Blame Jake Gyllenhaal

Jordana Willner

As October crashes gracelessly down upon Republicans, and party leaders blame Democrats, gay staffers, and hostile journalists, even seasoned party operatives have missed the obvious culprit for the swell of anti-party sentiment and projected loss of congressional power. The problem is actor Jake Gyllenhaal.

With pouty ambivalence absent since the glory days of 1980s anti-hero Molly Ringwald, 25-year-old Gyllenhaal has delivered a comprehensive body of work more liberal than the typically slanted Hollywood output and evidently targeted as a systematic, one-man cinematic battering ram to bludgeon the ideals held dear by President Bush and his party of faith and traditional Republican values.

Consider Gyllenhaal's films. In the 2001 cult classic, title character Donnie Darko meets doom after his smug wealthy white parents aver their dedication to the Republican Party. Vacant and vague while their teenage son plunges the depths of mental illness, overmedication, and quantum physics, they helplessly fund his tuition and psychotherapy but can’t prevent his violent death in his own bed in their garish suburban McMansion.

That same year, Gyllenhaal’s teenage photo store clerk in Lovely and Amazing spotlights the unlivability of the minimum wage for anyone over age 17 and offers a stark reminder of the heightened culture of statutory rape of American boys when he falls willing but bewildered partner to seduction by a 30-something married mother.

Gyllenhaal’s enviable romantic tryst with America’s sweetheart Jennifer Aniston is the clever lure of 2002’s The Good Girl, but the back stories expose the slow brain death, middle-American sloth, and physical dangers lurking for the untold numbers of financially and politically manipulated communities whose livelihoods center around Wal-Mart and other corporate retail giants.

No plan to undermine the right could compete in today’s crowded political landscape without a cinematic slam against climate change naysayers. In 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow, Gyllenhaal pleads an urgent case for the impending near-term doomsday consequences of global warming, as he and ultra hot screen father Dennis Quaid barely survive the instant onset of an ice age triggered by an earthly temperature trend gone haywire.

Jarhead, the 2005 telling of Anthony Swofford’s chilling indoctrination into Gulf War Marine Corps life, reveals dehumanized soldiers longing to kill and suffering the monotony of the legendary buildup to and short duration of Operation Desert Storm. Gyllenhaal’s destitute, ambivalent Swofford sees his fellow soldiers not as patriots who long to serve their country but as felons who choose service over jail-time, killers looking for sanctioned gun-time, young men with few options, and a small fanatical minority who seek “USMC” branding with a smoking cattle prod. “Anti-war” understates the damning commentary of Gyllenhaal’s film, whose final quiet irony is the 1992 celebration of America’s “permanent” departure from Iraq.

And of course, via 2005’s Brokeback Mountain, Gyllenhaal forever reframes into homosexual perspective the posse archetype, casting aspersions on men with fancy spurs. Shock value and world-class direction brought international prominence and a permanent place in societal and cinematic lore to his sympathetic, lovelorn gay cowboy.

To recap Gyllenhaal’s subversive messages: Global warming exists on an apocalyptic scale. Our manliest icons are gay lovers. Republican suburbanites kill their children. Retail is not a living wage. People die if they work at Wal-Mart. No one can protect our sons from sexual predators. The military is a dehumanizing hell for our sons. Our first Gulf War was an absurdly tragic waste of time; just what in the world are we doing there now for more than three years?

Gyllenhaal is not yet 26 years old. Surely the Republican machine, so adept at smoking out its enemies, will identify and quell this seditious source before he fires his propaganda machine anew.

If the right doesn’t act fast, the problem will only compound. Because Gyllenhaal has one more destructive new bomb to drop: sex appeal. The buff new bod he sent to the Gulf War in Jarhead was a sculpted work of art, reminding female viewers that the counter culture boy is growing into a desirably dissident man, and there’s an apolitical Demi Moore with Ashton Kutcher dreams in each of us.

The Republicans handle sex as well as Democrats handle taxes. But they must handle Gyllenhaal now. For if Gyllenhaal continues driving his messages home, the ever important female electorate will increasingly want that Gyllenhaal message, with their boy Jake in the driver’s seat.

Hollywood political dabbling is age-old and expected. To Republican relief, gentlemen lefties Paul Newman and Robert Redford are finally teetering their way into elderly obscurity, and to the Party’s confusion, trusted righty Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) has become more independent maverick than party faithful. Gyllenhaal’s oddity, and indeed his genius, is that with those vacant hound dog eyes and twitchy post-adolescent stance, he seems utterly oblivious to the political groundswell he has single-handedly launched. No grandstanding Jane Fonda clinging to the podium, this guy’s very distraction is his keynote speech.

Clever, sexy little bastard. It’s all part of his plan. The Republican political machine understands enemies and battles, but on subtlety, youth, angst, and sex they forever come up short. This time, all because of Gyllenhaal, so might their votes.

Testosteround-up

Jordana Willner

Bad week for the men. Nukes, wartime denials, schoolhouse shootings, congressional scandals. If frustrated American women have their way, lock-up for males 17 to 70 can’t come too soon.

Male-free, they figure a female White House would lead gently, with less war and fear-mongering. Of course that fantasy would fade when ladyhawks Hillary and Condi, both staunchly pro-Iraq-War, raced inevitably for the presidency. Just which of these warriors is the feminized peacenik to soothe the addled nation could be pondered right through the election and into troop increases, war front expansion, and the 5000th U.S. body bag.

But at least gender segregation would free schools of male pedophiles. Finally, young girls would be safe from vile sexual predators; young boys, on the other hand, would still be sitting ducks. Female teachers, like celebrity female rapists Debra LaFave and Mary Kay Letourneau, who captured rapt national attention for their affairs with pubescent students in their respective schools, profiled a model that has gained momentum to reveal a growing tally of seductions by female teachers.

Business, however, could heal with a woman’s touch. Those clandestine backroom corporate maneuvers so typical of unscrupulous power-driven men would never happen on a woman’s watch. Pay no attention to the current meltdown of Hewlett-Packard’s Board of Directors on spying charges and the forced resignation and indictment of its Chairwoman Patrician Dunn. Most women in business are really very nice. Just ask Leona Helmsley and Martha Stewart.

Meanwhile, male cleansing would eliminate school shootings. Temporarily. But trends in world violence show suicide bombing, once exclusively the domain of men, is a growth industry for females, the culprits in such attacks as the 1991 murder of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the 2004 downing of two Russian airliners, and bombings in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. They may be slow starters, but once a model is established, women have proven quite capable of effective copycat mass murder.

However, in an all-female populace, when scandals and mishaps did occur, citizens could count on calm, honest, reflective responses from civil and mutually engaging sisters. Masters of spin and persuasion would no longer flap smug lips and insult the collective intelligence with nonsensical denials and redirects to external blame. (This plan assumes that auxiliary quarantine space would be reserved in the male lock-up for Mary Matalin and Nancy Grace.)

How urgently respite is needed from the warmongering and pedophilia, the senseless killing and tiresome spin, the baffling excuses and irritating discharge of personal responsibility. How easy to blame the beastly chest beating and respond by waving dainty fists.

But despite the fun of rolling eyes and maligning men, as castration gains renewed appeal and estrogen supplements secure popularity in the daily recommended vitamin intake, how many clean, delicate hands are left?

Not many. Men might make all the mistakes, but at least they are creative enough to originate the bad ideas. Female leaders demonstrate the unique thought it takes to imitate the men they hold in contempt.

Men lead, and the road on which leading women continue to faithfully follow grows more disturbing. If societal segregation is the only new idea American women put forth this decade, it’s at least an original plan.

Short of that absurd scenario, perhaps in response to men’s “boys will be boys,” powerful women will finally find the motivation to say “And women are women. Now step aside boys, your house is mess.”

Meanwhile, just hope Katherine Harris and Cynthia McKinney don’t take the latest male cue and decide to learn the instant messaging feature on their Palm Pilots.

Fatty on the Catwalk

Jordana Willner

Raise the security color and call the reserves, they let a fat chick strut the catwalk.

In a week of other disturbing news anomalies---think congressional sex and schoolhouse slaughter---fashion fat was the feel-good Paris surprise from designer Jean-Paul Gaultier. The image of the super-sized black lingerie and its pouty-faced, ratty-haired conveyor made broadcast and internet rounds, with reports that onlookers cheered as the hefty model tossed her awesome hips with enough force to send airborne any nearby runway regulars who strutted too close.



Who knew an obese woman could enter a realm typically dominated by the thin and perform with such compelling, sensual flair? Surely not Queen Latifah. Or Roseanne. Or Rosie. Or Oprah. Or Star Jones, Camryn Manheim, or Mo’Nique of the plus-sized beauty pageants.

Nothing like celebrating a breakthrough that’s already busted. But even if civilization was setting eyes on its first corpulent cutie, the fatty in the black lingerie wasn’t about breaking barriers. Like her emaciated sisters in extremity, her size makes her a mere novelty, registering shock value on a par with the usual runway snores of lampshade headdresses and trash bag shawls.

Consider that Gaultier selected a woman with a dangerously extreme body size that represents only a small fraction of the populace, teased her hair into a cloud of steel wool, hardened her face into the typically hostile runway mask, and strapped her into a juxtaposed little negligee for a spruce of in-your-face Parisian irony. Such courageous experimentation in a cutthroat European fashion show hasn’t been seen since… the last European fashion show.

But, the fatties aren’t the problem. Their progress may plod, but they clearly have their pioneers. Worry instead about those poor unrepresented women of average size and shape, the size 12 and 14 middle-American misses and moms of the spare-tire middle and wiggly thigh, the forgotten middle children in fashion’s ugly game of polar favoritism.

For those regular American Joannes excluded from the alluring fashion game, a size -2 model is no less relevant than an unabashed size 24 double wide. Despite a love for pretty clothes and designer labels, this neglected fashion demographic might sooner shop a Sears catalog than a Paris fashion show for the relevance to its own average size and needs. If the typically transparent runway model or sitcom actress makes them feel like swollen elephants, the new inflated counter-culture variety paints them as puny and insubstantial in contrast.

Caught between enlarged castoffs of clothes designed for single-digit-sizes, and desperate searches on the small end of plus-sized specialty shops, the indignities suffered by middle-sized women are unspeakable. But where is the visionary leadership to guide this forgotten sect out of the fashion wilderness?

Many saw the future this week in Gaultier’s willingness to risk the unthinkable and allow flesh to come between a model and her bones. But whether she was his caricature or charter case, the real test is for designers to ease away from the extremes and into the body popular. Sashay the thick-waisted, short-limbed but cheerfully sexy ingénue down the runway. Decorate the rotund hourglass with the endearing jiggle and friction thighs. Let loose the full-bellied, wide-hipped, twig-legged babe who can glide and swivel. Or at least do as Spain attempted last month and ban models who subsist on ice chips and sugarless gum.

That would be fashion news worth celebrating. But as long as the industry equates its allure with the extremities of inaccessibility, average-sized women have no choice but to continue honing their coping mechanisms.

You’ll find them shopping off-the-rack at Target.

*********************************************
How the Divine Forgive

Jordana Willner

The ABC News reporter hurried to shock his viewers. Amish families shattered by bullets on Monday had forgiven the shooter. Their daughters were executed by his hands, and the community responded with faith-based forgiveness.

A female relative of a deceased child said her people see the tragedy as God’s predestined call on the girls’ earthly time. A victim’s grown male cousin said Jesus had died forgiving humanity’s sins, so how could he not forgive the killer.

A family spokesperson further surprised the anchor by welcoming the gunman’s wife to victims’ funerals. CNN.com meanwhile reported that one slain girl’s grandfather urged forgiveness for the killer: “We must not think evil of this man.” One after another, family and friends intoned the same message of total forgiveness, all stemming from their steadfast Christian faith.

Leave it to pastoral Lancaster County and its rejection of modernity to show a real-time model of what Jesus would do. And leave it to to mainstream American incredulity to reveal its distance from the majority faith the nation claims to uphold.

What did we expect? Knowing the Pennsylvania Dutch peoples’ ardent faith in the biblical gospels, did we foresee a call to arms? A lust for blood? Could we imagine anything from this godly sect but a model of true Jesus-like forgiveness?

Judging by the teasers and lead-ins, ABC News expected viewer astonishment at this Herculean forgiveness. For a dominantly Christian nation, led through tragic national times by a self-described devotee to the savior whose biblical testaments guide the forgiving Amish, you’d think we’d be a little more familiar with forgiveness.

Not so. Public forgiveness is typically photo-op damage control of scandals and rants. Casual pardons provide political payback so ranking apologizers can keep doing business.

But when it comes to tragedy, the familiar script from our Christian-in-Chief is different. When unthinkable aggression led to the mass murder on his watch, our devout Christian leader didn’t lead us to forgive but to avenge.

Why hasn’t his faith-based life perspective led him to walk Jesus’ walk? Why instead has he paired so-called faith with the stride of revenge, man-hunting, preemptive warring, and chronic aggression? How can he invoke the same savior as the Amish---who instantly knew the biblical response to the most unthinkable of atrocities---and claim that his violent leadership is a product of faith?

Maybe a book swap with the Amish community would reveal theirs as a different bible. So often quoted, our thumped, worn, and waved copy has failed to provide the model of healing peace and absolution that this tiny shattered community demonstrated with such nobility in the face of such evil.

Fashion birthed the question in recent years, “What would Jesus do.” Into an allegedly new age of Christians and Christianity, a baby boomer president was to blend faith and leadership for the fresh moral compass to guide a nation. Instead, we have the gall to be shocked that the Americans who shun modern ways have shown the newest age of all for bible-based faith.

The faith told them to forgive, and so at their darkest moment, when arguably most justified in bloodlust, the Amish instantly forgave. Whereas the nation, five years after brutal attack, is still making war and making corpses, not just of allegedly manufactured foes but of our own children.

The real surprise is not their forgiveness but that between the electric lights of modern Washington, D.C., and the pastoral 19th century simplicity of Pennsylvania Dutch Country, only one culture emerges as truly backward. The question is what else we can learn from Amish faith---the faith our leader claims as his own---that may save our sons, communities, and the souls good Christians pray for.

M is a Double Zero

Jordana Willner

December 1999

M is for Masterful. Meticulous. Mysterious and mature. M is also the mainstay modern manager who gives James Bond his bi-annual performance review and quarterly profit sharing check.

M, presumed male in the first seventeen James Bond movies, experienced a stylish rebirth in Bond #18, 1997's "Tomorrow Never Dies." In a clever casting twist, Oscar-winner Dame Judy Dench debuted as a ramrod straight, no-nonsense M, the female boss of Hollywood's greatest secret agent. Dench's M knew the spy business cold, and her femaleness was neither detraction nor delay when it came to making the tough calls that endangered lives and risked world annihilation. Making that scamp Bond answerable to a serious I've-seen-everything-you-have-to-show matron was a delicious reversal of formula, and she wore her pants better than any other spy boss in the business.

Which was not too farfetched in a film series notorious for mixing misogyny with reverence. Building on a history of tough female nemeses and sidekicks, #18 was the best yet. Each female character was an improvement on the last, showcasing womanhood as an ongoing ascension to greatness. With Michelle Yeoh, a compelling young sidekick whose intelligence, athletic skills, and spy acumen made her a worthy professional partner for Bond, and led by M, older and grayer than Yeoh but every bit a powerhouse woman, #18 celebrated brains and abilities as a sturdier pair of female assets than bond girl Teri Hatcher’s spectacular natural set.

Thus Dench's anticipated return in Bond #19, "The World Is Not Enough," was as welcome a reprisal as Pierce Brosnan's mature and thoughtful 007. But whatever points were won by the initial casting of the Lady M were flatly undone when #19 reduced her from law enforcement manageress-of-the-year to a gullible, emotionally overwrought mother figure with bad instincts and no judgment. Enter M #19: Licensed to be a Pill.

Here, M is for mistake. Marginal. Middle-aged and matronly. Like a frail female cliché, M abandons her hard-nosed professionalism for interpersonal fretting and fist-clenching. Referencing motherly guilt, her instincts go the way of her concentration, and she dumbly steps in a trap that any mindless Bondette could avoid. Klutzy M even fails miserably at a dungeon break, using the same reach-through-the-bars-method once employed with far greater success by the Brady Bunch kids. So inert is M that she, head of the vaunted double-0 organization, must join the queue of tear-stained, death's door damsels rescued by the ever-resourceful 007.

Granted, given the series’ long, celebrated history of such Bondian heroics, no one expects a referendum on feminist depictions in film when buying a ticket for a James Bond movie. Yet with the fifth and arguably best Bond actor ever, a huge budget, and a talented supporting cast, weakening M's viability is a serious affront, far worse than the much-publicized casting of mouthwatering but stilted Denise Richards as a post-adolescent nuclear physicist who dresses like a tawdry camp counselor.

While M's descent into menopausal mediocrity is hardly the smoking gun to indicate the degrading and limited Hollywood view of adult women, it’s particularly pathetic to see a team choke on its own formula when they possessed all the makings for freshness. Judy Dench alone is a force for male reckoning, having proven her talent for deadpan, razor-sharp leadership and autocracy not only in her first run as M, but in her Academy Award winning portrayal of in “Shakespeare in Love’s” Queen Elizabeth I, history’s quintessential female leader. Plus, with their tradition of hard-living women who are as brilliant and resourceful as the hero himself, the Bond team displays a disturbing lack of consistency with their own product by featuring a character so unskilled and unmotivated in the pursuit of her own survival.

Viewers who are not outraged by M’s meltdown will at least be bored by her incessant pacing and tsking. Where she could be a true supporting figure, she instead appears as a middle-aged woman slowing down the fun, and in Bond’s world of fast gadgets, fast women, and fast action, an old lady who can’t keep up is an unwelcome liability. And an unnecessary one. Why go to the trouble of casting a powerful older woman only to undo any implications of maturity and vitality? A traditionally stuffy white male M with no allusions to modernity would be far preferable to the damage done by #19’s reinforcement of the tired female stereotypes of vulnerability and dependency.

Not surprisingly, M’s breakdown is only one element of #19's plot that is uncreative and disappointing. With a story line that ignores #18's clever acknowledgment of the power of information, #19 tells a well-worn tale of oil, nukes, and submarines. So much money and talent in a campy but beloved film tradition should be worthy of far more innovation. Yet Bond's creators apparently tripped on all their old scripts; they couldn’t resist re-filming old scenes of Bond on skis and boats, and they couldn't conceive of an older female character who doesn't require salvation at the hands of the hero.

Bond will be back soon in his 20th film adventure. By then, perhaps intelligent filmmaking will prevail and M will once again be a maven with moxie. Until then, any one of the Golden Girls could kick her ass. Shaking and stirred, M is a mess.

*******************************
Correction: "GoldenEye," 1995, was Dame Judi Dench's debut film in the role of "M." Thus "The World is Not Enough" was her third Bond film, not her second as written above.