#that’s diego luna!! with his awe-filled tone

[soleadita]

my dad being a diego luna stan was not on my 2022 bingo card but holy SHIT it’s my favorite thing ever. (i had to tell him the new season ISN’T starting soon. he was sad about that.)

[fuckyeahwomenfilmdirectors]

What are your thoughts on the controversy surrounding whitewashing in The Beguiled and racism in The Bad Batch (and by Amirpour in general)? I know it may come across as a bit of a baity question, but it's interesting to see these controversies crop up around women-directed films around the same time.

I don’t think it’s baity, these things should be talked about. 

I’ve answered the question related to Coppola and The Beguiled here. 

Amirpour… Oof where to to begin?

The Bad Batch was released at the 2016 Venice Film Festival, but it wasn’t until a recent advanced screening in June of 2017 that issues about the racial politics of the movie came up and were discussed in a meaningful way. Cartoonist Bianca Xunise raised the issue of the movie seeming anti-black (she was concerned that the black characters had the most gruesome deaths) and asked why she had a Latino character called Miami Man that was played by Jason Momoa who is not Latino, but mixed-race native Hawaiian/white. 

Amirpour’s response was that she was not responsible for people’s response to the movie. 

I’ve followed Amirpour for a while on twitter and this is a through line of hers. She is someone who believes in the separation of art and artist (earlier this year there was a huge brouhaha on her twitter when she announced she was voting for Casey Affleck for Best Actor at the Oscars (Affleck had previously been accused of rape sexual harassment and assault)). Even accepting her point of view, I still found her answer, and the answers she’s given since in interviews where she’s been given the opportunity to answer Xunise’s question in full, to be really unsatisfactory. She’s stuck to her whole “not responsible for people’s reactions/just asking questions” line of thinking. If a director want to abdicate responsibility for the choices they make in their film that’s fine, I understand not wanting to justify every decision to an audience and letting the piece stand on its own. But people will step in to fill the void with their own interpretations good and bad and the interpretation of her story as racist is something she is neither fully defending herself against OR accepting. Amirpour’s interviews of late have taken in a really defensive and self-pitying tone talking mostly about how much the questions hurt her. It doesn’t seem like she’s willing to reflect on the greater implications of the racial politics of her movie.  

The Bad Batch dropped on VOD this weekend (23rd of June, 2017) and I did watch it, knowing this would come up and wanting to have my own opinion.

MILD SPOILERS: After watching the movie I thought that Xunise’s questions were totally appropriate and thoughtful. In fact, I wish the question about Jason Momoa’s casting got even more attention. Because Momoa doesn’t just play a Latino man, he plays a Cuban immigrant with a thick accent (which Momoa doesn’t have irl) and this backstory is used to obtain sympathy for his character. It’s really baffling to me that Amirpour would make this choice (especially when she has Diego Luna, a Mexican immigrant, right there in a wordless role). This could easily have been solved in one of three ways: 1) hire a Cuban actor with an accent 2) hire any Latino actor and change the backstory as necessary to reflect their heritage 3) stick with Momoa but again, change the backstory to reflect his own heritage. 

The anti-blackness in the movie… If I squint I can see Amirpour’s justification for at least one gruesome death which actually makes us sympathize with that character more. That said the way the plotline finishes itself out is horrible.

END SPOILERS

Am I surprised at these so called controversies (this feels like a bad description, they’re more like justified criticism) have cropped up around two women directed movies at the same time?

No. 

I always mention how years ago I started making a concerted effort to watch more films directed by women. What I don’t talk about as much is it showed me that women are just as adept at being bigoted and awful as men. This is why it kills me when people come here all happy go lucky and say that films directed by women are better. I’ve seen so much casual racism in films directed by white women, bigotry in films directed by woc (honestly this casting thing of having anyone brown play a Latino… this is far from the first time I’ve seen this in a film by a woman (not even the first time I’ve seen a WOC do it). At least Momoa’s actually sounds like he’s spoken Spanish before). So much homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, ageism, internalized sexism, ableism, erasure, colourism… you name it I’ve seen it. 

The only reason that women director/writers are able to coast along getting away with this a lot of time is because people don’t watch their movies. Coppola and Amirpour are among the best in their field right now. People are going to pay attention and with this attention comes questions. Amirpour can say she wants to get away from identity politics all she wants, and Coppola can dance around whether she’s a feminist, but the fact is that their audiences are more likely to be progressive women who found them and are interested in supporting them at least in part because they are women. Will they listen to their audiences and try to see things from their pov? Amirpour seems shut off to the idea and Coppola has been mostly ignoring questions about racism in her movies since 2003. I’ll continue to cover them both, I think they’re both immensely talented women, but I also hope people who watch their movies go in with their eyes open to the limitations they have and continue to ask questions about the racial politics of their movies. 

I said this in my Coppola post and I’ll say it again here. These things wouldn’t hurt so much if we had the voices of more woc speaking for themselves. If you are upset about what you see in Coppola and Amirpour’s movies please support the work of black women and Latina women. Their voices are needed.