Reclaiming Feminism in Popular Culture:

Subversive Humor and Satirical Reappropriation of Female Stereotypes in the

Film Comedies Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2

by

Archontia Leivada

A dissertation submitted to the Department of American Literature and Culture,

School of English, Faculty of Philosophy of the Aristotle University of

Thessaloniki as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master

of Arts.

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

November 2016

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements .……………………………………………………………….... ii

Abstract ...…………………………………………………………………………… iii

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………..1

CHAPTER ONE:

Deconstructing Film Comedy and its Sexist Stereotypes: Satire, Mockery, and

Feminist Subtext in Pitch Perfect ...………………………………………………….16

CHAPTER TWO:

Reclaiming the F-word: Elizabeth Banks’ Pitch Perfect 2 ...………………………..49

Conclusion ...…………………………………………………………………………77

Work Cited ...………………………………………………………………………...83

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Domna

Pastourmatzi for her continuous support and guidance throughout the course of this project as

well as for her mentorship throughout my studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

I would also like to thank the professors that I have had the luck to work with during the

course of this truly inspiring for me graduate programme. Despite the practical difficulties of

the recent years, they have managed to make the four semesters of my studies a genuinely

creative and exhilarating experience that has enhanced my understanding of literature and

culture, among other things, and has shaped my professional aspirations and ethics for the

times to come.

Moreover, I would like to thank my MA family, my classmates and companions in the

journey of this constructive experience, who have- free of charge- provided me with their

always welcome and life-saving psychotherapy. I would like to thank my closest friends for

their ongoing support the last 15 years of my life, and during the writing of the MA thesis

when I was utterly insupportable. Thank you guys and gals.

I would particularly like to thank my family and acknowledge the support of my

grandparents. Thanks to them I have managed to complete my MA studies as well as fulfill

many more dreams of mine that would have remained dreams without their help and support.

Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to my parents who have faith in me

even when I do not understand why, who support, encourage, and help me rediscover the

strength they have instilled in me, even when I think I have lost it. Thank you for everything.

This thesis is dedicated to all the empowering women who have influenced me, my

female role models whose strength has provided me with the inspiration for this project and

who I hope will continue to inspire me for the projects to come.

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ABSTRACT

In my MA thesis I examine the recycling of Hollywood female stereotypes in the popular

American film comedies Pitch Perfect (2012) and Pitch Perfect 2 (2015). I investigate the

cinematic narrative as well as the style of the directors, who appropriate these stereotypes and

turn them into a form of satire which aims at their deconstruction and at the subversion of

patriarchal assumptions of femininity. Employing feminist, cultural, and film theories, I argue

that the female director, producer, screenwriter and the all-female cast of these two movies

collaborate to provide a feminist statement. Together they subvert the conventions of the

comedic genre and at the same time they construct positive messages about female

independence, women’s empowerment, and social equality. In this way they resist against the

established Hollywood sexism that traditionally excludes female voices and experiences both

in front and behind the camera. I also comment on the fact that because of their success these

two movies have initiated and contributed in opening a public dialogue about feminism in

Hollywood and popular culture; a dialogue about the rare existence of female filmmakers that

has been recently exposed as a real problem that underlines an entrenched sexism in the

reigning Hollywood studios that form and shape the biggest part of the film industry and

influence audiences worldwide. Lastly, I argue that these two film comedies have opened up

a cinematic space in the genre of popular comedy, a space for the promotion of a female

and/or feminist comedic tradition. In other words, women’s comedic art can be the source of

a cultural revolution.

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INTRODUCTION

Popular comedies with an all-female cast, written, directed and produced by women

are a rare phenomenon in Hollywood. However, in recent years Elizabeth Banks (a director)

had the courage to produce two female-driven comedies that had great success in American

society. Pitch Perfect (2012) and Pitch Perfect 2 (2015) proved to be highly successful at the

box office and very popular in the United States. The original movie was written and

produced by women but had a male director. The sequel was written, directed, and produced

mainly by women. The popularity and impact of these two movies can be seen in the fact that

they have inspired an active fan base comprised of American young girls who call themselves

“Pitches”; these fans communicate with each other on numerous occasions, mainly on social

media but also during the fan conventions they organize themselves, to discuss how these two

movies have helped them feel empowered and accepted. The unexpected but overwhelming

success of these two movies, as well as the rare, almost exclusive, participation of women in

front and behind the camera have inspired me to investigate the reasons why they have had

such an appeal to female audiences and to discover the political message underlying the

representation of the female characters in each film.

It is well-known to filmmakers that popular Hollywood comedies depend heavily on

female stereotypes. These stereotypes are most of the times outrageously sexist and racist

because they try to satisfy patriarchal assumptions about gender and cater to the male gaze

that they usually address. The Pitch Perfect movies appropriate the recycled female

stereotypes of Hollywood in order to foreground their sexist implications and to gradually

deconstruct them through a subtle yet potent satire. Besides criticizing the persistence of

sexism in popular cinematic culture, these films recognize the need for positive

representations of diverse femininities, for the inclusion of a variety of female voices, and for

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the empowerment of the female audiences they address. They use satire to challenge sexist

cultural assumptions about femininity. Through the emphatic and hyperbolic performances of

the actresses, these films subvert the Hollywood stereotypes and provide a space for the

construction of alternative models of femininity, usually absent from popular cinema, which

very often conforms to the patriarchal expectations of gender roles.

Lois Weber, the first female director of a feature film and a woman who is still

considered one of the most important directors in the American film industry, firmly believed

that “film could change culture” (qtd. in Dowd). This is why she has directed movies about

female issues (such as contraception in the early 20th century), although addressing such

topics could easily have her burned at the stake. The main reason why I chose the Pitch

Perfect movies as the subject of my thesis is because I share Weber’s conviction about

popular movies and their powerful impact on contemporary American culture. As Rob

Schaap asserts, “for the cultural theorist Hollywood is a producer of culture” (152).

Considering this, I strongly believe that the Pitch Perfect films constitute a significant chapter

in recent Hollywood history. They are movies created by women who consciously choose to

multiply the number of women not only of those appearing on the screen as characters but

also of those working behind the camera. They address a female audience and deal with

issues affecting women’s lives, undermining at the same time the ridiculous Hollywood myth

that women filmmakers do not earn money for the film industry. With their films, the creative

minds behind the Pitch Perfect movies—Elizabeth Banks (the director) and Kay Cannon (the

scriptwriter)—have contributed to the recent phenomenon in the film industry to talk about

female issues and raise awareness about the importance of feminism. Partly why I find it of

great importance to critically analyze the two movies from a feminist perspective is the fact

that they belong to a period in Hollywood when highly successful actresses (like Patricia

Arquette, Meryl Streep, Viola Davis, and Jennifer Lawrence) began to address feminist

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issues; for instance, job opportunities and wage equality in Hollywood. These women actors

connect the importance of wage equality in the film industry with women’s wages in other

businesses. They share the belief Madeline Berg expressed in Forbes magazine that “with

powerful visibility and an ability to spark public debate, Hollywood has an opportunity to set

an example for every industry.” This is the Hollywood era of Lena Dunham, an actress,

writer, and director, who struggles to make feminism both popular and accessible through her

Lenny newsletter which focuses on women’s issues and which has a huge following by an

online community of women from all over the world. This is the era of the world-renown

actress Emma Watson, who is the key person of HeForShe—a solidarity movement for

gender equality initiated by UN women. This is the era when Gloria Steinem’s documentary

(titled “Woman” and exploring how violence against women around the world drives global

instability) airs on popular television and earns an Emmy nomination. Such events have

produced a newly carved, friendlier environment for female filmmakers who create female-

driven movies to empower their audiences. These women filmmakers reclaim feminism as an

urgently needed and positive political movement to fight gender inequalities and deconstruct

the popular culture backlash of the early 2000s in the United States, a backlash that perceived

the women’s movement for equal rights and equal pay as socially aggressive and dangerous.

Considering that meaning production takes place in the interaction between “viewer or reader

and social context,” as Janet Lee comments (88), I argue that the Pitch Perfect movies are an

important social phenomenon and cinematic products with meaning-making strategies that

are essential in the newly feminist phase in Hollywood. Whether this feminist phase will last

for years to come or be short-lived, whether it will bring change in Hollywood practices or

not, at the present moment it is helping create a popular female tradition in the movie

industry that may serve as a source of feminist resistance and positively affect and empower

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the women who go to the movies. In the last four years a considerable number of female-

driven film comedies have had unexpected box office success.

The reason why I want to focus on the cinematic genre of comedy is because it has

largely ignored or systematically objectified women for many years. As Janet Lee notes, in

Hollywood comedies women are frequently the butt of jokes; besides being objectified, they

are “considered to be humorless”; they learn that “they are not supposed to be funny” (90). In

contrast, the Pitch Perfect movies belong to a small but significant group of recent

Hollywood films which disrupt such obsolete and sexist convictions. This is precisely the

reason why they deserve to be critically analyzed. Although these two movies have greatly

affected American contemporary culture, film theorists and critics regularly dismiss them as

“inappropriate scholarship” because they belong to “mass culture” (Lee 88). However, such

statements have “purist ideological leanings that smack of elitism” (Lee 88). Popular cinema

is drenched with misogyny; it should not be theoretically dismissed precisely because of its

popularity and impact on a large number of people who massively consume the negative

representations of women. Traditionally, popular comedies associate feminism “with sexually

aggressive behavior, glamorous styling, and provocative posturing” (Genz and Brandon 98).

In contrast, the Pitch Perfect movies subvert such representation and offer positive images of

both women and feminism. It is my contention that Elizabeth Banks’ comedies deserve to be

approached seriously because they are rare examples of popular comedies with a feminist

message, because they subvert Hollywood conventions and because they foreground the

sexism that plagues contemporary American popular culture.

I have said that a serious critical analysis of this type of movies is almost non-existent.

But the recent Hollywood phenomenon of female-driven comedies has not been ignored by

newspapers and online cinema portals, where one can find regular references and articles.

The financial success and wide popularity of comedies like Pitch Perfect and their

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transformation into brand names give people the opportunity to talk about feminist issues in

the film industry, issues that have been ignored for too long. Berg, for instance, wrote in

Forbes magazine an article titled, “Everything You Need to Know about the Hollywood Pay

Gap,” in which she points out that although movies featuring female characters are

successful, the money paid to the actresses is comparatively less than the wages of their male

counterparts. Berg includes some statistics which reveal the depressing situation women

filmmakers find themselves in: women make up only 1.9% of the directors, 11.2% of the

writers, and 18.9% of the producers in Hollywood; the scarcity of women in key positions in

the Hollywood film industry seems to be the main reason behind the outrageous pay gap.

Berg also refers to actresses who have recently taken a stand in favor of wage equality and to

the findings of a report with the conclusion that “in productions where women held key

positions off-screen […] the films featured women more often, and in less sexualized roles.”

Similarly, Maureen Dowd underlines the importance of more women behind and in front of

the camera in her New York Times article, “The Women of Hollywood Speak Out.” Dowd

mentions Pitch Perfect 2 as one of the movies that made a difference for Hollywood

executives, since it has proven that a female-driven comedy directed by a woman “can make

a ton of profit.” Other articles include Melena Ryzik’s “Female Cinematographers, not

Content to Hide behind the Camera” in the New York Times and “The Black List and Women

in Film Create TV Lab for Women Writers” in Forbes. The Internet overflows with such

writings which attest to the fact that there is a recent feminist turn in Hollywood and that the

women working in the film industry are trying to fight sexism by producing films with

positive representations of womanhood and by asserting their right for equal pay.

In my thesis I will take into consideration articles in the American press regarding

the two Pitch Perfect movies because they underline the feminist leanings of both the

cinematic artifacts and their creators, and highlight the fact that feminism in contemporary

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popular comedy has become an important issue. It thus requires serious critical analysis and

investigation. I will argue that comedies like Pitch Perfect deconstruct the feminist backlash

that characterized the comedies of the early 2000s. As part of the endeavor of women

filmmakers to combat the sexism in popular cinema, Elizabeth Banks includes a feminist

undercurrent in the narrative of the first Pitch Perfect movie and then offers a more

straightforward feminist message in the sequel. One of her strategies is the employment of

subversive humor which aims to counter the anti-feminist discourse of Hollywood film

comedy. Necessary to my analysis and feminist approach are the theories of feminist humor:

in Unruly Woman, Kathleen Rowe talks about the kind of humor feminists use to undermine

patriarchal norms; Domnica Radulescu expounds a theory of female comedy as social

revolution and refers to cultural theorists who associate popular cinema with the female

spectators and the attempts on behalf of women filmmakers to empower their audiences

through easily accessible feminist discourses. Moreover, I will argue that the Pitch Perfect

movies resist the discourse of the typical Hollywood comedies which treat sexism against

women as harmless humor. While elaborating on this point I will depend on the cultural

theory of Susan J. Douglas in The Rise of Enlightened Sexism in which she pinpoints the

importance of reopening feminism as well as of unmasking harmful stereotypes of women in

popular culture. In short, feminist theory and film theory will help me demonstrate that the

mission behind the Pitch Perfect films is the reinvigoration of a feminist discourse and a

feminist political stance. Because of their wide popular appeal these cinematic narratives

have the potential to change the sexist Hollywood habits, practices, and conventions that have

endured for too long.

The story of Pitch Perfect revolves around an unsuccessful all-female a cappella

group which struggles to survive in the world of collegiate a cappella by following the

tradition of the previous generations of women who sang only conservative, woman-

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appropriate songs that accentuate the feminine and reserved nature of young women

performing in a cappella competitions. Specifically, it focuses on a first-year college student

called Beca, who joins the group, manages to revolutionize its conservative mentality, and

leads it to its long-due triumph against male rivals. In order to succeed, the girls must form a

strong bond and build a powerful sisterhood that is based on and strengthened by their

individuality. This sisterhood is promoted as a support system that is “for life.” Pitch Perfect

2 is set three years after the events of the first movie. It deals with the team’s efforts to

reinstate its lost status and right to perform. For the most part it focuses on the established

sisterhood between the girls and transmits the message that women should support each other

on the road to self-empowerment, a message only subtly implied in the first movie. In this

political satire, Elizabeth Banks plays with the patriarchal assumptions about femininity. Her

different style in directing the second movie is evident. Whereas in the first movie the focus

is mainly on the actions and aspirations of one central female character (Beca), in the sequel,

Banks makes an effort to include as many women as possible in each and every shot, scene,

and sequence.

Having read a non-fiction book on the unknown world of collegiate a cappella, called

Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate a Cappella Glory (2008) by Mickey Rapkin,

Elizabeth Banks brought the idea for a film to Kay Cannon, the scriptwriter. Cannon wrote

the script for Pitch Perfect that was produced by the independent Gold Circle Films

production company. As the producer, Banks closely participated in the making of the film

but decided to let Jason Moore direct it. Pitch Perfect premiered in September 2012,

distributed by Universal Pictures, and became a sleeper hit, a term used in Hollywood to

describe the kind of movie that becomes a huge success despite its small budget and

inadequate promotion. Very quickly the movie attracted a lot of attention because it is a very

rare occurrence for a comedy with an all-female cast and targeted to a female demographic to

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achieve such numbers in the box office, usually dominated by films featuring male stars. In

many reviews, the first movie was characterized with the ever intimidating for Hollywood F-

word. Many saw it as an example of feminist comedy. Finally, here was a movie with an all-

female cast, with a woman scriptwriter and a woman producer, featuring a plurality of

different female voices, emphasizing the importance of sisterhood and offering an

empowering message to its female audiences and at the same time was successful

financially.

According to Banks and Cannon, however, the two women did not conceive of Pitch

Perfect as a feminist statement resisting the sexist treatment of women found in popular

Hollywood comedies right from the beginning. Banks has stated in an interview by Caitlin

Hobbs, that what they achieved with Pitch Perfect is very rare and as a result “it is perceived

as being this sort of this politically feminist statement.” She said, “we made a movie about a

group of women—and because nobody makes those movies—we are a feminist statement,

just by our existence”. Her reluctance to categorize the first movie as a feminist statement is

undoubtedly connected to the fear and negativity attached to the F-word in Hollywood. The

assumption is that feminism repels the male audiences, traditionally thought of as the

demographic that defines the box office hits or failures. Most men would definitely avoid

watching any movie if it were labeled as a feminist statement, before it became a hit.

However, despite the anxiety that F-word may bring, a close look at the first movie reveals

that there is a feminist subtext of empowerment in the narrative and that both Banks and

Cannon felt the need to resist and subvert the sexist representations of women in cinematic

comedy. The obnoxious stereotypes of women that the movie appropriates (the promiscuous

bimbo, the weird fat girl used just for laughs, the controlling “mean girl”) are subtly

undermined in the last half hour. This is done not with the traditional exterior makeover of

the young protagonist who tries to win her guy, but with a discourse makeover that

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distinguishes the film from its genre. Hollywood popular comedies usually conclude with a

romantic happy ending. In Pitch Perfect the happy ending is achieved when the young girls

embrace their individuality and manage to create a true strong sisterhood, characterized by

mutual support, understanding, and acceptance. Instead of the typical Hollywood scenario

that positions women against each other and treats them as competitive “bitches” always

ready to engage in a “cat fight,” usually in a pool of mud, Cannon and Banks provide a

narrative that solidifies female bonding and empowerment.

Despite Banks and Cannon’s reluctance to openly promote their original film as a

feminist comedy, there are two reasons why it was very easy for critics to classify Pitch

Perfect as feminist: first, it was the feminist background of the women creators and second it

was the independent status of the film. As Radner and Stringer clarify, films independently

produced “offer an alternative discourse” to the type-driven narratives of Hollywood popular

cinema (2). Before collaborating with Banks to write the script for Pitch Perfect, Cannon

worked as a writer and producer for the NBC television series 30 Rock (2006-2013); in this

show, Cannon cooperated with one of the most well-known feminist comedians, Tina Fey,

whose alter ego in the series was the self-reflective, idealistic comedy writer and feminist Liz

Lemon (Mizejewski 26). With Fey as her teacher, it was of great importance for Cannon to

continue in Pitch Perfect what Fey perfected in both 30 Rock (2006-2013) and in her

infamous feminist SNL (1975-) skits. Following in her footsteps, Cannon created a popular

comedy with female characters that attracted people’s attention with the things they said and

not with the way they looked. The Pitch Perfect films had a huge success because Cannon

worked together with the well-known feminist Banks who was involved in their production

and later directed the sequel herself. Being a Hollywood actress, Banks aspired to become a

director in order to help create for women in the business the job opportunities that the

entrenched sexism of the film industry had denied them. She participated in movies (for

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example in The Hunger Games) known for their powerful feminist subtext and has on

numerous occasions talked about the importance of feminism for her:

I just felt like the label [feminism] was being maligned—the way

that the patriarchy still wants to do with the things when it comes to

women. I just want to remind people what it was—this is what

feminism is. It's a belief system that hopefully gets us parity in the

world. (qtd. in Kramer)

More importantly, Banks has been very active and has used her privileged position in the film

industry to offer female comedians opportunities to rise in their profession. She also has

worked hard to demonstrate that there is a need for subversive, feminist humor which

disrupts the patriarchal norms and sexist practices that permeate popular comedy. She has

created a site called “Whohaha” in order to foster the talent of female comedians and has

given it the subtitle, “Spotlight on Funny Women.” As Ann-Christine Diaz has noted in

AdAge magazine, Banks’ platform with its female-driven content made its appearance “as

women issues reach critical point in marketing, advertising, entertainment, and tech.” In this

way, Banks joins the efforts of many other women who work in the genre of comedy to make

gender an irrelevant factor in the human capacity to generate laughter. Like other

contemporary feminist comedians (Amy Schumer and Melissa McCarthy), Banks transmits

empowering feminist messages through her efforts to support funny women in the movie

business and change the game rules for women involved in the production of popular

comedy. As Banks has explained:

I was told growing up, 'The world is your oyster and you can be

whatever you want.' The fact of the matter is, that is empirically

untrue for most women. We need those barriers to be broken down

by young people, as well as us seasoned pros. (qtd. in Diaz)

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Taking into consideration the feminist and activist dimensions of her public persona, it was

hard for film critics to ignore the presence of Banks in the production of the Pitch Perfect

films; her presence was a factor that legitimized the classification of these movies as feminist

narratives. Such empowering feminist discourses, with their “scathing and often exhilarating

humor” have begun to “transform the intractable historical realities of women’s lives” and

indeed affect contemporary American culture and the female spectators; their new, positive

representations of women on the screen are a refreshing moment in Hollywood history

(Modleski, Feminism Without Women 57).

I have mentioned that independent films are taken to be “alternative” discourses to the

conventional Hollywood comedies. Although Banks has managed to have her movie

distributed by Universal Pictures, one of the big six film studios in Hollywood, in order to

achieve a more extended release in cinemas all over the United States, she collaborated with

the independent production company Gold Circle Films to make her first film. Such

independent film companies give the opportunity to filmmakers to “challenge and/or deviate

from classical Hollywood conventions” without assuming that such practices are risky and

may not “attract a broader audience” (Schreiber 179). In contrast to the big film studio system

which relies on mega-blockbusters that are “overwhelmingly male dominated,” independent

production companies give filmmakers the chance to question everything that seems to be

wrong with Hollywood (Lane and Richter 189). According to Ferniss and Young, the annual

film production is always dominated by male-oriented and male-driven films that address the

supposedly “most attractive demographic,” meaning male spectators (119). As a

consequence, the female characters on the screen are confined to stereotypes and supporting

roles. Because independent film companies do not abide by the Hollywood rules, they are

more likely to include women professionals in decision-making positions and to show an

interest in producing female-driven movies with a feminist agenda. In fact, they are

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indifferent towards the obsolete Hollywood marketing practices that give primacy to the male

presence both in front and behind the camera. Furthermore, independent film companies do

not have to obey the white, middle-aged, male executives who rule Hollywood; thus they

allow filmmakers to produce cinematically social realities that do not distort the female

experience and do not aim to satisfy the patriarchal gaze. The Pitch Perfect movies belong to

this category of films. Banks had the opportunity to construct new models of femininity and

to challenge the stereotypical images of women one finds in popular and financially

successful cinema. Moreover, free from the interference of male executives, Banks took

advantage of the independent status of her films to critique the entrenched sexism in

Hollywood, employing a subversive feminist humor which also constitutes an obvious

political stand in her films. Independent or not, popular comedies are still cinematic

commodities for consumption and they need to make a profit in order to be considered

successful and worthy of production. Particularly, female-driven comedies that resist sexism

must prove that they can hold a strong position in the American market. Not to risk the

financial prospects of the first Pitch Perfect film, its makers opted for a feminist subtext in

the narrative but promoted the movie as a common entertaining comedy; they did not want to

repel the spectators with any kind of a feminist threat.

In the first chapter of my thesis I will analyze critically the original Pitch Perfect

movie, directed by Jason Moore. I will argue that its discourse avoids explicit references to

feminism and instead it exaggerates and overemphasizes the female stereotypes so common

in Hollywood comedies with the ulterior motive to undermine them gradually and offer a

very subtle critique against Hollywood sexism. I will also show that by using irony as an

empowering device, the first movie takes a stand in favor of a sisterhood that transcends the

cinematic space. By focusing on the stereotypes of the fatty, the oversexed bimbo, and the

black lesbian, I will illuminate the techniques with which the director visually manipulates

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them and eventually mocks them because they reduce the cinematic female presence to sexist

caricatures and ignore the authentic experiences of such women. In my view, Pitch Perfect is

a political satire which provides the space for the deconstruction of sexist norms as well as

gives visibility to positive representations of femininity which hopefully will empower the

female spectators and encourage the creation of an explicitly feminist tradition in the genre of

cinematic comedy. I am basing my arguments on theories that deal with the representation of

women in cinema, with the effects of postfeminism on popular culture, and on theories that

explain cinematic female humor as a subversive tool with which women filmmakers can

attack Hollywood sexism. Moreover, I will take into consideration interviews given by the

women involved in the film because when they were explicitly asked about the feminist

nature of the film, they expressed their position on feminism in Hollywood.

In the second chapter, I will analyze the sequel, Pitch Perfect 2, directed by Elizabeth

Banks, who took advantage of the space created by the first movie and of its financial success

to provide a much more explicit feminist stand. I will refer to the promotion tour which

preceded the sequel’s release and which was dominated by a feminist discourse, revealing the

contributors’ political agenda. Although the F-word is a red clothe in Hollywood, once a

cinematic product starts making a profit, Hollywood hypocrisy kicks in and allows the F-

word to be used as a label. I will try to make clear that whereas the sequel downplays the

visual exaggerations of the first movie, it relies on a more explicitly political humor to

express the creators’ concerns about sexism in popular cinema and about their own

responsibility, as decision- makers, regarding the circulation of sexist stereotypes. Through

the analysis of the Latina (a character added in the sequel), I will demonstrate that Banks has

exploited the space for positive femininities established by the first movie in order to expand

the ethnic character of the female cast and reject both sexist and racist Hollywood

conventions. Banks’ directorial choices, such as the “muffgate” montage sequence, indicate

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her effort to showcase the responsibility of the American media when they indulge in sexist

comments, scrutinize and humiliate women on a daily basis. Moreover, I will refer to the

screen-transcending Pitch Perfect sisterhood that the two movies help launch, as evidence

that in American society there is a great need for popular feminist narratives created by

women filmmakers, meant to empower female audiences. The many newspaper articles and

reviews written about the sequel give a good picture about the enthusiasm with which the

release of the second movie was greeted and about the openly feminist discussions that the

contributors engaged in when talking about the films. To strengthen my argument I rely on

theories that explain the politics of female comedians and feminist humor as sources of social

revolution. Feminist filmmaking takes into account “representational categories and gendered

subjectivity […] identification and spectatorship practices […] cultural authority and

historical (in)visibility” (McCabe 1). As a feminist discourse meaning to attack Hollywood

sexism, Pitch Perfect 2 can be seen as a trailblazer in popular cinematic comedy; its positive

female images, its ethnically diverse feminine models and its inclusive sisterhood challenge

some of the expectations of contemporary conservative culture in the United States.

The financial success of both Pitch Perfect movies and their huge popularity (easily

observed in the social media that immensely define what is considered part of the popular

culture nowadays) have encouraged a more open conversation concerning feminism and

female empowerment in Hollywood. More and more actresses call themselves feminists and

talk about sexism in the film industry and the wage gap between male and female actors; they

also engage in movements that support women, draw attention to the need for self-

empowerment, and discuss what feminism really means. The people working in the

entertainment industry are the faces who (whether we like it or not) influence many young

girls around the world. Women directors like Elizabeth Banks, through their positive

messages about female independence, women’s empowerment, and social equality (things far

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from being givens even today) offer an alternative worldview. The success of her films seems

to be ushering a new era in Hollywood; several production companies have announced more

comedies with all-female casts, written, produced and/or directed by women. The aim is to

represent as many types of women as possible and to depart from the usual sexist stereotypes

of popular comedies that reduce femininity to a prop used for reasons of embellishment.

Nowadays, only 1.9% of the directors of top-grossing films are women. People in Hollywood

have just started to talk about this depressing number publicly and to expose it as a real

problem that underlines an entrenched sexism in the reigning studios (qtd. in Berg). Movies

like Pitch Perfect—created and produced by women—have proven that women

cinematographers can also conquer the box office. Box office success and wide popularity

have definitely a lot to do with this sudden urge in Hollywood to discuss about the need to

include more women both in front and behind the camera. This could mark the beginning of

an authentic female and/or feminist Hollywood tradition.

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CHAPTER ONE

Deconstructing Film Comedy and its Sexist Stereotypes: Satire, Mockery, and

Feminist Subtext in Pitch Perfect

It was Elizabeth Banks, one of the producers of the film, Pitch Perfect (2012), who

came up with the idea to transform the original material of the book Pitch Perfect: The Quest

for Collegiate A Cappella Glory (2008) written by journalist Mickey Rapkin into a cinematic

comedy. Banks pitched the idea to her screenwriter friend Kay Cannon, who later wrote the

movie’s script and hired Jason Moore to direct it. A cappella has evolved from glee clubs and

has become a very popular tradition in America. In the United States there are more than

1,200 collegiate a cappella groups. Because of its popularity, any work of art—either book or

film— that has a cappella as it main theme will do well at the box office. What is different

about the movie, Pitch Perfect, is the fact that there is a feminist subtext in its cinematic

narrative. However, neither in the movie nor in its advertising campaign do the creators

mention the F-word (that is feminism) because it still has a negative charge in the minds of

conservative or mainstream audiences. Anxious to make their film attract the attention of

American moviegoers, at the same time include a feminist subtext in the cinematic narrative

as well as deliver a feminist message to the female viewers, the creators have used a much

more subtle approach. After the unexpected success of the first movie, the script of the sequel

will be more forward and openly feminist in its perspective.

Pitch Perfect is an independent, low-budget endeavor. This means its creators were

obliged to play by Hollywood’s rules and follow its long-established conventions in order to

be able to produce it. Although during the promotion period of Pitch Perfect, the creators

were asked questions about the empowering feminist subtext, they strategically decided to

address the issue of feminism in the most subtle way possible and shift the focus to the genre

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of comedy and to their proposition that women can also be good comedians and make people

laugh with them and not at them. It is evident in the way Elizabeth Banks chose to market her

idea that she is well aware of the fact that “challenging the norm from the center has the

potential to wield much greater force than questioning the norm from the margins”

(Chambers qtd. in Genz and Brandon 62). Banks could not disregard the timing of the

movie’s release. Pitch Perfect opened in theaters across the United States, having behind it a

long period of backlash against feminism and of apologetic postfeminist discourse.

Feminism had become a dirty word and concepts like “equality” and “emancipation” had

“lost their innovative appeal” (Genz 1). Moreover, labels like feminism or lesbianism still

intimidate traditional Hollywood, which fears that any film associated with these labels will

have a limited movie audience (Ferniss and Young 111). Thus, because of Hollywood’s

hostility and suspicion against feminism, films with a straightforward feminist frame or

message are not considered effective or worthy projects and could be easily shut down for

fear of being box-office flops. To allay such fears and ensure that her film would not be

considered a risk or a threat, Banks and Cannon chose to do three things: 1) to construct a

semi-traditional story that poses no explicit threat; 2) to blend in the scenario a feminist

subtext of empowerment and a subtle message of resistance; and 3) to subvert the sexist

representations of women which are prevalent in Hollywood comedies and thus challenge the

biased assumption that the genre of comedy is a boys’ club only.

To ensure that independent, summer releases like Pitch Perfect will be successful and

profitable, the producers cannot depart very far from the established comedy conventions.

Therefore, their strategy is to overemphasize the female archetypes which appear in popular

comedies, and reproduce the sexist stereotypes which work against women in order to

undermine them. As McCabe states, although Pitch Perfect employs the regular

conventions—which legitimize Hollywood’s entrenched sexism, a sexism that also

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characterizes popular culture and deprives women from the “chance to see themselves

culturally through their own eyes” (6)— the film transcends them through the use of a

subversive context and empowering irony.

In this chapter, my main argument is that Pitch Perfect recycles the ordinary female

stereotypes that appear in Hollywood comedies in order to expose, criticize, and subvert

them; simultaneously, it provides a new locus not only for the accepted femininities so

prominent in popular comedy but also for alternative models of femininity. It achieves this

through a female-driven and female-oriented discourse; it takes a political stand for the need

of a strong sisterhood and imbues popular culture with a feminist message. Its main goal is to

unite and empower women viewers against any form of sexism they are taught to perceive as

harmless humor. The first movie might not have the explicit feminist discourse of the sequel

(directed by Elizabeth Banks), but it subtly yet powerfully criticizes the sexist traditions of

cinematic comedy when it comes to the representation of women. It bravely promotes female

empowerment and initiative in the male-dominated world of Hollywood and popular culture.

Three obnoxious stereotypes of women—the promiscuous bimbo coveted by males, the weird

fat girl used just for laughs, and the black butch threatening masculinity—are all satirized

throughout the movie and then subverted in the last half hour. This subversion occurs not

with the traditional exterior makeover that the girl in popular movies typically goes through

to win the guy, but with a discourse makeover that differentiates the movie from its genre.

The happy ending is achieved when the girls come “out of the closet” as something more than

the one-dimensional caricatures flourishing in Hollywood comedies. Thus Pitch Perfect

enables the female characters both to embrace their individuality and to create a colorful

sisterhood cemented by solidarity, understanding, and acceptance.

Instead of the typical Hollywood scenario, which positions women against each other

and treats them as competitive “bitches,” Cannon, Banks, and Moore provide a narrative

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which solidifies female bonding and empowerment. First, they expose and then satirize the

objectification of women, typical in movies of this genre. Mainstream comedies usually

include two or three classic female stereotypes as the butt of the joke. In contrast, Pitch

Perfect takes pains to include almost every single stereotype portrayed in popular Hollywood

comedies and base its comedic intentions on the strategy of exaggeration. This strategy gives

the impression to those failing to understand its intention to satirize and critique its own genre

that the movie is sketchy and hyperbolic. The stereotypical representations of women as well

as the emphasis on their hyperbolic amplification constitute satire the most effective weapon

of the movie. Pitch Perfect is deliberately not plot heavy because it wants to guide the

viewers’ attention to the exposure of the sexist conventions of the comedic genre and to mock

the representations of women in comedy. Thus the film reacts against and dismisses the

passivity of women and comedy’s dependence on female stereotypes; in fact it reclaims the

F-word. Kathleen Rowe claims that “much film comedy follows this tendency and either

excludes the feminine or subsumes it in its male figures” (Rowe 102). Rowe explains that

popular culture is “deeply conventionalized,” and “comedy even more so, many of its most

familiar elements having dured for centuries” (102). However, feminist comedy “contests

patriarchal power” (Rowe 102). By exaggerating the comedic conventions prevalent in the

genre of popular Hollywood comedy, Pitch Perfect exposes this deeply conventionalized

kind of cinema that ignores the dangers of its own sexism and uses the negative

representations of women as sources of laughter and comedy. To counter this tendency

toward sexism, Pitch Perfect relies on satire, slapstick, and mockery; it cleverly defies

comedy’s conventions that reduce women to objects of laughter or the sexy comedic props in

the service of the male gaze. As Jane Caputti has said, “popular culture serves as a repository

of ancient and contemporary mythic […] images and narratives […] and archetypes” which

reproduce distorted and yet fixed images of femininity (qtd. in Ferniss and Young 207).

Leivada 20

Through its comic effects, Pitch Perfect attacks American myths that legitimize sexism as

humor and oversimplify femininity or femaleness as conditions that serve Hollywood’s

patriarchal agenda. McCabe clarifies that “Hollywood cinema has over time repressed

women through categorizing female types in film” (7). To offer a feminist critique of this

arbitrary categorization, the film exploits standard comic and satirical elements. We should

bear in mind that comedy can be a powerful force; therefore, it “should not be overlooked as

a weapon of great political power,” precisely because of “its revolutionary potential as a

deflator of the patriarchal order and an extraordinary leveler and reinventor of dramatic

structure” (Rich qtd. in Rowe 9). The creators of Pitch Perfect appear to be well-aware of

comedy’s political power; they structure their movie in such a way that it can address and

stimulate the female spectators in through the disruption of the traditional norms governing

the male-dominated world of film comedy. They do not simply reject these norms and invent

new ones, but they also adopt the languages they inherit from the comedic genre, along “with

their inescapable contradictions, before transforming and redirecting them towards [their]

own ends” (Rowe 4). In Pitch Perfect, the goal is to expose the deeply rooted sexism

characterizing the discourse of popular Hollywood comedies and to create a space for

gynocentric movies (that is comedies with an all-female cast) made by female creators. Such

cinematic products can be as successful and popular as male-oriented films; simultaneously

they can include positive representations of diverse and empowered femininities, offering

thus the opportunity to the contemporary female viewers to enjoy a positive identification

with the heroines on the screen. In contemporary American society, movies like Pitch Perfect

made by women’s rights activists like Elizabeth Banks can promote the message and

discourse of feminism as positive alternatives to patriarchal assumptions about women,

especially when their scenarios encourage discussion about feminism and sexism in cinema

and popular culture.

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Featuring a plethora of female caricature-like characters reflecting the most common

models of femininity in popular comedies, Pitch Perfect steps within the domain of the

conventional and stereotypical representations. The young slut, the daring tomboy, the

aggressive and masculine lesbian, the obnoxious fatty, the outwardly Asian, the uptight mean

girl, the naïve or stupid girl, all these images of women are appropriated in the most

hyperbolic and comically excessive manner. They facilitate what Heather Brook calls a

“subversively satirical” discourse, which mocks the absurdity of female stereotypes in the

comedic genre and which works as social commentary on the ever-present sexism in cinema

and popular culture (229). “Comedy celebrates excess not only as an end in itself but as a

means of liberating the social world of structures grown so rigid and unyielding that they

threaten its very existence” (Rowe 107). The women of Pitch Perfect engage in this satirical

discourse through performances that protect them from being perceived and treated as sexual

objects or the butt of jokes, as it usually happens in film comedies. Whereas women in

Hollywood comedies have to look sexy and are thus trapped in the role of sex objects, in

Pitch Perfect they act as subjects of comedy. They are the ones who cause laughter with their

excessive performances and indirectly discredit the female stereotypes of Hollywood. Hence,

the way Pitch Perfect positions and promotes its female characters enables the underlying,

yet subtle, feminist act of subversion in its narrative. As Rowe argues, comedy can be used as

means of “reauthoring the notion ‘woman’” (49). Indeed, the excessive performances in the

movie function as a comedic device; they parody a set of genre conventions, whose mockery

opens up a space for a new dialogue about the problematic iconography that Hollywood

recycles (Genz and Brandon 119). A careful analysis reveals that the female characters in

Pitch Perfect appropriate extensively used comedic tricks in order to subvert fixed

stereotypes and offer new models of womanhood as well as new positive representations of

diverse femininities. On a superficial level, the movie upholds Hollywood’s sexist

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iconography, but on a deeper level it takes advantage of the models of femininity typically

presented in the genre of comedy, as “a means to its undoing and its resignification” (Genz

and Brandon 119).

Before indulging in the process of resignification, Pitch Perfect deliberately flaunts

the conventions of its genre to ensure that as a cinematic commodity it will be both familiar

and marketable to its potential audience. It features an unsuccessful female a cappella group

which struggles to survive in the competitive world of collegiate a cappella by following the

tradition of the previous generations of women who sang only conservative, woman-

appropriate songs that are supposed to accentuate the feminine and reserved nature of the

women performing in relevant competitions. When almost all the members of the group

graduate, Aubrey and Chloe (the group’s veterans now in their senior year), decide to recruit

new ones with the hope that their new group would be able to compete and finally even win

the long-postponed title and recognition they deserve in the collegiate a cappella world, a

world which treats them as a laughing stock. Singing a cappella is a very demanding task; it

requires great talent, since apart from having excellent voices, the members of the group must

know how to read a music sheet, must be able to harmonize with each other and to replace

sounds made by musical instruments with those made by their own throats and mouths. When

the two senior girls talk about the difficulties in finding appropriate recruits, Aubrey

anxiously, in an almost confession-like disposition, says that what they are really looking for

is “eight super-hot girls with bikini-ready bodies.” Aubrey represents the old mindset and the

discourse which needs to change in the movie. She represents all those people in

showbussiness who objectify young girls by making them obey the absurd and sexist

demands of the business, part of which is incarnating the spectacle of the so-called

‘femininity,’ behaving as bait to capture the male gaze or playing the role of the sex object

ready to fulfill the sexist fantasies of men. Early in the film, the creators pinpoint the way

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“dominant filmmaking practices transmitted the ideological codes of patriarchy to construct

an image of women as somehow fixed” (McCabe 17). To Aubrey’s comment, the filmmakers

juxtapose Chloe’s hesitation to agree. This lack of agreement forces Chloe to rephrase

Aubrey’s comment to “how about we just find good singers instead.” With this short scene,

the movie introduces one of its main anxieties to the audience: the conventional and sexist

representation of women in cinematic comedy, disguised with the metaphor of the collegiate

a cappella world. The creators of the film communicate their desire and responsibility to

construct a discourse that will revolutionize the image of women and at the same time resist

the sexist stereotypes that marginalize, vilify, or objectify women in popular culture. So they

bestow their gynocentric comedy with a self-reflexive moment, which refers subtly to the

actual obstacles Elizabeth Banks and other female creators face when they pitch ideas for

female-centered comedies with an undercurrent of female empowerment and an implicit

feminist message.

The film shows that when no one else but eight misfits show up, the two college girls,

Chloe and Aubrey, are forced to accept them in order to renew their group. Unfortunately,

these newcomers do not have the “bikini-ready” bodies that Aubrey has hoped for. Then the

new Bellas are invited to make their first appearance in a fraternity celebration. They put on

makeup and they wear high heels and tight pencil skirts; such attire makes them look like

seductive air-hostesses and caters to a very popular fantasy where the male gaze is at work.

The movie taps into this popular fantasy of sexy dames luring the male gaze with their

feminine bodies only to poke fun at Hollywood’s beauty standards. Instead of their bodies,

the camera focuses on the girls’ faces to capture expressions of surprise and indifference and

to imply that these young women are very far from the dictated beauty standards. When the

new Bellas try to imitate the feminine spectacle of the old Bellas (that is be sexy girls with

conventional beauty), the outcome is ridiculous. They stumble upon each other; they are not

Leivada 24

synchronized; they feel uncomfortable in this tight, feminine old-Bellas skin; they seem

ignorant about what they are supposed to be doing. With this scene, Pitch Perfect begins the

slow process of subverting the genre’s expectations concerning the traditional female

presence in comedy, signaled by Aubrey’s call for exclusively hot and “bikini-ready” ladies.

The call does not quite go as Aubrey has expected, so when the new group performs for the

first time the result is hilarious. Representing the executives of mainstream Hollywood, as

well as the gaze of the male audience, the fraternity guys are absolutely disgusted by the new

unconventional Bellas: “I wanted the hot Bellas, not this barnyard explosion,” the frat boy

tells Aubrey, throwing them out of the “cool college event.” The fraternity boys indicate that

they are not going to tolerate any deviations from the established conventions. According to

McCabe, one of the oldest cinema conventions constructs “the cinema spectator as male

while the object of that gaze is female” (27). Reacting against it, Pitch Perfect exposes the

typical treatment of femininity as spectacle that reduces women into sex objects, obliging

them to look a certain way in order to please the male gaze. Hence, the movie points to the

genre’s atmosphere as a domain “resolved to objectify” the female characters (Lane 134).

This objectification is rife in popular comedy. In the era of “postfeminism” women’s

shameless sexualization goes hand in hand with what Susan J. Douglas calls “enlightened

sexism” (9). According to Douglas, enlightened sexism refers to the postfeminist claim that

thanks to feminism women nowadays have it all, including gender equality, “so now it’s

okay, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women” and use them as

sources of laughter for the male-dominated audiences which apparently control the

“Hollywood game” (9). This attitude is precisely what the narrative of Pitch Perfect attacks.

The film gives the opportunity to these traditionally objectified female characters,

through the shift in its discourse, to retain their individuality, their strength, their autonomy in

order to fight against the forces of mass culture, which, according to Tania Modleski, reduce

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“women either to total absence or to an unthreatening, anorexic presence” (Feminism Without

Women 36). As I have already mentioned, the female characters in Pitch Perfect achieve

success not through the common postfeminist tactic of external makeover that aims at the

improvement “of the self through cultivation of the body and its appearance in accordance

with norms dictated by consumer culture” (Radner 26). On the contrary, Pitch Perfect

subverts this tactic by emphasizing independence from rather than conformity to the

traditional models of femininity imposed on the Bellas. The girls underline their differences

and thus provide new expressions of femininities. In fact, the Bellas manage to gradually

improve themselves as performers. When they appear together on the stage for the final

show, they signal their acceptance of their different personalities through the choice of their

clothes. Commenting on the absence of a makeover sequence in Pitch Perfect, Elizabeth

Banks has said that the scenario tries to subvert the sexist habits of popular cinema:

One of the things I love about this film is that no one apologizes for

themselves. No one talks about what they look like, there is no

makeover sequence, no one’s talking about the clothes they are

wearing. It’s not about boyfriends; it’s about regular girls of all

shapes, sizes, and ethnicities and just the wonderful chemistry

between them. (qtd. in Perrins and King)

This is visually communicated to the viewers through the lack of the traditional, uniform

Bellas’ costume and via the decision of the girls to wear whatever expresses their uniqueness.

The Bellas’ colors are maintained in their clothes, but these colors now represent their female

community and sisterhood. Their final performance solidifies their individual expressions of

womanhood and transmits the feminist message of emancipation. The scenario rewards the

girls’ initiative by allowing them to win the championship they have been striving for. Their

victory allows Banks to communicate an empowering feminist stance, which, as Modleski

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explains, derives from the “liberating departure from the stifling convention[s] of femininity”

(Feminism Without Women 133). Popular culture traditionally confines women into a fixed

idea about what femininity is supposed to look like. For decades it has objectified women for

the benefit of the male gaze. In contrast, the women in Pitch Perfect are shown to break free

from this sexist confinement in their last performance, thanks to their sisterhood and

acceptance of each another.

The main strategy of the film is to first expose the recycled comedic sexist

conventions that it means to subvert. To do so, it appropriates commonly used cinematic

apparatuses (camera angles and shots, meaningful cuts and edits, the clothes of the a cappella

singers, the performances of the actresses) but employs them in such a way that they expose

the sexist stereotypes which the traditional comedic discourse often justifies as humorous.

For instance, when Beca and Chloe, two of the film’s most important characters, are shown in

the shower together, the film deliberately positions them in this sexualized environment to

satisfy a common comedic convention which places two “hot college girls” in a pseudo-

lesbian context that has absolutely nothing to do with the girls’ sexual identities. Such scenes

are meant to satisfy a sexual fantasy by attracting the male gaze to stare at the girls through

the camera. The cinematic apparatus is involved in workings that objectify the female body

and “deny the female spectator and gaze any subjectivity or desire of her own” (Farrimond

84). In popular Hollywood comedies, the women engaged in similar pseudo-lesbian

situations are depicted in ways that emphasize their position as sex objects for the male gaze.

The camera never treats them as people “in control of the look they create”; rather any power

they might have had “is removed from them as soon as they fall under the attention of the

male gaze” for whose pleasure such scenes are created (Waters 84). The male spectators

never misunderstand such a set-up as genuine homoerotic interest between women. It

becomes obvious then that when the camera in some scenes concentrates on the actresses’

Leivada 27

looks and bodies, it does so to address the male gaze and seek its approval. Scenes with

sexual content affirm the “renewed and amplified objectification of young women’s bodies”

and show the influence of “enlightened sexism” (Douglas 10). The primary goal of this

discourse is to offer visual pleasure to male viewers through the cinematic exploitation of

female sexuality and a packet of good laughs since feminism has allegedly achieved its goal

of equality.

However, in the shower scene of Pitch Perfect, things unfold a little differently. When

she hears Beca sing, Chloe enters the shower room to hold an on-the-spot audition. Though

reluctant, Beca has to sing for Chloe if she wants her to leave the bathroom. Frustrating the

expectations of the male audience, the film does not show the girls to engage in sexual

activities with one another; it does not even show them naked, thus refusing the male gaze to

feast on their bodies and disrupting another quite popular practice in Hollywood comedies.

The scene is intentionally not sexy; the camera’s close-up shows only the heads of the two

women and then cuts to their feet, implying that they may be naked because of the shower

setting. Moreover, the scene is awkward and embarrassing. It lacks background music. It

confronts the male spectators with a curious silence and the surprised look of the two girls,

whose behavior seems to emphasize the fact that they have no idea of what to do and how to

react in this completely absurd situation. The film takes the male gaze inside the shower only

to undermine its power. It shows a nameless man enter Beca’s shower on purpose to “check

her out.” His facial expression reveals a macho confidence and a self-proclaimed right to

access the girls’ showers. However, Beca and Chloe do not follow the traditional Hollywood

strategy that wants women to engage in sexual practices to please the male gaze. On the

contrary, they treat the man as an unwanted intruder; their faces express repulsion and

disbelief. The man is forced to leave unwillingly as Chloe gently pushes him outside. Hence,

the fully dressed man who looks at naked women as a cinematic spectacle is placed at the

Leivada 28

exact same self-conscious position as girls are placed in similar scenes. He is made the butt of

the joke, being turned into a spectacle instead of a gazer. The audience is expected to laugh at

his ridiculous and quick retreat from the shower room and to understand that he has no

authority in there. As Rowe states, discussing the cinematic subversive techniques of certain

feminist discourses, such scenes work as “a kind of mimicry, or masquerade, a parodic

performance of the feminine that makes visible what is supposed to remain concealed” (6).

In comedies created by women, the male gaze is exposed as absolutely ineffective; this

specific scene has no reason of existence, since it neither helps the plot unfold nor does it

actually offer satisfaction to the male gaze for which it is supposedly included in the movie. It

is rather a ridiculous and hyperbolic scene which caters to the movie’s aim to use “comedy

with its exaggerations, hyperbole, and assault on the rational,” as a means to expose

“strategies of danger” like the commonly held comedic “technique” of compromising women

as sex spectacles (Rowe 5). Through this scene, Banks comments on the objectification of

female bodies in Hollywood comedies and targets both the ever-hungry gaze of men along

with the cinematic compulsion to satisfy it with sexually charged fare. Shot from the point of

view of the girls, this scene does not allow the camera to focus on female nudity or make the

female body a fetish. The emphasis is on the performance of the actresses in the shower room

and not on delivering femininity as a spectacle, as it happens in the mainstream

representations of Hollywood films.

One of the most common female characters used in comedy to turn femininity into a

spectacle is that of the obnoxious fatty. The visible difference of the obese female body from

the “normal” body is accentuated through the cinematic iconography, the director’s “visual

constructions” and the performance of the plus-sized actress (Mosher 19). To be more

specific, the director makes sure that not only the bodily size is emphasized through special

lenses, specific lighting, and low camera angles that visually augment the obese female

Leivada 29

physique, but also the performance of the actress is contrived so as to meet the requirement of

“fat behavior” (Mobley 64). As Rowe explains, “through her body, her speech, and her

laughter especially in the public sphere,” the fat, unruly woman “creates a disruptive

spectacle of herself” (31). This “fat behavior” is usually depicted on the screen through an

oversized woman with low self-esteem, undisciplined eating habits, emotional

maladjustment, conspicuous promiscuity, a masculine-like physique and a way of talking that

“does not abide by gender roles” (Mobley 64). Faithful to the cinematic tradition, Pitch

Perfect features the stereotype of the fatty in the character of Fat Amy. She exhibits “fat

behavior” on numerous occasions. For instance, Fat Amy assumes that some guys, although

completely indifferent to her, actually desire her, so she decides to force-give them her

number. “All right I’ll give you my number,” she says. The audience is expected to laugh at

the all too typical fatty who fantasizes that every man wants her. Obese actresses in comedies

usually indulge in bodily gestures, loud voices, pratfalls and experience physical humiliations

so that the film can exploit “the fat body’s deviance to comic effect” (Mosher 47). Such

slapstick depictions of fatness accentuate the “grotesque and infantile” eccentricities of the fat

female character primarily for humor (Mosher 57). In other words, the oversized actress

emphasizes her bulkiness through the performance of “fat behavior” and projects her

cinematic self as pathological; this self exists only to be laughed at and to be entertaining.

In Pitch Perfect, Rebel Wilson (the new Hollywood sensation) plays the role of Fat

Amy, a young overweight college student, who gives herself this nickname “so twig bitches

don’t do it behind [her] back.” Amy’s nickname is the first sign the movie uses to signal her

visual difference from the rest of the traditionally slim female characters to the viewers. This

label underlines Amy’s size hyperbolically and functions as a comment on the comedic

genre’s obsession to constantly expose and aggressively ridicule the physical difference of

the “fatty.” Thus, by choosing to exaggerate the presence of Fat Amy, Pitch Perfect criticizes

Leivada 30

the cinematic apparatuses of mainstream comedy that exploit the oversized woman as a

source of laughter. The film prevents other people from mocking Amy by giving her an

offensive nickname; instead, it empowers the obese woman by having her choose it herself,

and in this way allowing her to have absolute control over her identity. Aware of the

demeaning representations and treatment of oversized women in comedy, the actress Rebel

Wilson exaggerates her performance in order to expose and mock Hollywood’s absurd

conventions. Her performance is a rare example of an empowered fat woman, who does not

allow the camera to exploit her as a comedic prop. Usually, the cinematic genre of comedy

imposes on the fat female character a specific framework. Rebel Wilson is known to be one

of those female comedians who do refuse to be limited to prescribed roles. Domnica

Radulescu calls such a woman comedian, a “creator of [her] own parts,” an improviser and a

“creator in performance” (9). Thanks to her ability to improvise, Wilson uses comedy’s set of

conventions to give a voice to her personas; in her hands laughter becomes a powerful

weapon of self-definition and feminist appropriation. Wilson’s Fat Amy reflects the power of

the female grotesque and renders the female subject as the source and not the butt of laughter,

thus challenging the social and symbolic systems that keep women in their place. Rowe

points out that quite often “the conventions of both popular culture and high art represent

women as objects rather than subjects of laughter” (3). The character of Fat Amy, however,

succeeds through her “masquerade” (Rowe 7) of the typical fatty to challenge the

conventional norms of comedy and the sexism that pervades Hollywood’s popular movies.

She conducts herself independently; she uses humor to her own benefit; she convincingly

conveys her own control over her cinematic representation.

Hollywood’s prescriptions about the way an oversized female body is supposed to

appear on screen are overdone when the character of Fat Amy uses her body to provoke

laughter. Fat Amy’s hyperbolic performance aims to exaggerate the cinematic conventions

Leivada 31

and explode them by over-fulfilling the audience’s expectations. To foreground the fact that

obese female body is treated as spectacle, Fat Amy, during her first encounter with the “twig

bitches” of the a cappella group, makes sure that she leaves a grotesque last impression of

herself. In this scene, the girls ask her to perform. Fat Amy proves she can “match pitch” and

that she is actually a very good singer. Making smart humorous comments is not enough for

the comedic discourse; so Fat Amy indulges in a physical performance that would make

people laugh at her oversized female body making a spectacle of itself. She throws herself on

the ground, doing what she calls the “mermaid dancing,” a routine in which she has to clasp

her knees together and move her body like a fish, pretending that she is a mermaid. It may be

easy to claim that all Pitch Perfect does with this scene is to once again represent an

oversized woman as an obnoxious, crazy fatty, who is there only to be laughed at because of

the awkwardness of her unconventional body. Visually, the “mermaid dancing” stresses the

comedic prop status of Fat Amy and implies a weird personality that matches this

unconventional body. The deviance from the normal female body is further augmented when

the director places Fat Amy within the chic and girly space which forms the background and

visually contrasts her to the two hot leaders of the a cappella group. Such facile interpretation

of this scene covers only the surface level.

There is a deeper level in which Pitch Perfect comments on the problematic

iconography of the genre of comedy concerning the representation of women. If one pays

close attention to the way the movie develops Fat Amy’s character and takes into account

certain directorial decisions that are antithetical to the early visual treatment of Fat Amy (in

scenes such as the “mermaid dancing”) one will realize that Pitch Perfect does not fall into

the trap of caricaturing women just for laughs. Gradually, the film constructs Fat Amy as a

well-rounded character and a strong woman, capable of making smart points and displaying

high intelligence and wit, qualities that according to the director the actress Rebel Wilson

Leivada 32

brought to this character. Visually, the mermaid dancing does not really humiliate Fat Amy

because it is based on hyperbole; this hyperbolic exposure of the oscillating fat body wants to

make the viewers notice the absurdity of Hollywood stereotypes, which belittle specific

groups of women and reduce them to comedic props. Pitch Perfect deviates from the

established expectations by creating comic effects through positive female representations.

Implicit in these representations are the creators’ feminist anxieties and concerns about the

way women are represented in the genre of popular Hollywood comedy.

There is a series of shots through which the director of Pitch Perfect hints that

characters like Fat Amy serve only as comedic props, but then he goes on to disrupt this

assumption by highlighting her intelligent and empowered persona. This set of shots are

linked to the sequence presenting the girls’ a cappella initiation. All the girls have to take a

sip of the “blood of the sisters” so as to become real members of the a cappella sisterhood.

Having drunk once, Fat Amy is heard saying, “I want some more of this.” Then she is shown

to head towards the wine, to open her mouth widely and to gulp it down. In this shot, the

camera positions her at the foreground so that the viewers can notice her grand appetite and

lust for drinking, in contrast to the rest of the ‘normal’ girls who appear at the background

talking and having no interest for the wine whatsoever. The audience is expected to giggle at

the expense of the fat girl who runs to get more wine; even the ‘normal’ girls are amused

when Fat Amy makes a spectacle of herself. The cinematic apparatus depicts Fat Amy as the

stereotypical fat girl who is driven by an impossible-to-suppress urges to eat and drink

excessively; such “fat behavior” is expected to cause laughter, especially to the male viewers,

since Hollywood’s fatty is regularly made the butt of the joke and used as the means “to

expose flaws about femininity” (Mobley 32). These flaws, according to Susan Bordo, are

attached to the obese female body, to its uncontrollable appetites, and to its “disgusting

hungers,” which undoubtedly connote dangerous sexual desires that do not fit in with the

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cultural prescriptions of the ideal woman (8). Fat Amy is temporarily depicted as the

embodiment of a problematic femininity because she is shown to have unrepressed appetites

and unladylike sexual urges. In combination with the earlier shots that put the focus on Fat

Amy’s big body, indulging in ridiculous activities such as the mermaid dance, the shots that

expose her feminine flaws are supposed to elicit condescending giggles from the male

viewers. But Pitch Perfect does not stop there, it goes on to frustrate the audience’s

expectations by repositioning Fat Amy in subsequent shots that place her at the center of the

screen next to the protagonist. The director uses a close-up to present both the protagonist and

Fat Amy as central characters—occupying equal visual space—thus bypassing the comedic

convention that wants the fat woman to be the funny sidekick to the hot protagonist. We hear

Fat Amy say, “I still can’t believe they let my fat sexy ass in” with a humble smile on her

face. Fat Amy’s comment signals the fact that she is aware that an unconventional body like

hers can be a problem in the collegiate world and in Hollywood. Contrary to popular belief

and to the conventions of comedy, Pitch Perfect’s fatty exhibits reason and intelligence

instead of being plagued by ignorance and arrogance. Foregrounding her mild facial

expressions and normal voice pitch, this close-up contradicts the camera’s earlier visual

structuring of Fat Amy as a crazy, obnoxious sidekick whose only function is to be the target

of humiliating comic effects. As I have mentioned before, in the course of the movie, Fat

Amy develops into a full, rounded character that resists the stereotype of the obese nut. With

these subtle maneuvers the film reduces the visual significance of the fat female body as the

“most crucial aspect of her identity” (Orbach viii).

In another scene using a long shot, the director focuses on Fat Amy’s full body doing

a crazy dance meant to make viewers giggle. In this dance, Fat Amy tries to be sexy. By

alternating between a conventional representation of the fatty archetype and a revisionary

depiction, Pitch Perfect tries to subvert the comedic conventions and possibly to deconstruct

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the way popular cinema exploits the oversized woman as a comedic spectacle. No matter

which of the two kinds of shots is at work, the film makes clear that the humor derives from

the Wilson’s satiric performance as Fat Amy, a performance that ensures that the obese

woman is constantly in control, even when framed in typically oppressive situations that

objectify and shame women who look like her. Adding hyperbole to the stereotype of the

fatty and placing Wilson’s powerful performance as the center of the comedy, Pitch Perfect

disrupts the conventions of the film’s own genre. According to Rowe, cinematic comedies

usually position women as the “joke’s passive butt” (68), and harbor a misogynistic and

sexist attitude that “alienates women from the tradition of comedy” (69). Patriarchal

discourses locate women in the position of the comedic objects who are there to embellish the

cinematic narrative, but they never allow the actresses to manipulate the narrative through

their own performances.

In Hollywood comedies, women are not supposed to make the jokes; they are there

only to trigger male laughter. In other words, Hollywood-style comedy is a very hostile genre

for women, precluding women to create their own female tradition of comedy (Rowe 68).

This Hollywood “habit” of alienating women from comedy and directing misogynistic jokes

against them is mirrored in Pitch Perfect, which places a male commentator in the a cappella

competition. Called John (played by John Michael Higgins), this commentator is the main

expositor of the sexist conventions of Hollywood comedy. Through his absurd, misogynistic

comments, the movie exposes the genre’s entrenched sexism, which can be found even in the

most contemporary or supposedly female-driven scenarios. Pitch Perfect satirizes the

commentator’s misogynism by having him voice hyperbolic and irrelevant sexist comments.

John serves absolutely no purpose in the movie’s plot; he is there only to be mocked as the

sexist male authority who thinks of himself as a wise expert, when in fact he is an irrelevant

sexist caricature. To be more specific, Gale (the female commentator played by Elizabeth

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Banks) asks John why he thinks “it’s taking so long for an all-lady group to break through

that a cappella glass ceiling.” John responds with a most ridiculously pompous face: “The

women typically cannot hit the low notes, which really round out an arrangement, thrill the

judges, and that can really hurt them in competition.” This comment on women’s natural

inferiority in a cappella is matched by an even more absurd and sexist follow-up comment

which solidifies his sexism: “Women are about as good at a cappella as they are at being

doctors.” The dialogue between the two commentators functions as a trick that barely

disguises the real question Banks is asking to the supposed male authority, that is why it is

taking so long for women to break through comedy’s glass ceiling. This scene offers a self-

reflexive moment. Through the scenario of Pitch Perfect, Elizabeth Banks (one of the

movie’s creators who has publicly proclaimed herself as feminist) poses this hot question.

Since the question is not really about a cappella, the answer John provides indicates that the

sexist attitude of the male authorities in Hollywood is the main reason why women do not do

well in comedy both as characters and creators.

In order to satirize the patriarchal logic behind Hollywood’s explanations why

female-driven comedies are a rarity, Pitch Perfect structures John’s comments to reflect the

ubiquitous male bias. John invokes ‘natural’ or rather biological reasons why women are not

good leaders or doctors, reasons that most of the time put the blame for female incompetence

on hormones. Natural hormonal imbalances render women unable to become good doctors

and also make it impossible for them to be good at a cappella. Therefore, women are

‘naturally’ inferior to men who thanks to their masculine nature (the presence of male organs)

do well in this kind of competition and are equipped to “hit the low notes.” It becomes

obvious that one of the film’s main goals is to expose such sexist logic by highlighting the

absurdity of John’s explanation. The words uttered by this a cappella “male expert” sound

nonsensical and are delivered in the most pompous and ridiculous manner the actor could

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devise. The fact that Elizabeth Banks makes an appearance in this scene and reacts with facial

expressions that exude contempt for John’s misogynistic comments verifies that the film

intends to satirize sexist assumptions about women. The camera is used to create what

Modleski calls a shot of “disapproval” (Feminism Without Women 123), in which Banks

communicates through her performance her disdain for John’s misogyny. Banks’ silences and

pauses in this scene are performance characteristics, very essential to “comic delivery”

(Margolin qtd. in Radulescu 174). The movie allows John to express his sexist views in order

to indicate what Melanie Waters calls “the stubborn resilience of conventional conceptions of

gender within the seemingly enlightened context of postfeminist culture” (70). Ultimately,

what prevails in Pitch Perfect is the feminist subversion of sexism and misogyny. Not only

do the girls triumph in a cappella, but also the character played by Banks scolds John by

saying, “you’re a misogynist at heart, there was no way you would ever bet on those girls.”

To this reprimand John replies “absolutely.” It is through this short dialogue that the

cinematic narrative critiques and mocks the pervasive sexism in the discourse of the popular

comedic genre.

In the comedic agenda, patriarchal notions of gender also inform the stereotype of the

young slut which is based on the “centrality of sex” and its strong connection with femininity

(Rowe 104). As Farrimond clarifies, the “unexamined assumption that the role of sexual

performer is the only source of agency available to the pretty teenage girls” is an integral part

of Hollywood comedy and underpins its representations of femininity (80). In contemporary

popular comedies, the stereotype of the young and promiscuous femme fatale is seldom

absent from the scenario. Sexualized to a high degree, she is presented as an object of desire,

meant to embellish the narrative with her “outwardly conventional ‘sexiness’ and apparent

sexual availability” (Farrimond 79). She is thought to be a moral threat to the traditional

American family, because she tempts the men with her sex appeal and often renders them

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unable to resist her. By representing her as a desirable, oversexed young woman, who will

stop at nothing to get what she wants, Hollywood comedies stress woman’s “seductive

danger, while playing down any concern for her personal wellbeing” (Farrimond 79). Her

presence aims to generate a number of comedic situations and complications; but she is never

permitted to use either her performance or her subjectivity to the source of laughter. Rather

the male characters manipulate her and make her the joke’s passive butt. Being cast as a

naive person, she treats sex casually and barely understands the sexual innuendos she is

communicating or the message she is projecting of being an “easy access.” In conventional

scenarios, the postfeminist strategy of using sex as a source of empowerment for women is

undermined by the “patriarchal iconography of the films structured around titillating images

of threesomes [and] pseudo-lesbian sex” constructed to satisfy the male gaze (Farrimond 79).

They reduce the sexy girl to a sexual object, to a comedic prop, or an embellishing technique,

signaling at the same time that men can have full access to her sexuality. As Farrimond puts

it, the sexual woman as a postfeminist icon of female empowerment, is in fact portrayed in

comedy in a way that “is best understood as a figure that occupies the liminal territory

between sexual empowerment and patriarchal objectification” (79). Consequently, it is very

easy to transform empowerment into objectification. Barely in control of her subjectivity, the

sexualized woman surrenders any power that she may be invested with as soon as she

becomes accessible to the male gaze as the stereotype of femme fatale.

The objectification of the beautiful, sexy women in comedy and generally in cinema,

has a long history. Recently, women producers of comedies have articulated concerns about

the sexist iconography this genre promotes. Elizabeth Banks via Pitch Perfect expresses her

own anxieties about the representation of women in the comedic genre, by including in her

film conventional depictions of femininity and recycled stereotypes and subsequently

exposing their absurdity. Besides the stereotype of the obnoxious fatty, Pitch Perfect also

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includes the stereotype of the young slut who is often heard to say things like, “I’ll do

whoever it takes.” This distortion of the commonly used phrase, “I’ll do whatever it takes,”

functions as a Freudian slip meant to emphasize her sexual promiscuity and obsession with

sex and to create giggles in the audience. In Pitch Perfect, the stereotype of the young slut is

incarnated in the character of Stacie, who is a member of the a cappella group. She can sing;

she is, as expected, sexy and expresses her sexuality through provocative dance moves,

through the way she talks, and through her sexually forward conduct. However, the actress

delivers the oversexed character of Stacie on the screen via a hyperbolic performance; thus

she aids the film to parody the stereotype of the sexy girl in comedy and to comment on her

objectification as well as on the categorization of women as either morally loose and sexually

accessible broads or morally sound girls. Using mockery, hyperbole, and irony, Pitch Perfect

subverts the stereotype of the female seductress who uses sex for her benefit. The scenario

has Stacie constantly talk about sex, make sexy comments and hint about her sexual urges,

but it never actually shows her in the company of a man. To further emphasize the fact that

the biased viewers will rush to unsubstantiated conclusions about Stacie, although they do not

see her “in action,” the scenario includes a scene in which Stacie admits to the other girls that

she has had a lot of sex. Unsurprised, the group replies, “yes we know.” Then Stacie

responds, “only because I just told you.” The viewers can see that Stacie is annoyed by the

fact that the girls rush to assume that she is promiscuous based only on her looks. Moreover,

the actress who performs Stacie most of the time is shown to be on the verge of bursting into

laughter because of the absurd things she says. Apparently, the character of Stacie is there to

expose the conventional iconography of the genre and to mock the sexist stereotype, which

serves no cinematic purpose other than to objectify women and please the sexually hungry

male gaze.

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Stacie is depicted as an equal member of the sisterhood. She belongs to the girls’

team; she never becomes the sex toy of boys. To everyone’s surprise she is one of the main

characters who actually shows no love interest for men. She is probably unaffected by the

institution of compulsory heterosexuality which directs the lives of most sexy girls in

comedy. Adrienne Rich defines compulsory heterosexuality as a patriarchal institution that

erases the lesbian existence and disempowers women (21). Although cast as femme fatale

and overstating her passion for sex, Stacie is never shown in the company of a man. On the

contrary, she is visually paired with Cynthia Rose, the character who embodies the stereotype

of the black butch. Stacie is supposed to be indifferent towards Cynthia Rose but in the

slapstick scenes, which aim to ridicule the stereotype of the black butch, Cynthia Rose makes

advances on her. Stacie is shown to enjoy the company of Cynthia Rose. During the “serious”

moments of the movie presenting the strong bonds of sisterhood (their meeting in Beca’s

room, the riff-off or the scene of triumph after their final performance), the two girls throw

affectionate looks and smiles of friendship at each other. The comradeship between Cynthia

Rose and Stacie has a touch of homoeroticism, which could be interpreted as the movie’s

comment on the heterosexuality that is imposed on the stereotype of the femme fatale. By

limiting the femme fatale’s sexuality to the heterosexual model, Hollywood comedies provide

men with the justification to claim their ‘natural’ right over women. As Adrienne Rich points

out, compulsory heterosexuality functions as a “means of assuring male right” (50) and male

accessibility to the female body. Once more, Pitch Perfect uses the conventions of the

comedic genre in order to showcase their limitations. At the same time, it exposes and

critiques the entrenched sexism in the representation of women through visual and verbal

hyperboles. Stacie as a traditionally feminine and sexy woman must be dumb and alluring.

However, the movie portrays her as a quick-witted, perceptive, and self-aware woman, who

conducts herself according to the effect she is expected to have on the male gaze. Because

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she is not really dumb but has to give the impression that she is to the viewers, Stacie

indulges in comments that impose stupidity on her personality. This tactic further emphasizes

the movie’s intention to point out the constructed nature of Stacie’s character and to parody

the dumb bimbo stereotype. Soon the film reveals that Stacie is not what she seems to be,

undermining the spectators’ assumptions about her.

In popular Hollywood movies female beauty is often connected with stupidity. As

Yael D Sherman states, “if the performance of femininity requires one to hide intelligence

and intention, then beauty will be associated with frivolous, seemingly stupid women” (82).

Undoubtedly, Pitch Perfect structures the personality and reactions of Stacie’s character in

such a way as to poke fun at the established figure of woman as dumb slut. In a scene, Alexis

Knapp (the actress who plays Stacie) has to frequently utter phrases like “why can’t we figure

this out?” when the girls have difficulty deciding whether they will chant “on three” or “after

three,” but she does so in a hyperbolic manner that she almost trembles. Because they can’t

decide, they end up messing their chant. The impression the viewers get is that they are

incapable of resolving even the simplest problems without the help of a male authority. While

the camera focuses on the curves of her chest, Stacie nags like a spoiled child, exaggerating

her rendition of the dumb beauty, who is often infantilized in film. She grins and wins at the

camera and by extension at the female audience. This is a purposeful narratological sign with

an empowering potential. Irony often works by “making fun” of retrograde, sexist images

“with a wink” (Douglas 241). Thus, the audience is directed to laugh not at the expense of the

dumb slut but with Stacie who manipulates the sexist stereotype to deliver a harsh critique.

Actually, the way she performs the sexy bimbo is meant to resist the sexist labels forced upon

her by the comedic genre. Traditionally disliked and hated by women, the femme fatale relies

on her performance to establish an understanding between herself and the female viewers. By

having Stacie “the slut” attack her own label, the film tries to convince the female viewers to

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be on her side. Stacie deserves sympathy because she is an important member of the

sisterhood, who tries hard to be there for her girlfriends rather than associate with guys and

let them use her as a sex toy. She offers a new empowered version of the femme fatale, who

actually refuses to “cater to what men want” (Douglas 156). Stacie uses her external

appearance to mock the conventional expectations of her. She positions her body in a

typically male posture, while sitting in a chair; she keeps her legs wide open as men do; she

points at her genitalia and refers to her reproductive organs with male pronouns. As

Radulescu explains, such unbecoming behavior foregrounds women’s “invisible physicality”

in comedy and renders visible women’s hidden sexual organs through the use of male

pronouns (189). Stacie exercises a subversive control over her image as a slut and mocks the

stereotype of the sexually provocative and loose girl, resisting thus its degrading power.

Another regularly exploited female figure that the comedic genre uses as a narrative

convention and a source of laughter is the unfeminine lesbian, the butch, who often times is a

black woman. Pitch Perfect also features a black butch and constructs it along the same lines

to perfectly resemble the type of woman depicted in popular cinema. Her name is Cynthia

Rose. She is a black college student who decides to audition for the all-female a cappella

group. She shows up at the audition wearing baggy clothes, a style linked to singers of hip

hop, and a baseball cap that covers her face, intentionally misleading both the female and

male a cappella groups to assume that she is a guy. Her female identity becomes known only

when she takes off the cap. Apart from unfeminine clothes, she wears her hair very short, and

walks and performs like a hip hopper. Conventionally, the butch is threat to white male

masculinity (Fenwick 93). This particular scene underlines this threat through the expressions

of surprise and disgust shown on the faces of the members of the male a cappella group. The

guys are repulsed when they realize that Cynthia Rose is neither a guy who has come to

audition for their group nor a sexy feminine woman who would at least entertain their gazes.

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She is not a sexual spectacle. After her initial appearance on the screen, Cynthia Rose is

expected to amuse the audience through her inability to control her urges towards her female

teammates. At first glance, it seems that Pitch Perfect represents Cynthia Rose, the black

lesbian, “solely in terms of [her] sexuality” (Fenwick 98), as an aggressive, oversexed black

beast, who poses a threat to heterosexuality, to masculinity and to male desire because she is

interested in all the hot, preferably white, girls. She is constantly seen “checking the girls

out”; she always finds excuses to touch their breasts or kiss them. In one scene, she attempts

to force CPR on the fully conscious Fat Amy just to get her to make out. In another scene,

she tries to inappropriately touch Stacie, making the girl blow her rape-whistle. The

cinematic apparatus deals visually with such scenes using quick cuts, edits and the

appropriate background music that position the black lesbian in a slapstick environment.

Having her run after girls, it appropriates her sexuality to serve the comedic conventions.

One could claim that the inclusion of the black lesbian in a popular Hollywood

comedy is a step forward since it makes visible a female persona ignored in previous decades.

However, Pitch Perfect, does not intend simply to include a black lesbian in its narrative, but

goes a step further. It comments on the tendency of popular comedy to exploit a character

like Cynthia Rose as a traditional comedic caricature, bypassing the ignorance and racism

that this stereotype implies. The stereotype of the black butch is expected to frighten men, to

aggressively flirt with women and to make the audience laugh. Pitch Perfect constructs

Cynthia Rose as a replica of this caricature but has her conduct herself not as a homosexual

woman but rather as a conventional heterosexual man who objectifies women with his gaze

and gestures, who makes sexual advances and who exhibits a sexist attitude toward female

sexuality. Comedies like Pitch Perfect are usually released in cinemas during the summer

months when the box office is supposed to be dominated by male audiences (Genz and

Brandon 127). This type of films usually adds gay and lesbian characters to its cast in order to

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give “edge, risk, and sexiness to products that are often associated with straight men and

traditional sexism” (Genz and Brandon 127). The creators of Pitch Perfect are obviously

aware of the trend. In their movie, they employ the stereotype of the black butch not to please

the male audience but instead to mock their expectations by molding Cynthia Rose into a

caricature of a sexist straight “dude” rather than into a genuine homosexual woman. The

movie achieves what comedian Norma Bowles does in her subversive, feminist performances

targeting male audiences, namely to “destabilize [the] male audience members’ attachments

to macho ideas, by putting a lot of their old-fashioned, sexist behavior and discourse into the

mouth of someone they would want to distance themselves from” (qtd. in Radulescu 220). By

appropriating the image of the black lesbian caricature of popular cinema, the movie uses

Cynthia Rose to satirize macho behaviors, to subvert the male gaze and to criticize sexism.

As Martin Zeller-Jacques says, “the mainstreaming of lesbian representations has significant

[…] implications for the discourse around lesbian visibility” (103). Pitch Perfect raises the

issue of lesbian visibility in comedy and highlights the offensive practices linked to the

representation of lesbian identity in popular cinema and in the comedic genre. Hollywood

assumes it has the right to ridicule female sexualities and objectify women for the sake of

humor. Mainstream cinema usually falls short in representing women’s “desire for equal

treatment, for social status, for alternative ways of living,” and implicitly or explicitly

“equates lesbian identity to lesbian sex” (Zeller-Jacques 107). To expose the practices of its

own genre, Pitch Perfect avails itself of the comedic discourse to first recycle the image of

the black butch and then to transform it into a positive female presence in a new comedy.

According to Ferniss and Young, positive images are better understood as transformations of

popular forms, which can be effectively communicated through the standard mechanisms that

operate to produce humor and comedy (135). The discourse of Pitch Perfect does exactly that

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and then proceeds to deconstruct and finally redefine lesbian femininity in an empowering

way.

The transformation of Cynthia Rose takes place through the cinematic devices of the

movie. The performance of the actress Ester Dean (a lesbian in real life) is crucial. She

enhances and contributes to the hyperbolic performances of the other actresses who portray a

set of female archetypes staple in comedies. Ester Dean gives life to Cynthia Rose and

performs the role in an exaggerated manner to subvert the image of threatening black butch.

The film’s female-driven narrative and original depiction of femininities gives the actresses

the opportunity to bring the “authenticity and sparkle of their own identities and experiences”

(Radulescu 37). Its indirect critique of the fixed iconography and stereotypical portraits

becomes obvious to those viewers who are perceptive enough to detect the ironic tone of

Pitch Perfect and the feminist intentions of its creators. But one has to admit that the

subversion of the stereotype of the black butch does not occur as explicitly as the

undermining of the stereotype of the fatty. The latter is shown to have more control of her

otherwise oppressive situation. At moments Pitch Perfect seems uncertain about how to

handle the case of the black lesbian. This could be explained if we take into account the

white, heterosexual background of its creators; they seem reluctant to completely make over

the identity of a black homosexual woman for the sake of their feminist agenda. When the

plot nears its resolution and the happy ending is but a few minutes away, the viewers notice

that the representation of Cynthia Rose changes to fit a politically correct stance. Although

subtle, this change in cinematic discourse is quite obvious. Up to this point, the character of

Cynthia Rose appears to solidify a common-held belief that popular cinema is a discourse

that “[usually] fails to adequately represent lesbian sexuality as something other than a

transitory experiment and a deviation from the expository norm” (Radner and Stringer 4).

After the transformational moment, Cynthia no longer tries to harass any of the girls; she is

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no longer distracted by their feminine curves or attracted to external signs of femininity she

cannot resist. The movie stops positioning Cynthia Rose as a comedic prop at whose expense

the audience is expected to laugh. It no longer ignores the outrageous and sexist implications

of such a depiction. The shift is visible in the way the actress replaces her exaggerated

performance with a more subtle one that does not emphasize her threatening sexuality but her

individuality as a lesbian woman. At the end, the Bellas accept each other’s individuality and

cement an ever-lasting female bond. Then they go on to conquer the male-dominated field of

collegiate a cappella.

In addition, Pitch Perfect surprises the audience with a climactic scene in which

Cynthia Rose finally comes out of the closet not as a confirmed lesbian but as a person with a

gambling addiction. With this scene the movie undermines the expectations that want

Cynthia Rose to confess her lesbianism and takes a political stand against the positioning of

her sexuality as the center of the cinematic spectacle. Right before the plot’s resolution,

Cynthia Rose casually mentions a girlfriend while talking about her gambling addiction, but

refuses to link every piece of information about her person to her sexual orientation. At this

point, she overcomes the comedic conventions that construct her and has firm control over

her subjectivity and identity. She does not even allow her friends to compromise this moment

of empowerment but expresses indignation when Fat Amy attempts to exploit comically

Cynthia Rose’s reference to her girlfriend and make her admit her homosexuality. This is the

first time when Cynthia Rose resists actively and does not let her sexual identity to be either

ridiculed or used to provoke laughter let alone fulfill some male fantasy. During their

winning number, she takes the lead in two songs and interacts with Stacie like a true sister,

helping her to stand up after they have finished dancing. This scene is diametrically opposite

to the previous visual construction of their relationship, when Cynthia holds the position of

the gazer and Stacie is stuck as the spectacle. In other words, Pitch Perfect offers an

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empowering and positive version that contradicts the sexist depiction of the lesbian. During

the riff-off, the girls and the boys compete in order to be crowned as the university’s best

singing a cappella group. When the Bellas join this unofficial, street competition they are still

new as a group, so they lag behind the boys. Everybody expects them to perform a female-

appropriate song, so they are surprised when they sing a hip-hop song that leads them to

victory. Ester Dean, the actress who plays Cynthia Rose, is also a real life hip-hopper, a

musician and a songwriter. She is central to this hip-hop performance by the Bellas. Their

performance makes everybody stand on their feet, applauding the girls for their brave song

choice and their excellent rendition. The space of hip-hop is traditionally a sexist space that

both objectifies women—especially black women—and promotes violence against them.

Pitch Perfect appropriates this male space, places an all-female group center stage, and

remakes the hip-hop spectacle. The black female presence is no longer objectified as a sexy

exhibit, but is shown to be a performer who manipulates the spectacle that takes place on the

stage. The films allows the girls to redefine themselves; they are “no longer victims but

champions, no longer muted but mouthy,” as Douglas explains when talking about the

feminist reappropriations that sometimes occur in popular culture (98).

The first successful appearance of the girls as unified sisterhood is visually solidified

when they have control over the performance that leads them to their conquest of the male-

dominated space of a cappella. Foreshadowed by their success in the hip-hop arena, this

infiltration into the male domain not only solidifies their bonding but also signals that they

are “no longer trapped by patriarchy but challenging it” (Douglas 98). Visually their success

is presented on the screen with a shot that foregrounds their spectacular hip hop performance;

in this shot the camera positions the group at the center of the screen, and thus at the center of

the spectators’ vision, displaying diverse types of femininity which are usually ignored or

objectified in popular culture. The fierce glances that the girls exchange with each other in

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this scene offer an empowering moment to the female audience. Feminism has emboldened

women to overthrow the sexist ideology that “primarily serves the interests of white

heterosexual masculinity” (Modleski, Feminism Without Women 134). The women creators

behind Pitch Perfect take a feminist stand in favor of sisterhood; they hope that women will

be able to break the glass ceiling of the male-dominated genre of comedy, and make a

difference in the way Hollywood portrays women in popular comedies and in the way it

treats then when they are behind the camera.

The feminist message in Pitch Perfect can be detected in a) the representation of each

female character as an individual of equal worth, b) the depiction of a strong, empowering

sisterhood, and c) the happy ending, when the girls are named national a cappella champions.

As my analysis has shown, despite its subtle feminist approach, Pitch Perfect pinpoints the

need for positive representations of femininities and for the inclusion of a variety of female

voices which will empower the female audience in the genre of comedy and popular cinema.

Pitch Perfect challenges the sexist cultural assumptions that regularly marginalize, vilify, and

objectify femininity in American popular culture. Through its subversive satire, its parody of

fixed gender roles, and its deconstruction of the sexist norms, the film constructs a new space

for the representation of diverse models of femininity, usually absent from popular cinema.

The strategy of recycling Hollywood’s sexist archetypes and then exploding them through

hyperbole and exaggerated performances seems to be very effective. The political stand of its

creators in favor of a strong sisterhood constitutes Pitch Perfect a feminist discourse with an

agenda to empower the female viewers, while they are enjoying the film. Having established

the importance of sisterhood in the original film, the producers take a much more forward

feminist stand in the sequel, Pitch Perfect 2 (2015), directed this time by an “out and proud”

feminist Elizabeth Banks. Thanks to the financial success of Pitch Perfect, the sequel is

“legitimized” as an openly feminist discourse. Hollywood may be male-dominated but that

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does not mean that no cinematic space can be found for female-centered movies, created and

produced by women for women. The original film and its more daring sequel have made the

first steps toward reclaiming this cinematic space, favorable to the formation of a feminist

tradition in the genre of comedy.

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CHAPTER TWO

Reclaiming the F-word: Elizabeth Banks’ Pitch Perfect 2

Although an independent production and a gynocentric comedy created by women,

with a scenario focusing on a group of female students trying to break into the male-

dominated world of collegiate a cappella, the original film, Pitch Perfect, did exceptionally

well in the box-office. Its financial success surpassed all expectations and was quite a

surprise considering the movie’s small budget. What put Pitch Perfect in the limelight was

the rave reviews on the Internet; these reviews talked about Cannon’s “brilliant characters”

(qtd. in Clarke), or about girls who are shown to be “funny, weird, real, and most excitingly,

confident” (qtd. in Beck). Such comments followed a pattern set by the filmmakers; with

subtle hints they pass a positive message regarding the importance of popular, female-driven

movies that promote sisterhood and female empowerment. In this pattern one talks around the

F-word but never explicitly states it. The reviews and discussions that flooded the Internet

soon transformed the film, Pitch Perfect, into a popular phenomenon. This unprecedented

popularity on the web helped the actresses, Rebel Wilson and Anna Kendrick (two new and

impressively prolific stars) to enter Hollywood. In addition, the movie’s most popular song—

the Cups song—became viral and dominated the Billboard’s top 10 for weeks. The movie

won a number of Teen Choice Awards proving its appeal to female teenagers and young

adults. All these events led to the announcement of a Christmas album to further financially

exploit the brand of Pitch Perfect; the movie’s soundtrack became the bestselling album of

2013. Most importantly, the film’s success led to the production of a sequel.

Pitch Perfect 2 (2015), directed by Elizabeth Banks (her first major feature film),

confirmed the huge impact of the original movie within three days of its release. According to

the Walt Street Journal, it earned the top spot in the domestic box-office with $69.2 million,

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an unprecedented number considering its independent status (qtd. in Ayers). It was estimated

that 75% of the audience was female and 62% under the age of 25 (qtd. in Ayers). These

numbers further suggested the great appeal of the movie to young female adults and

teenagers. In a review the commentator stated that “Elizabeth Banks makes Pitch Perfect 2 a

feminist dream and one of the fiercest movies of the year” (qtd. in Semigran). Apparently, the

sequel’s bold feminist position was easy to detect. This meant that the film’s discourse could

be labeled as feminist without the anxiety that accompanied the first film.

After Pitch Perfect was embraced as a cultural phenomenon, it was no longer necessary

to be reticent about its feminism. Banks (a feminist herself) decided to direct the sequel Pitch

Perfect 2. According to Variety, she made a point of making female empowerment the

movie’s “mission statement” (qtd. in Lodge). In the second movie, Banks focuses on the

already established sisterhood between the female characters. Through her directing style, she

proposes a democratization of screen time; Banks avoids the typical convention of

Hollywood comedies to foreground one protagonist; instead she includes a greater number of

named female characters and allocates more time to female talk. The screen time given to the

male characters is almost non-existent compared to the first movie. The romance that

monopolized the interest in Pitch Perfect is given secondary importance. Banks’ directing

style is more confident in the sequel when it comes to the portrayal of the girls. The male

gaze is still harshly criticized in many sequences that now point towards Hollywood’s sexist

tendencies in a more obvious way. The plurality of female voices included in the sequel is

more about providing positive images of femininities in popular cinema and less about

satirizing the sexist ones, as was the case with the first movie. The point is to make female

empowerment the central statement of Pitch Perfect 2; a statement accompanied (before and

after the movie’s release as well as during the promotion tour) with relevant comments on the

part of Elizabeth Banks. Both the director and the movie’s cast openly discussed women’s

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rights and proclaimed themselves as feminists. Banks stated on many occasions (when asked

about the movie’s message) that she is a champion of feminism: “And I am a feminist: I am

not afraid of that word. I love it and I spend a lot of my time fighting for women and also

trying to lead by example,” she once said to Caitlin Hobbs of Edge magazine. Within this

more straightforward feminist discourse, she revealed that it was very important for her to be

the producer of both movies in order to ensure that the women working for them would earn

the same pay as the men when performing the same assignments. Banks began participating

in many “Women in Film” conferences and offering messages of empowerment and strength.

She constantly encouraged women to fight for equality in the movie industry and all

professions in general. At a Sundance “Women in Film” breakfast she said to an audience full

of young women:

We are up against something which is the entirety of human history

women have never had equality in the world, not even here in the

great United States. We still don’t have it. That’s a big thing to

overcome. It’s not going to happen overnight, so we gotta have these

models for the new generation. (qtd. in Siegel)

That sexism still plagues Hollywood and the American film industry is well documented.

That feminism, or the F-word, are suspicious in Hollywood and in many conservative social

quarters in the United States is also an indisputable fact. In this hostile environment, films

with a clear feminist message are not expected to be box-office hits. That is why the two

films produced by Elizabeth Banks are so significant; they dare articulate a message that

challenges the fixed beliefs of the mainstream culture and the conventions of Hollywood

comedy, bravely taking a stand in favor of feminist discourse in popular cinema.

Pitch Perfect 2 uses popular cinema as an appropriate locus for the promotion of

empowered female models, diverse female voices, and a variety of femininities. At the same

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time, it encourages young girls who consume popular Hollywood products to feel good about

who they are. Banks, Cannon, and the female protagonists adopt a bolder humor, more

forward in its critique of sexism. By playing down the female stereotypes and by criticizing

via humor the categories women are pushed into in Hollywood comedy, the creators of this

second film give a more serious dimension to their cinematic narrative. The ironic

reappropriation of female stereotypes so characteristic of the first movie is minimized in the

sequel. Banks devotes more visual space and time to the development and growth of the

characters as empowered women. She showcases a more mature and brave feminist criticism

in an attempt to actually offer alternatives to sexist stereotyping. Banks is aware of her own

responsibility when circulating sexist stereotypes to provide a satire and harsh critique of

sexism. In the first movie she underlined the existence of sexism in popular comedy in order

to critique it; in the sequel, Banks moves forward to solutions and is more straightforward in

the feminist message she broadcasts, a message that is needed more than ever in popular

culture. As Linda Mizejewski has suggested (in 2015) “women’s comedy has become a

primary site in mainstream popular culture where feminism speaks, talks back, and is

contested” (6). In my view, Banks’ Pitch Perfect 2 undoubtedly contributes to this recent

phenomenon. As I have already stated, during the promotion of the movie Banks used a more

direct feminist discourse to send a brave message about feminism. More importantly, Banks

made feminism and female empowerment her movie’s thesis, which is supported by her

directorial style, the visual representations, the editing mode, and the performance choices.

Directorial choices like the “muffgate” montage sequence or the quick edits used in the girls’

pillow fight scene in combination with the powerful development of certain female

characters, with the discursive “coming-out” of Beca as a feminist, and with the addition of a

Latina to the female cast as a source of political humor, all make the sequel an example of

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feminist cinema, which tries to empower its female spectators by allowing them to visually

consume more diversified images of girls.

Whether they explicitly express it with words or not, cinematic young women who are

independent, confident, intelligent, and beautiful, who assert their individuality and have an

active persona are considered feminists. Mary Ann Doane has pointed out that there is an

episteme surrounding the cinematic presence of women; it assigns them “a special place in

cinematic representation while denying [them] access to this system” (179). By establishing

and promoting herself as the movie’s producer and director and by developing her characters

as independent cinematic subjects, each with their own story, Banks subverts this systemic

exclusion of women. It is women directors like Elizabeth Banks who inscribe an alternative

worldview into popular cinematic discourses through the circulation of positive messages

about female independence, women’s empowerment and social equality (things far from

being givens even today). Both her strong presence as a filmmaker associated with the Pitch

Perfect movies and the success of these movies have proven that women can also thrive in

popular comedy cinema. As a consequence of the financial success and widespread

popularity of these movies, and because of the films’ either obvious feminist text or hidden

feminist subtext, Hollywood now finds itself forced to discuss issues that can only be

characterized as feminist: the wage gap, the need for more women behind the camera, the

need for more roles for women from racial minorities or for older women. In other words, the

need to put a stop to the entrenched Hollywood sexism which popular cinema usually

promotes as the norm or at the very best as harmless humor.

Before proceeding with the analysis of Pitch Perfect 2 it is necessary to summarize

the plot. The sequel is set three years after the events of the first movie, closer to the real time

of the film’s release. It begins with the Bellas (now successful) performing at Kennedy

Center in the presence of the President of the United States, Barack Obama. The President is

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added digitally in the sequence; his presence, although obviously fake, solidifies the Bellas’

recent success and their prestige in the a cappella world. Unfortunately, their performance

ends in complete disaster—in true Bellas fashion—so the rest of the movie presents the

team’s efforts to reinstate their lost status and right to perform. For the most part, however, it

actually focuses on the key to this re-instatement, which is none other than the strengthening

of the bonds of sisterhood. This plot allows Banks to construct her feminist message: women

should support each other on the road to self-empowerment and success; a message only

subtly implied in the first movie directed by Jason Moore. The comedic style of the movie is

the vehicle of this message.

In her political satire, Banks plays with the patriarchal assumptions about femininity.

Her different style in directing the sequel is evident; it deviates from the first movie’s typical

focus on two or three central female characters. Instead Banks makes an effort to include as

many women as possible in each and every shot, scene, and sequence. Moreover, she

undermines the traditional comedic structure that moves from disaster to resolution and

reaches its happy ending through the conventional journey of a heterosexual couple towards a

typical marriage. In the sequel, Banks does offer a happy ending but of a different kind; it is

female friendship and female bonding. Both discursively and visually Banks projects a sense

of solidarity and community, aspects significantly central for a typically feminist

consciousness that the movie seems to adopt (Modleski, Feminism Without Women 17). One

of the ways that Banks, as a director, encourages feminism and female empowerment is

through the feminist performances of the actresses. To define “feminist performance” I will

use Radulescu’s theory. Radulescu construes feminist performance as a performative and

narrative style that “pays attention to women” (120). This means that the narrative is

preoccupied with issues concerning “women’s status in society, from sexuality, to

motherhood, to relations with men, to violence against women” (Radulescu 120). According

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to Radulescu, feminist narratives place the female voice and presence at the center of the

viewer’s attention through “performative and discursive techniques” which represent the

female individual as “subject and not as object of the male gaze” (120). In Pitch Perfect 2,

the female presence is placed center stage. Unlike the first movie, where the male presence

was more evident—with Jesse being the obvious male protagonist and love-interest of Beca,

the female protagonist—the sequel minimizes the romantic element and confines Jesse to the

background as supporting character. This change in the film’s script makes Banks’ comedy a

narrative that deals primarily with women’s issues. An intelligent move on the part of the

director, it creates the space and time needed, so that Banks can include straightforward

commentary about problems that women—especially in her industry—face on a daily basis. I

am specifically referring to the “muffgate” incident and Banks’ scathing montage right at the

beginning of the movie which forecasts her intentions to dress the sequel with an even more

transgressive humor. According to Radulescu, transgressive humor is the appropriate means

to transcend traditional sexist positions and treat patriarchal values sarcastically in order to

legitimize a feminist critique as the only way to expose and eliminate such practices that

permeate the industry of Hollywood (120).

In the introductory scene of the sequel the Bellas face yet another public humiliation

that is even worse than Aubrey’s projectile vomit in the first movie. In a transgressively

risqué acrobatic dancing routine for a plus-sized woman, Fat Amy faces a wardrobe

malfunction while she balances through sheets that hang on the roof. The malfunction results

in the revelation of her private female organs in the “historical Kennedy Center” (as the

commentators say) and in the presence of President Barack Obama. Banks cuts this hilarious

scene (which features the two commentators, John and Gale, describing the events that occur

on the stage as a disaster) with a visual transition to a quick montage of real-life American

media and morning television personalities reporting on the incident as the ultimate scandal

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that shocked America’s morality. The scandal is named “muffgate” by the media; the news

people discussing it make the following comments: “All the authorities have ruled out

terrorism as a motive”; “Filth. Women who sing is just another example of cultural decay and

loose morals”; “It’s a national disgrace.” Banks includes sets that mirror America’s morning

television in order to associate gossip and the vilification of women who appear in the public

sphere with morning TV shows making a living by scrutinizing people’s lives. By people I

mean celebrities and by celebrities I mean female celebrities. As McCabe observes, the

American media construct women as sex objects (7). But it is not only sexism in the media

that Banks is after. In this scene where an all-female group takes center stage at Kennedy

Center, an incident like “muffgate” constitutes a subconscious threat to American morality; it

projects a liberating empowerment with an American woman publicly showing her hidden

privates that should be reserved only for motherhood. Such an exposure of the female

genitalia can be interpreted as a social threat, as an indirect way to corrupt the minds of

young and innocent American girls. Banks constructs this montage to mirror the American

media culture, capturing the moment when accidental exposures of the female body result in

“girls [being] vilified from all sides” (qtd. in Lodge). As Kristen Page-Kirby notes, the way

Banks construes this incident “echoes real life celebrity wardrobe malfunctions and society’s

obsession with control of the female form” (qtd. in Curtotti). Bank bases her scene and

montage on comical exaggeration; she shows a collegiate a cappella female group performing

at Kennedy Center with the Bellas putting on an extravagant performance that includes

fireworks and acrobatics. Then she shifts the audience’s attention to the media furor; the

news people transform an obvious accident into a terrorist attack. Through these visual and

discursive exaggerations, Banks means to expose the “media-fueled ‘outrage culture’”

against women who hold public positions (qtd. in Lodge).

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It is well known that Banks is a Hillary Clinton supporter. During the 2008

presidential campaign Hillary Clinton was constantly “demonized” by the American media,

which focused on her external appearance and her age; because she was a feminist and a

woman who dared to appear and speak in public, she was made an object of derision

(Douglas 269). Banks mirrors this media outrageous reaction against Hillary Clinton in her

film. In Pitch Perfect 2, Banks utilizes bold and transgressive humor, the kind that Radulescu

classifies as humor that “resists and denounces” entrenched patriarchal values (231). Banks’

montage is meant to make her female audience laugh at the hyperbolic and outrageously

familiar reality of the vilification of women in pubic space by the sexist American media. As

Radulescu observes, “it is largely the women at the audience who laugh wholeheartedly: first

because they recognize the scripts of their inequities, secondly because they experience

satisfaction at seeing these scripts subverted” (160). The film’s introductory sequence signals

the director’s intention to use humor both as an empowering and soothing device and make

the female audience recognize many of the social issues and imposed limitations that they

have to face every day. Moreover, through humor Banks exposes the sexist practices of the

movie industry and its tendency to marginalize and objectify women. In this way, Banks

pinpoints the need for more feminist popular movies like her own, movies that are female-

inclusive and subversive so that they can shake the Hollywood status quo.

Far more straightforward politically and explicitly feminist, the montage sequences in

the sequel reveal Banks’ intention to engage the audience with feminism openly. One way

that gender issues are visually translated in cinema is through the subversion of particular

female representations or with the inclusion of spaces and performances that sometimes blur

the “boundaries between actor and character” (Radulescu 188). This is exactly what Banks

does in the case of Beca, a major character in the sequel. Played by the actress Anna

Kendrick, Beca is represented as a constantly-unimpressed-by-college-life girl who aspires to

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become a successful music producer. Her performance includes some eye-rolling and very

few to almost non-existent smiles. This character resembles Kendrick’s public persona.

Kendrick usually appears in interviews and on red carpets as a woman who does not abide by

Hollywood’s expectations of princess-like actresses who just smile and make cute comments.

On many occasions Kendrick’s stance brought media fury upon her person. Whether it was a

twitter war or a morning television debate, people argued about Kendrick’s numb facial

expressions and her now-more-famous-than-her-performances “resting bitch face”; this

phrase was used by various media to describe Kendrick’s neutral pose in photographs for

which she posed with her arms crossed and without a smile. Banks exploits this media

scrutiny of Kendrick in the sequel by having the actress project her resting bitch face as

emphatically as she can. Even in the movie’s promotion poster all the other girls surround

Kendrick, who stands at the center with her arms crossed and dons the expression of a bitch.

In the film, Kendrick recreates her infamous pose during the graduation photo. In a

subversive move which blends her real personality with that of the fictional character, the

actress emphatically broadcasts her denial to yield to media expectations and to web bullies

who try to police her image. Kendrick performs Beca as the young woman who remains

unimpressed with college life and eschews any behavior that signals fragile femininity. Beca

is a source of laughter because she deliberately subverts the directives of her gender. As

Russell argues, women who possess a transgressive confidence, are openly antagonistic, and

make an audience laugh with their wit are perfect vehicles with which to challenge the notion

of an “appropriate femininity” (Mizejewski 16). Both Banks and Kendrick collaborate to

challenge the traditional feminine model by presenting Beca as an intelligent woman who

refuses to go by the rules and who opposes the culture-specific expectations that want

females to have wide and pleasant smiles on their faces, as well as a feminine body posture,

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when seen in public. The construction of Beca’s character as an “out and proud” feminist has

had a positive response.

Besides Kendrick’s emphatic performance in the film, the character of Beca became a

trend on the Internet via a popular “crusade”; girls began recreating Beca’s fierce resting

bitch face and posting it on Kendrick’s twitter profile with the worldwide trending hashtag

#BecaEffinMitchell. This reaction on the part of the fans constitutes a strong commentary

against the public policing of women, be they actresses or ordinary women. The spontaneous

participation of the female audience and the effort to express their support both to Beca and

to Kendrick prove that the cinematic sisterhood has transcended the movie screen. The fact

that the Pitch Perfect movies became a popular phenomenon testifies that women both desire

and need positive popular discourses that bring feminist concerns back to the surface and

reject any postfeminist claims that in the contemporary American society there is no longer

any reason to support feminism. Kendrick’s ascent to stardom can be seen “as an interactive,

ongoing experience in which the desires of audiences create new energies” (Mizejewski 213).

In the case of the sequel, the energy triggered by the audience points to the fact that women

do want to identify with non-traditional female models, do appreciate narratives that express

their frustrations, and do enjoy transgressive feminist humor that celebrates female “wit and

comedy over marginalization or contempt” (Mizejewski 213). That there is a widespread

need for positive, smart, funny, feminist female voices in cinematic comedy that will

revitalize the notion of sisterhood is also evident in the reaction of the fans. The cinematic

sisterhood featured in the Pitch Perfect films has triggered the formation of an off-screen

group of fans who, in an effort to establish a group identity, call themselves “Pitches.” This

fact not only speaks volumes of the movie’s feminist agenda and its influence on the

spectators, but also reveals that the premature dismissal and media derision of feminism has

left women without connecting bonds. As Annete Kuhn states “the potential of female or

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feminist audiences as communities is an issue of obvious relevance to questions of feminism”

(197). Because the Pitch Perfect movies try to reinstate feminist discourse as relevant to

women’s lives they have a strong appeal to female audiences. Moreover, I strongly agree

with Andi Zeisler who suggests that popular culture cannot be dismissed as being “just”

entertainment (4). There have been many occasions throughout pop culture’s history when

people assembled in movie theaters and concert arenas, or attended readings by authors or

demonstrations by artists, or gathered to discuss their favorite shows, movies, and books

(Ferniss and Young 132). The same has happened on several occasions with the “Pitches”;

anxiously waiting the release of the sequel they never failed to share their enthusiasm on the

personal sites of either Banks or of the actresses in the social media. As Ferniss and Young

explain, “such gatherings make concrete […] cultural practices that link people across a maze

of different and competing social positions” (132). The “Pitches” fans are important for the

Pitch Perfect movies and confirm the assertion that such “performances create communities

through laughter” (Radulescu 1). The producers make an effort to include the fans during

screenings, conferences, and other public events because they realize that non-traditional

comedies can facilitate the spectators’ response “to the insults and injuries inflicted upon

women through sexist humor and to various forms of gender inequity in society at large”

(Radulescu 1). Pitch Perfect 2 can easily be classified as a feminist discourse which uses

humor to raise women’s awareness, offers positive images of femininities, and encourages

women to rebel against the sexist practices that belittle them (Radulescu 218). The financial

success of the first movie in combination with the establishment of a community of sisters

beyond the screen attests to the fact that Banks’ feminist message that targets Hollywood

sexism and her efforts to construct alternative models of femininities seem to be widely

appreciated by American women.

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In the sequel, the feminist agenda is more distinguishable thanks to Kendrick’s

performance. But it is Kendrick’s actual personality and social status that have given

credibility and empowerment to the character of Beca on the screen. In the recent years,

Kendrick has become one of Hollywood’s A-list actresses, with an academy award

nomination and critically acclaimed as well as financially successful movies. She is a white,

heterosexual, abled-body woman who holds a privileged position of power and influence; a

fact which she intelligently exploits to make political comments that promote feminism,

knowing that her words will influence many young women. For instance, when she was

asked about the hate that women who identify as feminists receive, she stated:

There is a word for gender equality—and that's feminism. It's a very

female-centric word. I feel like the word can be appropriated by the

wrong people for that reason and misinterpreted by those people, but

you just have to fight back and own that word. It's practically

become a curse word. Somebody says, "Oh, you're being such a

feminist," and you're supposed to be like, "No I'm not." Why are we

afraid of that word? It exists and we can't get rid of it, so let's fight

for it and embrace it. (qtd. in Clover)

Susan Bordo has accurately noted that celebrities are never just about good or bad images on

the screen; they actually have a very emotional impact on the audience, on the people that

follow them (qtd. in Mizejewski 194). In fact, the body of a celebrity can convey

psychological and social meanings emphasizing her individuality and helping audiences

connect to it (Dyer 9). Aware of Kendrick’s star status and of her public statements on

feminism, Banks, the director, exploits the connection between Beca’s character and

Kendrick’s real life personality. By depicting Beca as an “out and proud” feminist in Pitch

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Perfect 2, Banks has the opportunity to voice explicitly feminist anxieties that burden women

both in Hollywood and in the American society.

There is a scene in Pitch Perfect 2 which mirrors the deliberately hyperbolic sexist

scenes that are ironically appropriated in Pitch Perfect to expose the entrenched sexism of

popular cinema. In this scene the Bellas engage in a pillow fight in their sorority house.

Banks deliberately sets this scene in the sorority house to reflect the conventional male-

centric Hollywood comedies that depict sorority girls as wild sexual animals ready to engage

in extreme sexual activities for the pleasure of the teenage boys—the target audience of such

movies—and for augmenting their fantasies. The pillow fight is structured as a sexualized

scene; ten girls in very short and revealing pajamas jump up and down, accentuating their

curves, and hit each other with feathered pillows. To harshly satirize such scenes, Banks uses

an extreme slow motion and transforms the pillow fight into a hilarious, ridiculous and

clownish spectacle. Like the shower scene in the first movie, the pillow fight has no

narratological or plot service. Banks includes it in order to comment on the practice of

Hollywood to systematically objectify women and reduce them to a spectacle of sexy

femininity ready to please the male gaze.

Taking advantage of Kendrick’s feminist beliefs, Banks leaves her out of the pillow

fight; instead, she has Beca walk in the middle of it and captures her reaction: Beca dons a

scolding and disapproving facial expression and wonders what she is looking at. Then she

makes her feelings clear by saying: “You know this sets women back like thirty years”; she

also performs an eye-wink. With Beca’s straightforward comment about the women’s

movement, Banks manages to assert that a feminist critique may be necessary in cinematic

discourse if women directors are ever going to eliminate the sexist stereotypes in popular

cinema. Beca’s comment would have been too blatant for the first movie, in which Banks

tries to hide her feminism and refrain from using the dreaded F-word so as not to drive

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audiences away. But the success of the original film has allowed Banks not only to expose a

harsh Hollywood reality but also to make her feminist message more explicit. As pointed out

by Mizejewski, feminism has recently regained visibility in popular culture, but it “has also

gained renewed loathing,” so we can understand the reluctance of the film’s executives to let

Pitch Perfect “come out” as a feminist comedy right from the start (25).

Another obvious change in the narrative of the sequel is the way Banks deals with the

romance between Beca and Jesse. She downgrades the male protagonist of Pitch Perfect to a

supporting, discrete, barely noticeable presence in Pitch Perfect 2. Whereas the romance

subplot accompanies the Bellas’ journey towards the a cappella championship in the first

movie, the love relationship (Beca/Jesse) recedes into the background in the sequel; Jesse is

given an almost cameo appearance, passing through Beca’s busy day and barely having any

lines. In Pitch Perfect the romance follows the typical structure: the cute interaction, the

falling in love, the crisis climax, and the resolution, leading to the happy ending. Comedies

usually conclude with a heterosexual marriage. At the end of the movie, Beca and Jesse do

not get married but they do have a typical love scene in which Beca performs the big

romantic gesture singing, “Don’t you forget about me,” a movie soundtrack introduced to her

by Jesse. Beca is the one who fights for Jesse and tries to win him back, showing that Pitch

Perfect agrees with Rowe’s point that “love is one of the few areas where Hollywood allows

women to take charge” (180). Thus, the Beca/Jesse love story ends with a big romantic kiss

in the first movie. It is a double happy ending: the Bellas win the competition and Beca wins

Jesse. In the sequel, as I have already mentioned, Banks shift the focus of the narrative to

Beca’s job aspirations and her commitment to the Bellas. Her relationship with Jesse is a part

of her life but not the dominant one. Instead of giving the audience a heterosexual love story,

Banks give them the Bellas’ sisterhood. She features female friendships and relationships as

the core of the plot and the key to the sequel’s resolution.

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Banks begins the second movie with the established sisterhood, now facing a crisis

due to the “muffgate” scandal; the sisters lose their sound and give disastrous performances.

This fact threatens to break them up and climaxes when Beca and Chloe—the two captains of

the Bellas who are very close friends—begin to fight about their commitment to the

sisterhood and to the Bellas’ aspirations. After a short separation, the Bellas are given the

typical reconciliation sequence a heterosexual couple would get, with a scene which Banks

structures as the epitome of romantic gestures for a college sorority: all the girls gather

around a fire, in a touching, bonding moment of confessions; then Beca admits that the

Bellas’ sisterhood “is for life.” Mirroring her expression of love for Jesse in the first movie,

Banks has Beca make a love confession to her Bellas sisters: “You know when I’ll look back

on this, I won’t remember performing or competing. I’ll remember you weirdos.” Her love

affair with Jesse is not even mentioned as an important part of her college life, something that

she will reminisce when she is older. Kendrick delivers these words to mimic the

performance of lovers. The performance is further accentuated by the looks she exchanges

with Chloe, with whom she has actually had many innocent homoerotic interactions

throughout both movies. Then Chloe starts singing, “When I’m gone” to Beca, the song Beca

performed in her Bellas audition. Shortly, the other girls join her in the singing. Thus Banks

brings their story into a romantic-like full circle structure.

In this scene with the girls around the fire, singing and managing to finally “find [their

lost] sound,” Banks eroticizes the Bellas’ sisterhood with the familiarly soothing campfire

iconography which powerfully provides the visual space for the brave promotion of “female

empowerment through female bonding” (Ferniss and Young 111). In other words, Banks has

the sisterhood take up the plotline of the heterosexual romance that usually monopolizes the

time and space of popular cinema. In this way, she comments on the importance of presenting

more aspects of a woman’s experience than simply focusing on the compulsive portrayal of a

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woman’s need for a man, as it happens in popular comedies. In Pitch Perfect 2, Banks resists

and takes a stand against the Hollywood promotion of “the essence of conventional

femininity” as “the pursuit of heterosexual love” (Rowe 27). Sisterhood and female support

are significant aspects of a woman’s experience and survival but have been largely ignored

by popular cinema and film comedies in particular. Banks attempts to reappropriate the space

of heterosexual romance in Pitch Perfect 2 and to display the necessity for cinematic

depictions of female relationships of support and friendship. This is further underlined by the

way she chooses to end Pitch Perfect 2; the Bellas perform in the a cappella world

championship and win it thanks to the presence of older generations of Bellas who

accompany them on stage. Thus, the happy ending is achieved through the ultimate gesture of

female solidarity and bonding. Banks overflows the stage with women of the older

generations of Bellas who appear to support the girls and help them win as a tribute to the

feminist waves. As Modleski has claimed, women need to get together and form a

“subculture” in order to “develop a system of values that will effectively challenge and

undermine an increasingly hegemonic patriarchal ideology” (Feminism Without Women 43).

This seems to be Banks’ point. The final scene unites the girls with their mothers and

grandmothers, merging together different generations of feminists. In this way, according to

The Washington Post, Pitch Perfect 2 “creates a world where feminism is simply the norm”

(qtd. in Page-Kirby).

In terms of visual representation, Banks builds this scene as a spectacle, but does not

try to impress the audience with props or choreography; instead Banks structures the final

scene plainly when it comes to visuals, focusing on emotionality, a characteristic traditionally

linked with womanhood. She uses romantic imagery, plays with light and darkness, and

centers the camera on the plurality of female faces and voices on the stage. She directs this

scene in a way that will appeal to and move her female viewers. It is a political moment of

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triumph that promotes female solidarity and displays female empowerment as the happy

ending of Pitch Perfect 2. The older generations of Bellas appearing on stage represent the

former generations of feminists who fought to create a female tradition that has now been

taken up by their daughters and granddaughters. That the young women will continue the

legacy is implied by the final shot which—with an extreme close-up and strong lighting—

centers on Emily, the youngest Bella nicknamed “Legacy.”

It becomes obvious that in the sequel, Banks counters the recurrent dismissal of

female experiences and the objectification of women in Hollywood, and proposes a united

sisterhood, regardless of age, race, sexuality, that will bring women together in the

contemporary fight for social change. One way to contribute to this fight is to construct more

positive and authentic representations of women on the screen. Another way is to employ

women in jobs behind the camera. Pitch Perfect 2 contributes to both.

In addition, Banks subverts the dominance of the heterosexual romantic couple in

Hollywood comedy. Whereas in Pitch Perfect the romance between Beca and Jesse is treated

realistically, the love affair between Fat Amy and Bumper in the sequel is visually structured

as a parody of the first movie’s romance. The sexual relationship between Bumper and Amy

is a recurring joke between Rebel Wilson and Adam Devine, the two actors portraying these

two characters in both movies. In the sequel, the two a cappella legends seem to be attracted

to each other. Bumper stages a fairytale/dream-like romantic dinner setting and in true

chivalric manner proposes to Amy to be his girlfriend. The latter quickly flees the dinner

claiming her independence. However, she soon realizes that she is in love with Bumper and

runs to find him. Unfortunately, she gets caught in a bear trap that prevents her from reaching

Bumper. The viewers, now familiar with Banks’ ironic humor, cannot help but connect

Amy’s fall into the bear trap with the movie’s comment on the entrapment of compulsory

heterosexuality. Strategically, Banks first sets up the romantic plot (which supposedly

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appeals to female viewers of popular movies), exploits the cultural assumption that a

romantic relationship is the only road to happiness for women and then proceeds to

deconstruct it by minimizing the romance and emphasizing the weird slapstick comedy. After

the bear trap incident Fat Amy still wants to get back to Bumper. On the following day, she

decides to publicly stage a grand romantic gesture, which balances between romance and

ultimate “cheesiness.” With this scene, Banks satirizes the genre’s romantic conventions as

well as Beca’s romantic gesture in the first movie (shown to publicly sing to Jesse in order to

win him back). In this ironic romantic scene, Fat Amy mimics Beca. However, Rebel

Wilson’s performance in combination with Banks’ directing choices construct this romantic

gesture as the ultimate parody of the typical romantic scenes found in Hollywood comedy.

Fat Amy is shown to sing while she is rowing a boat and crossing a street. She noticeably

loses her breath; she is almost hit by a car; she interrupts her singing to have a quick fight

with the driver. Usually, in the genre’s romantic scenes, it is a man (impeccably dressed and

glamorously good-looking) who makes the romantic gesture. To deconstruct this convention,

Banks focuses the camera on Fat Amy’s sweating body, on the shortness of her breath, and

on her rather unladylike movements. As the car that almost hits Fat Amy moves on, the

playback music magically resumes exactly from the point her song was interrupted,

demonstrating to the viewers the constructed nature of film romances. Finally, Fat Amy

reaches Bumper who accompanies her in her song. Banks cuts the song short in order to show

the two lovers hugging, kissing, and rolling in the grass in an inappropriate manner; then she

shifts the focus on their friends, who shut their eyes and walk towards the house looking

disgusted and appalled by the spectacle they were obliged to witness. By staging this

inappropriate public display of affection between Fat Amy and Bumper, Banks mocks similar

scenes of unrestrained eroticism. As Shayne Lee explains, sometimes feminist comedy may

include an inappropriately explicit sexual scene “that challenges the politics of respectability”

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and subvert stereotypes (98). Apparently, Banks targets the fairytale cinematic imagery

surrounding a romantic couple in the typical happy ending, in order to comment on the

constructed and unrealistic nature of such scenes. She stages a farce of romantic scenes, uses

hyperbole and irony, and subverts the genre’s conventions to point out that heterosexual

romance as the culmination of a movie’s happy ending sends the wrong signal to young girls

and distracts them from reality.

The focus on the love affair between Fat Amy and Bumper in the sequel instead of

the romance between Beca and Jesse has a dual function of subversion. Although not blonde,

Beca and Jesse constitute the traditional, white, beautiful, glamorous couple, Hollywood

loves to promote in popular movies. Kay Cannon, the movie’s scriptwriter, has admitted in an

interview in Salon that during the production of the first movie she was constantly “getting

notes by the studio” to add more romantic scenes between Beca and Jesse (qtd. in Silman).

Her answer was: “guys this is a movie about a group of underdog, rag-tag gals, who are

competing in this a cappella competition. This isn’t about the romance” (qtd. in Silman). In

the sequel, Cannon was able to downplay the affair between Beca and Jesse and focus instead

on Fat Amy and Bumper. Despite the fact that these two are also white, they cannot be easily

classified as the shiny Hollywood couple that producers want to see in a summer movie. Fat

Amy has a body, the kind Hollywood loves to hate or ignore. Hollywood has been reluctant

to picture fat female bodies “in the most popular stories of heterosexuality and romance”

(Mizejewski 190). According to Max Handelman, one of the movie’s producers, Banks

wanted to give Fat Amy a love story because, as he stated, “it is something you don’t see very

often with characters like that” (qtd. in Tauber and Dugan). Pitch Perfect 2 resists this

Hollywood reluctance; it positions Rebel Wilson at the core of its romantic narrative and goes

as far as to give her anti-Hollywood female body a romantically happy ending. Moreover,

Pitch Perfect 2 gives Fat Amy her heterosexual romantic ending after having established her

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(in both movies) as the kind of independent woman who knows what she wants and is not

afraid to fight to get it. Fat Amy has been constantly shown to be the sanest girl among the

Bellas, despite her crazy comic moments of screwball comedy, which Wilson used in order to

satirize the way Hollywood treats the oversized female body. She is portrayed to be the one

to call the shots in her relationship with Bumper and is never shown to compulsively seek for

a guy’s attention or approval to be who she is. This is why she at first rejects Bumper’s

romantic gesture, underlining the importance of choice for a young woman who is not

obliged to be with a guy just because he staged the typical romantic scene that supposedly

makes a woman hormone-crazy and unable to resist. Amy becomes a couple with Bumper

when she decides this is what she wants. Actually she is the one who positions herself as the

cinematic romantic hero; a space usually reserved for male actors performing the romantic

gestures. As Cannon has stated, “Fat Amy and Bumper have this romantic situation, but Fat

Amy wouldn’t talk about it with her girlfriends. And she wasn’t sharing like ‘what do I do,

should I be with him?’ or anything like that. I was purposely trying not to make it about them

with guys” (qtd. in Silman). Banks and Cannon’s insistence to include this rather

unconventional couple as the sequel’s romantic focus reveals their political intention to

subvert the romantic conventions of Hollywood films. As Rowe has noted, Hollywood often

“reinforces the ideology of traditional heterosexuality, which eroticizes an imbalance of

power based on feminine submissiveness and masculine dominance” (180). In Pitch Perfect

2, Banks resists this power imbalance by underlining Fat Amy’s strong personality, by

placing her as one of the Bellas’ leader, and by depicting her as a supportive friend to her

“sisters.” At the same time, she makes Fat Amy the heroine of the romantic story,

disregarding the limitations Hollywood narratives place on her unconventional obese body.

Thus far I have attempted to show that Banks took advantage of the first movie’s

success to include a bolder feminist message of female empowerment in the sequel, Pitch

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Perfect 2. While reluctant to make her feminism too obvious in the discourse of the first

movie, Banks now manages to touch upon Hollywood’s unreasonable fear of the F-word (a

concept that is supposedly pushing audiences away) and general frustration with empowering

female-centric popular discourses. The success of both movies has opened the way for even

more female-driven comedies that have dominated the box-office the last couple of years. In

short, whereas the script of Pitch Perfect is confined to having a feminist subtext and subtle

satire, the narrative of Pitch Perfect 2 includes a more straightforward feminist message. The

female characters of the first movie parody the way women are portrayed in comedies and

thus comment on the well-established Hollywood sexism, which is supposed to be taken as

harmless humor. The sequel, however, does not simply stick to the hyperbolic performances

and visual exaggerations that satirized the sexist classification of women in stereotypical

categories in comedies. In fact, Pitch Perfect 2 manages to propose a solution to the

stereotyping of women in film comedies; it does so by subverting the social expectations and

by providing new images of femininities, which resist the recycling of sexist female

archetypes that belittle and diminish women to sex objects and are used to entertain the male

gaze.

To the sisterhood, comprised mainly by white girls, the original movie adds a Black

and an Asian woman to achieve diversity. Both the character of Cynthia Rose—the black

lesbian—and of Lilly—the visibly Asian—are portrayed in a hyperbolic manner that mirrors,

mocks, and criticizes the Hollywood stereotypes of racially-specific females and their

containment into very specific comedic roles. On the one hand, Cynthia Rose is depicted as

the oversexualized masculine lesbian beast. On the other hand, Lilly (played by Hana Mae

Lee) stands for the “quiet, docile Asian female body” (Mizejewski 149); her quietness is

matched with an unnaturally low voice that it is very hard to hear when she speaks. Such

exaggerated cinematic representations parody the recycled stereotypes of minority females

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that appear in Hollywood films. They also target the sexist conventions which reduce women

either to “a stereotype or a cliché” (Mizejewski 132).

In Pitch Perfect 2 Banks adds a Latina character to the sisterhood, but she chooses a

slightly different approach for this ethnic role. Flo the Latina is a senior in Barden University

and the one responsible for the gymnastics-like dancing movements of the Bellas’

choreographies. This is a rather uncommon visual association of the Latina with gymnastics,

because usually Hispanic females are shown to be excellent salsa dancers. Banks chose

Chrissie Fit, an American actress of Cuban heritage, to play the role of Flo Fuentes.

Emphasizing her status as a foreigner, Chrissie Fit as Flo speaks with a thick Hispanic accent.

Banks makes sure that when Fit performs Flo, there is nothing about the character that would

remind the viewers of the stereotypical way the Latina character is depicted in Hollywood

comedies. Flo is neither a ridiculously oversexualized girl, nor is she a sassy maid, nor a loud

hairdresser. Banks avoids both the JLo and the Sofia Vergara-like archetypes reserved for

Latinas in Hollywood comedies. She does not include extreme close-ups emphasizing Flo’s

curves, like it happens in every Jennifer Lopez movie. The director avoids constructing the

Latina as a sexy, exotic bombshell. Instead Banks presents Flo as a very intelligent young

woman, who makes harsh political comments. Flo is funny but not an object of ridicule or the

butt of jokes. In fact, she is the valedictorian of her class, shown in the graduation photo

wearing the American valedictorian golden stoles. In Pitch Perfect 2, the representation of

Flo aims to subvert the established cinematic depictions of Latina women, who are usually

reduced to exotic, sexy bodies in order to entertain the male gaze. As Mizejewski claims, Flo

is the type of character “to contend against the norm, to demand public space and recognition

for an identity that has been dismissed” or cruelly objectified in popular cinema (132). As

directed by Banks, Flo offers an alternative Latina comedic character; she captures the

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viewers’ attention thanks to her witty, funny, and strictly political comments not by her sexy

curves.

One of the functions of Flo as a subversive character is to be the mouthpiece of

politically incorrect humor through which Banks critiques white privilege. Political

incorrectness has been a “boys-only-zone” in comedy (Mizejewski 2). Banks, the director and

Cannon, the scriptwriter, decide to subvert this practice. They have Flo utter the most

uncomfortable things with the risk of offending even people who watch the movie. Fit’s

politically powerful and satirical performance allows Flo to transcend the limitations of the

material that might offend many people. Discussing similar feminist performances by female

minority actresses, Modleski notes that they “bring out the subversive potential buried within

the text” (225). For instance, Flo satirizes as unimportant an incident, which the white female

characters perceive as the end of the world. The privileged Chloe thinks that losing their right

to compete in a cappella signifies the end of her life. Flo says to her indifferently: “You

know, before coming to Barden [University], I had diarrhea for seven years. But yes, this is

terrible.” Such politically incorrect humor mocks the gravity with which the white girls face

daily problems. Actually it functions as a commentary on those white women and men in the

movie industry who still ignore the experiences of women of color and silence their voices.

Banks herself is aware that although the narratives of both Pitch Perfect movies include

diverse femininities, at times they still fail to give central stage to Black, Asian or Hispanic

characters, who traditionally are presented as supporting sidekicks and are pushed to the

background. In the romantic scene when the Bellas are sitting around a campfire and

confessing their life dreams after college to their sisters, Banks gives time and forum to Flo to

comment on Hollywood’s reluctance to deal with important feminist issues and to depict

authentic experiences of minority females. When asked about her future, Flo blatantly says:

“after I graduate I’ll probably be deported and will probably die at sea while trying to re-enter

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the country.” Banks frames Flo’s words with a shot focusing on the facial expressions of the

other girls, who are shocked and uneasy and although they acknowledge the seriousness of

Flo’s comment they do not know how to react. Scenes like this one makes us realize that

what Banks is trying to do in Pitch Perfect 2 is indeed revolutionary. As Kuhn has stated,

feminist practices of representation “embody—in the quest for a ‘new voice,’ a

transformation of vision” (205). With Flo the Latina, Banks and Cannon present a woman

with the potential to transform public opinion. In an interview Chrissie Fit herself has said

that Flo’s humor was written and performed in a way that she hoped would start a

conversation about Latinos (qtd. in Terrero). The sequel obviously resists reducing the

Hispanic woman to a sexy stereotype (the Spanish-speaking equivalent of the dumb blonde)

and instead presents a strong, intelligent female character with a voice that delivers

significant political critique. Flo is not afraid to express what she is thinking or to use her

witty humor to touch upon serious issues that would never be brought up in a conventional

Hollywood comedy. Exploiting Flo’s fierceness, Fit and the creators of Pitch Perfect 2 offer

female audiences a new image, a positive cinematic Latina figure with a politically incorrect

humor and a transgressively powerful voice.

Although classified as feminist comedies advocating women’s rights in general and

women’s positive representation in popular discourses in particular, the Pitch Perfect movies

have faced a lot of criticism based on the fact that the feminism they promote is white. Most

of the characters are white women and those of them who are not are confined to supporting

roles usually manipulated for laughs. Many people dismiss the satirical disposition of the

movies and instead find offensive and racist the way the Black, the Asian, and the Latina

women are portrayed. Personally, I disagree with these conclusions. Taking into account the

white, heterosexual, upper-middle class status of the female creators of the two movies, I

argue that they did an excellent job trying not to step in the shoes of oppressed minority

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women and pretend to fight their fights for them. They do showcase the racism against these

women in Hollywood popular comedies. By incorporating the problems of sexism and racism

within an easy-to-digest comedy, Banks and Cannon have reached many people and started a

conversation about female representation in Hollywood films, about the cinematic

representation of women of color, and about the women working in the movie industry.

Maybe, as Mizejewski states, the creators did not analyze “how whiteness functions in these

texts as an enabling condition for the privileged heroines” (81). However, with their political

satire of Hollywood racism and sexism they did acknowledge the fact that some women are

simply more oppressed than others. In Pitch Perfect 2, Ester Dean playing Cynthia Rose is

given a line that proves that both Cannon and Banks are aware that the black women in film

“are in the most marginalized position” (Modleski 220). When Cynthia Rose blames Flo the

Latina for her fall on the stage, Flo hilariously replies, “sure, blame the minority.” To which

Cynthia Rose responds, “I’m black, gay and a woman,” implying that she is a member of a

minority with a triple liability. This short exchange between the two minority females is

evidence enough that both the scriptwriter and the director are conscious of the fact that in

American society some groups of women are more oppressed than others. At the same time,

it constitutes an instance of self-criticism. The creators give this line to Ester Dean, a black

woman and real-life lesbian, in acknowledgment that even feminist Hollywood is

dangerously white and that more Black, Hispanic, Asian, homosexual female presence is

needed in order for the glass ceiling to be broken once and for all. The movie industry needs

to realize that ethnic voices and non-white female characters need to be written into cinematic

narratives and films should also be directed by non-white women, who will vouch for the

representation of authentic female experiences not compromised by white privilege.

In conclusion, Pitch Perfect 2 takes advantage of the success of the first movie to

showcase a far more daring promotion of feminism. As the film’s director, Elizabeth Banks

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achieves this through a) the construction of the character of Beca as an “out and proud”

feminist; b) the demotion of the male characters into supporting presences; c) the mockery of

the necessary heterosexual love affair and the romantic scenes of comedic discourse; and d)

the inclusion of the Latina as a subversive character who resists the stereotypical

representation and offers empowering and uncomfortable humor of political importance.

Banks comments on the hypocrisy of Hollywood to avoid a straightforward feminist message

out of fear that the F-word would send male audiences away. Once financial success is no

longer an issue, women scriptwriters and directors have the luxury to produce female-driven

movies, to promote feminism, and to appeal to the long-ignored female audiences, who

apparently do bring money to Hollywood. Moreover, the overwhelming success of Pitch

Perfect 2 and the powerful sisterhood of “Pitches” that has transcended the cinematic limits

of the film proves two things: a) that female audiences long for female-driven movies

promoting empowered women of diverse backgrounds and b) that women contrary to popular

belief can create successful comedies, the success of which is not compromised by a

powerful feminist message. Thus, Pitch Perfect 2 has indeed proven that Hollywood needs

gynocentric movies made by women. In recent years, similar cinematic discourses have

started to appear in Hollywood. However, it is hard to ignore the white privileged status of

their creators. Hollywood has a long way to go when it comes to the inclusion of the

authentic experiences of women of color in cinematic narratives and even a longer one before

it allows non-white women to fill positions behind the camera. There has been some progress

in the last two years when it comes to the number of female filmmakers and actors supporting

feminism, creating cinematic discourses that advocate women’s rights and actively

demanding equal pay and opportunities in the movie industry. Unfortunately, the number of

women of color—both in front and especially behind the camera—is very low. More than

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ever there is a need for Hollywood executives and decision-makers that come from diverse

backgrounds when it comes to gender, race, and ethnicity.

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CONCLUSION

This research project has examined the representations of female characters in the

highly successful and popular film comedies, Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2. By

examining the performances of the actresses and the strategies of the directors I have come to

the conclusion that these two films exploit the traditional Hollywood comedic conventions

and female stereotypes only to expose them as demeaning for women and in order to

construct a feminist critique of the sexism that permeates popular genre comedies. Having

analyzed the stereotypes of the fatty, the black lesbian, and the promiscuous bimbo (very

often treated as sexual objects or the butt of jokes in Hollywood-made comedies) and the way

the female comedians manipulated their satirical performances so as to prevent these

characters from being perceived as ludicrous sidekicks, I asserted that the creators of Pitch

Perfect made an effort to present these types of women as subjects who produce comedy

rather than as objects of humiliation. With their excessive performances, the actresses who

embody these female types on screen not only provoke laughter but also indirectly criticize

the feminine stereotypes Hollywood comedies tend to recycle shamelessly.

Although not as audaciously feminist as the sequel directed by Elizabeth Banks, the

original Pitch Perfect movie still makes an effort to expose and to a certain extent denounce

Hollywood sexism. The movie insinuates that the conventional humor that objectifies and

vilifies women on the screen is not harmless but rather dangerous. Hollywood popular

comedies tend to sustain to the patriarchal assumption that women are more fit as comedic

objects “precisely due to their ‘inferiority’ which brings them closer to slaves, the other type

of persons fit for comedy” (Glenn qtd. in Radulescu 90). Sexist humor has endured too long

in this popular film genre, which, because of its immense appeal, has clearly affected

American culture and has contributed to the legitimization and recycling of sexist convictions

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about women. I have argued that the positive representation of empowered young women

who support one another in Pitch Perfect goes against the old cinematic conventions and has

carved a new space in popular cinema, where women cinematographers can assert and

promote a variety of nontraditional models of femininity that are not mocked but rather

celebrated. More importantly, Pitch Perfect takes a political stand in favor of a strong

sisterhood comprised by strong women. Its feminist discourse is cleverly hidden under a

superficial romance story in a college environment which runs parallel to the competition

between the male and female a cappella groups. The film targets the Hollywood female

stereotypes and tries to empower the female viewers through a happy ending that foregrounds

the triumph of the Bellas over their male competitors. The impact that this film has had on the

female spectators is apparent in the formation of an online fan club/community called

“Pitches” who aspire to recreate the sisterhood and support system the female characters of

the movie promote.

After having established the importance of sisterhood in the original film, the

producers of the sequel, Pitch Perfect 2, took a more straightforward feminist stand and did

not hesitate to allow, the “out and proud” feminist, Elizabeth Banks to be the director. Thanks

to the financial success of Pitch Perfect, the sequel did not try to hide its feminist agenda.

The brave directorial choices and style of Banks helped renew interest in feminism and

female empowerment and served as commentary on the mass media scrutiny that female

celebrities and other good-looking women are subjected to every day on American morning

television and web sites. Through parody, satire or subversive humor, Elizabeth Banks has

managed to deflate the power accorded to the male gaze and reject the objectification of the

female characters. Furthermore, Banks relied on feminist humor, which is, as Janet Lee

claims, all about “shedding light at experience and changing the world, and about ridiculing a

social system that exploits and trivializes women” (90). Feminist humor both exposes and

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critiques the sexist practices of popular film comedy by augmenting and exaggerating their

sexist politics. The female presence behind the camera is a prerequisite for the creation of a

cinematic space that takes seriously the authentic experiences of all kinds of women, the

positive portrayal of alternative models of femininity, and the contribution of feminism in the

careers of women comedians. The hope is that the feminist turn in popular comedy may help

reduce Hollywood’s sexist practices and perhaps bring some qualitative changes in cinema

culture. As Patricia Mann has put it, “women have no choice but to attempt to rewrite

patriarchal codes of recognition by engaging in signifying practices and interactions that have

historically played to the expectations of the patriarchal gaze” (qtd. in Genz and Brandon

176). Undoubtedly, the directorial choices of Banks are an attempt to rewrite patriarchal

codes. The sequel is a good example of feminist cinema that empowers female spectators by

giving them the chance to consume visually positive and diverse portrayals of women who

resist the social and cultural prescriptions and assert their individuality.

Hollywood is undoubtedly male-dominated but the Pitch Perfect movies and their

huge success has made it clear that there is available cinematic space for female-centered

movies, created and produced by women for women. Perhaps Banks has made the first steps

toward a new Hollywood era that will permit the development of a woman-identified

tradition in film comedy, promoting the authentic experiences of women and giving them the

opportunity to use laughter as a tool of self-empowerment.

The unexpected popularity of these two films indicates that female audiences long for

female-driven movies promoting empowered women. Additionally, Elizabeth Banks has

shown that feminist directors (even when they dare to subvert the sexist conventions of male-

dominated Hollywood) can construct comedies that can bring profits and compete with male-

dominated films in the box office. Thanks to the efforts of Banks, similar cinematic narratives

have started to appear in Hollywood. Movies like Spy (2015), starring Melissa McCarthy

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(one of Hollywood’s best-paid actresses), and remakes of older popular comedies now with

an all-female cast (as in the case of the Ghostbusters released in 2016) undoubtedly point to a

shift in the movie industry. Whether the presence of women both in front and behind the

camera will have a lasting effect it is to be seen. At the present moment, when one compares

the numbers of the male-centered narratives and the male filmmakers working in Hollywood

to that of female-centered stories and women cinematographers, one is confronted with a

depressing situation. It is also hard to ignore that the women who create and profit from

popular comedies are white with privileged backgrounds. Hollywood still has a long way to

go before it realizes the feminist demand for gender and race equality. Nonetheless, there is

undeniable progress, since more and more women filmmakers and actresses have embraced

feminism and dare to raise issues that have to do with women’s rights, alerting the public to

pay attention to them. Taking into account the fact that popular cinema does influence

cultural norms, women filmmakers now have the opportunity to have a considerable impact

on both the movie industry and on their audiences. As stated in Film Comment, it is not

possible to talk about cinema, movies, and acting without talking about culture since “the

relationship between cultural performance and professional performance is symbiotic: actors

imitate what they see in the world, and non-actors […] respond to and (consciously or

unconsciously) imitate what they see on the screen” (qtd. in Enelow). Because mass-

consumed popular discourses can have an impact on culture and on the spectators, comedies

like the Pitch Perfect movies deserve a serious critical analysis, regardless of outdated and

elitist claims that the products of mass culture are unworthy of academic attention. Popular

cinema with an emphasis on positive models of womanhood and on authentic “female

experience” (Showalter qtd. in Modleski, Feminism without Women 4) is long overdue.

The cinematic world that Pitch Perfect films created has enchanted and energized

millions of women around the world. This is the reason why in the summer of 2015, only one

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month after the release of the overwhelmingly successful sequel, the producers announced

that the Bellas would return with a third installment that would premiere on 21 July 2017.

Many of the regular female stars agreed to refresh their roles, Kay Cannon agreed to write the

script, and Elizabeth Banks to produce and direct Pitch Perfect 3. However, due to

scheduling conflicts, it proved hard for Banks to direct the third movie. Thus she decided to

hire another female director for Pitch Perfect 3 and ensured that the female-centered vision of

the second movie would not be lost. On September 2016, Banks announced on her Instagram

account, where she is followed by 1.4 million “Pitches,” that Trish Sie would direct the third

movie while she would stay as the producer. The movie was recently pushed back for a

holiday season release on the 22nd of December 2017, a period called in the film industry

Oscar-bait season, meaning that this is the time when the studios release their most

prestigious films. It is very rare for an independent, female-centered, musical film comedy

created by women to be released during the Oscar-bait season. The fact that the third movie

was pushed back for a December release proves that the Pitch Perfect movies are now

considered as successful cinematic merchandise. This means that Banks no longer has to

worry about or compromise her feminist agenda or reconsider her decisions when it comes to

whom she chooses to write the story and whom she hires to direct her films.

The latest news about the making and release of Pitch Perfect 3 is an indication that

Elizabeth Banks and her team have received the message that female spectators do crave for

female-centered comedies which disrupt the established conventions of cinematography and

refuse to represent women either as sex objects or victims of ridicule, and that they are

willing to spend money to enjoy cinematic experiences that empower them. It is a great

accomplishment that Banks has opened up a space in the film industry in which professional

actresses can manipulate their performances to make a political point and influence the

perspective of the viewers, while other women behind the camera can hold decision-making

Leivada 82

positions that traditionally were monopolized by powerful men. Banks has shown that

women’s comedic art can be the source of a cultural revolution.

Leivada 83

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