A Review on Moxie and How The New Age of Zines Are Taking Over The Media

Zines have been around for a long time, but to Gen Z, these publications have become an outlet for creative individuals to collectively put one another on the road to their desired career paths. Both online and print zines started to exponentially grow in popularity from the end of 2019 through to 2020. Each of these zines have been able to foster their own unique sense of community, whilst creating a platform for creative people to express themselves and mutually grow - personally and professionally.

With this rising popularity, the media has started to recognize zines and the journeys of Gen Z youth. This is where Moxie, a film by Amy Poehler comes into play. Instead of successfully executing a well written storyline, Moxie constitutes an embarrassing attempt at becoming a feminist film. Moxie is based on the novel by Jennifer Mathieu, and it doesn’t come as any surprise that there were significant changes to the story, from the novel to the movie.  

Moxie is about a 16 year-old high school student named Vivian, who decides to start an anonymous zine to bring attention to the sexism at her school. She becomes inspired by her mother’s rebellious past, as well as a new student who seemingly has been the only one to stand up against the sexist predators at their high school. Throughout the movie, Vivian slowly becomes more confident and befriends other girls at her school, who are also tired of the harassment that is being pushed under the rug by the other students, faculty, and administration. In theory, this sounds like a good, influential film for young people to watch and be exposed to. However, director Poehler and screenplay writers Tamara Chestna and Dylan Meyer utterly fail to execute a well thought out narrative.  

A Buzzfeed article written by Zoraida Córdova points out the differences between the movie and the novel, and she notes one dissimilarity in particular... In the film, as the relationship between Vivian and Seth starts to grow, their feelings for each other become evident. One night, Seth decides to take Vivian to one of his favorite skate spots, where he likes to spend his time by himself. While watching this scene, it seems odd that one of his favorite spots is a funeral home; this only gets more confusing when Vivian and Seth somehow get into the building and start walking around, enjoying themselves. This scene creates a multitude of confusing feelings for the audience to take in, because you’re not sure whether there is some sort of romantic tension in the air, while the two characters are enjoying themselves in a place usually filled with sorrowful emotions. The scene cuts to a shot of a casket, and the camera slowly moves in closer, eventually reaching an aerial view of it. The casket is open and we see Vivian and Seth squeezed in together, face to face, engaged in some intense conversation. It’s important to remember that this scene was absent in the original novel, so that begs the question; who in their right mind thought this scene was a good idea, especially at the film’s midpoint, a moment which is supposed to create a shift in the character’s journey, not make the audience so uncomfortable that they immediately want to turn off their screen. This scene was not influential at all, and definitely could’ve been done without.

Moxie tries so hard to be the new progressive feminist film for the younger generation, but barely makes any successful progress with the issues they bring up. How can you strive to produce a transformational, representative, progressive feminist film when your protagonist is a straight, cis-gendered, white girl who allows the POC girls around her to take fault for her actions. As a viewer, you can’t really find yourself rooting for Vivian, because of her lack of character development. She remains the same throughout the film, and you “get a privileged white girl who thinks that feminism is just putting on a leather jacket, screaming about dismantling the patriarchy over salad and listening to ‘Rebel Girl’ on the daily”, says Sydney Ling. 

Sydney Ling has actually gone through the journey of starting her own magazine that advocates for social issues in an effective way. Ling is a 14-year-old high school student from the Bay Area, California, and is the Editor-in-Chief for Rice & Spice Mag which she started in the summer of 2020. Ling remarks; “All of the diverse characters, from the Afro-Latina girl, to the Asian girl, to the trans girl, to the girl with a disability, are tokenized. Moxie tries to be inclusive but its attempt turned out to be mere check-off-the-boxes. Everything is too surface level”. What is the point of including such characters if you don’t put in the effort to make your inclusion actually feel genuine, instead of a marketing tactic. It isn’t surprising to later find out that the writers of Moxie are both white women. How can you tell a dynamic story when there is a lack of real inclusion and understanding?

Sydney Ling states; “Moxie just... doesn't have enough Moxie”, proceeding to argue that, “especially as a generation, Gen Z has long been self aware of all these issues, and from a young age we've advocated for rights and issues. So do we really need the feminist lessons from Moxie? Or is Moxie a feminist movie for a generation that doesn't need it?”