Hmm, should we start a new thread for articles ABOUT Interstellar? It seems like they're going to be a lot which aren't actually reviews.
This is on AwardsDaily. Though Sasha Stone hasn't given her review yet (and sounds like she isn't crazy about Interstellar), she got very angry about another article (which I hadn't seen) in which a bunch of male critics claim the women in Interstellar are all emotional wrecks. So she defends the way women are presented in Interstellar. I don't think anything I haven't marked spoiler really is a spoiler, but... even the spoilers are very general and not specific
Interstellar: Of Women and Their Emotions
Of all of the things written about Interstellar over the past few days the one that has disturbed me the most is the notion that the women in the film are ruled by their emotions and therefore can’t be trusted. This was mosst recently brought up by the New York Times Michael Cieply’s piece which exists, I suppose, to show how a frontrunner can fall from such a high place. I guess that doesn’t bode well for the other frontrunners waiting in the wings, the article suggests, like Unbroken and American Sniper. Beware the hype. It quotes David Poland, Kris Tapley, Steve Pond and Alonso Duralde.
The first thing to note is that Cieply only quotes men. Plenty of women write about the Oscars (like me, Anne Thompson, Susan Wloszczyna, Thelma Adams, etc) and have written plenty about Interstellar – but Cieply focuses only on the male point of view. And that’s fine, expected even, these days. If it only talked about the cock and balls of show business, the opening weekend and international box office that would be fine. But they go into the territory of negative female stereotypes without referencing a single female writer. I think that’s a problem.
Here is what Cieply wrote – in a piece, mind you, that only references male writes — I MEAN ONLY – no female critic, Oscar pundit, journalist, “editor at large” – nada, zip, niente:
Over at the website The Wrap, by contrast, the reviewer Alonso Duralde loved the film’s beginning, which he found “challenging, provocative and gorgeous.” But that last hour this is a bigger spoiler
Wrongheadedness notwithstanding, Mr. Duralde’s Wrap colleague Steve Pond, also writing on Monday, added to the confusion by insisting that Ms. Chastain “stands out as a supporting actress contender” for her time-shifting turn as Mr. McConaughey’s scientist-daughter. But Mr. Pond, too, thought the film came up short. “It isn’t the one thing that this year’s race has been missing: a front runner,” he wrote.
I’m not really sure why Mr. Cieply felt the need to “go there” but I thought it was worthy of addressing from the female perspective, since that is clearly the thing missing here. It is a commonly held MISPERCEPTION that women are irrational because they are emotional. Whether they are irrational or not has little to do with their being emotional, but rather, to do with their being human.
As to Interstellar, I’ve heard (and debunked) this complaint that the women in the film are irrational. They are emotional, yes, but they are capable
You can criticize that aspect of it but you certainly cannot and should not criticize the Jessica Chastain character for exhibiting emotion.
Anne Hathaway, were she also cast as a man, doing EXACTLY the same things would get a complete pass. No one would even notice the emotion. War Horse? All of Steven Spielberg’s films? We can start there if you’d like but I can probably name 100 films that star men being emotional, even men being irrational while being emotional.
Emotion is a good thing. It doesn’t mean a woman is more rational because she shows no emotion. No one in Interstellar shows more emotion, nor operates from a more emotional place, than Matthew McConaughey. If Murph had been cast as a man, if he did exactly what Jessica Chastain – or the kid who plays her – do in Interstellar no one would say a goddamn thing about it. But because it’s a woman, we get the low hum of criticism that women should never show any emotion so that they can appear more like men.
The least Cieply could have done if he planned to enter that terrain was get a woman’s point of view. Anne Thompson is a good place to start or any female critics writing about the film – Dana Stevens, Stephanie Zacharek.
Here are a few great female characters who got shit done while also showing emotion:
Holly Hunter in Broadcast News
Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty
Sigourney Weaver in Alien and Aliens
Diane Keaton in Reds
Faye Dunaway in Network
Emotion is never a bad thing in any character on film. Where the problems arise is when that emotion becomes irrational. Of course, when it’s a male character acting irrationally because of emotion that’s just called being male. Like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Like Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate or Kramer vs. Kramer.
There are so few films with women in them at all this year, where the women are doing something other than propping up the male character.
Of those that remain, the complaints are coming fast and furiously, even with a movie like Interstellar where a conscious choice was made
has to be destroyed, made into something ugly.
Gone Girl and The Homesman are under similar attacks for negative portrayals of women, never mind that they are full of diverse portrayals of every kind of woman. If this keeps up there will be no films with women in them at all, which is maybe the whole point?
The problem with adhering to a politically correct standard in art is that it greatly limits the array of characters and stories that can be told. If they aren’t “right” they get picked apart, chewed up and spit out. If they are “right” they are dismissed as being too politically correct. Someone should put out a handbook for filmmakers about what you can and what you can’t do or say. Me, I prefer there to be much much more stories out there of imperfect characters as long as they are well written.
Offensive portrayals of women, to me, are those that exist ONLY to prop up the male characters. Women who are only sex objects, designed for the pleasure of men and nothing more (a great send up of this trope in Blade Runner). But when you start to nitpick you eventually obliterate the diversity and freedom of storytelling and artistic expression. That’s a kind of fascism.
Maybe the status quo wants what it wants and women need not apply. After all, only men write about the Oscars, apparently, those emotionless, rational creatures who never shoot up schools, murder their wives and girlfriends, have emotional breakdowns in public, start and perpetuate wars. But they don’t cry so that gets them off the hook for being untrustworthy.
Of the things that are wrong with Interstellar, it’s portrayal of women is not one of them, in my irrational, emotional, invisible opinion.
