Tales from a Land Far Away

An Inside Out Diary of a Teenage Girl, or What Gets Left in San Francisco

Is it a coincidence that both Pixar’s animated Inside Out and Marielle Heller’s live-action Diary of a Teenage Girl, released this summer, are set in San Francisco and focus on adolescent girls? And do the former and latter have anything to do with one another? And why isn’t Inside Out - a highly conventional film being marketed as revolutionary - more like the extraordinary Diary of a Teenage Girl? 

It’s probably mostly sort of coincidence, except it’s not. One of the reasons Pixar is based in Emeryville, between Berkeley and Oakland across the bay from San Francisco, is the city’s awesome post-WWII counter-culture, including its alternative comix scene, which is hymned in Diary. Heller’s film is an adaptation of the autobiographical graphic novel by Phoebe Gloeckner, who grew up in SF and was influenced by the alt. scene around R. Crumb, particularly Aline Kominsky-Crumb, who appears as an animated imaginary friend to Minnie, the protagonist of Heller’s film. We see Minnie buying a Kominsky Twisted Sisters comic, and her emergent passion for drawing is entwined with her other new desire: for sex, or rather, for both sexual satisfaction and being desired. But this appears impossible: when Minnie tries age-appropriate dating, her boyfriend is overwhelmed by her openness about her desire, which he sees as unfeminine and threatening. Minnie therefore draws herself as a giant stomping over the city, an outsize creature irradiated by an emotion that her culture tells her not to possess, or to repress.

Like Inside Out, Diary of a Teenage Girl dwells partially in an inner world, represented on screen in three ways: by Minnie’s narration into a tape deck with microphone, via her hand-drawn black-and-white panel comics, which are animated; and in moments (as with her conversation with Aline) where colour animation bursts into the live-action frame. Animation is a crucial cue for viewers to understand that we are seeing events slanted through Minnie’s (heatedly teenage) perspective, and Heller cleverly manages to create an ironic gap where we can perceive just how amazing Minnie is, and just how awful are the available outlets for her desires (her mother’s boyfriend, a role in which Alexander Skarsgard reaches the epitome of sliminess) - and how she passes over and through this gap, scales falling from her eyes through her commitment to her artwork, and her changing relationship to her mother. In her flares and Mickey Mouse T-shirt, Minnie (haha) embodies her era as much as a cinematic performance of gender. Constantly interrogating her body’s relationship to femininity, Minnie is a refreshingly mobile character for whom sexual desire does not cause hyper-feminisation. Her world is sexually liberal by default, highlighted by a trip to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

For all its depiction of Riley as (mildly) unconventional in her gender presentation - T-shirt wearing, hockey-playing, milk-snorting - Inside Out retreats into gender stereotypes everywhere else: odd for a film set in San Francisco. But then, Riley hates SF on arrival, seeing it as Gothic, haunted, and fraught with broccoli. Fear is afraid there are bears in the streets: “Well, we saw a guy who looked like a bear,” jokes Joy, the film’s only nod to its arrival in the US capital of queer culture. When the end credits take us into the heads of other characters, both the unnamed girl who serves Riley the broccoli pizza and her cool teacher are thinking about men. In the pizza server’s case, thinking about thinking whatever Todd thinks; in the teacher’s case, fantasising about the same Brazilian helicopter pilot as Riley’s mom had done. This latter, as well as being a racist stereotype of the Latin lover, is a particularly cruel joke of which both women are the butt, as it’s implied they don’t realise that the pilot has multiple lovers.

Riley is also noticeably gender-unconventional in another way, which is also unexplored in the film: all the adults have single-gendered emotions, which sport their hairstyles or facial hair - for example, all the teacher’s emotions have Afros (which sort of gets around the fact that the emotions are primary-coloured and therefore can’t express their human’s skin colour). Riley’s emotions all look different, and consist of three female characters (Joy, Sadness, Disgust) and two male characters (Fear, Anger). Of course this is a classic case of Protagonitis, in which the focal point of the story has to be Marked as Different and Special (and also clearly a case of fear that too many female voices would confuse and perhaps put off viewers). The film never satisfactorily explains why Riley alone has differently-gendered emotions, whether they will all become female when she goes through puberty, or what it means in terms of her gender and sexuality. The other pre-teen characters (her emo classmate and the boy she bumps into at hockey) have mono-gendered emotions that look like them. Given its reluctance to deal with the potential implications of both Riley’s gender presentation and that of her emotions, the film should really be called “Inside In.”

Many critics have noted Inside Out does valuable (white liberal) feminist work in allowing its protagonist, Riley, not to be her parents’ “happy little girl,” but to experience a range of emotions that are not considered acceptable for middle-class white women in dominant culture. But the options the film presents are few: predominantly Sadness (who is shown as an unattractive, glasses-wearing, overweight, physically unfit character), but also Disgust (hyper-feminine, narrow-waisted, and clearly motivated by upward social mobility and capital), Anger (hyper-masculine) and Fear (a “sissy” male who is physically incompetent and wears a bow tie). There is no room for desire - a primary emotion according to a century of psychoanalysis - at all. Riley is essentially sexless (OK, there’s an imaginary boyfriend generator in Imagination Land), and a film which appears to be about the onset of puberty (Riley’s moody, Riley’s hyper-conscious of how other people perceive her, Riley’s pulling away from her parents) and how it restructures our sense of familial and social order as our bodies change, actually defers adolescence with a late, weak joke, where her emotions look at their new dashboard and its big red button and ask “What’s pubb-erty?”  

That’s the complete opposite of Diary of a Teenage Girl, which is probably why the latter has been handed an 18 (equivalent of R-rated) certificate in the UK, effectively ensuring its core audience will struggle to see it (and struggle they will: nothing is more compelling that sneaking into an 18-rated film that promises SEX). Although only three years separate Riley and Minnie in age (and four decades in time, from the mid-70s to presumably the present moment), Riley is remanded in a highly idealised, desexualised childhood while Minnie is exploring her sexuality in ways that are troubled, not because there’s anything wrong with her, but because her (and our) culture limit her possibilities and outlets. In fact, in infantilising Riley, Inside Out threatens to reinforce the same limits that frustrate Minnie.

But Riley’s extended childhood is also dependent on the film’s fantasy about middle-class life. Both internal and external stories are about white-collar workers and their fear of precariousness. Riley’s father has moved to San Francisco to run a start-up, and his concerns about investors are drawing him away from paying attention to his family (in Riley’s perception); both he and her mother are anxious about money, and their move is presented as downward property mobility from a large suburban family home in Minnesota to a slightly worn, narrow, classically SF clapboard house, where (horror) Riley finds a dead mouse. Deprived of possessions by problems with the moving company, the family inhabit a pretend, temporary precarity that bears little resemblance to either the experience of many middle-class and working-class American families teetering on the edge of a pay cheque, or to the experience of middle-class and working-class people priced out of San Francisco by commuter gentrification caused by employees of digital companies such as Google… and Pixar.

Within Riley’s head, too, precarity, real estate wars and gentrification are ongoing. Joy and Sadness find themselves “demoted” from headquarters (i.e., Riley’s head, in which emotions apparently have a seat) and set down among the “workers” (who don’t correspond to any established or identifiable biological or psychological function). Joy insistently introduces herself as “from headquarters,” and the main action of the film concerns her struggle to find a route back along the precarious bridges that run between Riley’s “personality islands” and the control room. At no point do Joy and Sadness participate in manual labour, offer to assist, or enquire into the conditions of labour - except when they have an opportunity to enter Dream Productions. Because even white-collar workers aspire to participate in the film industry as performers!

Inside Out requires that the viewer take on instrumentalised and utilitarian cognitive pop psychology as read, throwing out a century of philosophical, psychoanalytic and critical thinking about subjecthood, affect, identity, memory, and trauma. And it does so by turning both work and waste into candy-coloured playgrounds that disguise the film’s giant metaphor for capitalist becoming. At the turning point of Act 2 (the low ebb), Joy finds herself cast into the slag heap of Riley’s memories, which fade to ash and blow away. This idea is incompatible with our best understandings of trauma (and logically inconsistent with the film’s own use of the subconscious as a place where unwanted memories go - which should of course be the unconscious). 

Like the vast dump in Toy Story 3, it’s an image of capitalism’s worst fear (being considered useless) and of its underlying structure (turning commodities into waste so that more commodities can be purchased). To escape, Joy uses a wagon, which belonged to Riley and her imaginary friend Bingbong - a pink elephant - and shoots rainbow flames out of its song-powered engine. Bingbong sacrifices himself and the wagon breaks up on landing: an erasure of Riley’s queer potentiality, but also a ruthless portrayal of how capitalism positions the adolescent girl as ideal consumer. 

Imaginary friends and homemade wagons are not acceptable; they will be replaced by “personality islands” associated with boybands and vampire romance novels, key and generic markers of mainstream adolescent heteronormative consumption in the US, and which have absolutely nothing to do with laying down roots in San Francisco and engaging with its specific cultures. Riley has survived not only the threat of running back to Minnesota (which the film raises and diverts, with the unlikely spectacle of the coach driver letting her off the bus on the on-ramp to a freeway), but more of taking on anything about San Francisco, of becoming like the emo girl or pizza server, of absorbing the multi-ethnic, class-diverse, queer cultures mapped by Rebecca Solnit in Infinite City. Riley *is* the dot com boom, whitewashing and gentrifying and genericifying the city.

By contrast, Minnie in Diary of a Teenage Girl survives by becoming both more herself, and more San Francisco. She briefly enters the darker, druggy side of the counter-culture, which is initially exhilarating as she investigates her queerness on the dance floor and in bed, with a partner closer to her age. But a non-consensual encounter with an adult male shocks her into returning home. As for Riley, running away leads Minnie to remake her relationship with her family; unlike for Riley, it’s Minnie who has to take the lead, recognising that her mother has not had the opportunity to mature. They attend a gig together, dancing in a way that echoes Minnie’s first encounter with her girlfriend. But Minnie also spends time on the boardwalk and beach with her younger sister, whom she’d considered a brat throughout the film, as if identifying a younger (geekier, less sexual) version of herself, or placing herself on a spectrum of girlhood that encompasses all versions of her without notion of a “fall” or of a “return to innocence.” 

anyone going? :D with the Sailor Moon panel, most of the English VA cast, and Momoiro Clover Z as musical guests, I have a feeling it will be another big Sailor Moon announcement time so there’s no way I’m not going!!

Friday: either artbook 5 Chibiusa or babsdraws‘ Chibiusa

Saturday: Lottie La Bouff

No One Showed Up to March for Rekia Boyd

“..In the same city where thousands flooded the frigid streets months ago in the name of Eric Garner, few could be seen.”

See, if I joked and called you a “nigger”, you’ll be mad

You black people think we are always out here to ruin your day

And y’all always forget what MLK preached!

White privilege ain’t real ‘cause my life is hard

I was the only white kid and the blacks were so mean

So I called one a nigger, but clicked anon first

Susanna and the Elders, Restored (Left)

Susanna and the Elders, Restored with X-ray (Right)

For those who don’t know about this painting, the artist was the Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi.

Gentileschi was a female painter in a time when it was very largely unheard of for a woman to be an artist. She managed to get the opportunity for training and eventual employment because her father, Orazio, was already a well established master painter who was very adamant that she get artistic training. He apparently saw a high degree of skill in some artwork she did as a hobby in childhood. He was very supportive of her and encouraged her to resist the “traditional attitude and psychological submission to brainwashing and the jealousy of her obvious talents.”  

Gentileschi became extremely well known in her time for painting female figures from the Bible and their suffering. For example, the one seen above depicts the story from the Book of Daniel. Susanna is bathing in her garden when two elders began to spy on her in the nude. As she finishes they stop her and tell her that they will tell everyone that they saw her have an affair with a young man (she’s married so this is an offense punishable by death) unless she has sex with them. She refuses, they tell their tale, and she is going to be put to death when the protagonist of the book (Daniel) stops them.

So that painting above? That was her first major painting. She was SEVENTEEN-YEARS-OLD. For context, here is a painting of the same story by Alessandro Allori made just four years earlier in 1606: 

Wowwwww. That does not look like a woman being threatened with a choice between death or rape. So imagine 17 year old Artemisia trying to approach painting the scene of a woman being assaulted. And she paints what is seen in the x-ray above. A woman in horrifying, grotesque anguish with what appears to be a knife poised in her clenched hand. Damn that shit is real. Who wants to guess that she was advised by, perhaps her father or others, to tone it down. Women can’t look that grotesque. Sexual assault can’t be depicted as that horrifying. And women definitely can’t be seen as having the potential to fight back. Certainly not in artwork. Women need to be soft. They need to wilt from their captors but still look pretty and be a damsel in distress. So she changed it. 

What’s interesting to note is that she eventually painted and stuck with some of her own, less traditional depictions of women. However, that is more interesting with some context.  

(Warning for reference to rape, torture, and images of paintings which show violence and blood.)

So, Gentileschi’s story continues in the very next year, 1611, when her father hires Agostino Tassi, an artist, to privately tutor her. It was in this time when Tassi raped her. He then proceeded to promise that he would marry her. He pointed out that if it got out that she had lost her virginity to a man she wasn’t going to marry then it would ruin her. Using this, he emotionally manipulated her into continuing a sexual relationship with him. However, he then proceeded to marry someone else. Horrified at this turn of events she went to her father. Orazio was having none of this shit and took Tassi to court. At that time, rape wasn’t technically an offense to warrant a trial, but the fact that he had taken her virginity (and therefore technically “damaged Orazio’s property”. ugh.) meant that the trial went along. It lasted for 7 months. During this time, to prove the truth of her words, Artemisia was given invasive gynecological examinations and was even questioned while being subjected to torture via thumb screws. It was also discovered during the trial that Tassi was planning to kill his current wife, have an affair with her sister, and steal a number of Orazio’s paintings. Tassi was found guilty and was given a prison sentence of…. ONE. YEAR……. Which he never even served because the verdict was annulled.

During this time and a bit after (1611-1612), Artemisia painted her most famous work of Judith Slaying Holofernes. This bible story involved Holofernes, an Assyrian general, leading troops to invade and destroy Bethulia, the home of Judith. Judith decides to deal with this issue by coming to him, flirting with him to get his guard down, and then plying him with food and lots of wine. When he passed out, Judith and her handmaiden took his sword and cut his head off. Issue averted. The subject was a very popular one for art at the time. Here is a version of the scene painted in 1598-99 by Carivaggio, whom was a great stylistic influence on Artemisia:

This depiction is a pretty good example of how this scene was typically depicted. Artists usually went out of their way to show Judith committing the act (or having committed it) while trying to detach her from the actual violence of it. In this way, they could avoid her losing the morality of her character and also avoid showing a woman committing such aggression. So here we see a young, rather delicate looking Judith in a pure white dress. She is daintily holding down this massive man and looks rather disgusted and upset at having to do this. Now, here is Artemisia’s:

Damn. Thats a whole different scene. Here Holofernes looks less like he’s simply surprised by the goings ons and more like a man choking on his own blood and struggling fruitlessly against his captors. The blood here is less of a bright red than in Carrivaggio’s but is somehow more sickening. It feels more real, and gushes in a much less stylized way than Carrivaggio’s. Not to mention, Judith here is far from removed from the violence. She is putting her physical weight into this act. Her hands (much stronger looking than most depictions of women’s hands in early artwork) are working hard. Her face, as well, is completely different. She doesn’t look upset, necessarily, but more determined. 

It’s also worth note that the handmaiden is now involved in the action. It’s worth note because, during her rape trial, Artemisia stated that she had cried for help during the initial rape. Specifically she had called for Tassi’s female tenant in the building, Tuzia. Tuzia not only ignored her cries for help, but she also denied the whole happening. Tuzia had been a friend of Artemisia’s and in fact was one of her only female friends. Artemisia felt extremely betrayed, but rather than turning her against her own gender, this event instilled in her the deep importance of female relationships and solidarity among women. This can be seen in some of her artwork, and I believe in the one above, as well, with the inclusion of the handmaiden in the act.

So, I just added a million words worth of information dump on a post when no one asked me, but there we go. I could talk for ages about Artemisia as a person and her depictions of women (even beyond what I wrote above. Don’t get me started on her depictions of female nudes in comparison to how male artists painted nude women at the time.) 

To sum up: Artemisia Gentileschi is rad as hell. This x-ray is also rad as hell and makes her even radder.