If I had a daughter

In today's NYT Week in Review, Frank Rich locates the reasons for the box-office success of the Coen brothers' True Grit in the audience's nostalgia for a time when black and white hats could be easily distinguished from one another and the Law prevails. He sees the western as an antidote to the murky gray of the less commercially successful Social Network whose technologically gray landscape he likens to the pre-civilized Wild West.

Rich offers a fairly standard reading of the western and I won't argue against it. However, it doesn't account for the pleasure I took in TG. In fact, it wasn't until after I saw the movie Winter's Bone and finished the novel Anthropology of an American Girl a few days later that I realized why I so thoroughly enjoyed both movies. At the heart of each are fierce, smart, and resourceful young woman who embark on quests through lawless worlds in an attempt to restore order. Unlike the more conventional narrative thread of Anthropology and so many other texts for and about teenage girls, TG and WB tell coming-of-age stories for girls that do not hinge on the girls' sexuality. Mattie and Ree certainly endure much during their brutal journeys. Both girls see and experience violence that I wouldn't wish on any teenage girl or boy, but for me the fact that their pain wasn't based in a vicious rape or a broken heart made the stories more powerful for me. I found it inspiring to watch the two gritty girls overcome obstacles that didn't originate in their sexuality. As happy as I am parenting my almost 11 yr old son, I regretted not having a teenage daughter by my side while watching both movies.

If I had a daughter, we could admire the determination of Mattie and Ree to do what they thought was right. In watching the two fatherless girls saddled with passive, helpless mothers remain constant in their respective quests for justice, I'd want her to realize that she was blessed with an inner strength that didn't require the passionate embrace of a sparkly blood sucker to activate. She would see the loss that comes in giving up childish things and assuming her place in an adult world with all its violence and pain, but that loss wouldn't be sexualized. I'll need to think more about why this difference matters to me but it does. All I know is that I can't wait for Katniss Everdeen to make her way to the silver screen.