That’s No Lady--That’s Our Nightmare

A backlash against feminism has been brewing for years, and now it seems to have reached its full, rancid flowering. You can find plenty of evidence of this misogynistic spirit in a number of prominent pop culture events--in the lyrics of Eminem, in the Hillary Clinton-bashing books that have tumbled off the presses lately, and in a brutal new style of pornography that Martin Amis documented in a recent article in Talk magazine.

In his troubling new book, “Killer Woman Blues,” cultural critic Benjamin DeMott expresses alarm over the growing army of truculent women visible in movies and TV. A distinct whiff of misogyny suffuses many current movies, from edgy independent pictures to splashy studio products.

Killer women run rampant in these movies; they are raging egomaniacs and ruthless control freaks. Not only do they stomp on the meek, henpecked men in their lives, but they prod their mates to commit murder and mayhem.

Prejudice against women is hardly a new spectacle on the silver screen. In the ‘30s and ‘40s career women were often (though not always) presented as neurotic ice maidens, while in the ‘50s Hollywood enshrined the cheerful, subservient housewife. But there was something more innocent in these movies’ biases; they blindly perpetuated widely held cultural stereotypes that few people thought to challenge. In today’s climate, when filmmakers have lived through a clamorous feminist revolution, movies that malign strong women have a shriller reactionary undertone. There’s a more blatant political agenda in these pictures, even when it isn’t fully conscious on the part of the filmmakers.

At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, a number of attention-grabbing movies centered on angry, domineering, destructive women who aroused the filmmakers’ ire--and probably reflected stirrings of social turmoil in burgs a long way from Park City, Utah. One of the sharpest of the Sundance movies, “Scotland, PA,” was a witty update of “Macbeth.” Maura Tierney gives a scathingly funny performance as the Lady Macbeth of a fast food franchise, a trailer-trash waitress who spurs her slow-witted husband (James LeGros) to murder in order to satisfy her greedy fantasies. Of course, Shakespeare provided the inspiration for the character, but in this incarnation she emerges as a more pitiless harpy than even the Bard imagined.

This same harsh view of female malevolence was reflected in other Sundance offerings. In the movie that won the Grand Jury Prize, “The Believer,” the main character is a young self-hating Jew who joins a neo-Nazi movement. But the mastermind behind the fascist cause is a cold-hearted, Teutonic dominatrix played by Theresa Russell.

Some other Sundance movies tried to cast their female characters in a marginally more sympathetic light, but they still came off as rather frightening figures. “In the Bedroom,” which deservedly won a special acting award for the superb performances of Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson, might be described as “Ordinary People” crossed with “Death Wish.” Spacek and Wilkinson play an upscale, repressed New England couple who are dismayed when their 21-year-old son gets embroiled in an affair with an older working-class woman (Marisa Tomei) separated from her loutish husband.

When her estranged husband kills the boy and is then released due to a legal snafu, the middle-aged parents decide to seek revenge. The well-meaning doctor played by Wilkinson is the emotional heart of the film, whereas Spacek delineates a far colder and less appealing figure. In one highly charged scene, Wilkinson accuses her of being so voraciously controlling that she drove their son to rebel by plunging into a dangerous romance with a more hot-blooded woman.

Another Sundance prize-winner, “The Deep End,” also tells the story of a ferociously controlling mother (Tilda Swinton) who is willing to flout the law in order to protect her family. When her son accidentally kills his gay lover, Swinton springs into action to conceal the crime.

Like “In the Bedroom,” this film suggests that the mother’s overbearing nature is what prompted her son to enter into a dangerous liaison in the first place. And as she hatches a methodical plot to camouflage the killing, Swinton seems compulsively driven rather than warmly maternal. She resembles a lioness ready to tear at the jugular of anyone who threatens her cubs. The most sympathetic character in the movie is a male blackmailer who proves to be far more humane than the icy, calculating mother.

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Sundance often offers an intriguing peek at emerging trends in the movie marketplace. And indeed this same mood of fear and antipathy directed toward strong women can also be glimpsed in some recent and upcoming mainstream releases.

The recently opened “Saving Silverman,” for example, flaunts one of the most monstrous female characters ever to appear in a supposedly lightweight teen comedy. In this misbegotten piece of moronity, Amanda Peet plays a predatory psychologist who gets her claws into an innocent young man (Jason Biggs) and turns him into her love slave. When his two best friends (Steve Zahn and Jack Black) try to rescue Biggs by kidnapping Peet, we are treated to repeated scenes of her being battered and abused, which the filmmakers seem to consider just punishment for her castrating behavior.

“Saving Silverman” is not the last gasp of Hollywood misogyny. You will see the same vicious anti-female fervor in at least two other movies due for release this spring. In “One Night at McCool’s,” Liv Tyler plays a heartless vamp who wrecks the lives of three hapless men (Matt Dillon, Paul Reiser and John Goodman). And in “Blow,” based on the true story of George Jung (Johnny Depp), the drug dealer who became the first American conduit to the Colombian cocaine cartels, the villains of the piece are not the Colombian drug lords, but two of the hateful women in George’s life--his grasping, sluttish wife (Penelope Cruz) and his prunish mother (Rachel Griffiths).

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The portrayal of George’s mother is particularly revealing. Whereas his father (Ray Liotta) is presented as an ineffectual but loving mensch, his mother comes across as a mean-spirited, status-seeking shrew who cavalierly sends her son to jail in order to protect her reputation. Her motherly instincts are nonexistent, apparently a victim of her self-centered nature and drive for a better life.

I am certainly not trying to suggest that every female character has to be a saintly role model. That would leave no room for the tasty femmes fatales immortalized by film noir. These ruthless killers--from Mary Astor in “The Maltese Falcon” and Barbara Stanwyck in “Double Indemnity” to Kathleen Turner in “Body Heat” and Linda Fiorentino in “The Last Seduction”--are some of the most delectable characters ever created.

The difference between those characters and the women you find in the new movies is that those film noir adventuresses were seductive, magnetic and often quite brilliant. Even if they exuded more than a touch of evil, we secretly savored the cunning with which they outsmarted the men under their thumbs. In “Body Heat,” for example, Turner’s masterly manipulation of the slightly dim lawyer played by William Hurt left us grinning in admiration.

In other words, the most memorable film noir villainesses were formidable and unmistakably alluring. You search in vain for some of the same charisma in the new killer women of the movies. Instead they are unfeeling, unimaginative, unattractive gorgons, and you’re thrown out of the movies to ponder the disturbing cultural malaise that is producing this virulent wave of revulsion toward women who want to take charge.

The new conservative leaders eager to strip away many women’s rights may derive surprising fortification from a popular culture that demonizes independent, strong-willed women. Movies, after all, aren’t created in a vacuum; they express a rage that probably won’t be contained within the safe confines of your neighborhood theater.