Oscar Contenders: The Artist

The lead up to this film was monumental for me. I intensely followed Cannes coverage in May and saw the overwhelming support for this movie which had previously seemed oddly placed in the competition. It quickly became a crowd favorite at many different festivals and for the next six months, I hear the praises for this film. I got the chance to see it at the European Union Film Festival in Ottawa which is apparently something that happens each year. For a film with so much hype, I was worried if it was going to hold up especially after other hyped films did not(more on those in the future). Luckily, it held up wonderfully.

Before I get ahead of myself, I'll briefly tell you what this movie's all about in case you haven't yet heard. The Artist is the tale of a silent movie star and the trouble he has adapting to the "talkies" and how this affects his sense of self. Sounds a bit like Singin' in the Rain or Sunset Boulevard, right? Well, the reason this film has so much attention is because other than a few lines at the very end of the film, the movie is without dialogue. A silent film about silent films. It's also gaining a lot of attention because it's wonderful. In a year that seems filled with tributes to the magic of Old Hollywood, this one stands out not only for the gimmick but also for the great performances from both Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo, both of whom could be heading towards nominations at the Oscars. It's wonderfully directed and lovingly pays tribute to this Hollywood of yesteryear.

The Oscar season gets labelled as a time for pretentious, difficult, boring and serious movies, however, The Artist is none of those which might be the overall downfall of the film. Don't get me wrong, it's wonderful but the plot is simplistic, the pleasures are all shallow and the filmmaking holds nothing particularly groundbreaking aside from it being a silent film released in 2011. So, if you like your Oscar movies to be serious and challenging, this is not the movie for you. However, if you're looking for a fun movie that will remind you or introduce you to the magic of silent cinema, then this is the perfect movie for you. Just because the movie is from France and is silent doesn't make it an art film. It's a fairly mainstream film whose success can only be held back by an audience who refuses to open their mind to a silent film.

Glee or: How Girls Really Don't Run The World

I've been watching Glee since the first season premiered. Not even when it premiered in the fall, but the preview of the pilot they gave in May of 2009 and waited anxiously all summer for this show to start. I've seen every episode(except parts of the Christmas one) and it somehow took me three seasons to realize the complete misogyny that is this show.

There are a ridiculous amount of female characters on this show and each one of them is treated horribly by the show. It doesn't give them any respect and casts them into two categories: invisible, controlled girl or insane and needing to be controlled. The easiest way to do this is to run through the characters.

We've got:

• Rachel, who is overly ambitious, thinks only of herself and needs to be tough the importance of teamwork by her boyfriend and Mr. Shue.
• Quinn, who is rude and bitchy unless she's in a stable relationship. She makes stupid decisions by cheating and becoming pregnant. She must be taken down for trying to be prom queen by the hyper masculine Lauren, controlled by various boyfriends and once she rebels against all these forces against her, she is permanently removed from the glee club and not permitted to see her daughter until she acts like a proper woman.
• Tina is a non-entity on the show except for when she is being claimed an anti-Christ of sorts by the principal due to her slightly Goth nature of dress.
• Mercedes is completely ignored by the club and when she asks for anything, she becomes a demanding diva who is unable to handle anything but 100% attention and needs to be taught that not everything is about her when clearly nothing is about her.
• Santana is a sexually free bisexual of sorts who has an interesting time trying to discover her sexuality. Of course, she's overly feisty and conniving so she must also be kicked out of the glee club to punish her but let back in to allow her bitchy comments since her only use is to make others feel bad about themselves.
• Brittany is seen as completely dumb and while she tries to understand the world around her and gain some sort of empowerment, it only is achieved through unnecessary short skirts and needs to be constantly told of her intellectual inadequacy by males from her boyfriend to her teacher.

Those are just the teenage characters and they do not display any positive images of femininity for the largely female audience. This is clearly an issue with the show and while you may think, oh, it's a show of caricatures, you can't blame that on sexism. Well, why is it then that Artie was not even reprimanded in the slightest for looking down on Kurt for his slightly feminine audition and his second audition was laughed at by Artie for reasons that must only be the awkwardness of seeing an overtly flamboyant and homosexual man being intimate with a woman, which is a completely homophobic reaction. But nobody cares that Artie is portraying this behaviour and he is allowed to assert his masculine dominance over Kurt and any female character he sees fit to judge. The same is seen with Coach Beast who is a completely masculine character and portrays how masculinity is perfectly fine within the Glee universe, and in our society, but any sort of femininity is to be laughed at and mocked. 

For a show that claims to be so completely about including people and showing positive images of homosexuality and opening people's minds, the show might want to show women and femininity in a positive light before it makes statements about being a positive representation of anything.