Tag: Alice Guy Blache

Women Directors Week: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Women Directors Theme Week here.

Women Directors Week The Roundup

Women with a Camera: How Women Directors Can Change the Cinematic Landscape by Emanuela Betti

What I saw… was the problem women have faced for centuries: the popularity of woman as art subject, not as creator. What critics and award judges seem to love are not so much women’s stories, but women’s stories told by men. Stories in which women’s agency is strictly and safely in the hands of a male auteurs. … We need more women filmmakers — not as a way to fill quotas, but because women’s stories are different, unique, and need to be told.

Why Eve’s Bayou Is a Great American Art Film by Amirah Mercer

The story of a family burdened by salacious and supernatural secrets in 1962 Louisiana, the movie has become one of the finer American films in the Southern gothic tradition; but with a Black director and an all-Black cast, Eve’s Bayou has been unceremoniously booted from its deserving recognition as the fantastic, moody art film it is.

Leigh Janiak’s Honeymoon as Feminist Horror by Dawn Keetley

The film thus brilliantly puts the everyday (marriage) on a continuum with the horrifying (possession?), connecting the problem of Bea’s troubled self-expression and containment, now that she’s married, to the later seemingly supernatural plot. … Are the seemingly supernatural elements of the plot symbolic of Bea’s struggles with intimacy and the weighty expectations of married domestic life (sex, cooking, and reproduction)? Janiak’s expert writing and directing definitely leaves open this possible subtext of the film…

When Love Looks Like Me: How Gina Prince-Bythewood Brought Real Love to the Big Screen by Shannon Miller

Gina Prince-Bythewood’s choice to center these themes around a young Black couple shouldn’t feel as revolutionary as it does. But when you consider that “universal” is too often conflated with “white,” Love & Basketball feels like such a turning point in the romance genre. It was certainly a turning point for me because, for a moment, Black love and romance, as told by Hollywood, weren’t mutually exclusive.

Sofia Coppola as Auteur: Historical Femininity and Agency in Marie Antoinette by Marlana Eck

Sofia Coppola’s film conveys, to me, a range of feminist concerns through history. Concerns of how much agency, even in a culture of affluence, women can wield given that so much of women’s lives are dictated by the structures of patriarchy.

The Gender Trap and Women Directors by Jenna Ricker

But, when was the last time ANYONE sat down to write a story, or direct a project and asked themselves — Is this story masculine or feminine? Exactly none, I suspect. … Storytellers tell stories, audiences engage, the formula is quite simple. But, it only works one way — male filmmakers are able to make any film they want without biased-loaded gender questions, whereas women filmmakers always face more scrutiny and criticism.

Individuality in Lucia Puenzo’s XXY, The Fish Child, and The German Doctor by Sara Century

In the end, it is this focus on individuality that is the most striking common theme of Lucia Puenzo’s works. Each of her characters undergoes intense scrutiny from outside forces, be it Alex in ‘XXY’ for their gender, Lala in ‘The Fish Child’ for her infatuation with Ailin, or Lilith from ‘The German Doctor,’ who is quite literally forced into a physical transformation by a Nazi.

Andrea Arnold: A Voice for the Working Class Women of Britain by Sophie Hall

British director/screenwriter Andrea Arnold has three short films and three feature films under her belt, and four out of six of those center on working class people. … [The characters in Fish Tank, Wasp, Red Road, and Wuthering Heights] venture off away from the preconceived notions they have been given, away from the stereotypes forced upon them, and the boxes society has trapped them in.

Susanne Bier’s Living, Breathing Body of Work by Sonia Lupher

Women consistently make good films around the world, even if we have to look outside Hollywood to find them. Susanne Bier is one powerful example. Her vivid, probing explorations into family dynamics and tenuous relationships are fiercely suggestive marks of a female auteur that deserves recognition.

No Apologies: The Ambition of Gillian Armstrong and My Brilliant Career by Rebecca Hirsch Garcia

However, Armstrong also doesn’t mock Sybylla’s ambition or treat it as a joke. In Armstrong’s world, the fact that Sybylla has desires and wants outside of marriage and men is treated seriously because Sybylla takes it seriously. She never needs to prove herself worthy enough for her desires. … [She is] a woman who bravely acts according to her own desires, someone willing to risk everything in order to have what she wants and who recognizes that men and romance are not the sum total of her world.

OMG a Vagina: The Struggle for Artistic The Struggle for Feminine Artistic Integrity in Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie by Horrorella

Carrie is a terrifying and compelling story, but there is certainly something to be gained and perhaps a certain truth to be found in watching the pain of her journey into womanhood as told by a woman director. … But even in the face of these small victories, we have to wonder how the film would have been different had Peirce been allowed to tell this story without being inhibited by the fear and discomfort of the male voices around her.

Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark: Busting Stereotypes and Drawing Blood by Lee Jutton

Both brutally violent and shockingly sexy, Near Dark’s influence can be felt nearly thirty years later on a new crop of unusual vampire dramas that simultaneously embrace and reject the conventions of the genre. … Yet among all these films about outsiders, Near Dark will always have a special place in my heart for being the one to show me that as a filmmaker, I was not alone in the world after all.

Fangirls, It’s Time to #AskForMore by Alyssa Franke

In the battle to address the staggering gender gap in women directing for film and television, there is one huge untapped resource — the passion and organizing power of fangirls.

Euzhan Palcy’s A Dry White Season: Black Lives in a White Season by Shara D. Taylor

It is doubtful that anyone else could have made A Dry White Season as poignantly relevant as Euzhan Palcy did. Her eye for the upending effects of apartheid on Black families brings their grievances to bear. … The meaning behind Palcy’s work resounds clearly: Black lives matter in 1976 South Africa as they do in 2016 America.

Why Desperately Seeking Susan Is One of My Favorite Films by Alex Kittle

The character was created to be an icon, a model for Roberta and other women like her, an image to hold in our heads of what life could be like if we just unleashed our inner pop star. But she’s also real enough that it feels like you might spot her in a hip nightclub, dancing uninhibited and having more fun than anyone else there just because she’s being herself.

Movie You Need to Be Talking About: Advantageous by Candice Frederick

Directed and co-written by Jennifer Phang, Advantageous is a surprisingly touching and purposeful film that revitalizes certain elements of the sci-fi genre while presenting two powerful voices in women filmmakers: Jennifer Phang and Jacqueline Kim.

Concussion: When Queer Marriage in the Suburbs Isn’t Enough by Ren Jender

The queer women we see in sexual situations in Concussion are not cut from the same Playboy-ready cloth as the two women in Blue is the Warmest Color: one client is fat, another is an obvious real-life survivor of breast cancer and some of her clients, like Eleanor herself, are nowhere near their 20s anymore.

I’m a Lilly – And You’re Probably One Too: All Women Face Gender Discrimination by Rachel Feldman

Another obstacle to getting Ledbetter made is the industry’s perception of my value as the film’s director. There are certainly a handful of women directors whose identities are well known, but generally, even colleagues in our industry, when asked, can only name a handful of female directors. Of course, there are thousands of amazingly talented women directing; in fact there are 1,350 experienced women directors in our Guild, but for the vast majority of us our credits are devalued and we struggle to be seen and heard – just like Lilly.

Making a Murderer, Fantastic Lies, and the Uneasy Exculpation Narratives by Women Directors by Eva Phillips

What is most remarkable and perhaps most subversively compelling about both ‘Making a Murderer’ and ‘Fantastic Lies,’ and about the intentions and directorial choices of their respective creators, is that neither documentary endeavor chronicles the sagas of particularly defensible — or even, to some, at all likable — men.

Lena Dunham and the Creator’s “Less-Than-Perfect” Body On-Screen by Sarah Halle Corey

Every time someone calls to question the fact that Lena Dunham parades her rolls of fat in front of her audience, we need to examine why they’re questioning it. Is it because they’re wondering how it serves the narrative of ‘Girls’? Or is it because they’re balking at “less-than-perfection” (according to normative societal conventions) in the female form?

Female Becomingness Through Maya Deren’s Lens in Meshes of the Afternoon by Allie Gemmill

Her most famous work, Meshes of the Afternoon becomes, in this way, a reading of a woman working with and against herself through splitting into multiple iterations of herself. Most importantly, the film unpacks the notion that not only is the dream-landscape of a woman complex, it is bound tightly to her, defining who she is and guiding her constantly through the world like a compass.

Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy: Heartbreak in a Panning Shot by ThoughtPusher

Through the course of the film, Kelly Reichardt’s pacing is so deliberate that even the most ordinary moments seem intensely significant. Reichardt’s framing traps Wendy in shots as much as her broken-down car and lack of money trap her in the town.

Sofia Coppola and The Silent Woman by Paulette Reynolds

Many films touch upon the theme of female isolation, but I remain fascinated with Sofia Coppola’s three major cinematic creations that explore the world of The Silent Woman: The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, and Marie Antoinette (2006). Each film delves into this enigma, forming a multifaceted frame of reference for a shared understanding.

The Anti-Celebrity Cinema of Mary Harron: I Shot Andy Warhol, The Notorious Bettie Page, and The Anna Nicole Story by Elizabeth Kiy

I’ve always thought Mary Harron’s work was the perfect example of why we need female directors. I think the films she produces provide a perspective we would never see in a world unilaterally controlled by male filmmakers. Harron appears to specialize in off-beat character studies of the types of people a male director may not gravitate towards, nor treat with appropriate gravitas. She treats us to humanizing takes on sex workers and sex symbols, angry lesbians and radical feminism and makes them hard to turn away from.

How Women Directors Turn Narrative on Its Head by Laura Power

Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl), Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know), and the women directors of Jane the Virgin are infusing elements of whimsy into their work in strikingly different ways, but to similar effect. The styles they’re using affect the audience’s relationship with their stories and with the characters themselves by giving the viewer an insight that traditional narratives don’t provide.

Wadjda: Empowering Voices and Challenging Patriarchy by Sarah Mason

Haifaa al-Mansour casts an eye onto the complexity of navigating an autocratic patriarchal society in Wadjda. This bold voice from Saudi Arabia continues to empower voices globally.

Mary Harron’s American Psycho: Rogue Feminism by Dr. Stefan Sereda

American Psycho fails the Bechdel Test. … The script, co-written by Guinevere Turner and Mary Harron, eschews any appeal to women’s empowerment. … When the leading man isn’t laughing at remarks from serial killers about decapitating girls, he’s coming after sex workers with chainsaws (at least in his head). Yet American Psycho espouses a feminist perspective that fillets the values held by capitalist men.

21 Short Films by Women Directors by Film School Shorts

For Women’s History Month, we’ve put together a playlist of 21 of those films for your viewing pleasure. As you’ll see, no two of these shorts are alike. They deal with topics like autism, racism, sexism, losing a loved one and trying to fit in and find yourself at any age.

Evolution in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Chicken With Plums by Colleen Clemens

In a similar way to Marji (Persepolis), Nasser (Chicken with Plums) must be sent far away to have his journey of becoming. There is something in him — talent — that requires he must go beyond his home. But whereas in Marji’s case she must go away to protect herself, Nasser must go away so he can grow, get bigger and fuller and richer.

Vintage Viewing: Alice Guy-Blaché, Gender-Bending Pioneer by Brigit McCone

When was the last time we watched vintage female-authored films and discussed their art or meaning? Bitch Flicks presents Vintage Viewing — a monthly feature for viewing and discussing the films of cinema’s female pioneers. Where better to start than history’s first film director, Alice Guy-Blaché?

Vintage Viewing: Alice Guy-Blaché, Gender-Bending Pioneer

When was the last time we watched vintage female-authored films and discussed their art or meaning? Bitch Flicks presents Vintage Viewing — a monthly feature for viewing and discussing the films of cinema’s female pioneers. Where better to start than history’s first film director, Alice Guy-Blaché?

Alice Guy-Blaché

This repost written by Brigit McCone appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors and Vintage Viewing, our series exploring the work of women filmmaking pioneers..

When discussing opportunities for women and minorities created by new media, Kathleen Wallace highlighted the explosion of female directors at the birth of cinema, later squeezed out by the studio system. The list of vintage female directors is long, varied, and multinational. Yet, theorists like Laura Mulvey define feminist cinema by its resistance to the Male Gaze™, virtually ignoring the precedent of the female gaze. When was the last time we watched vintage female-authored films and discussed their art or meaning? Where better to start than history’s first fiction film director, Alice Guy-Blaché?

Alice Guy-Blaché may be compared to Ada Lovelace, who published the original computer program and  first predicted the wider applications of computing. Like Lovelace, Guy-Blaché was the pioneer who envisioned the future of her field. Like Lovelace, her legacy is only now being reappraised after decades of neglect. Though Guy-Blaché’s memoirs indicate she may have directed the world’s first fiction film, her massive output, estimated at almost 1,000 films, is really more remarkable for its overall grasp of film’s potential, both technical (hand-painting color film, pioneering the close-up, synchronized sound, and special effects such as superimposition) and in establishing tropes from melodrama to comedy to action to suspense.

Click here to watch an excellent youtube documentary.

Boss.

Alfred Hitchcock once cited two thrilling early influences: D. W. Griffith and Alice Guy-Blaché. But Guy-Blaché wasn’t simply an influential pioneer who happened to be female; she repeatedly challenged gender stereotypes in her work. Though sexologist John Money only coined the concept of a “gender role” in 1955, Alice Guy-Blaché’s cross-dressing films were interrogating gender’s socially constructed nature 50 years earlier.

 Pierrette’s Escapades – 1900

 “We have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic.” – Audre Lorde

Pierrette’s Escapades is one of the hand-painted demonstration films that Alice Guy-Blaché produced for Gaumont in France, before her move to America. This film is particularly interesting for probably containing cinema’s first lesbian kiss. Guy-Blaché recognized the power of representation, not only for queer visibility, but with 1912’s affirmative Jewish narrative A Man’s A Man, and cinema’s first Black cast in that same year’s A Fool and His Money, a story of hustling and hard luck inspired by blues narratives. Within a lushly tinted, escapist sensuality, the women of Pierrette’s Escapades play roles from anarchic Commedia dell’Arte and carnival traditions. As such, their flirtations and kisses can be explained by the established relationships between these stock characters, but Guy-Blaché has taken conventionally heterosexual love scenes and reimagined them with an all-female cast.

The femme Pierrette, in her throbbing pink dress, resembles a coquettish Columbine, the trickster wife of sad clown Pierrot, and mistress of witty Harlequin (the 16th century’s Bugs Bunny). As rivals, Harlequin and Pierrot represent the two faces of love, its triumphs and disappointments. The film opens with Pierrette reveling in her costume and powdering herself for Harlequin. A figure sidles into frame, in the traditional costume of Pierrot. Pierrot’s baggy clothes and white-powdered face make it difficult to identify the figure’s sex, who clumsily moves to embrace Pierrette, while she dodges impatiently, before Pierrot steals a kiss on her bare shoulder. Pierrette angrily orders her husband/wife to bed and primps for Harlequin. In the skintight, checkered costume and hat that identify the character, Harlequin is unmistakably feminine. In contrast to her coerced affection with Pierrot, Pierrette blossoms with female Harlequin, swooning and spinning before melting into her arms. Guy-Blaché cuts the film at the moment of their kiss, leaving it open-ended and suggestive.

Pierrette’s low-cut bodice and the raising of her skirts mark this film as teasingly erotic for the time. Records indicate that Guy-Blaché filmed cinema’s first striptease three years before Pierrette’s Escapades. Since the forced hypersexuality of women on film has become an expression of male control, modern feminists often read such images as objectifying. It’s worth remembering that a female director, Lois Weber, filmed the first female full-frontal, while Mae West provoked the paternalist Hays Code with her sexual frankness. The eroticism of Pierrette’s Escapades is a reminder of the liberating power of playful, sexual self-representation. Like the suffragettes, who wore lipstick as a symbol of defiance, it challenges sexless definitions of feminist orthodoxy. Isn’t viewing female bodies only from the imaginary perspective of an objectifying Male Gaze™ itself oppressive? Soundtrack suggestion: Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun“  [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeByzgJFLMs”]

Walk in the sun 

 The Consequences of Feminism – 1906

“Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell.” – Betty Friedan

Alice Guy-Blaché’s work regularly explored the status of women. She moulded Vinnie Burns into cinema’s first action heroine, and depicted women in traditionally male professions such as magicians and dog-trainers. In 1912’s Making an American, “Ivan Orloff and his unhappy wife” represent a caricature of East-European cultures of wife-beating – Orloff’s wife is yoked to his wagon as a beast of burden. When the couple emigrate to America, Guy-Blaché shows Americans constantly intervening to correct Orloff’s treatment of his wife, presenting resistance to domestic abuse as an American value  fundamental to the “Land of the Free.” 1914’s The Lure was a sympathetic examination of the forces pressuring women into prostitution. Nevertheless, many feminist viewers struggle with Guy-Blaché’s 1906 farce, The Consequences of Feminism, an apparently reactionary nightmare in which feminism creates a world of “sissified” men, who rebel by reclaiming their clubhouse and toasting the restoration of patriarchy. Discussing Pamela Green’s Guy-Blaché documentary Be Natural, Kristen Lopez concludes this film depicts “the bad side” of feminism, before apologetically suggesting “the very idea that a woman was exploring social issues in a time when women weren’t allowed to vote is astounding”. Is this really all that can be said? That it’s cool to see a woman having enough of a voice to argue against women having more of a voice?

The Consequences of Feminism does not depict a society on the verge of collapse, it depicts  straightforward role reversal. In her lost 1912 film In The Year 2000, Guy-Blaché also reverses gender roles, with Darwin Karr playing the objectified “Ravishing Robert”. This anticipates later female authors who used sci-fi to interrogate gender, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman with 1915’s Herland, or Ursula LeGuin with 1969 Hugo and Nebula prize-winner The Left Hand of Darkness (off topic: am I the only one shipping the Wachowski siblings to adapt?). Compare “Turnabout Intruder,” the genuinely reactionary 1969 finale of the original Star Trek series, which used role reversal to attempt to discredit second-wave feminism. In “Turnabout Intruder,” Dr. Janice Lester voices feminist grievances: “your world of starship captains doesn’t admit women,” before swapping bodies with Captain Kirk and attempting to command. Kirk shows calm authority in Lester’s body, while Lester is emotionally incapable of handling Kirk’s command and “red-faced with hysteria.” As “Turnabout Intruder” shows, discrediting feminism through role reversal requires a demonstration that women are incapable of performing male roles.

The Consequences of Feminism, by contrast, uses a farcical depiction of feminist rule to demonstrate that, while women thrive in male roles, men could not endure Friedan’s “sexual sell” of trading desirability for loss of power. Male viewers are confronted with a vision of themselves as passive “Ravishing Roberts” who must feign sexual resistance to preserve their reputation, laboring in domestic servitude while women supervise at their leisure. Society’s devaluing of domestic labor is shown by the women ridiculing their clubhouse’s sole washerman and pelting him with linens. If male viewers are relieved by the ending, in which a father revolts against a woman who disowns her child, and leads the men in storming the women’s clubhouse, they must acknowledge that collective rebellion against oppressive female roles is justified. Guy-Blaché’s tongue-in-cheek film is the opposite of stereotypical, humorless feminism, but it demolishes the illusory power of “feminine mystique” just as effectively, as relevant for today’s MRA as for the chivalry of Guy-Blaché’s own era. Soundtrack suggestion: Missy Elliott, “Work It”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIPMbkHQO3w”]

Put my thang down, flip it and reverse it 

 Algie The Miner – 1912

“We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” – Gloria Steinem

 As a subversive populist, Guy-Blaché was a master of the bait-n-switch. In 1913’s Officer Henderson, she offers audiences macho police officers dressing as women to catch crooks, the joke being the ridiculous juxtaposition of their fighting skills and feminine image. Then, at the end of the film, Guy-Blaché substitutes the police officer with his wife, who reveals equal skill in tackling the crook. Officers watch and laugh at their supposed crony brawling in drag, but Guy-Blaché’s real joke is revealed to be on the men themselves, for assuming that women are incapable of violence or self-defense.

Algie the Miner‘s IMDb entry lists Guy-Blaché as “directing supervisor” and producer to Edward Warren’s director, at a time when the distinction between producer and director was ill-defined. Her fingerprints are all over the film, however, which she’s often credited as directing. Algie the Miner offers the joke of a flamboyant “sissy” man, contractually obliged by his future father-in-law to “prove himself a man” in rugged Western pursuits, but this is only the bait-n-switch for Guy-Blaché’s critique of toxic masculinity and homophobia. Rugged pioneer Big Jim gives Algie directions to a frontier town and Algie kisses him in gratitude, leading to an explosion of violent insecurity from Jim. After discovering how non-threateningly puny Algie’s gun is, Jim thaws and agrees to become his mentor in manhood, settling into a cohabiting relationship whose separate beds recall Sesame Street‘s Bert and Ernie. Despite Algie’s female fiancé/beard, Algie the Miner is celebrated as a milestone in the history of gay cinema. When shown his separate bed in Big Jim’s cabin, Algie appears to lean into Jim suggestively before being rebuffed, giving grounds to view him as bisexual. As such, Algie’s final empowerment is gay-affirmative, as well as vindicating feminine values.

Though the rugged pioneers howl with laughter and ridicule Algie’s tiny gun, his willingness to kiss larger men demonstrates an effortless physical courage greater than that of his sexually insecure cowboy hosts, anticipating Marvel’s Rawhide Kid. Over the course of their relationship, Big Jim will teach Algie manly skills, but Algie will rescue Jim from ruinous machismo, nursing the alcoholic through his delirium tremens, saving Jim’s life from robbers and bravely defying the macho peers who pressure Jim to drink. Algie’s resistance to peer pressure, as well as his self-sacrificing nurturing instinct, vindicate feminine courage in the face of macho weakness. When Algie plans to return and claim his bride, Jim is visibly downcast until offered the chance to accompany him. Every Big Jim needs an Algie. The film ends with Algie “proving himself a man” by forcing his future father-in-law to bless his marriage at gunpoint. Closing with the father-in-law’s terror, the viewer must question whether such stereotypical masculinity is truly superior. In all, Alice Guy-Blaché’s Algie the Miner offers cinema’s most affirmative portrait of male femininity until Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot. Soundtrack suggestion: Hole, “Be A Man”

 [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCYYa0WxLXA”]

I’m potent, yeah 

Brigit McCone may now officially be an Alice Guy fangirl (Guynocentric?) She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and making bad puns.

Vintage Viewing: Alice Guy, Gender-Bending Pioneer

‘Bitch Flicks’ presents Vintage Viewing – a monthly feature for viewing and discussing the films of cinema’s female pioneers. Where better to start than history’s first film director, Alice Guy?

Alice Guy: she's the man
Alice Guy: she’s the man

Written by Brigit McCone, this post is part of Vintage Viewing, our series exploring the work of women filmmaking pioneers.

When discussing opportunities for women and minorities created by new media, Kathleen Wallace highlighted the explosion of female directors at the birth of cinema, later squeezed out by the studio system. The list of vintage female directors is long, varied, and multinational. Yet, theorists like Laura Mulvey define feminist cinema by its resistance to the Male Gaze™, virtually ignoring the precedent of the female gaze. When was the last time we watched vintage female-authored films and discussed their art or meaning? Bitch Flicks presents Vintage Viewing – a monthly feature for viewing and discussing the films of cinema’s female pioneers. Where better to start than history’s first film director, Alice Guy?

Alice Guy may be compared to Ada Lovelace, who published the original computer program and  first predicted the wider applications of computing. Like Lovelace, Guy was the pioneer who envisioned the future of her field. Like Lovelace, her legacy is only now being reappraised after decades of neglect. Though Guy’s memoirs indicate she may have directed the world’s first fiction film, her massive output, estimated at almost 1,000 films, is really more remarkable for its overall grasp of film’s potential, both technical (hand-painting color film, pioneering the close-up, synchronized sound, and special effects such as superimposition) and in establishing tropes from melodrama to comedy to action to suspense.

Click here to watch an excellent youtube documentary.

Boss.
Boss.

 

Alfred Hitchcock once cited two thrilling early influences: D. W. Griffith and Alice Guy. But Guy wasn’t simply an influential pioneer who happened to be female; she repeatedly challenged gender stereotypes in her work. Though sexologist John Money only coined the concept of a “gender role” in 1955, Alice Guy’s cross-dressing films were interrogating gender’s socially constructed nature 50 years earlier.

 Pierrette’s Escapades – 1900

 “We have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic.” – Audre Lorde

Pierrette’s Escapades is one of the hand-painted demonstration films that Alice Guy produced for Gaumont in France, before her move to America. This film is particularly interesting for probably containing cinema’s first lesbian kiss. Guy recognized the power of representation, not only for queer visibility, but with 1912’s affirmative Jewish narrative A Man’s A Man, and cinema’s first Black cast in that same year’s A Fool and His Money, a story of hustling and hard luck inspired by blues narratives. Within a lushly tinted, escapist sensuality, the women of Pierrette’s Escapades play roles from anarchic Commedia dell’Arte and carnival traditions. As such, their flirtations and kisses can be explained by the established relationships between these stock characters, but Guy has taken conventionally heterosexual love scenes and reimagined them with an all-female cast.

The femme Pierrette, in her throbbing pink dress, resembles a coquettish Columbine, the trickster wife of sad clown Pierrot, and mistress of witty Harlequin (the 16th century’s Bugs Bunny). As rivals, Harlequin and Pierrot represent the two faces of love, its triumphs and disappointments. The film opens with Pierrette reveling in her costume and powdering herself for Harlequin. A figure sidles into frame, in the traditional costume of Pierrot. Pierrot’s baggy clothes and white-powdered face make it difficult to identify the figure’s sex, who clumsily moves to embrace Pierrette, while she dodges impatiently, before Pierrot steals a kiss on her bare shoulder. Pierrette angrily orders her husband/wife to bed and primps for Harlequin. In the skintight, checkered costume and hat that identify the character, Harlequin is unmistakably feminine. In contrast to her coerced affection with Pierrot, Pierrette blossoms with female Harlequin, swooning and spinning before melting into her arms. Guy cuts the film at the moment of their kiss, leaving it open-ended and suggestive.

Pierrette’s low-cut bodice and the raising of her skirts mark this film as teasingly erotic for the time. Records indicate that Guy filmed cinema’s first striptease three years before Pierrette’s Escapades. Since the forced hypersexuality of women on film has become an expression of male control, modern feminists often read such images as objectifying. It’s worth remembering that a female director, Lois Weber, filmed the first female full-frontal, while Mae West provoked the paternalist Hays Code with her sexual frankness. The eroticism of Pierrette’s Escapades is a reminder of the liberating power of playful, sexual self-representation. Like the suffragettes, who wore lipstick as a symbol of defiance, it challenges sexless definitions of feminist orthodoxy. Isn’t viewing female bodies only from the imaginary perspective of an objectifying Male Gaze™ itself oppressive? Soundtrack suggestion: Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun“  [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeByzgJFLMs”]

Walk in the sun 

 The Consequences of Feminism – 1906

“Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell.” – Betty Friedan

Alice Guy’s work regularly explored the status of women. She moulded Vinnie Burns into cinema’s first action heroine, and depicted women in traditionally male professions such as magicians and dog-trainers. In 1912’s Making an American, “Ivan Orloff and his unhappy wife” represent a caricature of East-European cultures of wife-beating – Orloff’s wife is yoked to his wagon as a beast of burden. When the couple emigrate to America, Guy shows Americans constantly intervening to correct Orloff’s treatment of his wife, presenting resistance to domestic abuse as an American value  fundamental to the “Land of the Free.” 1914’s The Lure was a sympathetic examination of the forces pressuring women into prostitution. Nevertheless, many feminist viewers struggle with Guy’s 1906 farce, The Consequences of Feminism, an apparently reactionary nightmare in which feminism creates a world of “sissified” men, who rebel by reclaiming their clubhouse and toasting the restoration of patriarchy. Discussing Pamela Green’s Guy documentary Be Natural, Kristen Lopez concludes this film depicts “the bad side” of feminism, before apologetically suggesting “the very idea that a woman was exploring social issues in a time when women weren’t allowed to vote is astounding”. Is this really all that can be said? That it’s cool to see a woman having enough of a voice to argue against women having more of a voice?

The Consequences of Feminism does not depict a society on the verge of collapse, it depicts  straightforward role reversal. In her lost 1912 film In The Year 2000, Guy also reverses gender roles, with Darwin Karr playing the objectified “Ravishing Robert”. This anticipates later female authors who used sci-fi to interrogate gender, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman with 1915’s Herland, or Ursula LeGuin with 1969 Hugo and Nebula prize-winner The Left Hand of Darkness (off topic: am I the only one shipping the Wachowski siblings to adapt?). Compare “Turnabout Intruder,” the genuinely reactionary 1969 finale of the original Star Trek series, which used role reversal to attempt to discredit second-wave feminism. In “Turnabout Intruder,” Dr. Janice Lester voices feminist grievances: “your world of starship captains doesn’t admit women,” before swapping bodies with Captain Kirk and attempting to command. Kirk shows calm authority in Lester’s body, while Lester is emotionally incapable of handling Kirk’s command and “red-faced with hysteria.” As “Turnabout Intruder” shows, discrediting feminism through role reversal requires a demonstration that women are incapable of performing male roles.

The Consequences of Feminism, by contrast, uses a farcical depiction of feminist rule to demonstrate that, while women thrive in male roles, men could not endure Friedan’s “sexual sell” of trading desirability for loss of power. Male viewers are confronted with a vision of themselves as passive “Ravishing Roberts” who must feign sexual resistance to preserve their reputation, laboring in domestic servitude while women supervise at their leisure. Society’s devaluing of domestic labor is shown by the women ridiculing their clubhouse’s sole washerman and pelting him with linens. If male viewers are relieved by the ending, in which a father revolts against a woman who disowns her child, and leads the men in storming the women’s clubhouse, they must acknowledge that collective rebellion against oppressive female roles is justified. Guy’s tongue-in-cheek film is the opposite of stereotypical, humorless feminism, but it demolishes the illusory power of “feminine mystique” just as effectively, as relevant for today’s MRA as for the chivalry of Guy’s own era. Soundtrack suggestion: Missy Elliott, “Work It”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIPMbkHQO3w”]

Put my thang down, flip it and reverse it 

 Algie The Miner – 1912

“We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” – Gloria Steinem

 As a subversive populist, Guy was a master of the bait-n-switch. In 1913’s Officer Henderson, she offers audiences macho police officers dressing as women to catch crooks, the joke being the ridiculous juxtaposition of their fighting skills and feminine image. Then, at the end of the film, Guy substitutes the police officer with his wife, who reveals equal skill in tackling the crook. Officers watch and laugh at their supposed crony brawling in drag, but Guy’s real joke is revealed to be on the men themselves, for assuming that women are incapable of violence or self-defense.

Algie the Miner‘s IMDb entry lists Guy as “directing supervisor” and producer to Edward Warren’s director, at a time when the distinction between producer and director was ill-defined. Her fingerprints are all over the film, however, which she’s often credited as directing. Algie the Miner offers the joke of a flamboyant “sissy” man, contractually obliged by his future father-in-law to “prove himself a man” in rugged Western pursuits, but this is only the bait-n-switch for Guy’s critique of toxic masculinity and homophobia. Rugged pioneer Big Jim gives Algie directions to a frontier town and Algie kisses him in gratitude, leading to an explosion of violent insecurity from Jim. After discovering how non-threateningly puny Algie’s gun is, Jim thaws and agrees to become his mentor in manhood, settling into a cohabiting relationship whose separate beds recall Sesame Street‘s Bert and Ernie. Despite Algie’s female fiancé/beard, Algie the Miner is celebrated as a milestone in the history of gay cinema. When shown his separate bed in Big Jim’s cabin, Algie appears to lean into Jim suggestively before being rebuffed, giving grounds to view him as bisexual. As such, Algie’s final empowerment is gay-affirmative, as well as vindicating feminine values.

Though the rugged pioneers howl with laughter and ridicule Algie’s tiny gun, his willingness to kiss larger men demonstrates an effortless physical courage greater than that of his sexually insecure cowboy hosts, anticipating Marvel’s Rawhide Kid. Over the course of their relationship, Big Jim will teach Algie manly skills, but Algie will rescue Jim from ruinous machismo, nursing the alcoholic through his delirium tremens, saving Jim’s life from robbers and bravely defying the macho peers who pressure Jim to drink. Algie’s resistance to peer pressure, as well as his self-sacrificing nurturing instinct, vindicate feminine courage in the face of macho weakness. When Algie plans to return and claim his bride, Jim is visibly downcast until offered the chance to accompany him. Every Big Jim needs an Algie. The film ends with Algie “proving himself a man” by forcing his future father-in-law to bless his marriage at gunpoint. Closing with the father-in-law’s terror, the viewer must question whether such stereotypical masculinity is truly superior. In all, Alice Guy’s Algie the Miner offers cinema’s most affirmative portrait of male femininity until Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot. Soundtrack suggestion: Hole, “Be A Man”  [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCYYa0WxLXA”]

I’m potent, yeah 

After almost single-handedly inventing the language of narrative cinema, Alice Guy mentored director Lois Weber, whose blockbusting success ushered in the golden age of female filmmakers in Hollywood. Next month’s Vintage Viewing: Lois Weber, Blockbusting Boundary-Pusher. Stay tuned!

 

Brigit McCone may now officially be an Alice Guy fangirl (Guynocentric?) She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and making bad puns.

“Smurfette Syndrome”: The Incredible True Story of How Women Created Modern Comedy Without Being Funny

Far more than a common trend in cartoons and superhero teams, the Smurfette Principle is an ingrained interpretative framework that limits female achievement to a model for male imitation, rather than an argument for female inclusion. In comedy, “Smurfette Syndrome” is a bias that asks whether individual women are “as funny as men,” rather than assessing women’s collective contribution as creators of comedy genres.

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This is a guest post by Brigit McCone.

Professional female comedians are still asked in interview after interview whether women are funny. The usual response is a defensive list of funny women. But proof of funny women is no proof that women are funny, thanks to the dreaded Smurfette Principle. The “Smurfette Principle” dictates that women who succeed in male fields must be interpreted as a) unique and isolated, and b) a variation on a male original. Far more than a common trend in cartoons and superhero teams, the Smurfette Principle is an ingrained interpretative framework that limits female achievement to a model for male imitation, rather than an argument for female inclusion. In comedy, “Smurfette Syndrome” is a bias that asks whether individual women are “as funny as men,” rather than assessing women’s collective contribution as creators of comedy genres. Such as…

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGj5CnPJ3QA”]

Alice Guy’s irresistible piano syncs uncannily with Ray Charles

The Comic Novel

Murasaki Shikibu not only wrote the world’s first novel in the 11th century with The Tale of Genji, she included hefty doses of humor amidst all the karmic heartbreak. Whether revealing the bulbous nose of the mysterious Safflower Princess behind the silk screen, or working out the interpersonal dramas of a womanizer’s harem, Lady Murasaki wielded realism to puncture cliché. Murasaki Shikibu, along with Sei Shonagon (“the most natural wit in the history of Japanese literature”) and fiery, erotic poetess Ono no Komachi, became literary pioneers by accident: they were adopted as models for Japanese literature because their male contemporaries wrote in stilted Chinese to show intellectual superiority. As men switched to Japanese, women writers were squeezed out, leaving only their early classics.

On film and TV: Kozaburo Yoshimura’s 1951 adaptation of The Tale of Genji is a recognized classic. Peter Greenaway’s film inspired by Shonagon’s The Pillow Book reinvents it as a modern tale of a Japanese woman and an older Japanese man sexually servicing Ewan McGregor. A memorable riff on Shikibu’s “Princess Safflower” gag is featured in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Christian Comedy

Drama was strongly condemned by the Fathers of the early Christian church as immoral, in works like Tertullian’s De Spectaculis. It was a 10th century nun, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, who revived the tradition of playwriting by arguing that it could have a moral function. Hrotsvit became the first recognized playwright of medieval Europe, adapting the popular sex comedies of the ancient Roman Terence into an entirely new genre: virgin martyr sex comedy. Chuckle as Dulcitius attempts to ravish the virgins, but ends up humping a sooty pot instead! Giggle as soldiers attempt to strip the virgins, but discover their robes are stuck on! Then feel sorta bad when the virgins get burned alive and shot with arrows anyway. Martyrdom replaced marriage as the culmination of a female empowerment fantasy that began with immunity to rape. The subtle relationship between hermit and prostitute in Hrotsvit’s Paphnutius inspired novelist Anatole France and Oscar Wilde, while Hrotsvit’s Callimachus is identified as one of the sources for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Hrotsvit, however, gained acceptance by self-Smurfette: presenting her wit as an exceptional, divine gift contrasted with usual female witlessness.

On film and TV: Thais, a sexed-up rewrite of Paphnutius by Anatole France, was adapted into a faithful American silent film, and loosely inspired the only surviving Italian futurist film. Jane the Virgin is arguably a modern virgin martyr sex comedy.

Cabaret

In the 17th century, blacksmith’s daughter and shrine maiden Izumo no Okuni created kabuki as a mixture of cross-dressing sketches, sexual innuendo, musical performance, and titillating sensuality. It moved into the teahouses of the red-light district, allowing patrons to sit and drink while watching the show; that is, kabuki originally met the definition of cabaret. For empowering sex workers with social visibility and subversive self-expression, the Japanese authorities banned women from the stage to be replaced by all-male kabuki. Japan’s all-female Takarazuka revue, and witty writer-performers like Mae West and Gypsy Rose Lee in the Western cabaret/vaudeville tradition, carry on the legacy. Straight male comics often struggle to cross over into the diva humor of cabaret, yet it is female comic capability that is judged according to the masculine norms of stand-up.

On film and TV: Mae West defied ageism to become a Hollywood sex symbol in her late 30s, reportedly rescuing Paramount Studios from bankruptcy with She Done Him Wrong. The decadent culture of Weimar cabaret is depicted in the contemporary The Blue Angel, which introduced Marlene Dietrich, and the later musical Cabaret.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJS670okmZc”]

Mae West’s anarchic comedy of sex

Romantic Comedy

I seem to regularly rant on Bitch Flicks about Jane Austen’s role in defining romcom, so I’ll be brief: the meet-cute, the bickering couple who mirror each other, the misunderstandings, public humiliation and sacrificed ego – this is the template of Pride and Prejudice. Though her achievement is trivialized by treating “romcom” as a gendered slur, Austen’s formula is actually fundamental to the male romance of films like Fight Club, as well as classic comedies like Some Like It Hot.

On film and TV: There have been numerous screen adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, as well as updates such as Bridget Jones’ Diary, Bride and Prejudice and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

Parody Film

“If the future development of motion pictures had been foreseen at this time, I should never have obtained his consent. My youth, my inexperience, my sex, all conspired against me” is how Alice Guy Blaché described being given her start in directing by Gaumont because no one else saw the potential of film: Alice Guy invented the close-up, she hand-painted color film in 1897, experimented with synchronized sound in 1906 and made over 1,000 films, owning her own studio (Solax). She made action films with swashbuckling female leads and boat explosions, but makes this list for creating the first parody films. Although the first comedy film is the Lumiere brothers’ The Sprinkler Sprinkled, about a sprinkler… who gets sprinkled (it predates the “don’t name it after the punchline” technique), it was Alice Guy who parodied the special effects films of George Melies with 1898 cross-dressing farce At the Hypnotist’s and the earnest scientific documentaries of her male peers with 1900 botched-surgery farce Surgery at the Turn of the Century. She brought in slapstick domestic strife with 1902’s An Untimely Intrusion and explored sexual harassment through comic role reversal in The Consequences of Feminism. Mabel Normand was an early slapstick star who directed her own films. Studio boss Mack Sennett (Keystone) is on record saying that Charlie Chaplin “learned [to direct] from Mabel Normand.” Neither Normand nor Alice Guy is regularly celebrated among cinema’s comic pioneers.

On film and TV: Though many of Guy’s films are now lost, many more can be viewed free online.

Stand-up Comedy

It’s difficult to say when the comic monologues of vaudeville transitioned into recognizably modern stand-up, but probably while Moms Mabley was headlining at the Apollo. To understand her contribution, witness the comics who acknowledge her influence: Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, Joan Rivers, Eddie Murphy, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock. Mabley exploited the freedom of old ladies to speak their mind, to confront taboos like alcoholism, poverty, racism, infidelity and sexual double standards, defining the comedian’s role as “truth teller” with a persona modeled on her grandmother, a former slave. Growing up Black and gay in 19th century North Carolina, Moms was bulletproof to hecklers before she ever hit a stage. Stand-up and fringe theater offer creative freedom to the minority perspective of queer comediennes of color, from the wild parodies of the Native American Spiderwoman Theater to figures like Wanda Sykes and Margaret Cho today. Mabley is sometimes called the “first female stand-up,” but still isn’t widely acknowledged for pioneering the modern art of stand-up itself, despite Bill Cosby admitting that “she opened that door for a different kind of solo” (Cosby should know; he was quite the groundbreaking comic before moving on to beloved sitcoms and sex crime allegations).

On film and TV: A young Moms has a brief cameo opposite Paul Robeson in The Emperor Jones, rocking a tuxedo in 1933, before starring in 1948’s Boarding House Blues and 1974’s Amazing Grace. Whoopi Goldberg made a documentary about Mabley. You can find Mabley’s later comedy routines, for the Smother Brothers Comedy Hour and the Ed Sullivan Show, on YouTube.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLg1QzdAdLo”]

When Moms jokes about being forced into marriage, it’s because she was

Improv Sketch Comedy

The comic improv created in the post-war University of Chicago shifted the culture of comedy from stand-ups telling jokes to actors performing satirical sketches. This new style was introduced to the world by comedy duo “Nichols & May,” where Elaine May’s role in creating the skits was equal to Mike Nichols’. The sharpness of their satire and the danger from their live improvs brought improv skits mainstream, like a new art of comedy jazz. You might say that without Elaine May and Mike Nichols, there would be no Steve Martin, no Lily Tomlin, no Martin Short, no Saturday Night Live. In fact, Vanity Fair did say that.

On film and TV: Many classic “Nichols & May” sketches are available on YouTube. Elaine May brought geeky charm and Jewish humor to the romcom by writing, directing and starring in 1971’s A New Leaf, six years before Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. She was Oscar-nominated for writing Heaven Can Wait and Primary Colors, wrote The Birdcage and was an uncredited writer on Tootsie, but never got another chance to direct after Ishtar flopped (despite the film’s bad reputation being exaggerated).

Sitcoms

The first sitcom on network television, 1947’s Mary Kay and Johnny depicted Johnny and Mary Kay Stearns’ marriage, of which Variety said “much of the show’s charm is traceable directly to the femme half of the team.” The couple that defined the sitcom’s template was Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Ball and Arnaz created “more tropes than anything on television before or since”--they filmed the episodes in front of a live audience using multiple cameras, a unique format at the time, making the first reruns possible and keeping I Love Lucy in syndication worldwide. Ball and Arnaz’s Desilu studios also produced Star Trek. After breaking up with Arnaz, Lucille proved she could do it solo with The Lucy Show. Jennifer Saunders’ Absolutely Fabulous, Roseanne Barr’s Roseanne (which launched Joss Whedon and Judd Apatow) and Tina Fey’s 30 Rock followed in Lucille Ball’s sitcomical footsteps.

On film and TV: I Love Lucy has many episodes and classic scenes available on YouTube.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kukhLITAD_w”]

Lucille Ball defining the tropes of TV humor

Supernatural Action Romantic Comedy (SARCom)

A supernaturally strong girl hangs out with her sarcastic, quipping gang – including bitchy golddigger and sweet, motherly one – while carrying on a feud/flirtation with her supernaturally strong, shapeshifting love interest, being pined over by a more impulsive, supernaturally strong shapeshifter, and fighting off demons-of-the-week and sexual harassers. If you guessed Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer you’d be right, but if you guessed Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma 1/2 you’d be a decade earlier. Today’s explosion of sarcastic, bickering romcoms with supernatural martial arts was fresh when Takahashi developed it with 1987’s Ranma 1/2, and her later Inuyasha. Takahashi’s immense success at blending male and female genres, creating entertainment that offers integrated empowerment to both sexes, has been Smurfetted in Japan, segregating female mangakas into a female genre (shoujo).

On film and TV: both Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha have been adapted into anime.

So that is the incredible true story of how women created the culture of modern comedy without being funny. “The Smurfette Principle” is still used to isolate female achievement, from cartoons to comedy clubs. We can only laugh.

 

Brigit McCone is grateful to the anarchic Rose Lawless and Emma Pearson’s Crash Test Cabaret for assisting at the comical birth of her cabaret alter-ego Voluptua von Temptitillatrix. Her hobbies include doodling and she will be linking to this article if anyone ever asks that bloody question about funny women again.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Each of the wives deals with the different schools of thought within feminism in ways that roughly align with their ages. The three tell the generational story of feminism, albeit in broad and heavily stereotyped ways.

What’s interesting about the expressions of feminism is that they are happening within a family structure where the husband/father is at the center as the authority. 

Of 4,315 adults across the UK who were surveyed, a clear majority believe cinema too often falls back on discredited stereotypes, including sexless older women, drug dealing, oversexualised black people and gay people whose lives are dominated by their sexuality.

Almost two-thirds of those questioned believe older women are “significantly underrepresented” in films. They are rarely portrayed as sexual beings and are, generally, only given marginal roles, according to the findings, published exclusively in the Guardian today. 

The Fort Lee Film Commission is sponsoring a symposium next month dedicated to the first female filmmaker in cinema history, Alice Guy Blache, as part of the 2011 Garden State Film Festival (GSFF) in Asbury Park, New Jersey. The symposium, Reel Jersey Girls: Alice Guy to Today–a Century of Women in Film, is a key event, said Fort Lee Film Commission executive director Tom Meyers, at what he calls “the largest annual film festival in the state of New Jersey.”

Alice Guy Blache, one of the first three filmmakers in France, began directing in the 1890s. In 1912, Blache came to the then motion picture capital of the world, Fort Lee, and built her $100,000 studio, Solax, on Lemoine Ave. There she produced, wrote ad directed hundreds of films, according to Meyers. 

Whatever the strategy, director Deborah Kampmeier says she hopes that women and men can reach parity in the film industry, because film is so important to our culture. Kampmeier says that “films are the place in society that we really sit around the campfire and tell our stories and make our myths, and really create our future as a society. And 93 percent of those stories are being told by men, and this is a chronic, very unhealthy balance.”

The Group from Papermag: 

It’s a really good time to be young, female, funny, smart–and a little bit weird and awkward. Meet the members of Hollywood’s unlikely new in-crowd.

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a cute, bubbly, young (usually white) woman who has recently entered the life of our brooding hero to teach him how to loosen up and enjoy life. While that might sound all well and good for the man, this trope leaves women as simply there to support the star on his journey of self discovery with no real life of her own.

Winter’s Bone Q and A from Women and Hollywood: 

Here’s the Q and A from the Athena Film Festival with Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini and moderated by IndieWIRE’s Anne Thompson of Thompson on Hollywood. 

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