Skateland

I recently had the pleasure of attending SIFF (Seattle International Film Festival) and watched the film, Skateland. I was quite surprised that this film was actually entertaining and kept my interest.

The Film takes place in small town Texas, in 1983. Our protagonist, Ritchie Wheeler, played by Shiloh Fernandez, is one of the managers at the local skating rink. Throughout the film he is pressured by his family and some of his friends to go on to bigger and better things.

Although it is not mentioned, it seems his family, namely his sister, wants Ritchie to go to college so he might make a name for himself and also make much more money then he does doing what he loves. But despite what anybody says, Ritchie happens to love what he does and throughout the film is reluctant to do anything to take him away from what he knew and loved as his home. This idea of doing something "more" with his life, becomes problematic when his best friend Michelle, (who goes on to become his boyfriend) literally takes on the assumed role for him and sends in an essay, that Ritchie had written, to a well known college. Though the film doesn't completely play out the ending we are left with a few details. He gets the woman of his dreams, and is headed to college where, after completing plenty of school, will be setup with a well paying job.

It seems that the film was trying to tell the audience that this is what you should do. This is the way it is. If you continue to do a low paying job that you happen to love, you won't get a wife/partner, nor will you have the means to "succeed" in life. So, "love"turns out to be an issue of class, which should never be the case.

The one thing that bothered me most about this film, was the way the women in it were portrayed. Now before I go on, this film was a time piece and I am not sure as to how women were treated or viewed in the 80's and so can not judge on that level. I will be basing my observations off of what I saw as demeaning to women.

Within the first 10 minutes, we are exposed to a full frame of a woman's butt in skin tight jeans. Interestingly enough we are never exposed to a man's butt in skin tight jeans and if we were it certainly wouldn't have filled the entire frame! Director Anthony Burns is of course calling out and appealing to male audiences here like most Hollywood movies. The objectification of women doesn't stop there, one of the characters in the film refers to his girlfriend literally as, "his shit". One of the most demeaning lines I've ever heard. It not only is implying that this women is just an object, but he also calls her "shit". Not something anyone would ever want to be referred to as.

Along with the issue of objectification, there are also some issues that seem to deal with the patriarchal society of America. Ritchie's mom, played by Melinda McGraw, ends up leaving the husband early on in the film due to many factors. One of them seems to be the fact that she seems to never be home cooking dinner for her family due to yoga classes. Her husband can't seem to stand the fact and thinks that due to her absence, the family is falling apart. The children, Ritchie and his sister, even end up blaming the mother for the divorce and she becomes not the victim but the perpetrator for the events.

After the film there was a Q and A with the director and some of the crew members. Anthony Burns said that one of the reasons he wanted to set the movie in 83 was because of the strong Woman's Movement. He said he had made the roles of the women really strong for this reason. Personally I found the woman's roles to be very weak. The mother was portrayed as a whore, "feminist" and was definitely one of the characters you were not supposed to like. She threatened the "masculinity" of the father.

When the woman was in such a strong role such as, Michelle, they had to be promoting and upholding the ideas of a man. Not surprisingly the women in this film also had to be side characters and when their strength was shown it would indefinitely benefit the man.

Sources: Image taken from- twilight-buzz.com