All About Eve

[osprey_archer]

Let me tell you, I went into All About Eve with doubts. It’s one of the few movies on the AFI top 100 list with important relationships between women, and of course it’s about women backstabbing each other. Just of course.

Every once in a while I see someone anxiously proclaiming that it’s important that we should undermine the stereotype that women are so nice and supportive to each other and show that women are actually mean. Every time, this makes me think of that C. S. Lewis quote about how each generation directs “the fashionable outcry… against those vices of which it is least in danger.”

Because honestly. Where do these people live that the operative stereotype about women’s relationships is not “Women are so mean and competitive with each other”? This is absolutely fucking everywhere and it has been all over the movies in particular since at least the fifties.

As far as I can tell, the saying that girls are “sugar ‘n’ spice ‘n’ everything nice” exists mostly so that people can feel like they’re bucking the trend when they take on a superior and knowing smirk, and proclaim that women are actually bitchy ‘n’ catty ‘n’ mean to each other. And the saying serves to make it look somehow unnatural when women (just like men) occasionally do mean things, but men are allowed to be complicated human beings who are sometimes nice and sometimes mean and generally contain multitudes whereas women are supposed to be one dimensional.

I want to move to this planet where the biggest problem in the media portrayal of women is that they’re too supportive of each other - they’re just supportive of each other fucking everywhere, you can’t go to a blockbuster movie without seeing yet another plot that revolves around how much the female leads love and support each other. God, they’re just flinging themselves in the path of danger all the time, ready and willing to sacrifice themselves because they just love each other so much. Every single movie in this alternate reality is basically the new Ghostbusters, except for occasional movies about how cataclysmically terrible it is when relationships between women break down, and those are grand and epic tragedy, kind of like Civil War except with girls.

Seriously, though. I would move to that planet. Where I live, women in media rarely have any relationships with each other at all, and when they do often that relationship is actually a weird competitive triangle centered on some guy.

ANYWAY. I went into All About Eve prepared for two hours of misogynistic tripe, and was therefore pleasantly surprised to discover that most of the women in the movie are actually complicated three-dimensional human beings. Particular props to Bette Davis as Margo Channing, the aging actress who is allowed to be a difficult and ornery person without being set up to utterly forfeit audience sympathy.

It’s one of those movies where the problem is not the movie itself but the context. It’s just tiresome to look at the AFI Top 100 and see that one of very few movies on it that is centered around relationships between women is about women being sly and backstabbing. Yes, they’re sly and backstabbing in a well-written, three-dimensional, believable way, but all the same.

It’s like if people watched The Death of Stalin and rather than taking it as a portrait of specific men in a specific context, saw it as a treatise on The Fucked-Up Nature of Men, Those Backstabbing Dogs. In a world where the word “dogs” was as pejorative as “bitches.”

Comments

[asakiyume]

Amen to this whole entry, so hard.

I want to move to this planet where the biggest problem in the media portrayal of women is that they’re too supportive of each other - they’re just supportive of each other fucking everywhere, you can’t go to a blockbuster movie without seeing yet another plot that revolves around how much the female leads love and support each other. God, they’re just flinging themselves in the path of danger all the time, ready and willing to sacrifice themselves because they just love each other so much

PREACH IT.

Going to tweet your entry, because it's awesome.

[osprey_archer]

That paragraph was born to be a pull quote. I probably ought to put it on Tumblr.

[asakiyume]

You really should.

[lilysea]

I want to move to this planet where the biggest problem in the media portrayal of women is that they’re too supportive of each other - they’re just supportive of each other fucking everywhere, you can’t go to a blockbuster movie without seeing yet another plot that revolves around how much the female leads love and support each other. God, they’re just flinging themselves in the path of danger all the time, ready and willing to sacrifice themselves because they just love each other so much. Every single movie in this alternate reality is basically the new Ghostbusters, except for occasional movies about how cataclysmically terrible it is when relationships between women break down, and those are grand and epic tragedy, kind of like Civil War except with girls.

Seriously, though. I would move to that planet.

Oh, me too!

I can only think of a handful of shows where women are (sometimes, not always) supportive of each other!

Supergirl

Good Girls

The Bletchley Circle

[sovay]

The Bletchley Circle

Seconding The Bletchley Circle on general principle; I have not seen the second series, but the first was great. I liked all the main characters.

[osprey_archer]

Oooh! I hadn't heard of Good Girls, but I do love a good heist, so I'll have to check it out.

A few other shows that prominent feature women who are generally supportive of each other:

2 Broke Girls (which has a number of other problems, but the leads are great together)
Call the Midwife
My Little Pony (I know, I know, it's for six-year-olds. I do think the first few seasons work for adults too, though. It's like a magical girls show, but with ponies!)
Sailor Moon (the ur-magical girl show!)
Orphan Black (props to this one for having all kinds of relationship between women: supportive, antagonistic, we don't get along but we have to work together and actually maybe you're not so bad...)
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Sweet Blue Flowers (this is an adorable anime about female friendship & also f/f romance)
Rozen Maiden (anime about living dolls who are supposed to fight to prove who is the best doll)
Kimi ni Todoke (more anime! I don't know if anime is especially good at this or if I'm just good at finding anime that does it)

And a few shows with female characters who have a strong relationship, but it's less front and center:

Parks & Rec
The Borgias, surprisingly enough. (There are two shows about the Borgias & I'm talking about the one with Jeremy Irons)
New Girl (but even here they felt they needed to devote an episode to the idea that girls are passive-aggressive and catty and what Jess & Cece really needed to work out their problems was to brawl like men. Even though none of the guys in the show ever actually solve their relationship problems by brawling like men. I am not convinced that brawling like men is actually any kind of relationship panacea anyway.)
Downton Abbey (with the caveat that I quit after the season 2 finale so who knows what happens after that)
Princess Tutu (yet another anime! with dancing and fairytales)

Possibly I ought to make this its own post...

[kore]

Sign me up for that planet too.

[osprey_archer]

We could probably charter a rocket ship at this rate.

[sovay]

Because honestly. Where do these people live that the operative stereotype about women’s relationships is not “Women are so mean and competitive with each other”? This is absolutely fucking everywhere and it has been all over the movies in particular since at least the fifties.

I have been feeling this way about another aspect of women in film recently—there's been a wave of "At last! Really femme female heroes! Girls who love being girls! Women who are not torn down for liking dresses or being good at sewing!" and on the one hand I understand the double gender standard of our society means that the easiest way to show a woman doing something heroic is to show her doing something traditionally masculine and on the other I feel like, okay, so where is this timeline of valorized gender-non-conforming women everybody seems to know about but me? (It's probably on your planet of supportive women.)

It’s just tiresome to look at the AFI Top 100 and see that one of very few movies on it that is centered around relationships between women is about women being sly and backstabbing.

What are the others? I have not looked at the AFI Top 100 in years.

I remember really liking All About Eve when I saw it about eight years ago; it was at the time the favorite film of a male friend of mine who gave me a copy. (It was his favorite film because he identified with Bette Davis. He is, as far as I can tell, extremely straight, and therefore this is one of the nicest favorite movie facts among my friend group that I know.)

[osprey_archer]

I can see where this appreciation for femme heroines comes from because a lot of the time I do see these traits used to signal that a female character is bad - if a woman comes on screen in a boob shirt and we haven't been specifically primed to root for her (there's our heroine, taking control of her sexuality!) she's probably going to be an antagonist.

But this is not because female characters were ever widely allowed to be gender-noncomforming. It's just that the standard female characters are supposed to conform to now isn't pink-and-glitter femininity, it's - this definition is still a work in progress - but it's something like "hot (but not in a way where it looks like she works at it) and competent (but not threateningly so) and sexually available (but only to the right guy)."

And it helps if at least one of the things she's competent at is traditionally masculine because a lot of people just don't seem to see traditionally feminine skills as... actual skills. They marvel at the work and skill it would take to build a bookshelf but scoff at crocheting an afghan. (Feminine make-work!) It's okay for a female character to do masculine crafts or shoot aliens as long as she looks hot when she does it.

I'm not sure how far this standard carries over to real-life women.

All About Eve may be the only movie on the AFI Top 100 centered around relationships between women. (There are a few others that have important relationships between women - like Melanie & Scarlett in Gone with the Wind.) I was hedging because I haven't seen all the movies so I can't say definitively that it's the only one.

It's actually a really good movie and it offers a more complex view of women than either "always supportive!" or "always bitchy and competitive!" - but the trailer really sold it as "watch women catfight!" which sent me off on the tangent that led to this rant.

[sovay]

But this is not because female characters were ever widely allowed to be gender-noncomforming. It's just that the standard female characters are supposed to conform to now isn't pink-and-glitter femininity, it's - this definition is still a work in progress - but it's something like "hot (but not in a way where it looks like she works at it) and competent (but not threateningly so) and sexually available (but only to the right guy)."

I agree, including with your work-in-progress definition. I think it carries over quite a lot to the real world and it annoys me in both places.

[edit] I want fewer zero-sum games, is what so much of this boils down to for me.

It's actually a really good movie and it offers a more complex view of women than either "always supportive!" or "always bitchy and competitive!" - but the trailer really sold it as "watch women catfight!" which sent me off on the tangent that led to this rant.

There's a level on which I am comforted that classic Hollywood trailers sucked just as much as current Hollywood trailers, but also a level on which not.

[thawrecka]

I loved All About Eve when I watched it! I do want to live in a world that has some much female-centred content that it's impossible to generalise about any of it. That would be swell.

[osprey_archer]

It's a good movie! It's much more nuanced than its trailer would suggest.

[missroserose]

I've often had that discussion with regards to cultural context, and how a perfectly fine movie can still feel socially regressive. Works don't exist in a vacuum, and even if the story is well told, if it's the same story we've heard a million times that reinforces problematic social assumptions, it's a problematic work. It's not that any one given movie doesn't pass the Bechdel test, for instance—there are plenty of fine stories to be told about men!—but the fact that so many movies don't is disheartening, and a challenge to filmmakers to do better.

In any case, I'm glad this one was more interesting than the trailer made it look. And I laughed at the Lewis quote. So true.

[osprey_archer]

I wouldn't necessarily call an individual work problematic just because it falls within a larger problematic trend, but possibly this just reflects the fact that I have heard "problematic" used so many times on Tumblr to mean "this work is THE WORST" that I have a twitchy reaction to using it when I don't mean that something is THE WORST.

Which is sort of ironic because IIRC problematic was supposed to mean "This work has some problems which we can meaningfully unpack, but it's not THE WORST," but the internet is the place for hyperbole, I guess.

[missroserose]

Ooof. Yeah, I spend very little time on Tumblr, and I was definitely under the impression that "problematic" was a term meaning "there are some issues worth discussing here but that doesn't mean it's not a worthwhile piece of art". And here I really liked that there was such a useful and nuanced term. But I think you're right, the Internet is the place nuance goes to die. :(

[littlerhymes]

I love the prelude to the review, and the review. TAKE ME THERE.

[osprey_archer]

If only we could charter a rocket ship, am I right?