Film Review: Haute Cuisine

Haute Cuisine (based on the true story of Danièle Delpeuch) tells the story of Hortense Laborie, appointed to be personal chef to the President of France. Before we get to the nitty-gritty of the film, can I just say that the food in the movie was so beautiful? I wanted to cook the whole time I was watching it. And eat. I really wanted to eat.

Role of Women: I loved the main female character. She is gracious, competent, passionate, staunch. She's unafraid of adventures, travelling from the President's private kitchen to a remote Antarctic base. She's an artist. She's a little bit unruly, running the kitchen her own way despite the strict rules that surround her. She's wise.
Sexualisation of Women: There are some coarse moments in the film, a few jokes from male characters about the only woman around. Broadly, though, Hortense is valued for her character, personality, and talent, not her body.
Bechdel Test Pass/Fail: Pass. Hortense has conversations with the President's secretary (not sure she was named; it was all subtitles so I might just have missed it), and with the journalist in Antarctica.
Male:Female Ratio: There's only four or five female characters. This is part of the plot, of course, as Hortense forges her own path through the male-dominated world of the palais kitchens. I think they did a good job of not overemphasizing it, that is, the plot was more about the rules and restrictions of the palais versus Hortense's passionate, artistic cooking style, but still.

The Great Against the Powerless

Sir Robert: "The other one is this. It's from a slightly older source. It is this: you shall not side with the great against the powerless."
Member of Parliament: "Mr. Speaker, point of order."
Sir Robert: "I am on my feet."
Member of Parliament: "Will you yield?"
Sir Robert: "I will not yield, Mr. Speaker. You shall not side with the great against the powerless. Have you heard those words, gentlemen? Do you recognize their source? From that same source, I add this injunction. It is this: what you do to the least of them you do to me. Now, now, gentlemen..."
-Excerpt from The Winslow Boy

I was recently asked why I write about women's issues, why I make it one of my interests and passions. My answer was twofold. One reason I wrote about in the past: I feel that misogyny is as much and more of a threat to what complementarians hold dear as gender blurring. The other is summarised beautifully by the above quote.

In the beginning of time, God created humans, without sin, in beautiful harmony, with binary gender, with love and relationship at the heart of what it is to be human. But we sinned. Our relationship with God was broken, and by extension our relationships amongst each other became broken. Ashamed but arrogant, humanity has been trying to make ourselves look better than we are ever since. Genocides, bullying, social climbing and materialistic greed, self-righteousness, self-harming, an obsessive pursuit of physical beauty or physical strength, "in" crowds and outcasts, unhealthy competition-- so much of what is sick in our world stems from the deep underlying knowledge of our fallen condition and our futile efforts to secure our standing without the sacrifice of Christ.

One way this manifests is in the strong-- whether socially, financially, physically, what have you-- using their strength to oppress the weak instead of to protect them.

God calls his people to protection of the disenfranchised, disadvantaged, and forgotten. This value was embedded deeply in the moral code of the Mosaic law. Over and over in the prophetic judgements against Israel is the refrain of their callous heart towards the poor and needy in their land. As this value relates in particular to women, 1 Peter 3:7 specifically enjoins husbands to show honour to the weaker vessel.

In a rightly ordered world, women, physically weaker in terms of sexual dimorphism, pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, and menstruation, would only be protected and honoured by men. This is not so. When we look at human history, we see that across cultures, across eras, across belief systems, women have been oppressed. Women have been denied protection under the law, we have been denied education, we have been denied sexual agency*. We have been subjected to physical alterations**, we have been denied employment and financial independence. We have been told our minds are weaker, our emotions hysterical, our bodies shameful. We have been denied dignity and a public voice.

Some will suggest this is a 'victim mentality' and that men suffer at the hands of women as well.  Of course they do; sin is not restricted to one gender. Individual women do great wrong against individual men. However, I strongly argue that the systemic, institutionalised oppression of men by women has been very rare if not unheard of in human history, and is likely to remain that way, given sinful human nature which sides with the strong and oppresses the weaker.

Perhaps I am overzealous in my commitment to women's rights. However, I think it prudent as a Christian to err on the side of being overzealous for the oppressed rather than the oppressor. Certainly being oppressed does not make one a saint, and the oppressed can be greedy, selfish, self-pitying, manipulative, and so on. But the sympathies of our Lord routinely fall on their side nonetheless, and I should prefer to do the same, in as balanced and Scriptural a way as I can. It is the opposite of what sinful nature would have us do: shut up and side with the strong, protect ourselves, ingratiate ourselves, cling to our own comfort, and try to get in on the benefits the strong are reaping.

Secular feminists frequently hold forth the hope that the work of feminism will eventually bring about a better world, one of equality for women. I hope the church rises ever closer to that standard, but I have not much hope for the fallen world to get there; not as it is now. However, one day the risen Redeemer Christ, in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free, will come back and make all things right. Until then, "You shall not side with the great against the powerless"-- and "What you do to the least of them you do to me."

*From genital mutilation to child brides to rape and sex trafficking to sexual exploitation in advertising and media.
**From footbinding and neck rings to corsets and plastic surgery.

Complementarianism and Natural Leaders

The other weekend, I was involved in a discussion about whether complementarianism was based on fundamental characteristics of men and women. The argument I was opposing ran something like this: men in general have personalities and intrinsic qualities better suited to leadership positions, which is why God assigns them as natural leaders (not just in the church and in the home, but in business, politics, and other secular spheres as well.) Now, as is common in a group discussion, nobody really gets to explain their points to the fullest, so I wanted to sit down and write out my point of view in full, for my own sake and for the interest of anyone else who reads it.

Aside from the scientific evidence* and my personal experience (i.e. seeing a pretty even spread of personality characteristics across my circles of acquaintanceship), the main reason I disagree with this argument is because I think it actually undermines the entire position of complementarity (ironically enough, since the people who hold to deep intrinsic differences as the reason for complementarity would intend to uphold it). There are three ways in which I think this argument undermines complementarianism.

First, it borrows a leaf from the egalitarian position that a person's talents and characteristics would be the strongest influencer to God in determining who should be given which tasks among his people. But in looking at Scripture, I don't see evidence of this. I see the God who chose stuttering Moses as the spokesperson to a power-mad Pharaoh, insignificant David as the most important king of Israel, the prostitute Rahab and the foreigner Ruth as key players in the line of the promised Messiah, Christ-hating Paul as the great missionary of the early church. We serve a God who delights to use the weak to do what we would humanly assign to the strong. 1 Corinthians 1 leaves us in no doubt of that: "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God."Now, this is not to say that God never uses people's natural talents and inclinations to work His purposes; of course he does. I merely wish to point out that it is a misrepresentation of God to assume that that would be as important to Him as it is to us. God does use people's talents. He also uses them in spite of their weaknesses.

Second, it demeans the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit within the Trinity. As complementarians, we understand complementing roles to be a reflection of the complementing roles within the Trinity. We affirm that while God the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit are the same in essence and divinity, there is within the Trinity a hierarchy in which Christ submits in everything to the Father and the Spirit is subjected to the Son's authority. If we are to follow this parallel through logically whilst assuming that male-female roles in the church and home are based on ability, we would then have to assume that the Father is more powerful and better suited to leadership than the Son, who is in turn more powerful and better suited to leadership than the Spirit. But the very beauty of Christ's submission to the point of death is that he was powerful enough to escape his death at any time. Satan tempted Christ to this very thing in the wilderness, urging him to throw off his self-sacrificing submission to the Father's will and seize kingship of the Earth by his own strength. In turn, we see that the Spirit is capable of great, awe-inspiring acts of healing, revival, and other miraculous events, but He chooses most often to work quietly away at our hearts, doing the humble and largely unseen work of rooting out sin in God's people. Thus I would argue that the roles within the Trinity-- and by parallel the roles within the church and family-- as not primarily based on ability, but on willing submission to God's redemptive purposes.

Thirdly, and perhaps most practically, if it were true that male-female roles were assigned based on intrinsic suitability, surely that would excuse anyone who deviated from this general norm from submitting to these roles? If we accept that men are generally more aggressive, competitive, authoritative, and logical and thus better suited to leadership, while women are generally more gentle, cooperative, supportive, and emotional and thus better suited to following, then wouldn't we need to logically allow the women with more leadership ability to use their God-given abilities in a Sunday service, or let more passive, suggestible men let their wives take over in providing direction to their families? After all, if God assigns the roles based on what we're naturally good at, that would show that He wants us to do the things we're naturally good at. The logical outcome of an ability-based role distinction seems to me to be functional egalitarianism.

In the past, many arguments for male leadership in the church included false affirmations of women's emotional hysteria, inferior intelligence, and less discerning minds. Today, let us not be the generation of the church who seeks to root God's assigned role distinction in women's inability to lead. It will make us look foolish in the eyes of anyone who has ever seen a woman competent in leadership, and ultimately it will not lend strength to our position.

*Which, for example, tells us that men and women are much more neurologically similar than they are different, and that our hormonal differences grow more or less pronounced in direct relation to how pronounced the difference in our activities are.

Lady Legends: Katherine Switzer

Katherine Switzer, first woman to run the Boston Marathon as a numbered entry*, in 1967.


*Without official permission; "Race official Jock Semple attempted to physically remove her from the race, and according to Switzer said, "Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers.""

Focusing Our Firepower

In response to yesterday's blog post, I have been involved in a Facebook conversation with a friend discussing whether it is true that our culture views women as inferior. I wrote in my blog post that "...the church should claim the middle ground, passionately defending the beauty of binary gender as created and called 'good' by God, while at the same time standing firmly against any implied or outright attitudes that mark one gender as superior! ... And in our culture, the gender that tends to be portrayed as inferior is women." This friend argued that our culture has "spent many years trying to present women as equal to or even better than men". My response follows, as I think it merits wider discussion. 

"I agree that our culture would be quite unlikely to say outright that females are inferior. However, much like racism, which presents in subtle ways now that it is no longer socially acceptable to be overt about it, I do think mainstream media and those saturated in its thinking present a degraded, sexualised, and inferior view of women. The graphic I linked yesterday had many examples of this. The vast majority of tales of heroism, friendship, and character growth are fronted by male characters, while females are most often main characters in a romance story intended only for other females. I have explored on my blog dozens of other ways in which females are subtly presented as less valuable."
"Indeed, for the vast majority of history and still in the vast majority of the developing world, women are overtly considered less valuable, intelligent, and capable then men. This is true in the Muslim nations where women are hidden beneath robes as if shameful and have little to no civil rights in comparison to men, this is true in the African nations where females are routinely circumcised so that sexual pleasure becomes strictly male territory, this is true in India where little girls are given away as sexual toys in a parody of marriage to men old enough to be their grandfathers, this is true in China where female infants are aborted or abandoned in favour of males. It is only in the West and in the last fifty or so years that it even became inappropriate (in most contexts, unless it's the internet) to say that women are only good for cooking and looking pretty."
"As I have said repeatedly on my blog, I think the complementarian church is in grave danger of totally undermining its message if it sees feminism as its only enemy, since the enemy of misogyny is far more deeply entrenched over the world and across history. It feels to me a bit like if a movement for more racial equality in the church focused mainly on ways black culture excludes whites and ignored the long and bloody history of the ways whites have mistreated blacks. One is not the answer to the other, absolutely, but we should be very cautious before we decide which side deserves most of our firepower."

As always, deeply interested to hear your thoughts, arguments, and experience, whether here or on Facebook.

Thoughts on the NYFA's Infographic

Since the graphic is so unwieldy, I thought I'd better break this into two posts.

Quick thoughts: what we see revealed by this infographic is an industry that sells a very rigid, narrowly defined ideal of femininity to both women and men. Although half of audiences are female, the industry is dominated both financially and in terms of physical presence by men. This means that what we see on our movie screens-- the sexually postured, youthful, largely silent and subservient female explained in the first section of the infographic-- is a construct designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator being sold by what is largely a group of amoral, godless, and money-hungry males (I'm making assumptions here, but given the material the film industry routinely pumps out, I think they're pretty likely to be true.)

There are two points of consideration I'd like to draw from this. One is how we as Christians evaluate the films we watch-- and the ones we choose not to. It is easy, for example, to decide a movie isn't appropriate because "there's too much nudity" or "the actresses are all dressed immodestly". However, I think it is very important that we move beyond just "that isn't decent/modest" to "that isn't fair or honouring." There is a very real and present pressure on actresses to be sexy and to act sexually and our critique needs to incorporate an understanding of how sexualised female characters in the majority of our narratives contribute to rape, sexual harassment, and the sexual entitlement claimed by so many men of our culture. Are we going into the conversation with our sons beyond just telling them it's not appropriate for them to look at women's bodies in those contexts, to talk about ways in which this harms the actual women in the world around them, such situations as one where a couple of schoolboys can rape a young woman while all their male classmates look on and not one intervenes or goes for the authorities? Simply turning off the film without having these types of conversations effectively condemns the immodestly dressed actress without also explaining that a portion of the blame-- perhaps the lion's share-- lies with those who provide the funding, advertising, and influence to make that a criteria for an actress's success: the largely male portion of the industry.*

The second point I want to think about is something I mentioned in this recent post, about how the bulk of pop culture is radically sidelining, limiting, and tightly defining femininity rather than blurring the lines between the two genders. Pop culture creates a caricature of womanhood in which a beautiful, youthful physical appearance is paramount, the ability to attract a romantic/sexual partner is more important than any true talents, and articulateness, intelligence, and character are of minimal significance. On the other side, a small subsection of our culture pushes against this by arguing all gender differences are social constructs and should be done away with altogether. Surely the church should claim the middle ground, passionately defending the beauty of binary gender as created and called 'good' by God, while at the same time standing firmly against any implied or outright attitudes that mark one gender as superior!**

*Another portion of the blame lies with the men who act upon the ideas about women portrayed in mainstream media, and that's another important conversation to have with our sons, but that's for another blog post, I think.
**And in our culture, the gender that tends to be portrayed as 'inferior' is women, which is why I write the blog posts I write. 

New York Film Acadamy's Infographic on Gender Inequality in the Film Industry

Courtesy of: New York Film Academy