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Fifty Shades of Grey > Nymphomaniac: Some Stories Shouldn’t Be Told By Men

Women are goddamn tough to write. Pop culture is littered with miserable examples of men trying to write from a female perspective only to create absurd caricatures with motivations that can be baffling and insulting, such as in Suckerpunch, or they are basically male characters with swapped out genitalia and a random female trait thrown in here and there when the writer remembers that the character is a girl (almost every sci-fi/horror tough woman ever written).

But then there are the really spectacular failures, like  Nymphomaniac.

I believe Lars von Trier’s intentions were good when he wrote and directed the difficult and ambitious project which just released on Netflix. Nymphomaniac is a two-part story centered around a female sex addict named Joe (played alternately by  and ) as she recounts her life to Seligman (), an older and inexperienced good Samaritan who shelters Joe after finding her beaten in an alleyway. Nymphomaniac is the kind of art house cinema that I both love and loathe. It attempts to rattle viewers, challenging what they know about film, storytelling, and basic aspects of humanity, but lacks execution in some aspect that keeps it from reaching its full potential.

Trier is a professional provocateur, and this movie certainly delivered on shock. But it failed at its fundamental goal of humanizing the sexually aggressive woman. Trier stumbled onto some fascinating ideas, but they weren’t enough to save the film; even worse, many of the scenes actually promoted dangerous misrepresentations of female sexual identity.

For a more detailed dissection from a woman’s perspective of what the movie did wrong, check out this review by Jezebel’s Lindy West.

After watching volume one of Nymphomaniac, I was intrigued by a few interesting concepts the movie explored, particularly in the balance found in multiple partners. Trier used a clever metaphor of a piano with a sustain pedal for bass, one hand for a dangerous melody, and the other hand for anchoring chords. Comfort, passion, love. I’d encountered this balancing act in both men and women who’ve utilized multiple relationships to craft a singular, perfect love affair. Hopeful, I pressed on to the second volume to see if this insight was part of a grander revelation that needed time to properly unfold.

Nope.

A few inspired moments emerged, but they were sunk by deeply misguided portrayals of horny young girls roaming train cars in a game of numbers followed in volume two by a warped view of BDSM. Though there are several tone-deaf moments in this story, these two examples were particularly problematic. Seligman attempted to explain away Joe’s  train antics as only viewed negatively by the general public because the predators were women instead of men. Yet, the final scene during the game in the first-class car was definitely rape. It was easy for the Seligman to dismiss only because the woman was the attacker.

On BDSM, it is a bit harder to explain where Trier went wrong. I will admit that there is much I don’t understand about this lifestyle as it is an aspect of human sexuality I could never fully embrace. But it is clear that Trier knows even less than I do. The dominant/submissive relationship is rooted in trust. It isn’t brutal and distanced, as Trier portrayed it. It also isn’t subjection, it’s an agreement. A subtle, but important distinction. The submissive is the one who wields the true strength in the relationship.

Perhaps it would be better to consult Fifty Shades of Grey, the name brand in female submissiveness. I have not read the runaway best-selling book, nor will I watch the movie, but I did read the Wikipedia page (which I can safely assume is 100% accurate). The ridiculous plot description seems more in tune with the female experience than any part of Nymphomaniac. Perhaps E.L. James is a hack writer who lucked into an empire, but she is a woman and has tapped into a truth that Trier bumbled past.

A better example of uncovering the female perspective would be Secretary. The 2002 film follows the travails of Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a lonely, shy, and borderline suicidal young woman who finally blossoms under the domineering hand of her boss, expertly portrayed by James Spader. The movie displays the fetish as deliciously alien, but also as an outlet for Gyllenhaal’s character to seize control of her life. It is she who chooses when, where, how, and to whom she will submit. Capturing the curious link between pain and pleasure, control and submission, is a difficult creative exercise, but writers Erin Cressida Wilson and Steven Shainberg handled it with skill in their adaptation of Mary Gaitskill‘s short story from her Bad Behavior collection.

To round out amazing movies that I would never dare to write, Blue Is The Warmest Color is a brilliant character study based on a graphic novel by Julie Maroh. The French film follows a similar coming-of-age story where Adele, () struggles with her emerging homosexuality personified by a blue-haired beauty named Emma (). Straight men write cute lesbians often, sometimes earnestly, sometimes as exploitation, but I’ve never seen chemistry between two women captured with the same honest intensity. 

It is possible that I am not giving Trier enough credit. As awful as the ending was, it vaguely implied that this entire story was not real, but merely the main character feeding her male audience what she thought they wanted to hear. In the same way that she assured men that they were the first to give her an orgasm, Joe was reverting back to her predatory instincts and winning the man’s loyalty by building a fantasy. A few other moments in the movie support this theory and Trier could have been coyly chastising the chauvinistic Hollywood machine that creates unbelievable and overly-sexualized female characters.

I doubt it, though. Even if this was Trier’s intention, it wasn’t anything more than an afterthought to justify making a shocking movie.

So, what am I proposing? That men shouldn’t try to write from a woman’s perspective? No. I’ve done it and I will do it again, but it is important for male writers to understand our limitations and not to write beyond our perception. What Trier attempted with Nymphomaniac was doomed from the moment he decided he would write the script alone. If he really wanted to dig into the female psyche that deeply in his movie, he needed to give a woman writer an opportunity to illuminate aspects of the female experience that remain foreign to his own. The world is in no short supply of talented female writers, but rather a shortage in opportunities for them to share their lives with us. If men want these stories to exist, we need to bring women in to write them.

On a related note, Literati is looking for more female writers.

 

Leia vs. Gamora: Feminism in the Toy Aisle

Sitting on a twilight porch with friends the other night, I listened to a nine-year-old boy ask his mother why domestic abuse crimes were mainly committed by men against women. She tried, haltingly and with great care, to explain. I listened and thought about how much I dreaded ever trying to answer this question for the small people in my life. I’ve since come to realize that because our culture is saturated with ideas and images of violence towards women, it may need to happen sooner than I thought.

Shortly after watching the movie Guardians of the Galaxy, my eight-year-old daughter expressed an interest in finding an action figure of Gamora, the green-skinned female assassin. We couldn’t find one at Target, although there were action figures of every other character in the film—even the raccoon. I noticed it was difficult to find female action figures of any kind on the aisle, though we did eventually come across Princess Leia. She was in her Jabba the Hutt metal bikini with a thick chain around her neck.

You might argue that this aisle was for boys, and that boys aren’t interested in female action figures. I’m not sure it’s quite that simple. I think we often feel constrained to act within the options we’re given. In time, it becomes easy to believe that these are the only options we have—maybe even the only ones we should want.

My daughter went home that afternoon without an action figure. But we stayed in that aisle for a long time. I was thinking about how disrespect for women and abuse towards future girlfriends and wives might begin even in places like this toy aisle, where the only female presence was a strong, intelligent, woman wearing a bikini and a chain around her neck. Holding the box tightly in her hands, my daughter wanted to be reminded of who put this chain around Leia’s neck. I wanted to tell her, “Anyone who would buy it. Anyone who enjoys looking at it.”

“Mom, if we took her home, do you think we could get the chain off?”

“I don’t know.” Disgusted and discouraged, I didn’t want to look at this objectified, defeated figure any longer. I didn’t want my daughter to have to look at her, either, or to have to explain why the one female toy on this aisle was unarmed and on a leash. When I asked my child on the way home which of the two she liked better, who she thought was tougher, she shot me a suspicious glance and said, “Why are you asking me that? I like them both.”

Maybe she was right. The humiliating Jabba scene notwithstanding, Leia was smart, confident, brave, and good with a blaster. Gamora had similar qualities, along with the fierce desperation common to survivors of abuse. Neither character was a perfect feminist role model. As strong as both women are, neither of them can stand alone all the time. There are moments of crisis when they need the help of their friends, and many times when their (male, animal, robot) friends need and rely on their intellectual and physical help, as well. They are respected equals within their group. Instead of trying to find perfect feminist role models for my daughter, it may be healthier to show her good human role models like Gamora and Leia.

I don’t want to have to explain domestic violence issues to my daughter, or why sex and violence seem to go together so often in our culture. Why relationships between men and women are often a game or a power struggle that end up leaving everyone broken, and how all of this starts as early as childhood, with the kind of toys offered to them on store shelves. But eventually I’ll begin to explain. First, maybe we’ll go buy up all the Princess Leia action figures we can find. I think we could get all those chains off. Maybe the best place to start, before I try to explain anything to my daughter, is to imagine some better options.

Free eBook: In The Town Where All Things Are Possible

We have just collected the serialized story into one eBook on sale now in the Kindle library, via Smashwords, and soon to be distributed to all major digital bookstores. Nick Geist provided the cover image. The story was originally released on our site one chapter per week over the course of six months. Feel free to spend your hard-earned $2.99 to purchase it on your iPhone, Kindle, or whateves, but you can also download it as a pdf or as an epub. Here is the blurb:

“In The Town Where All Things Are Possible, the hopes of an unusual sea-side community rest on the weary shoulders of a love-sick widower. Originally published as a serial on literatipressok.com, this is the complete story of a town of eccentrics hiding an ancient magic which they believe can make any dream come true, provided the wish isn’t too big for such a small place. A beautiful woman arrives and the tortured widower finds love again, but The Town is not ready to let go of its lonely manager.”

Ckick this link to download the pdf: in-the-town-where-all-things-are-possible. Click this link to download the epub: in-the-town-where-all-things-are-possible.

Dusk

(Problems viewing? Watch it on YouTube.)

David Doub, writer of the vampire comic Dusk, approached us with the idea of doing a short film based on his long running series. The dark tale about a woman escaping a brutal cycle of domestic abuse by falling in with a vampire hunter has been a staple of the convention scene for years. SGInformer and Steakhouse Productions teamed up on a beautiful afternoon to shoot the horror film at the incredible Paseo Plunge location in Oklahoma City. We are very proud of the results.

Spooklights – The Beauty of Loose Ends

Good short stories are like exotic dancers. Not the run-down and drug-addled kind, but the careerists that know denial is what hooks the saps, haunts them for days after the cheap perfume fades away and the bank account has run dry. A really strong short story frustrates, working its way into the psyche, forcing the reader to obsess about what could have been had there just — been — more — time.

Spooklights deftly delivers the tease in a collection of short stories published through Denver’s Muzzleland Press. Focusing on sharp and intelligent horror, Spooklights often left me lusting after the loose ends and peering beyond the final punctuation. This is a hallmark of good horror, leaning heavier on tension and mystery than on shock and gore. From modern Lovecraftian yarns to brutal walking nightmares, the stories tend to use the genre to explore the scars of its characters, utilizing horror as a tool to dig at something more interesting underneath.

Toni Nicolino’s “Dark Matter” is a particular standout. The lead character struggles to digest the death of her monstrous, meth-addicted mother. Suffocating and raw, Nicolino shrewdly pulls the reader down into the spiraling chaos of a damaged psyche desperate to untangle and sort out a lifetime of hurt.

Jonathan Raab contributed two stories. Raab specializes in creating vivid and relatable narrators to ground a normal world, then throws in unbelievable elements like giant chunks of  asphalt plunging into calm waters. I’d read the second tale, “Between the Walls of Static”, before this collection came out and, upon re-reading, was reminded how fun it is when strong character building allows the reader to accept a crazy premise. Sort of the Indiana Jones effect, a writer can get away with damn near anything so as long as the central character is charming enough to lure the reader along.

Overall, the stories are delicious teases, leaving more questions than they answer. Short stories aren’t meant to satisfy, they are a flirt. They are the fist winking glance of a new writer to a prospective fan. Only the amateurs give it all up on the first dance, the pros leave the reader flushed and frenzied for more.

Ferguson

Warhol Sex Ed

 

My Name Is Grommit

My name is Grommit and I wreck worlds.

Over the course of three billion years, I have destroyed 2,013 planets which include ice moons hiding life in deep, tumbling oceans, green globes flush with vibrant possibility, and even red planets where organisms live only by the magnificent force of their own will. These red survivors often attribute life to miracles from gods that don’t exist. They are their own gods, the most wondrous of all life in this universe for their inexplicability. But I destroyed them too. I was bred for this, forged of silicon, carbon, and an inexhaustible fury.

Yet, there I sat on an old woman’s yellow, paisley couch, its springs groaning under my tremendous weight. I was careful not to pierce the fabric with the row of horns lining up my back. Thick plastic sheets protected the seat cushions from the needle-sharp spines sweeping across my upper thighs and mid-section. I am an indestructible killing machine, every inch armored and weaponized. The plastic rustled as I shifted my left butt cheek off of an uncomfortable couch spring.

I am not certain how I ended up here.

“Dragon’s Blood, Black Love, or Balsam Fir?” the old woman asked.

I chose Dragon’s Blood, with no real idea of what she was asking me. A match struck, a reddish-brown incense stick burned, then settled into a cinder. It smelled of fresh oak shavings mixed with an old man’s cologne. It was nice.

I attempted to stand, but my mind melted inside my silicone skull. Confusion and vertigo swirled. I rested against the couch, springs squealing, at the cusp of snapping.

I saw the old woman fully. A black and white muumuu flowed over her wide belly and gelatin arms. Silver hair was pulled into two pigtails which flared out from her head like children pulling at their mother. Her face was kind with silver/green eyes that made my mind melt once again. I looked into myself for the fury that drove me across the universe, but I found only a tiny, scared Grommit cowering from the old woman’s warmth.

What had happened, what had brought me to this place?

Oh yes, I remembered. Love.

But first it was that infuriating man. I encountered him so many light years away. He said his name was “Lima”. He talked in abstract riddles while I stood upon the embers of a once prosperous moon with surging oceans and young, hopeful mountains. After I landed upon its surface, I remade it into a barren wasteland. The oceans retreated deep within the planet’s crust. Life above withered under the heat of two suns blasting through the broken atmosphere.

“Why?” Lima asked as he gazed at the death I wrought. He didn’t seem shocked, only curious.

“Because this was how I was made.”

“Then your creator is flawed and you are weak for submitting to him.”

I snatched the man’s neck, but he disappeared into red mist. I never saw him again, but from that brief touch, I knew everything about him. I knew the name of his creator – Wonderboy*. I also knew the way to his home planet of Earth. I leapt from the conquered planet and began my long journey, fury roaring inside my invincible shell.

Decades passed as I sailed across the abyss. My fury did not abate with time, but instead infected and inflamed. I was sick with anger when I finally landed

But I encountered something new. The only thing that had ever silenced my rage.

“What was that?” the old woman asked, as if my thoughts were being amplified throughout her tiny shotgun shack.

Or was I talking out loud? My mind swished back and forth, confusion breaking against one side of the skull, then crashing against the other.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“My name is Samantha,” the old woman said. She waddled to a recliner, its thick cushions bearing the groove of her ample body. She struggled backwards against it, the recliner sighing with her weight. She shifted, settled, then took up a Chinese fan and waved it in front of her damp face.

“I am your intervention,” she said, meeting my eyes. Terrified, I looked away.

I retraced the last three days. When my fury reawakened. The rampage began in Hong Kong. I was vaguely embarrassed by the cliche but humans obsessed on their planet’s end. There simply was no original place to start. New York, LA, Tokyo, Sydney?

It’s all been done, baby, is what He said when I tried my hand at painting. Just go with what you feel.

He. That fabulous, beautiful He. He thought art would calm my nerves, but it was just his presence that put me at peace. We watched movies, explored online galleries, worked on that little beach house. He made me believe, for a few short years, that I could change.

“Who is ‘He’?” Samantha asked.

“How are you doing that?” I asked the old woman.

“Who is ‘He’?”

I held my tongue, my eyes avoiding hers. I tested my legs again, to try to stand up on her brown shag carpet, move through her living room of fat, porcelain angels, copper crosses, and collectible Coca-Cola bottles. Beyond was a hall of pictures showing faces that no longer lived within these walls. Through the front door was where I could find my fury again.

But I couldn’t lift myself off the cushions. My muscles would twitch, but could not tense nor could they hope to hold my weight. I resettled on the couch.

Yesterday, I was in Switzerland. Was it yesterday? It must have been. I stopped at a small electronics store as Zurich burned behind me. Looking through the front window display at a screen showing the news, I saw my path of destruction, like a row of tilled soil five miles wide and 5,808 miles long. The animation of my progress pleased me.

Everyone likes to see themselves on TV, He once said as he set up his tripod and small video recorder. He wanted to know my life story.

“I still do,” a voice broke in. His voice.

And there He sat in a simple wooden chair pulled from the dining room set. He sat just to the right of Samantha. She patted his arm.

“You’re dead,” I told him.

“Correct.”

I stared at the man, absorbed in his noble, patient countenance.

“Tell me about him,” Samantha said.

His face was still beautiful. Strong chin, soulful brown eyes, an ever-present smirk of clever optimism. But it was passive like in a staged photograph. He wasn’t real.

“I loved him,” I finally said. “Only him.”

“Not only me,” He corrected.

An image to the right of him materialized like colored smoke settling into a projection. It was a creature from over a billion years ago that lived on an angry ocean planet. Her smooth skin was streaked with stripes of purple, green, red, and blue. She was one of the planet’s only air breathers, like a dolphin, but with a shorter snout. I lived with the creature for twelve years until she left me. I, in turn, destroyed her ocean.

Other creatures appeared throughout the room. Feathered, scaled, humanoid, organic, and artificial. All beautiful. All intelligent and exceptional. All dead. I’d loved them all, but forgot. The fury had burned away all traces of happiness, leaving a deeper and deeper hole in which anger and hurt boiled.

They watched me. I went from face to face, recovering glimpses of our brief times together. I could not bear the memories. I attempted to stand, but my legs would not respond. I sunk back onto the couch. It creaked and rocked, but held.

I could only manage a whimpering “please.”

“We need you to face your past, Grommit,” the old woman said. “We want to free you of the pain, but this can only happen when you understand the suffering you have caused and will continue to cause unless you find a new way.”

“You are a beautiful creation,” He said. I looked to his eyes, a heaviness sinking within me. “We believe in you.”

I blubbered “I’m sorry” out like a terrified child. The weight of the room was crushing me.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, my gaze shifting from one creature to the next. “It just hurts so much. Everything I love dies, but I live. I cannot bear it.”

Samantha pushed herself slowly upon her feet. Her tummy jostled, her joints strained. She steadied, then waddled toward me. She placed her hand upon my spiked brow, her fingers settling between the points.

“Then let us bear that pain with you.”

I lifted my gaze up into her warm eyes.

“But you will die too. What will I be left with?”

“Pain, just as before,” she said. “But if you stay with us, I will teach you a new way of absorbing it.”

He stood and walked to me, his hand finding my cheek, careful of the razor perforations. The creatures all moved in, I felt their touches all over my shell. Steady, warm, accepting.

“Will you stay?” Samantha asked.

I felt life returning to my legs, the confusion cleared. I was free.

“Will you stay?” Samantha asked again.

“I will stay.”

*The Wonderboy Serials is available in print or in digital bookstores.

(Cover image by Don Rosencrans)