I know a lot of people in the femosphere are tired of the ongoing Diablo Cody coverage, but Miss Wizzle puts together a list of ten reasons for feminists to love her.
I was cynical about her at first, but after the eighth boring-Saturday-afternoon viewing of Juno on cable, she’s starting to grow on me.
We can all fight about it in the comments now.
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I just can’t forgive “Honest to blog!” What does that even mean? I dug Juno, and tend to enjoy Cody’s interviews.
What “so-called feminist websites” has she been reading??
I support Cody, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a love/hate relationship with what she produces. That’s part of putting stuff out there that’s diverse…..that’s part of making entertainment.
I can’t stand Juno. However, that may just be a product of being an ungrateful adoptee and listening to how many first mother felt about that movie.
What Athenia said. There certainly is a lot of fighting on feminist websites, but it’s usually about more serious things than calling someone a “slut” or “haggard.”
In any case, Cody doesn’t seem like a deep thinker.
What thetroubleis said. I’m not crazy about Cody’s “I slummed as a stripper so I could write about the other strippers with contempt” vibe, but this adoptee actively loathes Juno.
I have never seen a movie pretend so hard to be about teen sex, teen pregnancy and adoption without being about anything at all. The script is superficial, cowardly (here comes “the abortion decision”–duck, screenplay, duck!), and downright squicky in places–Juno’s incredibly inappropriate relationship with the manchild she intended to give her baby to, for instance, or the fact that she had a pre-birth relationship with the would-be adoptive couple at all. Cody couldn’t quite bring herself to let anything really bad happen to Mary S–er, Juno, and this hamstrung the movie for me.
I suspect, given the scene where she puled off the road and cried, that Our Heroine was supposed to have a character arc. Nice try, but no. I didn’t give a damn about any character in this movie, although I have hella respect for the actors involved for their being able to make anything of the script at all.
And yeah, “Honest to blog?” “Your eggo is preggo?” “Phuket, Thailand?” Violent eyeroll.
Sorry, but I thought Juno was a piece of lousy, stereotyped crap that didn’t have a single feminist idea. And since when does saying “fuck” make one a feminist?
“And since when does saying “fuck” make one a feminist?”
I’m pretty sure the ‘f word’ they’re talking about in the article is “feminist” – or possibly “feminism”.
I like Diablo Cody. I didn’t think Juno was the best thing ever, but it was fun. And that’s really all I expect from my movies, that they be fun and not be full of Apatowesque humor.
“The F-word” refers to the word feminist. And yes, never trust someone who brags about being a feminist: they’re trying to sell you something. Same with anyone that uses the word ’subversive:’ it’s the new “Oh, it’s only ironically [racist/sexist/homophobic]!”
And hey, if she’s so hung up on sexist stereotypes, maybe she should stop using them. Otherwise she’s just another one of feminism’s Obamas.
I dislike her making of The United States of Tara, too. Tara’s a gigantic collection of walking caricatures. It’s incredibly rude to pretend that someone (whether singular or plural) is a one dimensional stereotype. There’s a few scenes with redeeming qualities, but on the whole not much. Another thing about the show is that the plurality is obvious. Hello More Stereotypes. It’s usually subtle to the 9th degree, otherwise People Get Hurt. I can count on one hand the people who noticed something was up when we exchanged places/had internal communication, and they certainly didn’t leap to the conclusion of ‘mpd/did!’. And while everyone in general has parts of themselves that can be considered stereotypical I’d like to think feminists reject the idea that people themselves are walking stereotypes. It isn’t possible to rate the ‘wholeness’ of a self from the outside looking in but single people seem to forget that the second people not like them come up. Since the popular concept of plurality is ‘broken, tiny little bits with little rhyme and less reason, certainly a hindrance to adult relationships of any kind’, based on that backround, the show seems to exist to dismiss wholeness + plurality.
Another problem is that ‘alters’ were showing up because Tara went off her medication & that they were under control when she was on meds. Medication doesn’t suppress ’switching’.
I’ll let the clothing matter go since television does rely heavily on visual cues to discern character but it would be nice to know that people don’t honestly think my wardrobe is in constant flux.
The dialog for the show is witty but not accurate. Again, stereotypes. Cody could do so much better than what she currently is, her dialog skills carry many things through. With that amount of skill it could, with a little work, be a much more accurate portrayal. (I’m a few episodes behind, but I’ve doubts on the problems with the portrayal taking a 180 and correcting itself).
I haven’t seen Juno, but judging from the United States of Tara and multiple discussions I don’t believe I want to. I’d like to think that the fact USoT was made at all was a breakthrough of a sort, but that comes with the inherent problems of every breakthrough. To laud it now would be a step in the wrong direction, it resembles, way too damn much, previous movies about the subject. Particularly its problematic handling of mental illness. It’s still divided on whether did/mpd is a mental illness, what with its multiple possibility of causations/born that way, and not all coping strategies would or should be filed under illness. Whenever mental illness is shown, it’s shown as bad, a severe problem – and while it most certainly can be, it’s often no worse than any other long term issue. There’s also the concept that a working system is disordered in its own right, the idea that every system is disordered is taken as fact. Which, unfortunately, shows in the show. If your system was in a bit of chaos and you achieve (or already had) a working relationship, you’re still considered ‘ill’. Never mind that the problems you have aren’t caused by you or your coworkers existence. Like being depressed because a relative dies. You’re still depressed, has nothing to do with your existence but is instead just the regular crap that goes on in life. And while I do have mental illness (depression and anxiety for the nosy) I don’t think of it as the same thing. The shorter version is I’m really not fond of the show. She writes witty dialog, and that’s about it.
…There were also stereotypes littered in the kids on the show. Rude, knows-everything-about-sex teen girl, sensitive gay boy. As if I haven’t seen either of those hundreds of times before. And don’t get me started on the particulars of Buck, Alice or T. Watching the interaction between Buck and Tara’s son was ridiculous, it was like putting two stereotypes in a grudge match. Straight, Small-Minded Redneck vs Muffin-Baking Gay Teen. I don’t live in the city (I’m still not entirely sure what a suburb is) and there’s no way in hell I’d put out a smoke on some kids’ batch of baked goods, let alone insult him in the process. I mean, what the hell? I’m also queer, so nice juxtaposition there. What ever happened to well rounded characters, I’d like to know. What would be nice is for Cody to get out of the house, maybe learn about people other than herself. If all she has to draw on is stereotypes, well, that doesn’t bode well for her present and future endeavors. Tara’s the only one with a bit of depth, and even she’s rather flat.
I have 0 feminist problems with Diablo Cody. It’s her movies I can’t stand. Ugh, bad cinema. Of course, women are allowed to make bad movies too. Have at it Diablo. I won’t watch any.
This + Michael Cera + “he is the cheese to my macaroni” = why I still haven’t forgiven boyfriend for renting Juno. Teenagers do not talk like this. I do not say that because I think teenagers are inarticulate and stupid; I say this because I think the opposite. OR maybe I just have a stick up my ass and hate teh feminismz!
Y tambien.
Dang, did I ever not proofread that comment. “Pulled over,” I meant. And forgive the misplaced quotation marks plz.
K, I watched this with my adoptive mom. She insisted, because it was just so cute and because her brother said the main character reminded him of (42-year-old) me. Ye gods, I should be in therapy….
The part in Juno where Sonic Youth is a signifier for people who are old and don’t know it… made me feel so old.
But yeah, I’m fine with Diablo. I’m sorry that there are so few women’s voices in the mainstream that hers is expected to stand in for everyone, because she just isn’t up to that challenge. In a perfect universe full of diverse successful writers she would seem just fine to me.
Maybe I’m scrambling for crumbs, but I do like that Cody is centering women in her movies and that these women aren’t simpering love interests to some tragic hero.
Thanks for checking out my post! Like I said, Diablo is like some sort of Rorschach for feminists – it surprises me how much she polarizes us. The beauty is we’re all entitled to our own opinions. The challenge is drawing a line between sisterhood and exploitation. I see Diablo as more of a feminist ally whose ideas don’t always click with many feminists than a wolf in feminist clothing (you know, a Sarah Palin type).
What’s a nice way to say “I reject the HELL outta that framing?” Because I do. I knew I didn’t want to comment for this; I only did because Laurel reminded me of all the moments I wasted wincing over that wretched dialogue, and because I wanted to convey, by nodding also at Mar’s comment, that feminism is not a brand. It is not about our brand choices. It is not about which female entertainers we like or which women-centered this, that, or the other thing we consume–excuse me, I mean support. But it had better be about more than what we give two thumbs up to and what we give two thumbs down.
And sweet merciful Jesus, we’ve got other choices besides “feminist ally” and Sarah Maverick Palin.
I know! Pop culture and feminism have intersections! And that’s great, and fun to explore, and why I read Tiger Beatdown devotedly the same as everybody else, but when it gets distilled into the nonsense that we are actually capable of being polarized by Diablo Cody, that we’re that out of ideas, that out of our depths, that shallow, I lose it. A thread about Diablo Cody, Feminist? is probably not the place for me to do that, I admit–especially because my ranting is only going to be held up as more evidence that Diablo Cody is a really polarizing figure, see? Look at that lady cussing away!
That said, “Diablo Cody: Feminist? or former governor of Alaska?” does grate. And in saying it grates, I feel trapped–like any little thing I do to try to kick the machine in the nads only winds up feeding it. Maybe, as someone upthread suggested, she wouldn’t get held up as this polarizing figure if there weren’t so few successful women filmmakers these days.
I loved both Juno and Jennifer’s Body. I spend a lot of time around teenagers and used to be one myself and I thought the dialogue was spot on. It makes me sad that so many people hate what I think are great, interesting, fun movies. And it goes without saying that I am absolutely, positively a feminist.
I do wonder if the problem with Juno is that there have been so few movies that even talk about abortion or adoption that Juno is forced to be the center of conversation about those topics, when really it’s just about a single abortion that didn’t happen and a single adoption that did.
No, it’s that way Juno portrayed adoption was offensive.
I still am a teenager and thing Juno was a crappy movie.
Yes, indeed, the best thing about her is she gets other people talking. I love the hypocrisy she exposes. So very uncomfortable for so very many people.
“The challenge is drawing a line between sisterhood and exploitation.”
==== yes… and first we need, and feminism needs to examine the use of the word exploit.
Exploit is a verb which applies to OBJECTS. Always, only, and forever. Objects.
In the term “sexual exploitation” the object being exploited is the sexuality. Not the person.
Situations are exploited,
Weaknesses are exploited,
Characteristics are exploited.
People are not.
FW,
According to Miriam-Webster exploit is a transitive verb (not a noun), short version, 2nd def. down, ” to make use of meanly or unfairly for one’s own advantage.”
People can be exploited for others’ gain. If she’s going to write about issues she hasn’t experienced (I don’t know about Juno, but she’s not plural), she needs to watch how she does it so it’s handled with respect. It isn’t that she’s making movies and shows that deal with, say, adoption and mental health, it’s that with the shows she’s creating a lot of people find enforce negative stereotypes and/or misinformation. Or, bluntly, it’s handled pettily at best. That’s only opinion, but it’s shared by a lot of people in the groups her shows are the subject of. I’ve seen the trailer for her new horror movie – unless it’s radically different from the preview, it’s filled with sexism. It could very well be different, haven’t seen it yet. But Cody is not her movies. To argue that her movies are feminist just because she is is ridiculous. Which is what seems to be going on in the internet at large with the “She can’t be all things to all women” vibe. That’s a cop out. No one is asking her to be all things. No one expects her to present every view – just to handle the things she does put out with research and respect. Which, imo, she did not do, at least wrt USoT. You do not talk to the doctors who rule you to make a sitcom when you have no info about the subject – you talk to actual people.
And if this is a thread to inquire whether Diablo Cody is herself a feminist, that question is moot. She already said she was, she clearly believes in equality. But that doesn’t mean her films – don’t – contain some rather problematic shit.
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