Analysis of Moxie
The 2021 Netflix original movie Moxie, directed by Amy Pohler is a beautiful coming-of-age movie following the lives of young girls navigating their way through womanhood. Within the movie you watch the main character Vivian Carter go through many rapid changes that force her to take a dive deep within herself and push on new ideas to the rest of the female student body with her “zine” creation. The zine was started through Vivian’s self-discovery and reflection on her mother’s life when her mother was a political activist at Vivian’s age. The zine brought together the female students and uplifted them to take a stand for the misogynistic wrongdoings that occurred in their high school.
Moxie shows many characters from different religious, cultural, and gender backgrounds and their interactions with each other and allows the viewer to understand that even though all of these characters have their differences, at the core they share the same values. At the end of the movie, there is a scene where the student body walks out to stand with a victim of sexual assault. There are many characters that come together to express how they are different from each other but still stand with the victim. The expression of differences, along with certain misfortune different characters face due to the way they look can relate back to the information we have been taught over the semester with intersectionality.
As we have learned over the semester, intersectionality is the disadvantage a person can face due to differences in race, sexuality, class, and gender. In Persepolis, Marji was looked at differently due to where she was from, and the same can be said about the characters in Moxie. There were many points in the movie where the girls are not given the equal chances that the boys do at their school, and how deep-rooted misogyny is in their school’s culture. It is clear that Pohler wants the viewer to understand the importance of owning who you are as a person and taking a stand for what you believe in rather than allowing people to take advantage of you based on the way you look. I feel as if my classmates could look at this film and take away some points about self-realizat
ion as they follow through Vivian’s story. There is a lot of growth that comes out of her self-discovery that impacts the lives of the other students.
Moxie. Dir. Amy Poehler. Paper Kite Productions, 2021. Netflix. Web. 1 December 2021
At the beginning of the semester I touched on a topic very near and dear to my heart, and that is the right that women have to their own bodies. A few months ago at this point, Texas lawmakers implemented strict abortion laws banning medical surgery after six weeks of pregnancy. At six weeks the “neural tube” begins to close and begins the formation of the spinal cord. The fetus at this point is the size of a tadpole and the creation of the heart will begin during the 7th week. There were many oppositions to the implementation of this bill but lawmakers still proceeded to carry on with implementation. Usually, women are unaware of the pregnancy until after two weeks of a missed period cycle, this would put the realization of pregnancy past the 6-week point. The law also does not have any grace for victims of rape or those who face pregnancies that will implicate health issues for the mother. The Law also allows the kin of the fetus to prosecute anyone who assists the mother with the surgery. A very similar law has recently been proposed in Ohio, but unfortunately, this law is way more extreme. If implicated, the law would completely ban all abortion access in Ohio and would again, allow the prosecution of whoever seeks the procedure. This law is called the 2363 Act, and I strongly urge you to sign the petition at the end of this post. These unruly laws that are being placed on women’s bodies in the name of “ProLife” remind me heavily of Ortiz Cofer’s “The Story of My Body”. Throughout the story, you navigate through Cofer’s life and see the moments where her body did not seem like her own. This may be when she is made fun of due to her appearance, or the over-sexualization of the way she looks while she is in college because she was deemed ‘exotic’. Other people’s opinions on Cofer’s body made her mind think differently of herself, and who is to say that is not how these laws are making women feel about pregnancy. The constant negative media attention of women pursuing abortions may steer other women away from the procedure and leave many children in terrible situations. If all abortions are completely banned, the rise of children in an already full foster care system would skyrocket, and the number of malpractice cases from unsafe abortion clinics would rise as well. Putting limitations on abortion after the first trimester is understandable, but the complete removal of a woman’s choice is uncalled for. 