A New Era: We are the remade world
By Hailey Barr
In a world where media reflects the values of the society in which it is created, media is constantly in conversation with cultural norms and overarching structural ideology. This conversation can be geared towards reaffirming, reflecting, critiquing, and transforming various themes in our everyday lives. When looking at films of female maturation, the storyline and the themes within become fundamentally different with a female protagonist due to the gendered nature of our society. Films have the power to take the bare bones of affirmation or transformation and create from them narratives that are beautiful and haunting, aspirational and outrageous. For myself, I find the most meaningful and successful films within the female bildungsroman genre are those that take an active role in transformation and are purposefully crafted in “pursuit of the remade world,” (Allison 211). This “pursuit of [a] remade world” can be made meaningful in two separate ways: depictions of young girls succeeding in ways that differ from what society has been conditioned to expect and films that show girls struggling and ultimately failing in their endeavors (Allison 211). This genre forces the audience to confront their unconscious expectations of female protagonists and asks them to examine why such endings produce visceral, noticeable responses. In looking at films that fit these trajectories, the most transformative and meaningful narratives are inherently subjective, but there is something undeniably special about watching the success of the March sisters in Little Women or engaging in a horror-based metatextual conversation as displayed in Ruby Sparks. These films take radically different approaches to examining female maturation that subsequently push the boundaries of our expectations and thus help begin to shape our society in favor of a remade world.
The gendered reality of our world has conditioned us to expect women to possess some sort of formulaic traits in order to be considered valuable and successful. The key pillars of success, in both society and film, are a subservient personality aimed at cultivating men’s potential, joy in providing emotional labor, and marriage with children. Therefore, to see a woman succeed either in spite of these stipulations or use them to create something in her image of happiness serves to reimagine what female maturation can look like. Society has presented us with “conduct books” meant to contain a woman’s value into predetermined roles (Fraiman 145). Instead of blindly following these rigid roles, films like Little Women instead take these stipulations and turn them on their head to create a radically feminist account of multidimensional womanhood. Little Women shows the viewer four different girls and depicts the success that they have created for themselves, not for the purpose of societal affirmation, but rather for personal fulfillment.
The scene in which Amy and Laurie are in the French painting studio allows for two modes of communication. The first is explicitly laid out by Amy as she is forced to confront and remedy the duties decided for her by her family and society in order to limit her maturation and worth. The second is made clear to the audience, through acting style and intonation, that she is reluctant to follow these duties and to go against them, though difficult, will bring her the most happiness. This conversation is transformative in that the audience can clearly see Amy’s unhappiness and frustration and we root for her to use her agency and choose differently, to choose happiness over duty. This hope is not one commonly afforded to women, and by showing this type of internal struggle, the film purposefully sends a message regarding choice: women must be allowed to make the choices that were unavailable before and that making this decision is inherently powerful. Later on, Amy and Meg have decided to pursue marriage, and yet it's the fact that they willingly made this choice that becomes transformative instead of repetitive or cliche. This scene acts as a basis for arguing that women are valuable, whatever their choice, and even that conforming to some societal expectations is not shameful if that’s the path they have deliberately chosen. Little Women is centered on reclaiming the domestic sphere for oneself, exercising agency, and pursuing cultural norms with individuality.
This film furthers the idea of “unbecoming” during the scene with Jo and Marmee discussing anger (Fraiman ix). This scene depicts a daughter asking a mother for advice and thus allows the film to express its politics as a bildungsroman narrative (Kontje 4). Here, the audience is witnessing a meditation on different forms of femininity and their validity. It presents jarring language such as. “I’m angry nearly every day of my life”. This messaging along with its depictions of women work together to create a message that protests the idea that women must become domesticated and force themselves to be quiet and gentle for the sake of appearances. It encourages female anger, as something natural and powerful in order to work towards the remade world. This film has repeatedly said that women should not limit themselves and that happiness comes from being wholly yourself, a message that is transformative in its positivity. Fraiman says that womanhood is not a “single path to a clear destination but [an] endless negotiation of crossroads” (Fraiman x). This film reaffirms that idea, that there are many choices to make to achieve your goals and critiques the idea that for these negotiations to be successful, a woman should give up parts of herself, especially the ones deemed ‘unladylike’.
Finally, one of the last scenes shows Jo negotiating her book deal with her editor. The themes in this scene are profoundly different in that while Jo’s novel may be forced into the predetermined track of “marriage or death” for the sake of sales, Jo has the opportunity to choose differently for herself. Here, her willfulness has provided her with success - success that though different from our expectations is extremely rewarding for the viewer. This scene is interesting in that the director chose to stray from the novel and managed to splice together an ending that is revolutionary in its own right. To clearly show a woman advocating for herself, her worth, and her dream when it goes against societal limits, is inspiring and uplifting. The film reimagines what ownership and achievement look like for women and therefore splits completely from the mold in order to launch us into a new age of understanding (Fraiman 144). What is more indicative of the remade world than showing a female character’s growth and not limiting her to marriage, however painful and lonely this decision may be? Little Women has taken the character’s trajectory and refreshed it to show a new sort of handbook on becoming - one where agency, individuality, and passion are nurtured instead of limited. This is the type of narratives that “give[s] some child, some thirteen-year-old, the hope of a remade life” where her maturation is not narrowed onto a specific path but instead cultivated for herself, working to mastery in something worthy of her interest (Allison 220, Howe 4).
Where Little Women was transformative in its multiple depictions of success and positivity, Ruby Sparks is transformative in it’s raw metatextual conversation that highlights and exposes the structures in place that limit female success and maturation to within the dictates of the male gaze. Ruby Sparks, at first glance, looks like every other romantic comedy we see - a nice dorky boy meets a quirky interesting girl and the story centers solely on their relationship. On a deeper level, the film is in direct conversation with our ideals of love and the role women play in the lives of men. This is a narrative “in which the heroine [is] obstructed, humiliated, diverted from [her] early goals, and otherwise mocked by the project of building” (Fraiman 144). In doing so, it presents an interesting dichotomy when dissected through the lens of the female bildungsroman narrative and instead produces feelings of anger, fear, and anxiety in the audience.
The scene where Calvin realizes that Ruby is real is absolutely terrifying. It’s deeply unsettling once the audience wades their way through the layers presented on-screen. The way Calvin treats Ruby is dismissive, until she’s proven her worth and passed his test, where at that point, she runs away and he chases her down. There’s grabbing hands and rough violent movements, at one point Calvin throws her over his shoulder and the camera focuses on the underwear peeking out from beneath her dress, effectively sexualizing Ruby’s forced helplessness and Calvin’s control over her. This scene is clearly coded as something resembling sexual assault and, yet, the music is that of a happy and upbeat romantic comedy. There is a constant use of discordance throughout the film between what is on screen and what the film is asking us to see. This scene is horrifying but reminiscent of the so-called “romantic” notions young girls are taught to look for in their relationships. It forces us to consider what we “looked at unflinchingly, even if [we] did not know what we were seeing at the time” (Allison 219). Here, the audience views such a casually violent scene that it begins to plant a seed of doubt and disgust that the film repeatedly returns to and cultivates as it works to expose and transform the patriarchal structures encouraging Calvin’s actions and preventing Ruby’s success.
Moving forward, Calvin discovers that he can completely re-write Ruby to become exactly what he wants. Ruby cannot develop into who she is because she is constantly bound to the whims of a man who utilizes his talents to manipulate and diminish her to suit him rather than to encourage her own growth. It becomes nearly a game for him as he shows off his new girlfriend and her subservience to his brother. This is a clear critique of the culture encouraging learned helplessness in women, where it becomes almost impossible for her to exist in the world without him. Calvin is writing his dream girl into existence so that he can control her in order to soothe his own insecurities under the guise of a great, sweeping romance. This development in the narrative is a clear critique of the way women are viewed in society and works to transform by showing us the terrifying reality behind societal norms. The “relationship” between Calvin and Ruby is abusive, predatory, and constraining. Watching this twisted account of a relationship, clearly exposes the obstacles women are facing and can easily lead to developing stronger, reactive feelings.
Finally, near the end of the film, Calvin and Ruby’s relationship explodes. She is unhappy and Calvin repeatedly controls her actions to show that, no matter what, he possesses complete and utter power over her. The things he forces her to do are degrading, such as being made to bark like a dog and are used to reinforce and serve his own ego. Ultimately, this scene shows the audience the tangible ways in which Calvin is benefitting from his exploitation of Ruby. By using his supposed “genius” as a writer to force Ruby to fit into his narrative and bend to his desires, this film is in conversation with the ways that women are shown in media along with their attempt to break out of those structures that creators repeatedly force them back into. The film is suggesting that all women, not just Ruby, are subtly controlled and influenced by the media as it teaches us what to expect out of life and the proper ways to navigate that to achieve success.
By the end of the film, the audience has been privy to the escalation of overt control on Ruby with a complete disregard for her own development and autonomy. The tension increases and the film morphs from romantic comedy to cringey reincarnation of the manic pixie dream girl to finally explicitly showing the audience the horror-based commentary at its core. It’s showing the truths of our society: that women are taught to be mindful of the male gaze in order to succeed within the blueprint provided for domestic relationships. The depiction of a relationship in Ruby Sparks is unnerving given that it refuses to “pretend [that women] aren’t really...broken in the darkened bedrooms of the American family” (Allison 216). Its truth is so vivid and apparent in this end scene that it rips the female bildungsroman genre apart and asks us to do so much more than survive (Allison 209). Men, art, and societal constructions do hold a certain amount of power over women; it’s the exposé of such that makes viewers deeply uncomfortable as they are forced to question their own reality. For myself, this type of film is uniquely transformative in that it shows what is wrong with our limiting cultural assumptions and, in doing so, has created such an intense feeling of anger and frustration. Frustration for people who are so much more similar to Ruby than they have ever imagined, frustration for girls growing up and being conditioned to want certain things and to find a predetermined brand of success, and frustration at myself for playing into these notions for so many years. It’s this frustration that encourages, almost forces, you to talk about what you’ve just seen or act on the feelings it produced, something akin to ‘productive frustration’ or ‘productive outrage’. It’s one thing to be emotionally moved or intellectually stimulated by a film; it’s another to see the events on screen and to hope to break the cycle somehow. A film like Ruby Sparks is not just in “pursuit of the remade world” (Allison 211), it’s well on its way to creating it.
Little Women and Ruby Sparks are incredibly different films: one is upfront in it’s radical feminist messages backed by an encouraging, nurturing story whereas the other hides its message behind a story you’re meant to be troubled by. Both films explore ideas regarding women and the power of art as well as the obstacles different types of girls face in their maturation. Both are metatextual films, very aware of their own messages as well as the timeliness of their making. They exhibit a “spirit of protest” that produces a powerful effect in their respective audiences, making them truly successful in their endeavor of “pursuing a remade world” (Allison 211). These special iterations of the female bildungsroman take the idea of a “conduct book” and cause it to explode (Fraiman 145). There’s no right way to be a girl and there’s no pre-selected path to success, there’s just growing older and becoming who you are, either helped along with other stories of girlhood or in spite of them. To say which version of this type of narrative is more successful or powerful is inherently subjective - just as there is no longer a “conduct book” in the traditional sense, there is no right answer when considering what narrative was most influential in each individual’s maturation (Fraiman 145). All of these iterations of the female bildungsroman narrative have opened up the possibility for different paths of maturation and have effectively remodeled the idea of a conduct book to fit these new intricacies. As a viewer, I value those narratives of women “who by failing or defying the normative story, grow up in disconcerting ways” and therefore reveal the structures in place that make their maturation appear “disconcerting” rather than natural (Fraiman 145). For others, it’s more encouraging to view acceptance and reassurance on screen, so that they have the confidence to remake their worlds in line with their desires. Both of these films are profoundly compelling to diverse audiences and encourage some sort of personal reflection or action, and it is through this process that the remade world is born.
The gendered reality of our world has conditioned us to expect women to possess some sort of formulaic traits in order to be considered valuable and successful. The key pillars of success, in both society and film, are a subservient personality aimed at cultivating men’s potential, joy in providing emotional labor, and marriage with children. Therefore, to see a woman succeed either in spite of these stipulations or use them to create something in her image of happiness serves to reimagine what female maturation can look like. Society has presented us with “conduct books” meant to contain a woman’s value into predetermined roles (Fraiman 145). Instead of blindly following these rigid roles, films like Little Women instead take these stipulations and turn them on their head to create a radically feminist account of multidimensional womanhood. Little Women shows the viewer four different girls and depicts the success that they have created for themselves, not for the purpose of societal affirmation, but rather for personal fulfillment.
The scene in which Amy and Laurie are in the French painting studio allows for two modes of communication. The first is explicitly laid out by Amy as she is forced to confront and remedy the duties decided for her by her family and society in order to limit her maturation and worth. The second is made clear to the audience, through acting style and intonation, that she is reluctant to follow these duties and to go against them, though difficult, will bring her the most happiness. This conversation is transformative in that the audience can clearly see Amy’s unhappiness and frustration and we root for her to use her agency and choose differently, to choose happiness over duty. This hope is not one commonly afforded to women, and by showing this type of internal struggle, the film purposefully sends a message regarding choice: women must be allowed to make the choices that were unavailable before and that making this decision is inherently powerful. Later on, Amy and Meg have decided to pursue marriage, and yet it's the fact that they willingly made this choice that becomes transformative instead of repetitive or cliche. This scene acts as a basis for arguing that women are valuable, whatever their choice, and even that conforming to some societal expectations is not shameful if that’s the path they have deliberately chosen. Little Women is centered on reclaiming the domestic sphere for oneself, exercising agency, and pursuing cultural norms with individuality.
This film furthers the idea of “unbecoming” during the scene with Jo and Marmee discussing anger (Fraiman ix). This scene depicts a daughter asking a mother for advice and thus allows the film to express its politics as a bildungsroman narrative (Kontje 4). Here, the audience is witnessing a meditation on different forms of femininity and their validity. It presents jarring language such as. “I’m angry nearly every day of my life”. This messaging along with its depictions of women work together to create a message that protests the idea that women must become domesticated and force themselves to be quiet and gentle for the sake of appearances. It encourages female anger, as something natural and powerful in order to work towards the remade world. This film has repeatedly said that women should not limit themselves and that happiness comes from being wholly yourself, a message that is transformative in its positivity. Fraiman says that womanhood is not a “single path to a clear destination but [an] endless negotiation of crossroads” (Fraiman x). This film reaffirms that idea, that there are many choices to make to achieve your goals and critiques the idea that for these negotiations to be successful, a woman should give up parts of herself, especially the ones deemed ‘unladylike’.
Finally, one of the last scenes shows Jo negotiating her book deal with her editor. The themes in this scene are profoundly different in that while Jo’s novel may be forced into the predetermined track of “marriage or death” for the sake of sales, Jo has the opportunity to choose differently for herself. Here, her willfulness has provided her with success - success that though different from our expectations is extremely rewarding for the viewer. This scene is interesting in that the director chose to stray from the novel and managed to splice together an ending that is revolutionary in its own right. To clearly show a woman advocating for herself, her worth, and her dream when it goes against societal limits, is inspiring and uplifting. The film reimagines what ownership and achievement look like for women and therefore splits completely from the mold in order to launch us into a new age of understanding (Fraiman 144). What is more indicative of the remade world than showing a female character’s growth and not limiting her to marriage, however painful and lonely this decision may be? Little Women has taken the character’s trajectory and refreshed it to show a new sort of handbook on becoming - one where agency, individuality, and passion are nurtured instead of limited. This is the type of narratives that “give[s] some child, some thirteen-year-old, the hope of a remade life” where her maturation is not narrowed onto a specific path but instead cultivated for herself, working to mastery in something worthy of her interest (Allison 220, Howe 4).
Where Little Women was transformative in its multiple depictions of success and positivity, Ruby Sparks is transformative in it’s raw metatextual conversation that highlights and exposes the structures in place that limit female success and maturation to within the dictates of the male gaze. Ruby Sparks, at first glance, looks like every other romantic comedy we see - a nice dorky boy meets a quirky interesting girl and the story centers solely on their relationship. On a deeper level, the film is in direct conversation with our ideals of love and the role women play in the lives of men. This is a narrative “in which the heroine [is] obstructed, humiliated, diverted from [her] early goals, and otherwise mocked by the project of building” (Fraiman 144). In doing so, it presents an interesting dichotomy when dissected through the lens of the female bildungsroman narrative and instead produces feelings of anger, fear, and anxiety in the audience.
The scene where Calvin realizes that Ruby is real is absolutely terrifying. It’s deeply unsettling once the audience wades their way through the layers presented on-screen. The way Calvin treats Ruby is dismissive, until she’s proven her worth and passed his test, where at that point, she runs away and he chases her down. There’s grabbing hands and rough violent movements, at one point Calvin throws her over his shoulder and the camera focuses on the underwear peeking out from beneath her dress, effectively sexualizing Ruby’s forced helplessness and Calvin’s control over her. This scene is clearly coded as something resembling sexual assault and, yet, the music is that of a happy and upbeat romantic comedy. There is a constant use of discordance throughout the film between what is on screen and what the film is asking us to see. This scene is horrifying but reminiscent of the so-called “romantic” notions young girls are taught to look for in their relationships. It forces us to consider what we “looked at unflinchingly, even if [we] did not know what we were seeing at the time” (Allison 219). Here, the audience views such a casually violent scene that it begins to plant a seed of doubt and disgust that the film repeatedly returns to and cultivates as it works to expose and transform the patriarchal structures encouraging Calvin’s actions and preventing Ruby’s success.
Moving forward, Calvin discovers that he can completely re-write Ruby to become exactly what he wants. Ruby cannot develop into who she is because she is constantly bound to the whims of a man who utilizes his talents to manipulate and diminish her to suit him rather than to encourage her own growth. It becomes nearly a game for him as he shows off his new girlfriend and her subservience to his brother. This is a clear critique of the culture encouraging learned helplessness in women, where it becomes almost impossible for her to exist in the world without him. Calvin is writing his dream girl into existence so that he can control her in order to soothe his own insecurities under the guise of a great, sweeping romance. This development in the narrative is a clear critique of the way women are viewed in society and works to transform by showing us the terrifying reality behind societal norms. The “relationship” between Calvin and Ruby is abusive, predatory, and constraining. Watching this twisted account of a relationship, clearly exposes the obstacles women are facing and can easily lead to developing stronger, reactive feelings.
Finally, near the end of the film, Calvin and Ruby’s relationship explodes. She is unhappy and Calvin repeatedly controls her actions to show that, no matter what, he possesses complete and utter power over her. The things he forces her to do are degrading, such as being made to bark like a dog and are used to reinforce and serve his own ego. Ultimately, this scene shows the audience the tangible ways in which Calvin is benefitting from his exploitation of Ruby. By using his supposed “genius” as a writer to force Ruby to fit into his narrative and bend to his desires, this film is in conversation with the ways that women are shown in media along with their attempt to break out of those structures that creators repeatedly force them back into. The film is suggesting that all women, not just Ruby, are subtly controlled and influenced by the media as it teaches us what to expect out of life and the proper ways to navigate that to achieve success.
By the end of the film, the audience has been privy to the escalation of overt control on Ruby with a complete disregard for her own development and autonomy. The tension increases and the film morphs from romantic comedy to cringey reincarnation of the manic pixie dream girl to finally explicitly showing the audience the horror-based commentary at its core. It’s showing the truths of our society: that women are taught to be mindful of the male gaze in order to succeed within the blueprint provided for domestic relationships. The depiction of a relationship in Ruby Sparks is unnerving given that it refuses to “pretend [that women] aren’t really...broken in the darkened bedrooms of the American family” (Allison 216). Its truth is so vivid and apparent in this end scene that it rips the female bildungsroman genre apart and asks us to do so much more than survive (Allison 209). Men, art, and societal constructions do hold a certain amount of power over women; it’s the exposé of such that makes viewers deeply uncomfortable as they are forced to question their own reality. For myself, this type of film is uniquely transformative in that it shows what is wrong with our limiting cultural assumptions and, in doing so, has created such an intense feeling of anger and frustration. Frustration for people who are so much more similar to Ruby than they have ever imagined, frustration for girls growing up and being conditioned to want certain things and to find a predetermined brand of success, and frustration at myself for playing into these notions for so many years. It’s this frustration that encourages, almost forces, you to talk about what you’ve just seen or act on the feelings it produced, something akin to ‘productive frustration’ or ‘productive outrage’. It’s one thing to be emotionally moved or intellectually stimulated by a film; it’s another to see the events on screen and to hope to break the cycle somehow. A film like Ruby Sparks is not just in “pursuit of the remade world” (Allison 211), it’s well on its way to creating it.
Little Women and Ruby Sparks are incredibly different films: one is upfront in it’s radical feminist messages backed by an encouraging, nurturing story whereas the other hides its message behind a story you’re meant to be troubled by. Both films explore ideas regarding women and the power of art as well as the obstacles different types of girls face in their maturation. Both are metatextual films, very aware of their own messages as well as the timeliness of their making. They exhibit a “spirit of protest” that produces a powerful effect in their respective audiences, making them truly successful in their endeavor of “pursuing a remade world” (Allison 211). These special iterations of the female bildungsroman take the idea of a “conduct book” and cause it to explode (Fraiman 145). There’s no right way to be a girl and there’s no pre-selected path to success, there’s just growing older and becoming who you are, either helped along with other stories of girlhood or in spite of them. To say which version of this type of narrative is more successful or powerful is inherently subjective - just as there is no longer a “conduct book” in the traditional sense, there is no right answer when considering what narrative was most influential in each individual’s maturation (Fraiman 145). All of these iterations of the female bildungsroman narrative have opened up the possibility for different paths of maturation and have effectively remodeled the idea of a conduct book to fit these new intricacies. As a viewer, I value those narratives of women “who by failing or defying the normative story, grow up in disconcerting ways” and therefore reveal the structures in place that make their maturation appear “disconcerting” rather than natural (Fraiman 145). For others, it’s more encouraging to view acceptance and reassurance on screen, so that they have the confidence to remake their worlds in line with their desires. Both of these films are profoundly compelling to diverse audiences and encourage some sort of personal reflection or action, and it is through this process that the remade world is born.
Works Cited
Allison, Dorothy. “Survival Is the Least of My Desires.” Skin: Talking About Sex, Class and Literature, Firebrand Books, 1994, pp. 209-223.
Berger, Albert, et al. Ruby Sparks. Fox Searchlight, 2012.
Fraiman, Susan. Unbecoming Women: British Women Writers and The Novel of Development. New York Columbia University Press, 1993
Gerwig, Greta, et al. Little Women. Sony Pictures Releasing, 2019.
Howe, Susanne. Wilhelm Meister and His English Kinsmen: Apprentices to Life. New York Columbia University Press, 1930.
Kontje, Todd. The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1993.