By Claire

Last night, I watched the Australian broadcast of FOX’s production of Grease Live, and boy oh boy did it resurface some emotions. 

Obviously, these emotions started with my love of live theatre and the bitter realisation that I’ll most likely never be in a production of Grease now that I’m 2 years out of high school. Then arose my new-found love for Jordan Fisher, the guy who played Doody (Hello babe, where have they been hiding you?). All of these emotions are evidently displayed in my live-tweets of the 3 hour broadcast, (including one that was broadcasted on the television—Mumma, I’m famous!) where the most potent and obvious emotion I was feeling was, OH MY GOD, I FREAKING LOVE GREASE.

This isn’t new, I have always loved Grease, and this love would come and go, resurfacing from time to time. In Year 11, studying for my Studio Art exam, in Year 12, backstage at West Side Story gossiping on the rumours of doing Grease the next year (note: I wouldn’t have been able to do it anyway, since I was heading to University, but the excitement was still there.  They actually ended up doing Legally Blonde instead. CAN I LIVE?!) And this glorious picture of the Pink Ladies, which represents most of my emotions, has been my cover photo on Facebook for about two years now.

 So obviously, my Grease-lover card is in check.

Grease, however, is a Feminist Nightmare. The backdrop of 1950s America is the hub of blatant sexism, particularly amongst the T-Birds. The T-Bird side of Those Summer Nights perpetuates rape culture and the sexist notion that girls are only good if they put out. The song is also riddled with the damsel in distress trope. Furthermore, the T-Birds pressure Danny into thinking he can’t show his true emotions for Sandy when they reunite, turning him into an outright dick. Let him love his girl, dammit.

The T-Birds during Those Summer Nights

There is also the constant reminder that you need to change in order for people to like you: Sandy at the carnival in the infamous black spandex number, Danny joining the track team; naming and shaming Frenchy for being a Beauty School Drop Out like Frenchie is a wounded animal and needs to scurry along back to high school because Ya Blew It, Kid; slut-shaming Rizzo for being a promiscuous woman, and virgin-shaming Sandy for being a “good girl”…

Sandy's famous transformation is complete

And I could go on.

Grease has many faults, but despite acknowledging this, I can’t help but to love it. It seems hard to justify, but bear with me.

Is it the dreamy 1950s costuming and aesthetic that I have always loved (sexism aside)? The catchy songs that I seem to know all the words to and will always make me happy? It’s definitely both of these things, but most of all, I love the Pink Ladies.

Not only did I need a Pink Ladies jacket, like, yesterday, but no matter how flawed they are, they have redeeming qualities which I have always remembered and carried with me.

Frenchy, who is nice to the new girl without the bat of an eyelash, and continues to root for her despite Rizzo’s immediate distaste for her. And who can forget the legendary “Men are rats” wisdom I hold with me to this day?

Jan, who loves to eat and sing along to the toothpaste ad, and ends up going to the dance with a guy who likes her just as she is (“I think there’s more to you than fat” even though she is not fat at all, thank you very much Mr. Putzie).

Sandy, who sticks up for Rizzo when Patty Simcox slut-shames her, despite Rizzo being less than friendly previously. The girl who is teased for sticking to her “good girl” values, and feels like she has to change in order to be worthy of Danny, in a country that isn’t her own.

Rizzo, who is unfairly treated because she likes to have control over her body and take charge of her destiny. There Are Worse Things I Could Do, while perpetuating heteronormativity and the idea that men-and-women-need-to-be-together-and-that’s-the-end-of-that, is heartbreaking, demonstrating the pressures and stereotypes placed on Rizzo as a woman who enjoys fooling around, who, like Danny, feels like she can’t display her true emotions.

I love these women. And I will hold them dear to my heart, flaws and all. I will resume my search for a Pink Ladies jacket on Etsy or EBay, try to wear as much pink as I can and be singing the entirety of the Grease soundtrack for the rest of time, because Grease may be inherently flawed, and problematic, and made in the 70s, set in the 50s, perpetuating antiquated gender-roles but gosh darn it, I love it so.

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Cause a Cine do not own any pictures used in this post.

By Zoë

Mad Max: Fury Road and Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. It’s hard to dispute that the two films were both critical and commercial successes. Furthermore, they both achieved this while featuring well-written, complex female leads.

Both films could be considered ‘feminist’ in that they starred female characters who were not sexual objects, were multi-dimensional, and whose narrative arcs didn’t revolve solely around men. However, Fury Road and The Force Awakens had completely different approaches to the representation of gender and sex, and I want to explore this further.

In The ForceAwakens, gender does not matter. By which I mean, you could swap any of the male characters to female, or vice versa, and they would remain largely the same. The plucky desert orphan with a knack for piloting could have been a man. The runaway Storm Trooper could have been a woman. The characters’ defining traits were their skills, their personalities and whether they were on the side of good or evil. This is excellent, in my opinion, because it sends the message that it’s not your gender that is important, but what you do. Considering the number of children who watched this film, it’s a wonderful message for them to absorb.

This ‘gender-blind’ approach is often utilised in science-fiction, a genre which, owing to its fantastical nature, can disregard the prejudices of our own society. Jane Espenson, a writer on shows including Firefly, summed it up thusly: “If we can’t write diversity into sci-fi, then what’s the point? You don’t create new worlds to give them all the same limits of the old ones.”

Fury Road, however, takes a completely different approach. In Fury Road, gender – or rather, sex – does matter. It matters entirely, because the oppressions faced by the women in Fury Road occur explicitly because they are women.

Sure, Furiosa is never treated differently because she’s a woman. There’s no holding back from Max when they fight each other, and Immortan Joe’s men respect her command until they realise she’s gone rogue. But let us be clear – Immortan Joe’s kingdom is a patriarchy. It is ruled by men, and women suffer from their abuse. The abuse of the women that Furiosa rescues cannot be separated from their status as women. They are raped and forced to bear children, kept in sexualised outfits and essentially treated as chattel. Their inferior status is inscribed upon their female bodies. You could not swap the characters from male to female and retain George Miller’s highly political message about the abuse of women.

While The Force Awakens eschews gender politics, Fury Road confronts them head-on. The heroes of The Force Awakens fight the Dark Side, the heroes of Fury Road fight the patriarchy. They escape male oppression and search for a female-only utopia. Furiosa is a member of the “Vulvalini”, honestly.

I enjoyed both films immensely, as a film-lover and as a feminist. The difference was, The Force Awakens made me forget about sexism for two hours. (What a glorious two hours that was.) Fury Road demanded that I think about it. When it comes to gender equality, The Force Awakens shows us a world we’d like to live in. Fury Road, by contrast, shows us a representation of the world we live in now and just how devastating it is.

The oppression of women is an issue that we all need to be paying attention to. So thank-you, Fury Road, for making it the focus of a big, popular film. But sometimes, thinking about it all is unbearable. So thank-you, too, The Force Awakens, for giving us a fantasy to escape into. When it comes to female-centric films, we need both kinds. 

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Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is now showing in cinema.
Mad Max: Fury Road is nominated for Best Motion Picture at the 2016 Academy Awards. 

Cause a Cine do not take any credit for the images used in this post. 

By Claire

It's why were all here, really, but female directors are seldom talked about in mainstream media. In effect, the more casual viewer often say to me that they do not know of many women directors. Even in one of my cinema studies classes last year, students, too, had trouble making a list of female directors. 

I stumbled across this list of essential films by female filmmakers last year, and as a budding women in film activist, more titles surprised me than I would care to admit. 

When you really think about it, you may have seen more female-directed movies than you know:

Across the Universe (2007)

Directed by Julie Taymor

The Matrix (1999)
Directed by Lana and Lily Wachowski 

Whip It (2009)

Directed by Drew Barrymore

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Directed by Valerie Faris & Jonathan Dayton

Thirteen (2003)
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke

You've Got Mail/Sleepless in Seattle
Directed by Nora Ephron

Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
Directed by Gurinder Chada

Wayne's World (1992)
Directed by Penelope Spheeris

Clueless (1995)/
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Directed by Amy Heckerling

An Education (2009)
Directed by Lone Scherfig

We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
Directed by Lynne Ramsay

American Psycho (2000)
Directed by Mary Harron

Selma (2014)
Directed by Ava DuVernay

You can check out the rest of the list here

Or join the pledge to watch #52FilmsByWomen, along with more lists and resources

What's your favourite film by a female filmmaker?

By Claire

I almost didn't want to write this post, because I feel like I am just constantly repeating myself, but if we don't get angry, how will The Academy learn?

Last night the 2016 Oscar nominations came out, and people can say all they want about "awards don't matter" or "the Oscars aren't relevant anymore", they really, really do, because it highlights and showcases what the industry deems "worthy" and "important." 

Last year the Oscars received backlash for their blatant omission of people of colour and women in their nominations with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. You think they would have learned by now, but if you can believe it, this year is worse!

Every actor nominated in either a lead or supporting role is white.

No women were nominated for Achievement in Direction, and none of the 8 films nominated for Best Motion Picture were directed by a woman (a drop from last year's Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay, which even then, was only nominated for two awards).

It has been six years since a woman was nominated for the direction category, which was Katheryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker. 

This is all a major issue, as it actively demonstrates the systematic oppression of women and people of colour in the film industry. If women and people of colour aren't nominated, celebrated or acknowledge for their work in the industry, how can any women or people of colour know that they can direct, write, star in a movie, and be recognised for it? 

And it's not like 2015 didn't have the talent. 2015 was an amazing year for women in film, but the Academy don't seem to recognise it. 

I was talking to my latina friend, getting angry about the nominations. Like me, she is by no means surprised, but nonetheless disappointed in this years selection. As she pointed about, apart from the foreign films, Alejandro González Iñárritu is the only latino nominated, and no latina women are there at all, "I'm so TIRED of Latina women not being nominated for things because THEY'RE NOT IN THEM." 

Which therein lies the importance of viability and representation, which The Oscars, arguably the most important awards for mainstream Motion Pictures, constantly denies. 

People of colour aren't being nominated because they aren't being cast in any films, because they aren't being nominated and the cycle goes on. Or at least the films aren't being supported, because they are deemed "too risky" to take on. Which is stupid. 

Women driven and diverse cast movies make money in the box office, and are successful (never mind beautifully made, impactful and a CRAFT). But The Academy ignore's this, and thus the industry ignores this.

You can read the whole nominations list here, and Congratulations to Room, Brooklyn and Mad Max: Fury Road for their Motion Picture nominations, and to the following female directed  documentaries and foreign films nominated, which seems to be the only place we're seen: 

“What Happened, Miss Simone?” by Liz Garbus for Best Documentary Feature. 

“Chau, beyond the Lines” by Courtney Marsh, “A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness” by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and “Last Day of Freedom” by Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman for Best Documentary - Short Subject.

“Mustang” France* by Deniz Gamze Ergüven for Best Foreign Film.

I am so rooting for you. 

By Claire

Rowan Blanchard is one of the most important young feminists of our time, and one of my top inspirations and role models for 2016.

At only 14, Rowan plays popular tv couple of the 90’s, Cory and Topanga’s, daughter, Riley Matthews on the Disney Channel hit Girl Meets World, (a spin off from the ABC 90s classic Boy Meets World, and discussed on the blog in this post).

In the world of constant connection and social media, Rowan uses her Twitter account to tweet and re-tweet articles and inform her 330 thousand followers of intersectional feminism, LGBTQ+ rights (which extends beyond being able to marry), depression in teenagers and the Black Lives Matter movement. She writes about these issues in the captions on her Instagram account, which has a staggering 3.3 million followers. 

Her writing provides an insight and eloquence I hope to one day achieve myself. 

At the start of this year, in the caption of a short video posted on her account, Rowan mentions going through depression in the past year, her lesson to live unapologetically, embrace her teenage emotions and support for all teenagers. In a society where teenagers are condemned for being emotional, are pressured into having their lives figured out, as young and foolish, Rowan embraces teenager’s right to be exactly who they are, complicated and full of emotions as they are, including herself. 

However, it seems that every day I am more and more inspired, and fall more and more in love with her.

In 2015, Rowan spoke on “gender inequality in youths” at the US National Committee for United Nations Women Annual Conference with Team HeFor She. The video of this speech is linked in the profile of her Instagram account, highlighting the importance gender equality is to her. 

You can read the transcript of her speech here, so expertly written and spoken, as well as other responses such as her mini essay on the term “white feminism”, and sexism on the red-carpet. 

Alongside friend and feminist trailblazer Amandla Stenberg, Rowan was named Feminist Celebrity of the Year by the Ms. Foundation for Women. These two were placed number one, an top of an impressive list of ten including Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Lavern Cox and Viola Davis. 

Rowan Blanchard is a stunning, eloquent, educated, mature and beautiful girl who inspires me to do better every day. You can catch her on the Disney Channel show Girl Meets World, and follow her on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.