Moxie premiered on Netflix on March 3 and is a sweet film that revolves around teenage girls at a high school in the Pacific Northwest, dealing with sexism and double standards within the school. Vivian draws inspiration from her mother’s youth and starts an anonymous zine called Moxie, which starts a club and a school revolution. Although it is not based on a real story, it is based on a book with the same name.
Netflix’s new film, ‘Moxie,’ is directed by Amy Poehler
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Moxie it is not only directed by Amy Poehler, but it is also produced by her. In fact, his company, Paper Kite Productions, produces the film. Poehler is also in the film. She plays Vivian’s mother, Lisa, who is a single and very relaxed mother. Vivian doesn’t know much about Lisa’s high school experience, but she finally learns that her mother was an avowed feminist. She led many protests and kept many memories.
In the trunk of Lisa’s school, Vivian finds several items from the band riot grrrl, such as the group Bikini Kill. The riot grrrl movement was a subgenre of feminist punk rock music that catered to feminists in the 90s and focused heavily on the region in which this film takes place. He plays an important role in the film because it drives Vivian’s activism and is a main reason that she creates Moxie. He also plays a role in the book, on which this film is based.
The film is actually based on a 2017 book
Moxie was originally a novel written in 2017 by Jennifer Mathieu. Although she did not write the script for the film – normally this is not how adaptations work with the authors – it does not appear that she was kept in the dark. Mathieu and Poehler appeared in The Kelly Clarkson Show on March 5 and the two talked about the project.
Mathieu still teaches English in high school as well as being an author and she shared that she doesn’t force her books on children, but they still find out about them and are looking forward to Moxie.
“I don’t want them to think I’m weird, like, ‘Watch this movie, read this book,'” she said. “My main focus, when I’m with them, is to connect with them as a teacher.”
In 2018, Mathieu talked to Novel2Screen about how long it took him to write Moxie and how timely it was. He left after Donald Trump was elected president and around the time the #MeToo movement started. Mathieu said that although, like all books, it took the “pace of death”, she wrote it before Hillary Clinton was in the vote in 2016. Even though she wrote it thinking the election would go the other way, it seemed very … needed.
“I think Moxie it came at a particularly important time for women and during the fight for women’s rights, which is useful in terms of sales, I suppose, ”she said. “But the truth is that the fight for women’s rights is always critical, and even if Hillary won, that would not mean that we would have no need for feminism.”
Many of the unfortunate things in the book – and in the film – that Jennifer Mathieu experienced in real life
As for what inspired Mathieu when writing the book, and why he will always be timely, she told Novel2Screen that, unfortunately, she has had many of the bad experiences the girls have gone through.
“Unfortunately, everything that happens in Moxie it happened to me, to a friend, or is it something that I observed in a real school setting as a teacher, ”said Mathieu. “Just read the dedication to Moxie to find out what happened to me when I was a teenager in high school. “
She is referring to the 12th grade teacher who called her “feminazi”. Although times have changed since the 1990s, she said, many injustices and sexist actions against girls have not changed.
On The Kelly Clarkson Show, Mathieu also shared that there were two words that she kept in mind while writing Moxie: joy and liberation.
“For me, this is what feminism is,” she said. “It’s about freeing ourselves, all of us – men, women, however, you identify yourself – freeing yourself to be your full, complete and true self. And forgetting strange constructions like boys can’t cry or girls have to be like that. When we liberate humans to be fully human, we all benefit, I think. And this is really, for me, the core of what feminism is. “
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