I genuinely believe that we, as judgy bitches, sometimes “cancel” people too quickly. People make mistakes. Celebrities make mistakes. Sometimes people feel terrible about their mistakes, and sometimes people get defensive and try and fail to articulate why they made some boneheaded decision. I feel like all of that is happening with Sofia Coppola and her new film, The Beguiled. We talked about Coppola’s decision to exclude the one non-white character from her film (a slave character appeared in the source material/book and the first film), which is painful enough, but the way Coppola justified it was… bad. I personally think she genuinely believes that her version is more feminist/more universal because she excluded the one woman of color from the story. As in, only white women get to have universal stories.
So should Coppola be “canceled” for merely being clueless? I don’t know. It does feel like every interview with Coppola brings some other eye-roll moment of just how out-of-touch she is though, and how she hasn’t been paying attention (like, at all) to any of the conversations in her industry. Coppola sat down with GQ to discuss her film, and guess what? She didn’t know what the Bechdel Test was. I’m sure a lot of women don’t know what it is, but every director in America should at least know how to f–king define the Bechdel Test. Some highlights from GQ:
GQ: I loved The Beguiled. Would you say this is the rare feminist film that struggles to pass the Bechdel test?
Sofia Coppola: The what test?
The Bechdel test.
I’ve never heard of that. What’s that?
It’s a test to see if two or more women in a movie talk about something other than a man.
Oh, I guess I’ve never studied film. That’s so funny, but there are a lot of women talking about a man in this.
Right. I thought you handled the climactic tension in such a different manner from the original. Did you think about changing the story much, or were you mostly concerned with giving the women more of a perspective?
Yeah, I just wanted to tell the story from their point of view, so that was really my aim. I tried to forget about the original movie. I mean, I know the story from the movie and I loved the premise, and then I thought I’d track down the book, which is a bit pulpy. A man wrote it in the ’60s, but it’s written from the girls’ point of view, so I got to retell the story and make it theirs. Because I thought the opposite with the original movie, that it was a about a group of women fooled by a man encountering them. I thought we’d start in their world, and a stranger comes in.
I’m curious—do you still deal with, or have you ever been bothered by, people saying you’re where you are now because of nepotism or anything like that?
No, I know that I’ve worked really hard. I’m so lucky that I grew up with a great film education, and because there aren’t that many women directors, it was an advantage that I had connections in the film business. You’ve got to do what you can, but I’m confident that it’s my work.
Do you feel like the word “camp” or “campy” is used a little too much when describing projects involving women?
I never thought about that. I mean, I definitely thought we could go that way because it’s just so heightened and dramatic, and so it was definitely kind of straddling that. We wanted it to have humor and have fun with it, but also be believable, that these characters were women that you could connect with.
What about someone you haven’t worked with who you would like to?
I would like to work with Eddie Murphy. I don’t know why.
Two quotes in the same interview: “I guess I’ve never studied film” and “I know that I’ve worked really hard. I’m so lucky that I grew up with a great film education.” The thing is, I feel bad for yelling about one of the few female directors to really break the boys’ club. It’s the same reason why I largely give Kathryn Bigelow a pass, because even when there’s something problematic, I always think about how hard it is for any woman to get financing and support for her films. But still… does Sofia Coppola help women in the industry by being so clueless? Is she a good representation within the industry? I’m really asking.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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