Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

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10 Movies by Black Women to Stream on Netflix This Weekend by Alexis Jackson at Shine at For Harriet

Our Favorite Funny Women Call Out Sexism in Hollywood at Ms. blog
Lena Dunham, Amy Schumer and Comedy Actress A-List in Raunchy, R-Rated Roundtable by Stacey Wilson Hunt, Michael O’Connell at The Hollywood Reporter
A History Of The Term ‘Chick Flick’ And How It Marginalizes Female Filmmakers by Tess Barker at MTV
7 Queer Female Filmmakers to Watch for in 2015 by Dorothy Snarker at Women and Hollywood

Childbirth is finally getting the cultural treatment it deserves by Elissa Strauss at The Week
New Short Exposes Unique Experience of ‘Brown’ Ballerinas by Qimmah Saafir at Colorlines
Jeffrey Wright and Jennifer Hudson Join Cast of HBO’s Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas Project by Tambay A. Obenson at Shadow and Act
‘Gemma Bovery’ Review: Literary Comedy Puts a Feminist Spin on an Old Classic by Alonso Duralde at The Wrap
On Mad Max and The Avengers by Margarita at Plain-Flavoured-English.tumbler.com
The Ecofeminism of Mad Max by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media
What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

recommended-red-714x300-1

A pantheon of one’s own: 25 female film critics worth celebrating at BFI

#FilmHerStory: 10 Female Biopics That Desperately Need to Happen by Elisabeth Donnelly at Flavorwire

Ava DuVernay: Focusing the Lens on Equality by Kitty Lindsay at Ms. blog

The Workplace Is Even More Sexist In Movies Than In Reality by Walt Hickey at FiveThirtyEight

13 Gay Things You Can’t Miss at South By Southwest by Neal Broverman at Advocate

50 Shades of Boring. by Scarlett Harris at The Scarlett Woman
Univision Race Gaffe Shows Culture Gap by Maria Murriel at NPR’s Code Switch
Disney says Frozen sequel is on its way by Esther Zuckerman at Entertainment Weekly
For Some Women in Hollywood, Movie Roles Are Getting Better With Age by

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

“I Believe ‘Anita'”

Women and girl characters in film (and the plays and works of literature films are based on) lie a lot. I don’t mean that they tell an occasional (or not so occasional) untruth, the way male characters often do. I mean that the role of a woman or girl in the movie can many times be summed up as “the liar.” The student in ‘The Children’s Hour’, the girl in ‘Atonement’, the girl in ‘The Hunt’, the two teenagers in ‘Wild Things’ the Demi Moore character in ‘Disclosure’ are all liars who disrupt the lives of those around them, usually men, whom they falsely accuse of sexual misconduct or abuse. The men are, of course, always completely innocent of the charges.

AnitaHillThen

Women and girl characters in film (and the plays and works of literature films are based on) lie a lot. I don’t mean that they tell an occasional (or not so occasional) untruth, the way male characters often do. I mean that the role of a woman or girl in a movie can many times be summed up as “the liar.” The student in The Children’s Hour,  the girl in Atonement, the girl in The Hunt, the two teenagers in Wild Things, the Demi Moore character in Disclosure are all liars who disrupt the lives of those around them, usually men, whom they falsely accuse of sexual misconduct or abuse. The men are, of course, always completely innocent of the charges.

This scenario is the opposite of the common real life situation, in which a woman or girl lies (or pretends nothing is wrong) when she has been raped, sexually abused or sexually harassed. She doesn’t bring charges. She tries to function as if the rape, abuse or harassment hasn’t occurred and decides not to disrupt her own family or career by calling public attention to what has happened to her. Those stories we pretty much never see played out in film.

Unless that film is Anita, the new documentary from Oscar-winner Freida Lee Mock about Anita Hill, the woman who came forward during the confirmation hearings, over 20 years ago, for Clarence Thomas as Supreme Court Justice. Thomas had sexually harassed Hill when he was her boss at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency that is supposed to implement Federal laws against discrimination, including sexual harassment. She had never pressed charges and had even kept a professional relationship with Thomas (for the sake of her career) after moving on from the EEOC. But when officials were interviewing his former coworkers and assistants for a background check, Hill felt she had to tell the truth.

The FBI file that contained Hill’s private interview was leaked to the press. Women politicians and reporters were outraged that the Senate had been prepared to confirm Thomas without looking into his past conduct, so hearings were called in which Hill was subpoenaed to testify in person. We see the media following her with cameras and lights even before her appearance in the Senate, as she makes her way across the University of Oklahoma campus where she was a tenured law professor. “I just want to teach my class,” she tells them. In a humorous moment that didn’t make it into the news stories of the time she mentions what was then her legal specialty. “I can answer any questions you have about contracts.”

The Senate committee grilled her for hours at a time over the course of days, but Hill never lost her composure in spite of being forced to repeat, on national live television, the explicit details of Thomas’s harassment, which included references to pornography and his own anatomy. The excerpts of the hearing are the most striking part of the film, and the documentary could use more of them.

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Thomas and Hill when they worked at the EEOC

The Republicans on the committee (we see some particularly despicable moments from Alan Simpson and Arlen Spector), eager to confirm Thomas, portray Hill as a liar. These old white men do their best to denigrate her, and although the footage of the hearings shows that they never succeeded in diminishing her clear-eyed, precise testimony, they did succeed, in the off-camera arena, in diminishing her reputation.

The film shows, so we don’t forget, that Hill’s testimony was confirmed by four others whom she had told about the harassment at the time it was occurring. They gave their sworn testimony in front of live national television and one of them, another African American woman even mentions why Hill had kept in touch with Thomas, “My mother always told me, as I’m sure her mother told her, that wherever you leave, make sure you leave friends there, because you never know when you will need them.” She goes on to detail that for this very reason she exchanges Christmas cards with former colleagues she can’t stand.

The film also includes the information that Thomas had harassed other women in the workplace, at least one of whom was also subpoenaed, but mysteriously never called to testify. In the live question and answer period after the showing I attended, Hill explicitly blamed now Vice President, then Judiciary Committee Chair, Joe Biden, for this decision. She explained the “he said, she said” narrative the committee wanted to put forth  would have been disrupted if more than one woman had offered testimony of how Thomas had harassed her.

Hill and filmmaker Mock
Hill and filmmaker Mock

Because of the all-white membership of the committee, Thomas could get away, in his own testimony, with labeling the hearings “a high tech lynching” (the folly of that description is pointed out in the film by the male African American corporate lawyer whose testimony confirmed Hill’s) while ignoring that Hill too was African American. Hill sums up this narrative as “I had a gender. He had a race.”

Hill always had the support of her large (she is one of 13 children), close family. In another clip that never made its way  into the news stories of the time, we see her 79-year-old mother giving her a hug at the Senate hearing witness table and stand beside her outside of her family home back in Oklahoma, when the media ask for a statement on Thomas’s confirmation. Dignified as always, Hill tells them that she hopes her testimony will encourage other women to speak up about harassment in their own workplaces.

In spite of her tenured position at The University of Oklahoma, Hill felt the pressure from local Republican politicians (who targeted not just her, but also went after the Dean and the institution itself) to resign and eventually moved across the country to a position at Brandeis University where she is now  at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. She also travels around the country lecturing on sexual harassment, which, she points out, she wouldn’t have felt free to do if she had stayed at the University of Oklahoma. We see that Hill even has a supportive, long term boyfriend. Although the footage of this part of her life is less dramatic than that of the testimony I understand why the director includes it. After people in her own hometown angrily confronted Hill on the street about her testimony, after famously being called “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty” (by a writer who later recanted though the slander lives on), in spite of Thomas being confirmed and sitting on the court to this day when even Hill’s lawyer’s 12-year-old daughter told her Dad, “I believe Anita,” and in spite of politicians and courts still explicitly or implicitly labeling women as liars when they seek justice against powerful men, we need to see at least one happy ending–to give the rest of us the fortitude to continue fighting.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGrWaCCVfq0″]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast, xoJane, and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

recommended-red-714x300-1

 

Take the Tarrant Test for 2014 Super Bowl Ads! at Ms. blog

Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth premieres nationally Friday, February 7 at 9 p.m. on PBS

Telling women’s stories will change the world, Sundance filmmakers say by Ellen Fagg Weist at The Salt Lake City Tribune

Watching Downton Abbey With an Historian: Birth Control by Mo Moulton at The Toast 

Study: Female Movie Stars’ Paychecks Decrease Rapidly After Age 34 by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

Don’t Be a Dick: A Comic About the History of Lady-Centric Comics by Ladydrawers at Bitch Media

Harvey Weinstein: Quentin Tarantino producer vows to stop making excessively violet films by Tomas Jivanda at The Independent

Reel Girl’s List of Top 10 Movies Starring Heroic Girls to Show Your Kids at Reel Girl

Five Theories For What ‘American Horror Story: Coven’ Was Actually About by Alison Willmore at Indiewire

Watch This Anita Hill Documentary Trailer and Remain Calm, I Dare You by Hillary Crosley at Jezebel

7 Ways Stars Can Change Hollywood This Awards Season by Holly L. Derr at Role/Reboot

Shonda Rhimes on her DGA Diversity Award: ‘We’re a tiny bit p-ssed off that there has to be an award’ by Lindsey Bahr at Entertainment Weekly

4 Films about LGBT Muslims Everyone Needs to Watch at QWOC Media

Margaret Cho cast in Tina Fey-produced comedy by Sandra Gonzalez at Entertainment Weekly

Sexed up Powerpuff Girls point to Cartoon Network’s girl problem at Reel Girl

 

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!