North Country

Although the crooning Reese Witherspoon, is supposedly a lock for Best Actress this year, Charlize Theron turns in another dead-on dramatic performance in this look at sexism and sex in northern Minnesota mining country. In a normal year, this film and Cinderella Man would have gotten far more attention. But, this was a year to honor gays as a group worthy to be considered an oppressed minority.

Unfortunately, these days it takes a lot more than a twenty year old lawsuit to focus on us the problems women face in this world. This film makes it all too easy to say, yeah, well maybe in the past men could get away with tipping women in porta-potties over on the job, but they could never get away with that again. Maybe in northern Minnesota they can get away with scrawling pictures on the wall of blow jobs, but not around here. Maybe in the 80's women were still afraid to tell anyone when they were raped by a teacher, but, not now.

Maybe this film was overlooked because no one wants to talk about sexism any more. The young women say it doesn't exist. The schools are almost back in the business of openly promoting boys again because it's becoming increasingly obvious they can't compete with girls in the academic environment, particularly at early ages.

North Country is a fabulous film and I find it sad that it was shut out by newer, sexier causes. Sure, gays need rights, and blacks and Hispanics and Arabs, and just about everyone else in some way or another, and sexism gets lumped in right along with prejudice against the overweight and everything else. But, I've always seen this issue in a bigger way. Men and women have to deal with each other in a way the other sub-groups can avoid. Issues between the sexes permeate our society in a different way. While those with small, closed minds can often just avoid dealing with certain race issues, or homosexuality, we all have to interact with members of the "opposite" sex. I mean the terminology gives it away, doesn't it?

The sexes are divided by silence and ignorance that still exists all around us today. As long as we have a society that hides its fears and normal, human urges behind veils we will continue to dehumanize sex and degrade women for owning their sexuality, or as was portrayed in this film, simply for being a young, attractive woman.