woman to shed clothes so regularly and unabashedly. It was refreshing. Finally somebody onscreen who wobbled a bit having a convincing sex life. It made little difference that she was the creator, writer, producer, director and lead actress, she was there to be body-shamed by… well, it was scary how many. Somebody like Patrick Wilson (see, One Man’s Trash S2 E05) wouldn’t f*ck any woman who looked like that, yada yada yada.
It’s a white show. Written by a white woman about four (white) friends; its creator, co-producer, Jenni Konner and executive producer, Judd Apatow are Jewish too if this is something of interest (side note: must research criticism levelled at Knocked Up or latest show LOVE). One of the first things Dunham did, following comments about the lack of diversity on the show, was cast Donald Glover as Sandy in two episodes (It’s About Time S2 E01 and I Get Ideas S2 E02) which depicted Hannah’s ignorance surrounding the issue of race – they also made him a Republican too. While there have been numerous characters of colour albeit, one could argue, clumsily added, and mostly in supporting, non-recurring roles; still, attempts have been made to address the imbalance. Those same critics who describe the show as whitewashing would probably now accuse of tokenism or misrepresentation. The scrutiny with which Girls was subjected to over the last six years, one could surmise, is down to the gender of its creator. I’m sure there are some male-led shows that are held to account, just not quite in the same way as those by/for/with women.
If you’ve never bothered with it, fair enough, I would implore you to check out the bottle-neck episodes for a riveting taste of just how good the show can be, One Man’s Trash, Flo (S3 E09), The Panic in Central Park (S5 E06), American Bitch (S6 E03). Girls showed women in all their complexities, fallibility, humiliations and vulnerabilities. It was dark, cynical and sometimes depressing; not always a comforting watch but funny – I don’t think it’s given enough credit for its humour. Or for its ability to write men. Specifically Adam Sackler. To listen to Dunham, their show was a collaborative effort, replete with improvising so who knows the *true* author of Adam, regardless he remains amazingly written; the epitome of the sensitive, complicated, masculine male. A man in AA; his sobriety sometimes a battle. His dark, sexual, almost deviant behaviour and the temper… oh the temper. That which exploded usually to save him exposing his vulnerability. He was deep, complex and – just like the rest of the show’s characters – grew, evolved, shifted. It was a joy to watch, Adam Driver is a joy to watch. He (Sackler) was, is, for all intents and purposes, Dunham’s finest creation.
So, how to end it all? (Finale review over at TDF:Latching)
I will miss Hannah and the gang immensely (even Marnie). The girls may have been maddening and mortifying but we loved them; through their imperfections it allowed us to disengage from reality for a bit and embrace our own flaws.
Sex and the City (SATC) came to our small screens in 1997, based upon the novel of the same name by ex-New York Observer columnist Candace Bushnell. This television series and its depiction and ‘celebration’ of women not only appealed to a mass female audience but attempted to dispel the so-called – thanks to Betty Friedan -“feminine mystique” by dismissing repressive female stereotypes which had seemingly dogged popular culture in the years before. These were (white) women talking, writing about, and more importantly, having sex (as they maintained from the very first episode) “like men”[1]. At the heart of this series was the feminist ideology that all women have a right to sexual pleasure and live in a place of complete independence where women have ownership of the, albeit narcissistic, ‘gaze’ and men are the sex objects.
Quite simply, without second wave feminism, a show like Sex and the City would fail to exist and creator Bushnell describes the Foucaultian confessional as depicting “female choice, not female rejection […] women viewers get the naughty thrill of seeing their gender portrayed for once as sane, sentient, and decent.”[2] With this sweeping statement there is an implication that all television and/or film texts gone before had negatively depicted women and that by seeing this positive, even verisimilar portrayal, the female population are engaging in illicit activity. Bushnell never considers the representation of women within the text or the fact that the characters have been rewritten by a man. An audience requires more than gender in order to negotiate identification and, unfortunately, for the female viewer there is little to identify with. SATC depicts women as over-consumers and seems to believe its own propaganda; that in order to be liberated and successful, a woman has to be white, heterosexual, rich, thin, and self-obsessed. Is this really what modern womanhood has been reduced to? The representation of women and the evolution of these characters have enforced further limitations and new stereotypes that women are measured against. The motion pictures which were born from the success of the series have taken the ‘sane, sentient and decent women’ with choice and replaced them with four dolls bridging the gap between feminine and sexy, artificial and empowered. It utilises the Beauty Myth[3] and defines a woman’s sexuality against the clothes (and shoes) she wears to create a Serious/Sexual dichotomy[4] in which liberation and promiscuity merge. A woman’s voice has now been replaced with a body, however, because these women choose sexual freedom and choose to “act like men”, we find ourselves in a culture which appears to resurrect stereotypes of female sexuality that feminism endeavoured to banish.[5]
In a term coined by Feona Attwood (2009) Sex and the City ‘mainstreamed’ sex and used it ‘as a source of self-definition and a means of self-expression’[6]. They were, in accordance to Rosalind Gill, sexually confident and autonomous – “knowing, active and desiring subjects”[7] but as the series progressed the women chose their respective Mr. Rights over their independence and sexual freedom and this has, since, been repeated within the narratives of the first and second film[8]. Despite, second wave feminism informing women that Prince Charming is a patriarchal fiction designed to render them passive and in need of rescue. It went on to furthermore state that they did not need him to define their happiness or create the so-called “happily-ever-after”. Sex and the City chose to perpetrate the myth and reinforce, as David Greven argues, “the ideology that heterosexual sex is forever [while homosexual] sex is transitory, fleeting, [and] intangible.”[9] The filmmakers response to this was to take the two male homosexual characters and marry them off. To each other. With Liza Minnelli officiating! So, if the whole purpose of Sex and the City was to make these women sexually independent and to break stereotypes, why then do we see three out the four characters re-enforcing patriarchal ideology by getting hitched?
The last beacon of hope is Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), who, on the surface, appears to be the exception to the ‘Mr Right’ rule, preferring to settle for ‘Mr Right-Now’ (conveniently, she is potentially too old to procreate). Her views on marriage, monogamy and sex transgress the heteronormative ideologies, she truly believes she can do anything a man can do, even experimenting with Viagra[10]. Like most transgressive women before her she is ‘punished’ with the discovery of breast cancer.[11] There has even been a suggestion by some critics that she transgresses the female gender altogether given that she is encoded as a homosexual, Greven writes,
[…] Samantha, most explicitly of all the women, acts, speaks and cavorts like a stereotypical gay man, her femaleness a safeguard against both homophobic retaliation and an explicit admission of a gay agenda, to use this cruelly overused phrase only to suggest that the show about sex in Manhattan has to use female characters as a cover […][12]
If a woman is sexually confident, even aggressive, successful, ambitious, and appears to not require a man ‘she’ of course must be a ‘he’! Once again, female sexuality is defined by patriarchy. Interestingly, Candace Bushnell, in 2001 agreed with Greven and declared that Samantha is, in fact, a gay man[13]. So, are women getting the ‘naughty thrill’ from seeing their gender portrayed as ‘sane’ or as a gay man?
Sex and the City: The Movie saw Carrie – the woman without the bride gene[14] – agreeing to marry ‘Big’, now known as the less phallically aggressive John. The proposal of marriage is a business transaction to ensure that, should their relationship fail, Carrie will not be left with nothing. Charlotte has the ‘; perfect’ marriage to Harry and in addition to their adopted daughter she finds herself defying medical odds and falling pregnant. Miranda is coping with Steve’s infidelity and Samantha finds she is rapidly falling out of love with Los Angeles and being in a relationship with a man whose name she says more times a day than her own.[15] John, then jilts* Carrie on their wedding day and the girls accompany her on the honeymoon to Mexico; a suite she booked in the names of Mr and Mrs Preston – a thrill which made her forget her ‘true self’.[16]
The Beauty Myth informs is that there is ‘no right way to look’[17], however, SATC (a programme that Wolf endorses as “funny, clever and thinks women are important[18]) portrays a uniformity in women, they may have different hair-styles but essentially all the attributes they own, situations they find themselves in, men they deem attractive can be applied to just one woman; in fact one could argue that Miranda, Carrie, Charlotte and Samantha are the four (patriarchal and ideologically enforced, of course) facets of one woman; the cynic, the optimist, the Madonna and the whore. This uniformity is ever more prevalent in the racial make-up of the cast.
Carrie hires an assistant to help her ‘come back to life’ (because obviously, losing a man brings serious health risks, one is suddenly are unable to open mail, unpack, etc.) after the ‘devastation’ and ‘humiliation’ of being jilted. Louise (Jennifer Hudson) is a curvaceous black woman from St. Louis who is never legitimised with a surname, and only in her depiction as the single African-American character does the viewer realise the full extent of Sex and the City’s whiteness.[19] She is immediately encoded as the social minority because she is a St. Louis native and subverts the whiteness/virtuousness ideology[20] because Louise is the innocent, naïve in her pursuit of love, even crossing state lines to seek out the love of her life.
Louise starts out, albeit tenuously, with similarities to Donald Bogle’s ‘Mammy’ character; “she is sweet, jolly and good tempered”[21] and serves Carrie, helping her complete the most basic tasks – answering letters and e-mails, replacing a mobile phone and unpacking boxes and boxes of clothes. She does, however, evolve from the stereotype – although one could argue she becomes the “Magical Negress” bringing Carrie back to life and all – and gains some autonomy just in time for her ex-boyfriend to propose marriage. She begins to show more flesh, specifically cleavage, her clothes become tighter and more streamline, slimming her down; the voice is replaced by the body. Although, her screen-time is not sufficient enough to explore the character in depth, it is hinted at that her change in physicality does have the desired effect on men (coincidentally, Hudson herself lost a substantial amount of weight and married and gave birth following her role in SATC). Louise’s curly natural hair is straightened and coloured a lighter brown, and it can be argued that she, essentially, is white(r) when she leaves New York, complete with a diamond engagement ring and Louis Vuitton handbag hanging from her wrist. Using Dyer’s model she becomes colonised; from St. Louis to Manhattan – black to white(r). Dyer writes that, “white women are [after all] constructed as the apotheosis of desirability, all that a man could want, yet nothing that can be had, nor anything that a woman can be [an] everything-and-nothing quality.”[22]
Racial difference is also explored in the sequel, its release date in 2010 to coincide with the football World Cup – another occasion in which there is a divide the sexes; all women HATE football, obviously. Samantha is invited to a Sheik’s private hotel in Abu Dhabi on a PR trip and extends the invitation to her three friends. This trip is used as a distraction from the womens’ respective problems at home. Carrie and ‘Big’ are married (following a vomit-inducing Cinderella-alluding proposal at the end of the last film) and ‘making their own rules’ but according to Carrie, their relationship is getting ‘too Mr-and-Mrs-Married’. Charlotte is felling oppressed by the demands of motherhood and is beginning to obsessively believe that Harry is having an affair with their twenty–something Irish nanny, Erin (the girl doesn’t wear a bra so of course, she must be sleeping with her boss). Miranda, having no inclination to confront her sexist boss, quits her position at the law firm, an action which is completely inexplicable and out-of-character.
Throughout the scenes shot in Morocco (doubling for Abu Dhabi), the Americans, understandably, never fully assimilate into Middle Eastern society; their ignorance seemingly the main problem. Miranda is constantly berating Samantha for leaving her shoulders or legs bare and on display. Even after her arrest she falls foul of a group of Muslim men on their way to prayer. Her bag then bursts during an altercation and condoms are scattered at the men’s feet and then, as this is Samantha, the prophylactics are waved in the crowds’ faces and thus as Lindy West so eloquently writes in her scathing review:
Traditional Middle Eastern sexual mores are upended and sexism is stoned to death in the town square. At sexism’s funeral (which takes place in a mysterious, incense-shrouded chamber of international sisterhood), the women of Abu Dhabi remove their black [burkas] and [niqabs] to reveal – this is not a joke – the same hideous, disposable, criminally expensive shreds of cloth and feathers that hang from Carrie et al’s emaciated goblin shoulders. Muslim women, under those craaaaaaaa-zy robes, they’re just as vapid and obsessed with physical beauty and meaningless marital concerns! Feminism! Fuck yeah![23]
West is a Seattle-based film critic who despised the movie with every fibre of her being, it would seem. She describes SATC2 as “tak[ing] everything I hold dear as a woman and as a human […] and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car.”[24] A horribly violent, almost anti-feminist metaphor but she really hated it…
Georgina Isbister, on the other hand, writes, that the reason that SATC resonates with an audience is that “its narratives are dominated by the challenges faced by protagonists in achieving their ideals and the subsequent anxieties surrounding them […] trying to conform to an expectation that women can have it all.[25] This is not so much an expectation as patriarchy rearing its ugly head again. Women are lead to believe that they can have liberation and everything that men are entitled to as long as they revert back to the patriarchal ideal of ‘wifedom’ and motherhood. SATC not only highlights the anxieties and challenges but exacerbates them.
Sex and the City has shamed women into believing that acquisition is the pathway to freedom. While the post-modern feminist text contains heroines who are much more active than the bygone eras of the 70s and 80s and, as Rosalind suggests,
[they] value autonomy and bodily integrity and the freedom to make individual choices […] [Yet] they seem compelled to use their empowered positions to make decisions that would be regarded by many feminists as problematic located as they are in normative notions of femininity.[26]
Carrie chooses marriage with the man who treated her badly for ten years. She and Miranda changed who they were for men, the latter hell-bent on a career kept her hair short and dressed in power-suits in order to make it in a ‘man’s world’ only to fall pregnant, marry and throw her career away for a family-life. Charlotte also gave up a career and her single independence for a husband and children while Samantha maintained she had sex like a man, believing that behaving as a man provided liberation and empowerment whereas sex as a woman does not. For her trouble, she is described as channelling as ‘homosexual man’. These successful women have, over the last decade, communicated that a career, financial security, looks and ostensibly, intelligence are nothing compared to doing anything to get (and keep) a man, including compromising the essence of who you are in order to secure the man you love.
There is little doubt that SATC made a cultural impact; yet at no point is there an attempt at a realistic portrayal of a modern-day woman. She has been thwarted by product placement and shoe iconography and manipulated into thinking that because she is privileged over the male(s) in the diegesis she has been gifted with choice. The film texts, in particular, are responsible for repackaging the patriarchal ideology of normative femininity in shinier, more expensive wrapping, marketed to the richest, skinniest and whitest women; content to allow Capitalism’s oppression keep them content and submissive.[27]
In an attempt to implore sexual freedom the text(s) reaffirms the male – female divide and this apparently gives the cast and writers’ license to incite sexism, misogyny and female chauvinism[28]. Sex and the City appears to return to a repressed state – it is still men who rule their world. Mr. Big allows Carrie to believe that they are creating their own rules and sharing the relationship power, when, in fact, she always compromises herself and comes around to his way of thinking, in the end, even without realising it. This may be somebody’s reality but please do not attempt to use it as a form of celebrating the twenty-first century woman. She is, one would like to think, less-consumer obsessed and vacuous. Her right is not only to shoes but to a voice, freedom, power and to transgress male notions of femininity. Within the media forum would seem like the ideal vehicle for such a premier, however, given the complexities and humanity of the female gender would anybody be up to the task. Lena Dunham has taken up the mantle with Girls[29], a series not unlike SATC which deals with four friends and their quest for all the things that the former programme initially set out to do – a survivable place in the world. She has full creative control, stars, writes, produces, directs and while Ms. Dunham has given a voice to the younger woman, one who is not preoccupied with becoming a wife, mother or trying to ‘take over’ from men, these ladies are still white and privileged.
[1] SATC Season 1: Episode 1 ‘Sex and the City’ Samantha insists the girls try “Hav[ing] sex like men, you know, without feeling.” HBO, 1997-2003.
[5] Levy, Ariel, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Rauch Culture (Pocket Books, 2005) pp4-5. Levy suggests that not all women of this generation are imbued with the feminist agenda and “if this bawdy world of boobs and gams we have resurrected reflects how far we’ve come, or how far we have left to go.”
[6] Attwood, Feona, Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualisation of Western Culture (I B Tauris, 2009).
[7] Gill, Rosalind, Gender and the Media (Polity Press, 2006) pg103.
[8] Samantha finally chooses herself over a man at the end of film one.
[9] Greven, D “The Museum of Unnatural History: Male Freaks and Sex and the City in Akass, Kim. & McCabe, Janet. (eds) Reading Sex and the City (I B Tauris, 2003) p42.
[13] Declared during an interview in The Independent, 5 February 2001.
[14] SATC Season 4: Episode 15 ‘Change of a Dress’.
[15]SATC: The Movie. Samantha ends her relationship with Smith by telling him that although she loves him, “I love me more, I’ve been in a relationship with myself for 52 years and that’s the one I need to work on.”
[16] Ibid. “If I met myself ten years ago, I wouldn’t know me.”
[27] As suggested by Eliza Tozzi in her article “Sex and the City: Feminism and Mass Culture (Empowerment & Consumerism) “[SATC] suggests that empowerment is attainable through consumption” p64
[28] A term used by Ariel Levy and described as “women who make sex objects of other women and [them]selves” 2006, p4.
[29]Girls premiered on HBO in 2012 and is now on its fourth season.
A determining factor, some may argue, at the heart of Campion’s oeuvre is the inclusion of a strong, emotive (and convincing) female protagonist seen in the likes of Sweetie (1981), An Angel At My Table (1990), The Piano (1993) and In the Cut (2003) to name but a few; these women are usually in search of themselves and while their strength and femininity are rarely questioned they tend to be deeply flawed characters. In Campion’s crime mini-series Top of the Lake – which sees her reunited with collaborator and long-time friend Gerard Lee – leading protagonist Robin Griffith (Elisabeth Moss) picks up the baton left by these memorable characters.
When 12-year-old Tui Mitchum (Jacqueline Joe) is rescued from Lake Top’s freezing stretch of water, her pregnancy is discovered and Detective Robin Griffith – having returned ‘home’ from Sydney – insists on taking the case. Over the course of the six-part drama, she contends with a lot more than just a statutory rape case; namely a dying mother, a long-term engagement she may or may not want, the boy she left behind, and her own demons that she has never fully faced. Throw into the mix, the all-female commune (attempting to take refuge from the debilitating aspects of their respective lives) that has set up home in a field they call Paradise, led by the enigmatic GJ (Holly Hunter). Feeling such a strong personal affiliation with young rape victim Tui, Robin is determined to assist the child; a prospect made all the more difficult when Tui disappears from a dysfunctional community full of secrets, lies, and deception, seemingly led by her father, Matt (Peter Mullan).
Boasting a cast which includes David Wenham (Oranges and Sunshine), Genevieve Lemon (The Piano) and Thomas M. Wright (soon to be seen in the US version of The Bridge) as well as the stellar prowess of Hunter and Mullan, all of whom are superb, this is really Moss’s show. Proving that she can do so much more than MadMen‘s Peggy Olson, she is, quite simply, brilliant as the psychologically paradoxical Robin. Filmed largely on New Zealand’s South Island (a character in itself), Top of the Lake, is a TV story which unfolds like a novel much like HBO’s Deadwood. Yet amid its style there is a stark hyper-realism and mimetic quality which emerges at its own pace – some may say a snail’s – but this deliberate pacing, silence and haunting cinematography has a purpose and builds upon the thrilling tension.
It is, oddly, reminiscent of Smillas’s Feeling for Snow (1997), yet ups the emotionally raw ante (and provides a much more relatable leading lady). Campion and Lee wrote a script in 2010, a lot of which is improvised around here, and manages to keep audience interest through many-a subject matter including murder, incest, police corruption and gender politics. Misandry and misogyny go hand-in-hand; the invisibility of the older woman is offset by the impotency of the ageing male, here in Lake Top everybody is damaged, vulnerable and/or breaking the law in some capacity. By the last episode, the conclusion of which is grimly satisfying, one realises that there is no actual resolution; there are still unanswered questions which is frustratingly refreshing and not usually expected in crime television of today’s standard, at least not of the English speaking variety anyway. Campion nails it yet again.
The Framing Device 