Week 10 - Bachelorette

It was International Women’s Day last week and, good God, the media were all over it. Lots of strong, inspirational, aspirational icons dangled in front of us, each publication vying for our attention. It iss appreciated, but we’re still missing the mark: women just need to be allowed to live. Literally, all women want to do is survive on their own terms.

Coincidentally, I watched a lot of female driven movies this week, with a lot of archetypes to play with and analyse. In hindsight, not one of these films had a woman of colour in their main cast and the heteronormativity was through the roof. It’s dizzyingly boring but unsurprising – out of the last four weeks, there have been two people of colour in the main casts of the seventeen different films I’ve watched. We need to strive for representation in the media at all turns, using the privileges we have to highlight that the world on screen – as much as it is brilliant and vital and grounding – just doesn’t portray our lives.

Women in particular have been sold a pup since Eve was told that hair was an appropriate substitute for clothes. Be thin, be chaste, be a slut, be invisible. Only since fairly recently have women been able to be as average as the men, and the reaction has been shockingly positive. But this is just a version of a new persona: the ‘cool girl’ cometh.

But women weren’t having it. We’ve worked too hard for too little for too long to have our individuality rubbed out for a fake persona. But cool girls are fun! They’re so chill with everything! Chill is a cancer on society, and does nobody any favours. Since Jennifer Lawrence started fetishising normality (eating food and saying ‘fuck’ is not a personality trait, FYI), there’s been a real drive to tell the other side of the story: showing women being high maintenance, knowing what they want, saying ‘no’ to things they don’t like.

Bachelorette illustrates four women, who regret the mistakes they make when they’re drunk; who take recreational drugs and do not do well on them; who work hard at a job they hate; who are unattractive messes, not just clumsy supermodels (Mindy Kaling writes a scathing indictment of this trope in her partial memoir, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?).

I really liked this film. Bachelorette reflected the girls in my life perfectly: unfinished, vulnerable women who cry and jump to conclusions and say horrible things to and about each other but who would jump into the abyss for their fellow warriors.

When the film was being promoted, Rebel Wilson was at the helm of all interviews, but in reality, she was a minor character, this is not Wilson’s film, but Kirsten Dunst’s, who has been on teen screen queen trajectory since her dreamy portrayal of a girl under fire in The Virgin Suicides. Her portrayal of vindictive doer Regan is not what one would call a protagonist. Regan has no time for weakness and knows what she wants and how to get. If Dunst’s character was a man, he would be treated like a god, but as a woman, Regan is forced into a pigeonhole that she has no desire to occupy. Sound familiar?

Naturally, this film was trounced into the dirt by the glitzier, funnier and generally more appealing Bridesmaids, but if you want something that is going to make you wince at its familiarity and show you how women actually live their lives, Bachelorette is your ticket.

Films of the Week: Sweeney Todd, Bachelorette, Tiny Furniture, Serial Mom, Walk of Shame, Teeth