bechdel taser: dr strangelove, wars don’t start in the kitchen
Until Wednesday, I had never seen Dr Strangelove. As a film student, this is something you reveal only in alcohol-fuelled games of Truth or Dare. The Astor, Melbourne’s deco-era cinema with Depression-esque claims to seat-comfort, gave it a week-long season recently. So, I stuffed a cushion in my back-pack and joined some cohorts to take part in all the Kubrick-Sellers glory.
I don’t really expect a movie made in 1963 to pass The Bechdel Test. Feminism really had nothing to do with my attendance that night. But there is one female character in Dr Strangelove, and in her sole scene, she wears only undergarments.
Still, I feel like we can claim this one. Dr Strangelove sets out to be a scathing indictment of humanity; our obsession with the arms race, and the Mutually Assured Destruction that will follow. By virtually ignoring women, however, it becomes a searing invective against the stupidity of men.
Watch it, it’s hilarious. Watch it with that in mind to avoid feeling like there are too many dicks on the dancefloor.
As the film ended with Vera Lynn singing ‘We’ll Meet Again’, I decided that what the world really needs is a contemporary equivalent, dealing with Climate Change and whatnot. A friend reminded me the Cold War went on for decades after Dr Strangelove—I reminded him that our appreciation of Dr Strangelove has gone on decades longer still.
You don’t want me proselytising to you about politics. I voted Greens in the federal election purely because I lived in a safe Liberal seat (Higgins, ex-Peter Costello), and their candidate’s name was Hibbins. HIBBINS FOR HIGGINS. I’ve written essays on why it’s perfectly acceptable to get all of your political information from Good News Week and The Chaser, clausing that really they should be on more often, so I stay better informed.
I do, however, have a clitoral hard-on for politics-through-the-lens-of-the-media. But both politics and the film industry are preposterously testosterone fuelled. I heard a great joke that you can always tell a movie is set in the future, because the president is black or female. Because we don’t live in Battlestar Galactica, when we did score ourselves a female Prime Minister, it was all of ten seconds before discussion turned to her hair, clothes and fruit bowl.
When the film isn’t science-fiction, and the world leader stays white and male*, the Academy loves politics. It makes them feel informed and important. This also explains the popularity of biopics. It shocks me a movie about Bill Clinton is yet to be made, because his sax-work would make it a politico-musico-biopic. Perhaps the screenwriter keeps retyping it because at the end of the day they realise the characters can’t stop referring to each other as Oscar.
I have no great fondness for Margaret Thatcher, though my Meryl Streep obsession borders on Cullen**. So, I’m excited to see The Iron Lady. I’m also cringing pre-emptively at how many misogyny-jokes will basically read:
“What, Iron Lady? She didn’t use an iron once!”
Politics is man’s work. This lesson was relearned when the day after seeing Dr Strangelove, I caught George Clooney’s Oscar-baiting Ides of March. Timing-wise, it would have made more sense to release this in March, but the Academy has a short memory and that post-ceremony month is reserved for films like Norbit. I would have preferred it to be released in March.
The film is nicely photographed, well-paced (though ‘thriller’ is a stretch) and Bechdel-failing. There are three female characters, but none of them speak to each other.
In one unwarranted montage, Evan Rachel Wood’s Molly is denied a conversation with a female nurse through the score. She serves her clichéd martyr role with dignity, but it exists to show off Clooney’s relationship-ethos, and advance Stephen Meyers’s (Ryan Gosling) development. In its own right, her character arc is illogical and borderline demeaning.
Of course, having a character arc puts her ahead of the other female characters. Jennifer Ehle, as Governor Morris’ (Clooney) wife Cindy, is given one speaking scene, only with her husband. Marisa Tomei’s Ida is a journalist for the New York Times and foils the back-room secrecy the campaign folk are relying on. I’m fairly sure we’re supposed to hate her.
Like Strangelove, Ides uses ‘We’ll Meet Again’, but its despair at the fallibility of humans in public life has none of the good Dr’s charms. In 47 years, we’ve gone from ‘men will ruin everything’, to ‘most men will ruin things, but not without the help of women.’
Equality, at last!
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*Queens excepted. After all, if a higher power wants them to point a sceptre, not even Walt Disney can argue.
**Streep is an actual Queen. FACT.
