Lemonade Mouth (2011) Dir: Patricia Riggen

By most people's standards, a Disney Channel Original Movie (DCOM) is a strange, unceremonious, and--I don't know--maybe insulting? way to begin a project highlighting female directors. For me, that's decidedly not the case. Despite my love of all things Sundance-savvy, Cannes-ready, and Oscar-baity, media targeted at preteens remain more savory feast than guilty indulgence. The tastiness is myriad:

1) These are the messages shaping realities and possibilities for young people tomorrow. This is a forum with the dramatic potentiality to inspire a future world that is empathetic, socially conscious, prepared to navigate the world relationally, and armed with a toolbelt for self-love. It matters.

2) It's nostalgic, bringing me back to a time of intense self-discovery and exciting possibility. Movies were how I discovered realities beyond what my small-town had to offer: worlds where I could be gay, could have none-white friends, could find alternative expressions of masculinity, could find value in myself. My local rental store not only introduced me to the world outside my town--a window to an existing world--but it created a world within my town that didn't exist before. It brought the outside in and it redefined what the inside was.

3) I love it, and it totally does it for me. Especially as someone who feels deeply but struggles to show that, I respond well to melodrama and broad strokes. I soak up the pulpiness and revel in simple, plain approaches to getting at complex truths. Teen and pre-teen media communicate to me in a way that's fun, accessible, powerful, and meaningful. I'm all about it.

Now post-High School Musical DCOMs are often very similar beasts. A musical-component to maximize merchandising and franchise potential. A cast that's racially diverse, but ethnically ambiguous, and that operates in a world where race doesn't matter and is essentially invisible (which is, you know, problematic). A minor character or cameo role who is either overweight or visibly disabled, and one can assume that this is something that a genuine and caring producer fought hard for to ensure the casting was as diverse as possible and that every child watching could find someone to identify with. And, as always, a central message of being fiercely yourself, or sometimes less successfully, being "an individual" (which is more archetype than authenticity). 

Lemonade Mouth is rockin' all this necessary accoutrement, but it goes several steps further. On the assumption that most of you haven't seen and won't be seeing this, I'll provide a brief synopsis, then get into all the ways the movies goes right.

LM starts out as The Breakfast Club with 5 very different high school students, all struggling in some capacity to find a place or use their voice, meeting in detention and changing each other's lives. 

There's Stella, the rebel-rouser and Hot Topic anarchist who feels out of place in her family of scientific geniuses.

Wen, a doofy-yet-brooding Anthony Michael Hall, who can't even about the fact his father is preparing to marry a 28-year-old woman. He gets to rap with respectable flow.

Olivia, shy and invisible and cutoff from social interaction because her mother has passed and her father (we learn in an inconsequential third act reveal) is in prison. Guess what, guys? She finds her voice! And, honestly, it's one of the better voices to be churned out of the Disney Channel Machine. I'd listen to Bridgit Mendler, Disney darling who plays Olivia, cover Avril Lavigne songs any day of the week. It is worth mentioning that Olivia gets detention because she's discovered sitting alone in the janitor's closet reading "I'm Nobody! Who are you?" by Emily Dickinson. Disney just picked up the eating-your-lunch-in-the-bathroom-stall-because-no-one-would-sit-with-you-in-the-cafeteria mic and dropped the fuck out of it.

We also have Mo, beautiful daughter of Indian immigrants, who just wants to be a teenage girl, but her father expects a model of woman that won't allow it.

And Charlie, who feels trapped and unnoticed in the shadow of his soccer-prodigy brother. Charlie is also REALLY hot. I'm pretty sure he was not 18 when this movie was made, but he is now, so I think we have to talk about it. Look at Charlie smolder. Look at Charlie smile! He can even charmingly pull off the lipbite thing.Less successful at having a popcorn kernel lodged in his throat but staying pretty serene about. Least appealing as the dead offspring of a Criss Angel, Jack White, The Crow threesome.

Anyway, the kids meet in detention where they organically transition into performing music together through environmental noises like jangling keys, spray bottles, and dripping water a la Cell Block Tango. They form a band to compete in a competition where the winner gets a record deal because that's the plot of any movie worth watching. Of course, there's a rival band who presents obstacles and shenanigans. Of course the bandmates experience a journey of self-discovery and encounter struggles they are now prepared to weather thanks to friendship and the power of being voiced. More unexpectedly, the band creates a social movement that exists well beyond themselves and sort of orchestrates a baby revolt against capitalism that, like most revolts against capitalism, is resolved through a well-intentioned and immediately beneficial compromise with capitalism.

So, let's discuss the things:

1) Guys, like I said, there is coded class warfare and coded class revolution going on here. In Disney movies, everyone's rich, even the people who are poor (unless they're an orphan? I think that's the formula). So visible, literal class warfare is out of the question. Instead, the school is divided into haves and have-nots along fairly conventional high school lines. The jocks and cheerleaders are in power; the arts kids and nerds are literally all relegated to the basement and identify as "the subterranean." The jocks/cheerleaders have the ear and the heart of the school principal/dictator, and the backing of corporate sponsor "Turbo Blast," Disney's douchey gatorade. The subterranean wave a different banner, the totes East German Mel's Lemonade, a dingy vending machine that the school plans to remove from their basement-ghetto. Lemonade--and the band's music--becomes a stand in for all things counterculture, bohemian, and queer. The LM kids stage a revolt against the status quo and the powers that be both through their music-- calling for all people to stand up, be heard, and fight against their oppressors--in an act of civil disobedience where they protest the removal of the Lemonade vending machine and are ARRESTED-- and by rallying their fans to their cause. The Lemonade Revolution is resolved Deus Ex Machina style when Stella meets Mel (of Mel's Lemonade) at a wedding and convinces him to build a top-dollar arts wing for the school. Money saves the day! And the revolution and the fight against the man lives on only in song, just as it does for most of us lazy socialists. 

Still, you have to wonder if Disney temporarily wielded a soft-spot for sticking it to the capitalist machine. Lemonade Mouth was cable's No. 1 original movie in 2011 with 6 million viewers of it's premiere (7 million with DVR) and had all the necessary elements for a franchise. But Disney ultimately decided against making a sequel because they felt the story was complete and didn't see the point of shooting a second film just to make a little money. That's such a Mel's Lemonade thing to do!

2) I'm all about the yin and yang of Lemonade Mouth and their also beverage-named rival, Mudslide Crush. On the surface, the two bands have oppositional messages. Lemonade Mouth sings songs of self-love and self-celebration, friendship, and standing for what you believe in. Mudslide Crush serves up a lot of douchebag swagger songs about having hot girlfriends, nice cars, and making everyone jealous of their superiority. But it's easy to see Mudslide Crush's message as the insecure brother of Lemonade Mouth's... both bands promote self-celebration, but MC cynically assumes self-worth must be proven and it must come at the expense of others. What's interesting about the tone of the piece is we're not supposed to hate Mudslide Crush; they're meant to be musically impressive and their swagger is mad sexy, has great appeal. The director seems to trust her audience will ultimately be drawn to the more authentic and more loving expression, without forcing them in that direction.

3) Mo's story line should be shared and discussed with any pre-teen or teenager you know. It's empowering and it's important. She is in a relationship with a potentially controlling partner but she never acquiesces to him or silences herself around him. She maintains and insists upon her identity within the relationship, negotiates power, and stands up for herself against her partner. As she navigates relationship challenges, including potential infidelity, she puts herself first, asks for what she wants, and through the power of communication is able to make her relationship work. You do not see this happen in depictions of high school girl's relationships in children's movies, especially on the Disney Chanel.

4) More enthralling about Mo's story line is her not-relationship with Charlie. Charlie has a crush on Mo. He is sweet to her. He listens to her when she needs it, fights for her when she needs it, and shows remarkable respect for her boundaries as she navigates a confusing, and briefly failing, relationship. In any of a number of different movies, Charlie-- sweet, loving, right-in-front-of-her-eyes Charlie-- would have gotten the girl because of his patience and friendliness. One can imagine a scenario where Charlie feels entitled to her after all he's been through for her. But ultimately, he professes his crush, she tells him she only sees him as a friend, and Charlie manages to move on and maintain his friendship with Mo. Guys, THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN EVEN IN GROWN-UP FILMS. Men still bitch about being friend-zoned and assume being nice to a girl entitles them to romance and sex. What an awesome message to send to boys and girls alike. That you might have a crush on someone, and they might not like you back, and you have to move on. That being a good friend should be about being a good friend, not about you trying to get something out of the other person. That you don't owe anyone anything just because they're kind to you. MIND BLOWN, Y'ALL.

5) The movie just hits me in a sweet spot with all its simple truths and complicated lessons. Do you remember how friends were everything in high school? How they were your 3rd and 8th arms, how they spent their hours protecting and warming your heart? That's in the Lemonade Mouth recipe. Or remember what it feels like when you think you've just miserably failed and your mom tells you she loves you and she's proud of you? TEARS FOR DAYS. And do you remember how scary it was to stand up to dad? Or to your best friend? Or to your boyfriend? Or to your past? The kids here develop the capacity to face those closest to them, a skill we're all still trying to hone. And I'm glad there's a movie out there that tells kids to love themselves, to speak their minds, to fight for what they believe in, but to be kind along the way. All things I'm still learning, too.

6) The film was an adaptation of a young-adult novel by Mark Peter Hughes that seems to have contained more reality and grittiness. Hughes characters' struggle with body image, death, sex, and abandonment, and in more visceral ways than the film's characters navigate their problems. A more literal adaptation by a different company might have packed a greater, more honest, more relevant punch. Still, there is something moving about the Disneyization of life, not so much in its erasure of social problems and structural barriers, but in its earnest insistence that if you put your mind to it, you and your 4 closest friends might be playing at Madison Square Garden in the near future. Isn't that something we all need to believe?

And, for good measure, one last look at Charlie (Blake Michael):

SWOOOOOOOOOON!

Why I Listen on the Night Before

Tomorrow, I turn 28, and this project officially begins. I'm spending the evening straightening the house, experimenting with bourbon and chocolate milk, and contemplating why I'm setting out to do this in the first place. More specifically, why women in film? Why not something else?

The answer is selfish, but I think it's honest, too.

I'm gay. I won't take this time to explore whether or not I was 'born this way," but I was certainly born different and with a sense that I'd inherited a different script from everyone else around me. I observed stories and "stories" of how to be a middle-class white boy in Missouri, and they mostly suggested there was a particular way I was to exist in the world, but none of those ways of existing worked for me. (I imagine they work for very few people). So I sought out different stories about different ways of being, and I learned about possibility, and about others, and about myself. And I discovered pathways to take in this world that read very true to me, and I discovered pathways that seemed six dimensions away from me, but I still recognized them as human and as valid. It was a real blessing, not seeing myself in the most accessible story, and having to reach out to find others.

Which is all a flowery way of saying I've sought out female (and other) subjectivities since I was a child because the prescribed worldview of most male protagonists was not my story and could not capture the world as I experienced it. I learned how to identify with and appreciate a small handful of the 8 billion ways you see the world, which is sadly a lot more ways than most people bother to try. I grew comfortable in accepting that some people experienced existence in a way so contradictory to my own vantage point, but that there's was just as much the reality of life as mine was. I felt safe, cuddled, hand-held, when someone countries or chromosomes away from me seemed to share a thought or feeling, and I was invigorated and challenged when a would-be neighbor seemed to occupy a different universe.

That is, I strapped myself into the empathy machine, and a lot of the operators were women, and a lot of the women helped me feel less alone, helped me feel better understood and helped me better understand.

And I think, ultimately, women in film because gender fails us all. It's an arbitrary and harmful way of dividing the world, and I refuse to limit myself to male cultural products when genes and experience both indicate I'm just as likely to identify with and learn from a woman's keyhole to the world as a man's. In fact, more so-- as a population who has long been forcibly removed from their voices and their subjectivities, women have seen and felt and known a world so much different from the one laid out in more dominant, prevailing narratives. It's a chance to be liberated from the narrow story we're given of how the world is. It's a chance to see the world differently, perhaps more truthfully, at least more completely. And if we keep expanding access to who gets to tell stories, and if we keep demanding stories from diverse points of view, maybe one day we'll see the world so completely that we'll know what it is to be ourselves and to be alive.

That's the itch; that's the dream. Gertrude Stein had it. I've got it. Here's hoping you do, too. 

Introduction III: The What Of It

And, briefly, a boring post to  introduce the logistics:

My original hope was to watch 128 movies directed by women between my 28th and 29th birthday. I loved the silly poetics of it, but when I realized I'd have to faithfully commit to blogging on 2.5 movies a week, even on those weeks of vacation or working late hours or random depression, I felt like I was setting myself up for certain favor. I considered trimming it down to a digestible 100, but the more I weeded, the more it bloomed, and soon the promiscuity of movie magic had flicks busting out all over.

So my official goal is 150 movies directed by women between now (my 28th birthday) and the end of 2016, averaging 9-10 per month. In reality, I hope to keep watching, to keep watching regularly, and to be moved enough to talk about the movies as I do.

There's no hidden logic to my list. It's a blend of suggestions from friends, essentials I've missed, favorites of mine, things that I hate--- anything I believed might illicit a response in me. I've avoided several presumably wonderful scholarly films if they looked difficult to get my hands on or amounted to too many slow burns to wade through. If I'm going to be in this for the long haul, I might as well focus on movies that are stimulating to watch.

You can view my forever-flexible list of potential films here. Taste the random.

Lastly: check out and give all praise to a women a a thousand times more hardcore than I am. Marya Gates is spending 2015 exclusively watching movies directed by women that she's never seen before. Her project is gorgeous, brave, time-consuming, and perspective-changing. You can follow what she's viewing here.

Introduction II: Talking About Her Speak

Jill Soloway, creative force behind Transparent and all around badass,  has said and will say everything I'd ever want this blog to broadly communicate, and much better than I will. She's a brilliant filmmaker, a brave artist, and she has the felicitous habit of delivering beautiful, impassioned speeches that make you want to go outside and throw lawnchairs at patriarchy.

Check out this sumptuous morsel about women in film:

"Obviously, besides trying to bring other women into your work, when you pick up the camera and share your voice, it heals the world. It’s not funny anymore what’s going on with us. It’s immoral, the way that we are kept from our voices. It’s not just a matter of our numbers. There is a real all-out attack on us having subjectivity, so I just beg everybody to be relentless in their pursuit of their voice."

Sharing your voice HEALS THE WORLD. Women must relentlessly pursue their own voice. She is enveloping us in these gorgeous calls to action.

Or munch on this tasty nugget about women's power as directors:

"I came into most of my power as a filmmaker when I realized that all I needed to do was make a safe space for people to have feelings. And that’s feminine energy. That’s mommy energy. That’s OUR birthright. Our wombs, our space-making, crucible containing bodies...What I’m talking about is no more imitating men’s style or competing with them on their terms, instead reinvent at every turn."

And she continues on this theme that the feminine is a gift to filmmaking with this priceless advice:

It was shockingly, frighteningly easy for me to realize that I could invite actors into their risk spaces by leading with receiving, gathering, feminine, space-creation energy.

New rules. You CAN cry at work, in fact, you must cry at work, in fact if you’re going to make a movie, do me a favor and think of it “as bring your tears to work day”, hell while you’re at it, “ hashtag #bringyourpussytoworkday”, every day. You’re gonna need it."

BRING YOUR PUSSY TO WORK EVERY DAY. I would get that as a face tattoo if I could guarantee it would only be interpreted in context. I mean, that's fucking awesome.

Soloway literally calls for a "matriarchal revolution," an overthrow of the male gaze and of Hollywood's insistence on exclusively-male subjectivities. All it takes is brave, awesome women to create characters in their own images and stories in their own voices.

It's clear why Soloway thinks the revolution is possible, and it's clear why she think it's necessary. The past year, on some fronts, has been awesome for women in media. The box office prowess of female-directed projects Pitch Perfect 2 and Fifty Shades of Gray. The critical and commercial success of female-centered films like Trainwreck and Mad Max: Fury Road. Rich, thoughtful, celebratory depictions of women on TV in Parks and Recreation, The Honorable Woman, Transparent, and countless others. If we assume that Hollywood is an industry invested in its own survival, we can hope that 2015 is a turning point for women in film as executives finally realize that female-oriented films are financially-viable and considerably delicious. No better time to stage a revolution than on the wings of these recent triumphs.

But in general, despite the wealth of offerings out there, we're not watching female-directed films and major studios aren't meaningfully hiring women behind (or often in front of) the camera. In 2014, only 2 of the top 100 films were directed by women, and consequently, less than 20 percent featured a female protagonist.  We know that women have made and can make awesome cinema; we've seen it. But year-in and year-out, Hollywood seems to regularly forget or ignore the successes of female directors, and audiences never seem to question who is behind the story being told. If this blog accomplishes anything for those who read it, I hope it's a reminder to pay attention to the creators of the stories you absorb, a call to seek out diversity in subjectivities and perspectives, and a chance to discover and rediscover a lot of awesome movies crafted by women.

And maybe you'll remember to bring your pussy to work tomorrow. Maybe you'll celebrate the feminine and the gift of power, leadership, and direction that's based in sharing, empathy, and creation.Maybe we'll both cry-or-not-cry like a girl. Maybe you'll turn your money into activism by seeing one of these 2015 films directed by women.

Or maybe you'll just think more about the stories we tell and who should have access to telling them.

Introduction I: Talking About Hearing

Guys, I'm the worst. All I wanted to do in preparation for my 28th birthday was start a moderately-to-severely kickass blog about female directors. Between now and the end of 2016, I watch (at least) 150 movies directed by women and then blog my reactions to them. No reviews or film scholar pretense, minimal "did you know's!?", just feelings and thoughts and an experiential account of what it meant for me to hear a woman's voice from behind the camera.

I wanted to write again because I love writing. I wanted to write about movies because I love movies. I wanted to write about movies by women because I think that it matters. I think that sharing and experiencing female subjectivities is the best tool against patriarchy, and that film shaped by the feminine can be the warmest, bravest, most welcoming, most honest, and most liberating to engage. That's the simple math of all of this.

But everything we do is complicated because we are complicated. And today's web I'm spinning is a tangle of self-doubt, humility, fears of failure, good intentions, and a sort of allyship whose merit is yet to be determined.

I'm scared to write because everything might be terrible. I used to believe so much in my writing, in my own voice, that I would stay up past midnight in high school, turning simple class assignments into a 15-year-old's magnum opus. My justification was that I was a writer, and we writers just had to write because it was in our blood and on our tongues. I loved sharing what I could do with words back then; I loved showing people how I saw the world and how I talked about how I saw the world. But something has died since then or at least crawled into its sickbed. I'm weak of words, even though I still believe I have them, somewhere. I'm afraid to speak, even though there's some part of me who believes I am worth hearing. I want this blog to be a chance to start speaking again, and for me to grow stronger in my own voice; it's a lot to ask of a Blogger account, and somehow, a lot to ask of me. There's an irrational fear that if I can't discover through this blog how to talk about the world I see, that it will just confirm that I can't write anymore. That writing can't be something I identify with, or that I'm proud of, or that might help build a future for me. The stakes are high (even though they're not).

And then there's the part of me that feels some moral trepidation about the whole setup. What does it mean that I (a man) intend to dedicate a blog to how I experience the voice of female artists? Women creating art is a revolutionary act. Men talking about art is not. Women's narratives deconstruct and can slowly de-struct male authority simply by asserting the stupidly radical notion that women are people, are subjects in the world, and not something less. What can I do to make sure my own narrative contributes to that, rather than acting as its own unwelcome authority, speaking on a topic for women that no woman ever asked me to speak for? The point of female filmmaking, besides the fact that some women just have the desire to tell stories and make movies, is to challenge the male gaze and the male monopoly on protagonism. A narrative of my perspective, in which I am my own hero in my film-watching experience, feels like a slap in the face to everything female directors seek to accomplish.

But, as someone who overthinks, it's safe to assume I'm overthinking this. Despite all the amazing possibilities of female filmmaking, the intention of most artists (male, female, otherwise) is to tell a story that makes you think or feel something. Sharing what I think or feel might be a bit elementary, but it's not necessarily some problematic contribution to male privilege. I can't deny the systems in which the audience, the story, and the storyteller are embedded, but I also can and should celebrate my reactions to the story; that's what art is about.

What I think I need are some ground rules:

1) Listen to the movie
2) Be honest; and let yourself feel something
3) As always, try to be the best person you can be.

*Breathes*-- Now things feel simpler again.