When the movie industry was born,
it was limited to a small range of genres, the most popular being comedy. The
category was so well liked that many of the comedians’ names, including Buster
Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Marion Davies, and Carole Lombard, actors that
smoothly transitioned from silent films to talkies, are still familiar. The
ability to speak was important because it broadened a comedian’s range from
slapstick stunts to more sophisticated stratagems like employing sexual
innuendo or sarcasm, which provided richer content. One factor that audiences
loved about funny movies was unconventionality. Eccentric situations and
screwball characters took center stage in movies like A Night at the Opera (1935), Topper (1937); the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road
series (1940s); Ma and Pa Kettle (1949); Harvey (1950);
and Some Like It Hot (1959), among many others. Disney
and Warner Brothers even used the technique in animation, producing cartoons
with eccentric animal characters: Mickey and Minnie Mouse in Plane Crazy (1928) and Steamboat Willie (1928);
Bugs Bunny (who introduced American children to opera) and Elmer Fudd in Rabbit Seasoning (1952); and Daffy Duck in Duck Amok (1953).
As the television
became a standard in American homes, producers plunged into the quirky genre
with abandon, offering audiences zany shows like I Love Lucy (Lucy),
the Red Skelton Show (Freddy the Freeloader), Bewitched (Aunt Clara), and My Favorite Martian (Tim’s O’Hara’s live-in alien
Uncle Martin). It used unconventional characters to examine marriage (The Honeymooners), test society’s mores (All in the Family), protest war (Mash), and address
the dynamics of social interaction (Friends). Some used the genre to open up
conversations about race (The Jeffersons and Sanford and Son),
redefine women’s roles (That Girl and The Mary Tyler Moore Show), delve
into the LGBTQ debate (Soap, Will and Grace, Modern Family), and
talk about nothing (Seinfeld).
In fact, both on big
and small screens, hundreds of stories were built around screwball characters
in both major and minor roles. The Dude in The Big Lebowski and
Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory are central roles
that scream eccentricity; Barney Fife in The Andy Griffith Show and
Ed Norton in The Honeymooners are good examples of goofy
sidekicks; and plots where the whole cast is made up of bizarre characters
include Young Frankenstein and Wayne’s World. If you go online to research the quirkiest movies,
you’ll find that a lot of the lists include Juno, starring
Elliott Page. I’m not discussing that movie here because it is very well known,
and if you haven’t seen it, I’ll wait while you catch up. It’s available on
Hulu, Amazon, Apple TV, and other streaming services. You’ll have to pay around
$4 to see it, but that’s what you get for overlooking it in the first place,
and you should be ashamed of yourself. Besides, it’s important to this
discussion because Bliss Cavender, the protagonist in Whip-It, bears striking similarities to Juno (Elliott
Page).
https://intiaudiovisual.com/en/silent-cinema/
https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/silent-film-actresses-and-their-most-popular-characters
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls068711722/
https://www.newsweek.com/elliot-page-deadname-birth-name-1551714
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&ei=UTF-8&p=Steamboat+Willie&type=E210US910G0#id=1&vid=68c59b514d600de5fb6f64402549580b&action=click
Whip-It – 2009
Born in Nova Scotia, Canada, Elliott Page made his
first appearance at the age of ten as Maggie in the Canadian made-for-TV movie Pit Pony (1997). Even though the title sounds
cutesy, the story is a drama that centers around the MacLean family, Rory
(Richard Donat) and his five children, Nellie (Jennie Raymond), John (Andrew
Keilty), Willie (Ben Rose-Davis), Maggie (Elliott Page), and Sara (Anna
Wedlock). Rory and his oldest son John support the family by working in a coal
mine until there’s an accident in which John dies and Rory is severely
disabled. As a result, ten-year-old Willie becomes the breadwinner by replacing
his father and brother in the mine. Although the undertaking is daunting, it
becomes bearable due to the pit pony (Jen?) that hauls his coal. The film
garnered several nominations for Gemini Awards (similar to our Emmy Awards) and
was later made into a television series. Elliott was nominated as the best
actor in both. Following Pit Pony, he went on to appear in numerous movies,
including the surprise indie hit Juno (2007),
which was nominated for four Academy Awards, and the dark sci-fi thriller Inception (2010), where he worked alongside stars
like Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Cillian Murphy. Of course,
not all of his movies were as successful as the aforementioned, but many are
nevertheless entertaining.
One of my favas is Whip-It (2009), in which Elliott plays Bliss
Cavendar, a unique adolescent who not only knows that she is an outsider but is
okay with it because she considers most of her peers odious. Unfortunately, her
mother, Brooke, a former beauty queen, dreams of turning Bliss into someone who
is identical to the people she holds in contempt. Therefore, Brooke forces her
daughter to compete in every beauty pageant she can find, regardless of the
cost. That explains why, in the opening scene, Brooke is sitting in an audience
in the small town of Bodeen, Texas, praying that her lovely daughter will walk
on stage with the regal demeanor of a queen. Unfortunately, Bliss awkwardly
shuffles out, wearing a beautiful gown and a mop of cobalt blue hair. As one
might expect, Brooke is enraged by her daughter’s stunt and rants about it all
the way home.
After thinking it
over, Brooke decides to try to close the rift that has developed between her
daughter and herself by changing tactics. She offers to take Bliss and Bliss’
younger sister Shania (Eulala Scheel) on a shopping trip to Austin. To her
delight, the girls are excited about the prospect, and they have such a fun
time that when Bliss asks if she can have some new shoes, Brooke says yes
without asking what kind. However, when Bliss drags them to a “head shop”
(which looks like a Hot Topic) and picks out a pair of Doc Martens, Brooke
feels duped and refuses to pay for them. As she strides away, Bliss pulls some
cash out of her pocket (as if she had anticipated this happening), and hands it
to the cashier. Just then, a trio of young women wearing short skirts and heavy
makeup roller skate up to the service desk to leave a stack of brochures
advertising try-outs for the women’s roller derby. On impulse, Bliss grabs one.
The next day, at the
Oink Joint, where she works, she asks her best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat) to
drive her to the try-outs. Clueless as to what a roller derby is, Pash readily
agrees. The next evening, Bliss tells her mother and father, Earl (Daniel Stern),
that she and Pash are going to a football game for the evening. Relieved that
their daughter is finally acting like a typical teenager, the two readily give
their permission. Later, at the old warehouse where the roller derby is held, a
crush of kids mills around the parking lot, and inside, a crowd of young women
sign up to audition. Pash, whose opinion of proper female etiquette is more
like Brooke’s than Bliss,’ is put off by the rough-talking derby girls who have
names like Smashley Simpson (Drew Barrymore), Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), and
Bloody Holly (Zoe Bell). However, Bliss is excited by the rebellious ambiance,
and immediately signs up for try-outs when she learns that coach Razor (Andrew
Wilson) of the Hurl Scouts is looking for new talent.
The brash skaters
guffaw when Bliss enters the track wearing Barbie skates, but Razor notices her
speed and knows that a diminutive skater quick enough to break through the pack
can score serious points. When he tells Bliss that she’s in, she accepts his
offer immediately, not considering how it will complicate her life. The girls
give her the moniker Babe Ruthless, and Maggie, a thirty-something single
mother, becomes an instant friend. Still, the team’s immediate acceptance
doesn’t negate the fact that Bliss faces some serious problems.
According to the
league, skaters have to be at least twenty years old and attend all regular
practices, but Bliss is only sixteen and doesn’t drive. Even more problematic,
her parents, especially Brooke, will never let her participate in such a
violent sport, and her best friend Pash will have to take up her slack at the
Oink Joint. Bliss says that she is of age and secretly makes plans to get to
the practices by bus. She further manages her parents by telling them she is
taking an evening SAT class and promising Pash that she will continue to carry
her share of the load at the restaurant. Bliss’ last hurdle is Iron Maven, a
member of the Holy Rollers and the league’s lead jammer, who inexplicably
dislikes her onsite. Thus, from the start, Bliss’ venture is fraught with
betrayal and torment. She’s lying to her teammates and parents, making empty
promises to her best friend, and is the target of someone who is older and
stronger. Nonetheless, she’s happier than she’s ever been and is determined to
do whatever it takes to be an asset to the team. This includes doling out her
money to buy a pair of professional skates and spending countless hours
practicing.
Serendipitously,
Bliss meets Oliver, a musician who hangs out at the warehouse. From their first
encounter, they are attracted to one another and soon begin spending a lot of
time together. In fact, when Oliver tells her his band is leaving on an interstate
tour, Bliss surrenders her virginity to him the night before he leaves and
loans him the White Stripes t-shirt that she stole from her mother, so he
doesn’t forget her. With her boyfriend out of the way, Bliss can focus on her
skating, becoming a key member of the team, and improving their chances of
winning the league championship. As is so often the case, however, just when
everything is going great, life starts to unravel.
It turns out that the
Roller Derby finals are on the same night as the Blue Bonnet Beauty Pageant, an
event which is so important to Brooke that she has paid hundreds of dollars for
a custom-made gown to improve Bliss’ chances of winning. Then the police raid
the warehouse for being overcrowded and roust as many kids as they can. Since Bliss isn’t drinking, a cop checks her ID,
informs her that seventeen is too young to be hanging out there, and tells her
to go home. Maggie Mayhem offers her a ride, and she gratefully accepts,
relieved that her troubles are resolved. Unbeknownst to her, however, Maven has
overheard everything and now has the perfect weapon to use against the young
skater. Meanwhile, Pash, who drove Bliss to Austin that night, is caught
drinking alcohol and hauled off to jail.
Angry that her best
friend abandoned her, Pash calls her parents for help and tells them what Bliss
has been up to; they in turn call Bliss’ parents to let them know the truth.
Needless to say, the minute Bliss walks in the door, her mother and father are
waiting, and boy are they mad. Because she believes winning first prize in a
beauty contest will benefit Bliss’ future more than skating, Brooke insists
that Bliss give up roller derby and participate in the Blue Bonnet Pageant.
Determined to determine her future, Bliss declares that she is in love with
what she’s doing and tells Brooke, “Stop shoving your idea of fifties womanhood
down my throat." She storms out and calls Maggie, who picks her up,
but when Bliss describes what happened, Maggie sides with her parents. Feeling
more alone than ever, Bliss bails out of the car, goes back home, and tries to
contact Oliver, who has not called since he left. Unable to reach him, she logs
into her computer, checks the band’s website, and sees pictures of him with a
girl wearing the White Stripes t-shirt.
To preserve what
little of her crumbling life is left, Bliss heads back to Austin, only to
encounter Maven, who reveals that she knows Bliss’ secret. Aware that the woman
could cause her to lose everything she’s worked so hard for, Bliss goes to the
Hurl Scouts and tells them the truth. She hopes that they’ll understand what
she did and why, but the ploy doesn’t work. Rather than forgiving her, the
women turn against her, not only because she’s been dishonest with them but
because her lies may cost them the championship. In an ironic twist, Razor
informs Bliss that she could have participated legally if she’d just gotten her
parents to sign a permission slip. Considering her skating career over, Bliss
decides to make things right with her family, returns home, and agrees to
participate in the pageant.
What will happen
next? Will the Hurl Scouts take Bliss back into the fold? Will her parents
forgive her? Will she become the Blue Bonnet Beauty Queen? And what will she
say to Oliver when he gets back to town? If you want to find out, you’ll have
to watch the movie because it’s time for me to move on.
Overall, the quirkiness in Whip-It is pretty straightforward; however, this
isn’t true for countless comedies. Since people
started writing stories, satirists have used humor to poke fun at serious
topics. Early examples are Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Jonathan Swift’s
chilling essay, A Modest Proposal, which advises the impoverished
Irish to sell their babies to wealthy English landlords for food. Even books
like Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, and Matilda by Roald Dahl, stories we associate with
children, are actually biting denunciations of society. Because of how much
people enjoyed parodies, the movie industry dove into the genre like hungry
seagulls plunging into a school of herring. Since the 1970s, such films have
been classified as dark comedy, but the style was around much earlier than
that. Movies like Arsenic and Old Lace, 1944 (a funny movie about
murder), Harvey, 1950 (a humorous story about mental illness),
and Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Love the Bomb,
1964 (a comical tale of nuclear war) are just some examples of films drenched
in social criticism.
On the other hand,
there are also serious films about unconventional characters who are facing
hard circumstances. They include the 1944 murder mystery Laura, where a
police detective (Dana Andrews) falls in love with his victim (Gene Tierney);
the 1947 drama Sunset Boulevard, where an aging actress (Gloria
Swanson) becomes terminally infatuated with her young boarder (Charlton
Heston); the 1949 romance Portrait of Jennie, where an artist (Joseph
Cotton) is stalked by a girl (Jennifer Jones) who defies the laws of time; and
the 1962 horror film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, where a mad woman
(Betty Davis) terrorizes her paraplegic sister (Joan Crawford). We continue to
enjoy these types of characters today, including the radical cannibal Hannibal
Lecter in Silence of the Lambs (1991); the terrifying monster
Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th franchise; and the
misguided super villains Doctor Octopus, the Sandman, and the Green Goblin in
the Spider-Man series. Finally, there are a few cases
where it is difficult to pick out who is the hero and who is the villain
because they both act so outrageously that neither one is really a good person.
Hard Candy - 2005
This movie opens with a series of computer messages
between Thonggirl14 and Lensman319. The content of their discussion, which
culminates with an agreement to meet, indicates that the two have been
communicating for a while. The rendezvous takes place at a coffee shop with
Jeff (Patrick Wilson), a handsome man in his early thirties, who enters and
approaches a young teenage girl named Hayley (Elliott Page), who is sitting at
the counter. The waif, who has chocolate smeared around her mouth, has
obviously been waiting for him because she is glad to see him and appears to
trust him. They talk for a minute, then he buys her more chocolate, and she
guides him to a booth that is beneath the poster of a pretty girl named Donna
Mauer, who is missing.
Since Hayley lives
with her father, who is a college professor, she has an atypical taste for
things beyond her years, like old movies, classical literature, and traditional
art. Although he’s much older than she is, as a professional photographer known
for working with young female models, Jeff seems perfectly comfortable sharing
his afternoon in an electrically charged situation with a lovely child. He’s so
at ease, in fact, that he repeatedly makes comments which ooze sexual innuendo,
creating a really uncomfortable vibe. As he offers to buy Hayley an expensive
t-shirt with a reproduction of Edward Hopper’s painting The Nighthawks on the front so she can model it
for him, it feels like he’s a John making a transaction with a baby prostitute.
He suggests that they go elsewhere to take the picture; Hayley says okay, and
the air fractures. When she asserts that she won’t go to his place, however,
the tension subsides. Then they step outside, where she spies his chic sports
car, starts crawling all over it, and begs him for a ride. As a man who never
refuses a pretty girl, Jeff generously relents. There are countless places in
L.A. that they could go, but Jeff takes her to his plush mansion in the Hollywood
Hills. Even though she knows that she shouldn’t, she readily accepts his
invitation to go inside, and your skin crawls.
Jeff’s house is
tastefully furnished except for the wall hangings, which are all shots of his
models. They aren’t shown, but we see them through Hayley’s eyes as she
describes pictures of underage girls wearing skimpy lingerie, creating a mental
image of soft kiddie porn. While Hayley is critiquing the decor, Jeff plays
host by slipping into the kitchen and making her a drink. As he does so, he
confesses that the only model he ever slept with was Janelle, who was special.
Reemerging, he walks toward Hayley, adds bitterly that Janelle left him for an
older photographer (talk about your irony), and hands her the drink. To his
surprise, she refuses it, explaining that she never drinks anything she hasn't
made for herself. She disappears into the kitchen with the glass, empties the
contents into the sink, then returns with fresh drinks for both of them. As
they imbibe, Jeff begins coaxing her to pose for him, saying things like,
“Models have strength. They can do anything.” Even though she’s been
well-behaved up to this point, Hayley suddenly starts shouting and jumping on
the furniture. To regain control of the situation, Jeff yells at her to stop,
then abruptly passes out.
When Jeff comes to,
he is bound to a wooden kitchen chair. He makes light of it: “Why do I get tied
up first if this is how we’re going to play?” However, when that doesn’t
convince Hayley to release him, his tone turns vicious. “Play time is over,” he
barks, and he demands that she free him. Instead of obeying, Hayley, who somehow
seems significantly older and less naïve than she was at the coffee shop,
coolly rebuffs him, saying that his neighbors are away, and no one will hear
his screams. (Why would he be screaming?)
She further reveals
that while “playing” the victim online, she was actually studying him, noting
the way he stalked her. He’d pop up in whichever chat room she signed onto,
regardless of the name she used, and no matter what she claimed to be
interested in, he’d always reply that those were his favorite things, too. In
fact, the only criteria she didn’t alter were her gender and her age because
she realized early on that he was only looking for fourteen-year-old girls, and
she understood why. People don’t take young girls seriously, and if one
complained about him to the cops, all he had to do was pretend to be the victim
because the police would take his word over hers. “It’s just so easy to blame a
kid,” she sneers. The problem is, she continues, that he doesn’t understand
that what he’s doing is wrong (“Just because a girl knows how to imitate a
woman does not mean that she’s ready to do what a woman does.”), which means
he’ll never quit on his own. Therefore, it’s up to her to stop him.
Unable to do prevent
it, Jeff can only listen as Hayley tears his house apart, looking for
pornography or other evidence of immoral behavior. Even though she doesn’t say
so, she is seeking something more specific and more damning. While she
dismantles his home, Hayley relishes informing Jeff that she went through his
computer when he was unconscious and discovered that he had downloaded a lot of
pictures, but she couldn’t find them. She is convinced that they are in the house,
and even though the only useful thing she’s uncovered so far is a gun, which
she hangs onto, she continues searching. Jeff tries to control the situation by
making her feel guilty and asking what her family would think about her
behavior, but she ignores him. Just when it seems she’ll never locate what
she’s looking for, Hayley stops and studies the room, finally zeroing in on a
box of large rocks that doesn’t fit the overall decor. Convinced that’s where
Jeff hid the goods, she rips into it with great fervor, and voilà, she finds a
combination safe secreted in the bottom.
Hayley knows Jeff
isn’t going to give her the combination, so she tries several dates, but none works.
Knowing that her window of time is short, she racks her brain until it finally
hits her that the key has to be 319. It’s on both Jeff’s chat room ID and on
the back of Janelle’s picture, the only photo that hangs in his bedroom. As
soon as she enters it into the lock, the door springs open, exposing a DVR, a
stack of dirty pictures, and on the very top, one photo of Donna Mauer posing
demurely in front of the same coffee shop where Jeff arranged their meeting.
Now that she has a gun, Hayley has become overconfident, and isn't watching Jeff
as closely as she should.
Taking advantage of this, he frees
himself, and when she arrogantly returns to gloat, he kicks her hard and grabs
the weapon. To escape him, she sprints away, moving deeper into the house.
Although this gives him an opportunity to run, Jeff goes after her instead,
boldly prowling from one room to another, intent on revenge. Suddenly, she
creeps up on him from behind, wraps plastic around his face, and suffocates him
until he’s unconscious.
This time, when Jeff comes to, he is
strapped to the kitchen island, nude from the waist down, with a bag of ice on
his genitals. Standing between his legs, Hayley interrogates him like she’s a
detective, demanding to know why Donna is fully dressed in her photo when the
subjects in all the other pictures are nude. Still trying to gain her trust,
Jeff confesses that he took the picture when he and Donna met for coffee, but
then she left, and he has no idea where she went. He then changes the subject,
casually asking what the ice is for, as if he doesn’t care, as if he’s just
trying to make conversation. Not about to fall for his act, Hayley proclaims
that she’s going to castrate him for “preventive maintenance.”
Still playing it cool, Jeff tries
warning Hayley away by telling her that “it changes you when you hurt
somebody,” like he wants to save her from herself.
She just ignores him and sets about
starting the surgery. Terrified, Jeff threatens that he’ll call the police, and
they’ll put her in jail.
Instead of showing concern, however,
Hayley responds that it won’t happen because he doesn’t know anything about
her; she’s lied to him about her name, her age, her family, where she lives,
everything.
Finally, in desperation, Jeff tells
her a story about something that happened when he was nine and got in trouble
for molesting his five-year-old cousin, painting himself as someone who was
born a pedophile and can’t resist molesting children.
Rather than giving his ridiculous
excuses any consideration, Hayley nonchalantly continues cutting, snipping, and
stitching. When she’s finished, she drops his testicles into the garbage
disposal and turns it on. Then, after advising him not to remove the stitches
for ten days, she heads upstairs to take a shower.
While she’s gone, Jeff gets free a
second time, and after realizing that he can walk, he sneaks upstairs for a
little vindication. The water is running full force in the bathroom, so he
charges into the shower, but she isn’t there. Confused, he’s trying to figure
out where she could be when she sneaks on him carrying a taser and shocks him
unconscious. While he’s out, she puts the house in order, calls her mom on her
cell phone to say that she’ll be home soon, and texts a friend about seeing a
movie. Then, she uses Jeff’s landline to call someone and report that he is
suicidal and needs help.
When Jeff regains consciousness this
time, he is too trussed up to move, and there is a noose hanging from the
ceiling. As before, Hayley is standing by, ready to educate him. This time she
tells him that she called the police, who are on their way, and she has left
the pornography, DVR, and most importantly, Donna’s picture lying in plain
sight. The only way he can avoid going to prison is to hang himself, and she is
willing to help him if he wants her to. Then, knowing that it will take him
some time to decide what to do, she leaves him alone and goes through the house
to be sure she hasn’t left anything that can identify her lying around.
Reasoning that this is his last
chance, Jeff strains and struggles until he frees himself, but this time Hayley
is not prepared. When she sees him coming after her, she runs through the
house, into the yard, and finally onto the roof, where she gets the drop on him
with the gun. Confident that everything she did was just, Hayley tells Jeff,
“I’m every little girl you ever watched, touched, screwed, killed.”
The problem is that Jeff thinks he can
get away with what he’s been doing because he is successful and wealthy.
Confident, he arrogantly declares that no one will care what he’s done. “It
didn’t ruin Polanski. Didn’t he just win an Oscar?”
Smirking, Halyey levels a final blow,
informing Jeff that she called Janelle (on his landline) and asked her to come
over. She taunts him further, saying that if he doesn’t jump off the roof, the
love of his life will learn that he’s a monster. If he does the right thing,
however, Hayley promises to hide the evidence of his crimes, and Janelle will
grieve for rather than despise him.
If Jeff has learned anything, it’s
that Hayley is duplicitous. He can’t be sure the police are coming or that
they’ll believe her if they do. Nor can he be positive that she called Janelle,
or that Janelle will believe the awful things Hayley will tell her. All Jeff
can be sure of is that he has a crucial decision to make and very little time
to do it. If you want to know the outcome, you’ll have to watch the movie. You
should do that anyway because it isn’t just a story; it’s an experience.
Summary
Unquestionably, these films seem to differ,
their only connection being that Elliott Page stars in both. On a deeper level,
however, there are strong similarities. First, they are both fighting for
something. While Bliss is primarily fighting for herself and Hayley is fighting
for every girl Jeff pursues, both characters are trying to right a wrong.
Because she believes that beauty was her only asset when she was young, Bliss’
mom, Brooke, tries to give her daughters the same advantage by attempting to
make them the fairest ones of all. The irony is that rather than being a
success, Brooke is just a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service who spends
her day walking beneath the relentless Texas sun wearing a hot, ugly
government-issued uniform. Noting the incongruity, Bliss rebels so she and her
younger sister can have futures that make them happy. Admittedly, Hayley (or
whatever her name is) has a weightier mission. Positive that Jeff is not only a
pedophile but also is a murderer, she literally puts herself in peril to
protect his future victims. The movie never clarifies if there is a connection
between Hayley and Donna, and you don’t learn until the very end why she
believes that Jeff is to blame for the girl’s disappearance, but her intention
is apparent.
Second, because they are girls, the
two protagonists have the same problem; they aren’t taken seriously. When Bliss
confronts Oliver about another girl wearing her T-shirt, instead of
apologizing and hoping for the best, he makes up some weak excuse, believing
that Bliss will be dumb enough to believe it. Bliss handles his misconception
by blowing him off. Since Jeff is diabolical rather than just sleazy, he goes a
step further, talking to Hayley as if she’s a child and assuming that she’ll believe
him. Unfortunately, he’s probably right to believe that the cops will see her
the same way, and that when push comes to shove, they’ll side with him. What he
doesn’t realize is that Hayley knows this and has planned all along to bypass
the difficulty by convincing Jeff to kill himself.
Third, both Bliss and Hayley lie to get
what they want. This is important for a couple of reasons. First, they lie so
they can do something they aren’t supposed to do. As a rule, in our society,
girls generally have a limited range of opportunities open to them. Even when
women become physicians, they tend to practice pediatrics or obstetrics rather
than cardiology or neurosurgery. Thus, Bliss and Hayley both lie so they can do
something they are otherwise not going to be allowed to do. The other reason that
females lie is that they get away with it because Americans believe that
females tell the truth. Bliss lies to everyone about everything, and even her
parents, who should know better, believe whatever she tells them, no matter how
questionable her story is. We don’t know whether Hayley is typically an honest
person, but we do know that she lies to Jeff constantly, and he believes her.
She also lies to Judy Tokuda (Sandra Oh), Jeff’s neighbor, who comes by to drop
off some Girl Scout cookies (the neighbors aren’t gone after all). When she
does, she asks Hayley who she is and why she is there, leading one to wonder if
what Judy really wants to know is what Jeff does with all the young girls he
brings home. Could Judy be a liar too?
Lastly, both movies implicitly suggest
that there are times when it’s okay to do the wrong thing for the right reason.
Determined to participate in roller derby, Bliss willfully disregards the facts
that she is a minor and her parents have the right to know, and to object to,
what their daughter is doing. Brooke is not blameless here because she forces
Bliss to participate in beauty pageants, and in allowing this to go on, Carl is
complicit. But does that give Bliss the right to go behind their backs? Hayley’s
behavior is even more questionable. Being a pedophile who makes pornographic
photos of underage girls that he stalks out on the internet, makes Jeff a
dangerous man, whether he is to blame for Donna’s disappearance or not.
However, does that excuse Hayley’s behavior? She leads him on, lies to him,
drugs him, binds him, tortures him, and threatens him, all so she can get him
to kill himself. Hayley and Jeff have plenty of excuses for why they do what
they do. Are her excuses better than his? Clearly, good people do not do the
things that Jeff does. But do they do the things that Hayley does?
Conclusion
Whip-It has an overall rating of 69% on IMDB but did
much better on Rotten Tomatoes, where audiences gave it a respectable 74% and
critics rated it at an impressive 85%. They especially loved the movie’s humor
and tenderness. The movie received a total of eight award nominations,
including recognition by the Women’s Network Awards for Ms. Barrymore’s and Mr.
Page’s work. The Women Film Critics Circle Awards nominated Mr. Page for Best
Comedic Actress, and the Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics recommended the
movie for Campy Film of the Year. You can watch the film for free if you have a
subscription to Cinemax or Spectrum, or you can rent it on Apple TV, Prime
Video, or VUDU for about $4. Amazon is selling a double-feature DVD with both Juno
and Whip-It for twelve bucks, but if you are only interested in Whip-It,
Amazon, eBay, Best Buy, and Walmart are selling it for $8 to $15.
Hard Candy was nominated for more awards than Whip-It,
but most of those came from outside the United States. For example, the British
Independent Film Awards chose the movie as the Best Foreign Independent Film in
2006. Elliott Page was nominated for several awards and won for the 2006 Best
Equality of the Sexes Award from the Women Film Critics Circle as well as the
2007 Best Actress Award from the Austin Critics Association. The Phoenix Film
Critics Society considered the movie The Most Overlooked Film of the Year
(2006). Even though it was nominated for more awards than Whip-It, however,
critics on IMDB gave it the same rating (70%), and critics on Rotten Tomatoes
gave it a poor 67%, noting that the content was very disturbing (which it is).
Currently, if you have subscriptions, you can watch Hard Candy on
Cinemax and Spectrum, or you can pay $4 to see it without commercials on Apple
TV or Prime. If you don’t mind the occasional commercial, however, it’s
available on Roku, Plex, Tubi, and Pluto for free. In most cases, the
DVD/Blu-ray is for sale on Amazon and eBay for $10 to $15. One seller on eBay
wants $104, but I wouldn’t pay that unless you’re looking for a good way to get
rid of money and are afraid of fire.
It’s time for me to bounce but I’ll be
back in a couple of months to share two biographical movies starring Elliott Page.
Until then enjoy the spring of 2024 and watch some cool flicks. Peace out.
https://literarydevices.net/Satire/
https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/g34645809/best-dark-comedy-movies/
https://www.hellorollergirl.com/roller-derby-101-the-complete-guide-to-getting-familiar-with-roller-derby/
https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/workforce/data/active-physicians-sex-and-specialty-2019
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