I really didn’t like Juno. I avoided watching it the first
year it was out because of all the hype, but one afternoon in 2010, during the
Georgia equivalent of a blizzard, I found myself watching it, and I must say
the experience was pleasantly surprising. Ellen Paige won me over immediately,
and although I’ve read a lot of reviews criticizing the movie for making the
characters, hers especially, too clever and too interested in things that predate
them, that’s one criticism I still vehemently disagree with. When I was 16, I
knew people who talked like Juno. My best friend talked like Juno. I talked
like Juno. At one point we decided to combine 1920s and 1960s slang terms to
create a whole new style, but that project never really went anywhere. The
point is, Juno’s character is the one who seems the most real, and that’s got a
lot to do with Ellen Paige, who manages to make her seem really smart
and mature but not cynical. I have to admit, I find a heroine whose
top three bands are Iggy and the Stooges, The Runaways, and Patti Smith and yet
who is still shocked and upset when she discovers Jason Bateman’s character is
actually a douchebag to be incredibly refreshing. As much as I hate The
Privilege, I like that an obviously privileged heroine is actually acting like
one in this movie.
That being said, I still really
don’t like it. After watching it a second time it hit me just how in love with
itself this movie is, and as much as I enjoy the scene where Juno and Mark play
an acoustic cover of “Doll Parts” it just isn’t enough to overcome the smugness
that permeates just about every other scene.
All that was to say, when I heard
about Whip It I had high hopes based
solely on the fact that it starred Ellen Paige. I didn’t even need to know it
was about an all-women roller derby league, an “alternative” female coming of
age story, or even that it actually had a solid female friendship at its core
(What? Those can’t exist in movies with straight women!). I actually wasn’t
disappointed by it, which made the $7 I paid for the DVD a bargain.
This is one of this movies that gets so many things right it's easy to forgive what it gets wrong. I'm only mildly annoyed by the bucket of Hipster Lite that was thrown onto Paige's character Bliss, and as with Juno, that has everything to do with Paige's acting. She takes what could easily have been an irritating, spineless character and makes her into a shy, misunderstood, and (mildly) conflicted character. When the Popular Kids decide it would be clever to (again, mildly) taunt her by asking if she's "alternative now" her response is, "Alternative to what?" That's not a brilliant line. That's not a particularly memorable line. That's not even a great comeback for a regular person who doesn't have a professional writing her dialogue, though it's not the worst I've heard, but the way Paige says it makes it sound brilliant. Her obvious confusion about just the hell they're trying to accomplish--Is it a real question? Is she supposed to be insulted?-- completely sells the moment. That's how a lot of moments in this movie go. The script isn't bad, but if it were in the hands of different actors its flaws would shine through a lot sooner.
So, when I found the Shauna Cross YA novel this movie is based on I wasted $1 on it. Why not? It can't be that bad, I thought. I liked the movie.
I was right. It isn't that bad. It's fucking awful. I was skeptical about Drew Barrymore as a director, but it turns out she's actually the reason this movie turned out as well as it did. Cross wrote the screenplay, but based on the novel it's clear who made this story as likeable as it is.
The most logical place to begin with this book is with Bliss. At the beginning of the movie she's soft-spoken and shy, but it's clear there's more to her than what most people see, which makes her transformation into badass Derby Girl something the audience cheers on. We want to see her find her voice almost as much as she wants to find it. My mother never put me in beauty pageants, but she did push me really hard for as long as I can remember to succeed academically. Like Bliss, I didn't really complain about it, mostly because I knew she was trying to shove me out of the abyss. The movie makes clear that's exactly what Bliss's mother is trying to do for her, and while I have issues with pageants, the fact is she's always presented as stable, loving parent who thinks that's the best way to help her daughter succeed. We don't see Bliss have a truly confrontational moment with her mother about her aversion to life as a pageant star until her roller derby career is threatened, and everything about the scene works. She sounds like a teenage girl struggling to assert an identity that hasn't even finished forming, which is exactly how she should sound. She's slowly and painfully beginning to become herself and trying not to hurt the people she loves in the process.
The Bliss of the novel, on the other hand, is decidedly different.
I fucking hate her.
On a more objective note, her character in the novel was a disappointment when compared to her character in the film. I expected there to be differences, but I wasn't prepared for the movie to be an improvement. That has only happened twice that I can think of. First it happened with Girl Interrupted, but I wasn't too upset about it because Susanna Kaysen's book isn't a linear narrative; it's more of a series of vignettes. A lot had to be changed to make it into a Hollywood movie starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. The second time it happened was with Revolutionary Road, and I'm tempted to say that's just because it stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and those two have enough chemistry to convince me to buy a ticket to watch them watch paint dry. My love for them individually is pretty great, but my love for them as a couple reaches frightening, not to mention embarrassing, heights.
Back to the point. While there is a certain amount of authenticity to Cross's writing of Bliss in the book, there's nothing likeable about her. The story is narrated by her, and while her voice is interesting at times, it's almost impossible to distinguish it from countless other "typical" teenage girl narrators in YA fiction. I could use a lot of great adjective to describe her, but the best way to sum up her character is to say she's bratty and naive. Now, I don't mind the naivete; I like when 16 year olds act like 16 year olds. As many completely batshit experiences as I had had by 16, and as mature as I was at that age, I was still pretty fucking naive at times, and I've got a few stories to illustrate that. That being said, there's a difference between writing a teenager who doesn't act and sound like 25 year old and writing a teenager who epitomizes every stereotype in existence. I find it especially frustrating because there are so few substantive heroines in mainstream YA fiction. Furthermore, there are no "alternative" heroines in mainstream YA fiction that I can think of aside from Mia in the Princess Diaries series and Samantha from the All-American Girl series. They're all pretty standard representations of what adults who market to teenagers think teenage girls act like--which is to say, they're misogynistic caricatures more often than not. In some cases, like Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicolson series, this actually works. The thing that makes that series work though is the fact that it's almost a parody of the whole genre. Georgia Nicolson is an updated, female version of Adrian Mole, who is the only YA male main character who is as painfully naive and self-centered as most YA female main characters that I've come across.
I'll just come right out and say I read a lot of YA fiction aimed at teenage girls at one point. Each book was the literary equivalent of eating a whole box of eclairs in one sitting: very satisfying but horrible for me. It's a topic for another post, though.
Unlike in the movie, the Bliss of the novel is mean-spirited. She spends half the book complaining about her parents not understanding her and how "totally uncool" they are, which, okay, she's 16, fine, but the problem is we're never shown anything that justifies her supposed unhappiness. I get I'm not the target audience for this book, and when I was 16 I doubt I would have liked it. The thing is, a lot of people in their late teens and early twenties still read YA fiction and almost nothing else. It's sad,. but true. I went to college with more people like that than I could count, which probably had a lot to do with why college was so goddamn disappointing. So, that makes the representation of women and girls in YA fiction even more important because the way these people view women and girls will be affected by these books. It will perpetuate misogynistic stereotypes about how women behave. That doesn't mean every heroine has to be a paragon of maturity or goodness or intelligence. It just means they need to be well-rounded, interesting, and relatable--and not just to the women who fantasize about finding a boyfriend who will magically make all their problems go away.
The brings me to my last few points. In both versions the love interest is a douche bag, and it's rather obvious to everyone but Bliss. The thing I really like about both versions though is they end with her getting over him, in spite of, to quote the movie, "giving him everything." Now, this phrasing carries some heavy implications, most obviously that the most important thing a woman can ever do is let a man be the one to sleep with her for the first time. I'm not saying there isn't usually some kind of emotional connection between a person and the person they sleep with for the first time because there almost always is, if not before than after for at least one of them. Nothing exists in a vacuum. The problem comes when it's only female characters who do all the talking about "giving everything." It's only female virginity that's important. No-one gives a flying fuck about a guy's virginity. That's not to say individual guys don't have emotional connections to the women they sleep with; it's just to say the culture at large pretends they don't and would have us believe they don't--unless it's The Girl They Love. You know, the Future Wife character. Sex with her means something; those others, if there were any, were just whores. He's already forgotten their names. The thing both the book and movie get right, though, is Bliss is devastated by her boyfriend's betrayal but she grows up a little and moves on in the end. In the book she's even allowed to talk about how much she enjoyed sex, which in this strange world of Sexual Experimentation and Kink = Empowerment for Women (where are you Shulamith Firestone?) that seems like something I shouldn't have to praise, but the sad truth is most stories about young women still place sex in the Only If You're In Love box, which is problematic since there aren't really any stories aimed at men like that.
Okay, two more things, and I'll stop pontificating. These are two of my favorite moments from each. In the book there's a scene where Bliss is going through a stack of records at a party. She finds The Velvet Underground and Nico. "What's coming out of the stereo is like a genre unto itself, a charming, fucked-up fairy tale that immediately breaks my heart in all the best ways" is her description of the event. I don't think I need to explain why I love this scene, or why I love how obsessed with music the book version of Bliss is. I want more heroines with actual interests. Seriously. We fucking need them.
The last thing is a scene from the movie. It happens in the book as well, but it's a lot more satisfying in the movie. It comes in around the halfway point, and it's what happens when Bliss's bullies meet Babe Ruthless. I've always had a problem with female characters not meeting their bullies head-on (Yay repressed female anger!), and this scene just makes me happy.
This is one of this movies that gets so many things right it's easy to forgive what it gets wrong. I'm only mildly annoyed by the bucket of Hipster Lite that was thrown onto Paige's character Bliss, and as with Juno, that has everything to do with Paige's acting. She takes what could easily have been an irritating, spineless character and makes her into a shy, misunderstood, and (mildly) conflicted character. When the Popular Kids decide it would be clever to (again, mildly) taunt her by asking if she's "alternative now" her response is, "Alternative to what?" That's not a brilliant line. That's not a particularly memorable line. That's not even a great comeback for a regular person who doesn't have a professional writing her dialogue, though it's not the worst I've heard, but the way Paige says it makes it sound brilliant. Her obvious confusion about just the hell they're trying to accomplish--Is it a real question? Is she supposed to be insulted?-- completely sells the moment. That's how a lot of moments in this movie go. The script isn't bad, but if it were in the hands of different actors its flaws would shine through a lot sooner.
So, when I found the Shauna Cross YA novel this movie is based on I wasted $1 on it. Why not? It can't be that bad, I thought. I liked the movie.
I was right. It isn't that bad. It's fucking awful. I was skeptical about Drew Barrymore as a director, but it turns out she's actually the reason this movie turned out as well as it did. Cross wrote the screenplay, but based on the novel it's clear who made this story as likeable as it is.
The most logical place to begin with this book is with Bliss. At the beginning of the movie she's soft-spoken and shy, but it's clear there's more to her than what most people see, which makes her transformation into badass Derby Girl something the audience cheers on. We want to see her find her voice almost as much as she wants to find it. My mother never put me in beauty pageants, but she did push me really hard for as long as I can remember to succeed academically. Like Bliss, I didn't really complain about it, mostly because I knew she was trying to shove me out of the abyss. The movie makes clear that's exactly what Bliss's mother is trying to do for her, and while I have issues with pageants, the fact is she's always presented as stable, loving parent who thinks that's the best way to help her daughter succeed. We don't see Bliss have a truly confrontational moment with her mother about her aversion to life as a pageant star until her roller derby career is threatened, and everything about the scene works. She sounds like a teenage girl struggling to assert an identity that hasn't even finished forming, which is exactly how she should sound. She's slowly and painfully beginning to become herself and trying not to hurt the people she loves in the process.
The Bliss of the novel, on the other hand, is decidedly different.
I fucking hate her.
On a more objective note, her character in the novel was a disappointment when compared to her character in the film. I expected there to be differences, but I wasn't prepared for the movie to be an improvement. That has only happened twice that I can think of. First it happened with Girl Interrupted, but I wasn't too upset about it because Susanna Kaysen's book isn't a linear narrative; it's more of a series of vignettes. A lot had to be changed to make it into a Hollywood movie starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. The second time it happened was with Revolutionary Road, and I'm tempted to say that's just because it stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and those two have enough chemistry to convince me to buy a ticket to watch them watch paint dry. My love for them individually is pretty great, but my love for them as a couple reaches frightening, not to mention embarrassing, heights.
Back to the point. While there is a certain amount of authenticity to Cross's writing of Bliss in the book, there's nothing likeable about her. The story is narrated by her, and while her voice is interesting at times, it's almost impossible to distinguish it from countless other "typical" teenage girl narrators in YA fiction. I could use a lot of great adjective to describe her, but the best way to sum up her character is to say she's bratty and naive. Now, I don't mind the naivete; I like when 16 year olds act like 16 year olds. As many completely batshit experiences as I had had by 16, and as mature as I was at that age, I was still pretty fucking naive at times, and I've got a few stories to illustrate that. That being said, there's a difference between writing a teenager who doesn't act and sound like 25 year old and writing a teenager who epitomizes every stereotype in existence. I find it especially frustrating because there are so few substantive heroines in mainstream YA fiction. Furthermore, there are no "alternative" heroines in mainstream YA fiction that I can think of aside from Mia in the Princess Diaries series and Samantha from the All-American Girl series. They're all pretty standard representations of what adults who market to teenagers think teenage girls act like--which is to say, they're misogynistic caricatures more often than not. In some cases, like Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicolson series, this actually works. The thing that makes that series work though is the fact that it's almost a parody of the whole genre. Georgia Nicolson is an updated, female version of Adrian Mole, who is the only YA male main character who is as painfully naive and self-centered as most YA female main characters that I've come across.
I'll just come right out and say I read a lot of YA fiction aimed at teenage girls at one point. Each book was the literary equivalent of eating a whole box of eclairs in one sitting: very satisfying but horrible for me. It's a topic for another post, though.
Unlike in the movie, the Bliss of the novel is mean-spirited. She spends half the book complaining about her parents not understanding her and how "totally uncool" they are, which, okay, she's 16, fine, but the problem is we're never shown anything that justifies her supposed unhappiness. I get I'm not the target audience for this book, and when I was 16 I doubt I would have liked it. The thing is, a lot of people in their late teens and early twenties still read YA fiction and almost nothing else. It's sad,. but true. I went to college with more people like that than I could count, which probably had a lot to do with why college was so goddamn disappointing. So, that makes the representation of women and girls in YA fiction even more important because the way these people view women and girls will be affected by these books. It will perpetuate misogynistic stereotypes about how women behave. That doesn't mean every heroine has to be a paragon of maturity or goodness or intelligence. It just means they need to be well-rounded, interesting, and relatable--and not just to the women who fantasize about finding a boyfriend who will magically make all their problems go away.
The brings me to my last few points. In both versions the love interest is a douche bag, and it's rather obvious to everyone but Bliss. The thing I really like about both versions though is they end with her getting over him, in spite of, to quote the movie, "giving him everything." Now, this phrasing carries some heavy implications, most obviously that the most important thing a woman can ever do is let a man be the one to sleep with her for the first time. I'm not saying there isn't usually some kind of emotional connection between a person and the person they sleep with for the first time because there almost always is, if not before than after for at least one of them. Nothing exists in a vacuum. The problem comes when it's only female characters who do all the talking about "giving everything." It's only female virginity that's important. No-one gives a flying fuck about a guy's virginity. That's not to say individual guys don't have emotional connections to the women they sleep with; it's just to say the culture at large pretends they don't and would have us believe they don't--unless it's The Girl They Love. You know, the Future Wife character. Sex with her means something; those others, if there were any, were just whores. He's already forgotten their names. The thing both the book and movie get right, though, is Bliss is devastated by her boyfriend's betrayal but she grows up a little and moves on in the end. In the book she's even allowed to talk about how much she enjoyed sex, which in this strange world of Sexual Experimentation and Kink = Empowerment for Women (where are you Shulamith Firestone?) that seems like something I shouldn't have to praise, but the sad truth is most stories about young women still place sex in the Only If You're In Love box, which is problematic since there aren't really any stories aimed at men like that.
Okay, two more things, and I'll stop pontificating. These are two of my favorite moments from each. In the book there's a scene where Bliss is going through a stack of records at a party. She finds The Velvet Underground and Nico. "What's coming out of the stereo is like a genre unto itself, a charming, fucked-up fairy tale that immediately breaks my heart in all the best ways" is her description of the event. I don't think I need to explain why I love this scene, or why I love how obsessed with music the book version of Bliss is. I want more heroines with actual interests. Seriously. We fucking need them.
The last thing is a scene from the movie. It happens in the book as well, but it's a lot more satisfying in the movie. It comes in around the halfway point, and it's what happens when Bliss's bullies meet Babe Ruthless. I've always had a problem with female characters not meeting their bullies head-on (Yay repressed female anger!), and this scene just makes me happy.
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