In Which We Defend Diablo Cody

Success x Backlash x Backlash = Forwardlash?

by Molly Lambert

All italicized print and bolded captions ganked from Diablo Cody’s former blog Pussy Ranch on City Pages.

All italicized captions and all other text by me.

We’re here to jump back in the fray about the hateration directed at Diablo Cody’s Oscar win for best screenwriting. I didn’t know how sexist this country really still is before this year. I’m not sure whether I’d just been in a scholastic bubble until now or if the election has shone a light on all of the issues America is most uncomfortable talking about.

I think my style says “political prisoner in the front, vintage Joan Jett in the back.”

I don’t think any of this summer’s unwanted babies trilogy (Waitress, Knocked Up, Juno) were particularly pro-life. But they all created interesting and timely discussion about the ongoing gender wars.

I think Hollywood is still a total boys club. For a woman to be a visible (let alone attractive) screenwriter is rare but not unprecedented, which is why I compared Diablo to Anita Loos. If Anita Loos were alive she’d be writing a romantic comedy called Gentlemen Prefer Blogs.

The Patriarchy

Female directors are still fairly rare, though it’s getting better. It’s not because women lack some kind of inherent talent or interest in film. There are a lot of women in the film industry. Most of them with integral, but less visible positions. What I have learned is that some people are repulsed by an outwardly ambitious woman. The hatred directed at Diablo has been mostly about her character and appearance, even when it’s supposedly about the dialogue. When asked about her attention seeking Diablo said that “only male writers can afford to be coy and self-deprecating.”

Diablo’s former natural Junior Varsity Boobs

No woman has ever won an Oscar for best Director. Sofia Coppola was the first female American director to get nominated. Ever! And they called her a “girl” when they brought her onstage which was really weird and infantalizing. More women make films now than ever. Will the Academy finally start to reflect that? Anyway I have nothing but love for Diablo and for anybody, male or female, who bothers to put themselves out on an artistic limb and make a film. Even if it has burger phones.

What’s that, Mr. Murnau? Oh, I promise to emote convincingly in your picture!

My prediction (and I am never wrong about these things, I’m like Nikki Finke x Brenda Starr) is that her next film, Jennifer’s Body, will bear the brunt of the backlash. And that once it has simmered down again Girly Style will come out (maybe even directed by the womyn) and be totally praised for making the world a safe place for girls to get their periods on guys’ legs freak-dancing them.

Anyway, here are 20 more reasons to love Diablo Cody, and 10 million pictures of her to demonstrate how, Zelig-like, she looks like a completely different person in every weave.

1. She loves Fleetwood Mac and understands that The Dance is in fact a reality movie, a soap operatic documentary about what happens to two crazy coked up musical geniuses after you pick up the pieces and go home.

Stevie has said that she hoped her songs about Lindsay would ensure that he’d never be able to forget about her. Even today, he probably turns on his car radio and bam– it’s 1976 and they’re both dicking each other over in spectacular fashion.

Hey you guys! We’re all going to Teddy’s now! WOOOH! I am so hammered on Veuve. Hey, let’s prank Michel Gondry and ask him if his bidet’s running!

2. She takes stupid pictures of herself, just like you. And her captions are hilarious.

3. She follows George Clooney’s rules of celebrity (self-depricate), but unlike the Cloon two years ago she was watching the Oscars at home with the rest of us plebes.

I remember the day I got my book deal. I was working at an insurance company at the time, and we were forbidden to be human. My agent called me on my cell phone, which I had set on “vibrate” and wedged between my knees since an errant ring could be grounds for termination. I waited until my fifteen-minute break, then crept downstairs to the antiseptic, gleaming lobby of the office complex. I hid behind a large potted plant and sobbed for fifteen minutes. Then I went back upstairs to my cubicle and continued processing insurance claims.

4. The Bettie Page thing is still really big in the midwest. Who am I kidding, Rockabilly still rules most of California.

5. She loves junk food and junk TV. She is as ADD as we are.

I don’t think there is a solution to adult ADD, frankly. For every quirk the speed supresses, there’s always a few that slip under the radar. My head is much quieter now, but I still space out every few minutes. I can finish a job, but I still find myself fighting distractions midtask. I still fidget. I’d up my dosage, except I don’t want to, like, DIE.

6. She mocks For Better Or Worse as much as we do. And she dared to challenge the close-knit crafting community of New Domestics. She also hates to exercise. Oh, and school.

School: I’m not remotely nostalgic about grade school. I hated it, and was the sneakiest sick-faking truant you ever saw. I would rather work a shitty minimum-wage job as an adult than be a first grader again. I LOVE being a grownup. All the alcohol and porn I can consume, plus they pay me to write movies. It’s better than I ever dreamed of. And I have tits! I always wanted these!

I closed the event by singing “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and then vomiting blood onto the crowd.

7. Her favorite Degrassi character is Ellie (OMG ME 2) and she was super bummed by the offing of JT. She waxed poetic on irrepressible Canadian lout Craig Manning. I was just waxing on him last night!

I’ve always thought of Craig as “Most Likely to be Iced by the Writers,” since he’s constantly buggin’ out and causing a ruckus. Whether he’s panhandling on the mean streets of the T.O. or disrupting a gay wedding, Craig can always be counted on to totally lose his shit. Even Kevin Smith couldn’t save the guy from the inevitable 48-hour coke habit.

But JT could never catch a break. His small penis was alluded to repeatedly on the show, inspiring Toby’s classic “roll of dimes” diss. He dated the most obnoxious character on the series (humorless Liberty, who’d sprain her face if she deigned to smile), knocked her up, O.D.’d on OxyContin, and then–once he was finally free of Liberty’s umbilical noose–proceeded to rebound with teen mom Mia.

Diablo’s giant new fake boobs. I accept it but I can’t say I’m thrilled. I thought it was cool before that she repped for the pear shaped lasses. But I also think Dolly Parton is a good role model.

8. She wants a ferret and writes short stories she describes as “bad Alice Munro.”

9. Mall hair and her take on Mick Jagger and other gross male Alphas of rock.

Rockers date and marry these women because they (the women) are attractively powerless. When your entire persona hinges on the air-pressure in your ego, you can’t be with a women who poses a threat to your primacy. It’s much smarter to find a mute ornament–she’ll impress your hoary friends without challenging you intellectually or creatively. Younger women are more deferential by nature.

No 14-year-old is going to tell Jimmy Page he’s not a genius. No swimsuit model is going to tell Rod Stewart that his Great American Songbook album is unlistenable. Eric Clapton doesn’t have to worry that his beaming, fertile young bride will head into the studio one day and cut an album that surpasses anything he’s done in years. These women are safe, because they’re not equals.

10. She acted in her friend’s mumblecore webseries as a “hippie pole dancing instructor” and reads hippie blogs. Now I know what part I’ll be casting her in for “Bake Off!: The Movie.”

Kind of a mixed Arquette? Patricia x Roseanna x Alexis + a dildo.

11. She compares herself to Black Cherry Vanilla Coke, and we look forward to Mona starring Shia LaBeouf.

O.G. indie film pixie/perennial teenage crush Winona Ryder?

12. She had a dream where she fucked a transgendered Stephen King.

13. And she knocked up Angelina Jolie to the tune of “Laffy Taffy” by D4L.

Whee! I’m flying, Jack, I’m flying! And not just because of the Percodan.

14. She wanted to name her cat L. Ron Cuddles. He got fat and she called him Ham Parsons.

15. She knows the stripper thing is annoying:

There were times when I was at Sex World where if I was doing a really sick show for somebody it would remind me of that final scene in Requiem for a Dream where Jennifer Connelly is doing the ass to ass with the dildo.

I was like “God. I’m almost like the ass to ass woman. I can’t believe I’m at this place in my life.” I remember watching that movie a couple years ago and thinking “How horrible to be doing such a thing for money in front of old men. Now I’m doing it for mad money because I want to go see David Byrne play next week. How did I get here?”

I ate the guy from My Chemical Romance. He tasted gay.

16. She’s a feminist.

The one thing that I thought was interesting were the happily married guys who would talk about their relationships in respectful, reverent terms. They would always create this division where their wife was a very moral, good, sweet, wholesome maternal type and the strippers were the exact opposite.

It was always strange to me because I always felt compelled to explain to them that all women are complex. That there were things they didn’t know about their wife’s sexuality and that these strippers have maternal, moral, wholesome sides that they didn’t know about either. It’s not like we’re just one or the other.

17. She smoked a blunt with Cypress Hill.

Ani DiFranco x Last Of The Mohicans x Jayne Mansfield?

18. She may or may not masturbate to the thought of Draco Malfoy. (We thought we were the only one!) She’s also turned on by some fairly random geek shit.

Diablo at maybe 21? Kind of a CK One/ANTM vibe

19. John Philip Sousa marches make her cry. And she hates Cat Stevens even though they both have names like X-Men. Two outta three ain’t bad! (I am partial to “Epic.”) Oh and don’t fuck with Joe Walsh or Bob Seger. Especially Bob Seger. He will send you to Kathmandu.

20. She won’t tolerate you White People and your Vampire Weekends.

What is it with American poseurs going to Uruguay and shit and acting like they’re totally down with the gaucho-shamans or whatever? There’s no Krispy Kreme in Montevideo, fools. Stay here where you’re wanted. And if you do insist on traveling to far-flung locales, please be bashful, assert your ignorance, and refrain from calling the natives “a simple people.” (That means you, Cameron Diaz.)

OK we’re jealous that her Oscar date was Edgar Wright.

Molly Lambert is the senior editor of This Recording.

LINKS TO BRING YOU BACK TO EARTH

Existential Media Dot Org

Claire L. Evans is the UNIVERSE

Sorry Jim and Pam shippers, Jim (John Krasinski) and Karen (Rashida Jones) are still very much on IRL.

Mixtape Mixtape!!!

Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are to be recast/reshot at the studio’s insistence? Say it ain’t so, Spike!

Pareene is reaching Stage 8 of Gawker Employee Fatigue Psychosis, wherein one becomes intolerable to be around by virtue of having read the whole internet every single day. Hang in there baby!

The most misogynistic films of the past ten years. We hope Diablo makes it right with Girly Style. Our forecast: there will be fingerbanging.

DIABLO ON WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN IN MN

I just realized that I have been totally assimilated to the Minnesota way of life: I’m blonde, I attend a Presbyterian church, I listen to the Replacements and I cook with Pyrex. It’s horrifying. Now I need is a snowmobile and an unspoken grudge and the assimilation will be complete.

ALL YOUR GENRES ARE BELONG TO US

“Telephone” – Erykah Badu (mp3)

“Master Teacher” – Erykah Badu (mp3)