Tag: Female Directors

‘Friends with Kids’ Preview: Leading a Stellar Cast, Writer/Director Jennifer Westfeldt Depicts an Unconventional Path to Parenthood

I’ve been excited to see Friends with Kids since last year when I heard it would reunite Bridesmaids castmates Kristen Wiig (omg do I love, love, LOVE her in Bridesmaids and on SNL!), Maya Rudolph (adore her in Away We Go and Up All Night), Chris O’Dowd (adorbs in Bridesmaids) and Jon Hamm (of course I swoon for Don Draper). When I discovered a woman wrote AND directed it, Jennifer Westfeldt in her directorial debut, my elation skyrocketed! No joke.

Written, directed, produced and starring actor Jennifer Westfeldt, Friends with Kids tells the story of two best friends Julie (Westfeldt) and Jason (Adam Scott), who decide to have a baby together while remaining platonic friends “so they can avoid the toll kids can take on romantic relationships.” It looks like a hilarious, awkward yet sweet ensemble comedy about friends navigating friendships, relationships and parenting.

A Tony and Indie Spirit Award nominated actor, Westfeldt is probably best known for her role as actor, co-writer and co-producer of the critically-acclaimed lesbian romantic comedy Kissing Jessica Stein. She also wrote and starred in Ira and Abby, a story of two strangers who get married. In an interview with Marie Claire, Westfeldt shared her inspiration for Friends with Kids, which stemmed from being out of sync with where your friends are in life:

“Four years ago, Jon’s and my friends started having babies, and everything became so kid-centric. You miss one-on-one time with your friend. When you’re childless and close friends become new parents, you suddenly feel left out, and that’s where the kernel of this idea came from.”

Adam Scott (who I crush on hardcore in his role as Ben Wyatt on Parks & Rec) and his wife Naomi Sablan have been friends for years with Westfeldt and her long-time partner Hamm. After reading the script, Scott realized he and his wife were those friends who pull away after they have a baby. As someone with friends who have kids, yep, this definitely happens but understandably so. Now, I don’t have babies and I don’t want them. Seeing my friends have babies doesn’t trigger any biological clock in me. But I really like Westfeldt’s idea of looking at parenthood in a non-traditional way from the perspective of two single people.

Being single doesn’t sound a death knell. Yet Hollywood would have you believe otherwise, especially if you’re a woman. The media also often shows only the glamorous, fairy-tale side of weddings, babies and relationships. I’m hoping Friends with Kids will tell a more authentic story. Too many people wait for their life to start, thinking events must progress in a certain order: college, career, marriage, home, baby. But why can’t you do things differently? Who’s to say you can’t have a baby without a relationship?  Each of the 3 films Westfeldt has written share a theme of taking relationships and life choices and “turning the norm on its head,” choosing a different path than what convention dictates.

Earlier today, Melissa Silverstein wrote about the “depressing reality of women directed film in 2012” and how we need to generate more anticipation and buzz for upcoming films directed by women. With female writers comprising 24% of all writers in Hollywood, 17% in film and only 5% of women as directors, down from 7% in 2010 and 2009 (god that’s horrifying depressing and makes me cringe), it’s exciting to see a film written and directed by a woman that could potentially do well with both female and male audiences.

Now, I’m not saying films written, directed or starring women are automatically good. Some suck (although I always hate saying that since there aren’t nearly enough movies created by women). And I don’t know if Friends with Kids will be amazeballs, a feminist extravaganza! But I’m optimistically hopeful considering it co-stars two talented and hilarious female comedians (Rudolph and Wiig) and Westfeldt, the woman behind and in front of the camera, not only writes interesting female characters but also speaks openly that “there aren’t that many interesting roles for women in TV and film.”

We need to support women filmmakers if we ever hope for Hollywood to become more gender equitable. When Bridesmaids came out, Salon writer Rebecca Traister argued it was people’s “social responsibility” to go see it:

“Yes we can … buy tickets to a Kristen Wiig movie in an effort to persuade Hollywood that multidimensional women exist, spend money and deserve to be represented on film…we now inhabit an entertainment universe in which everything male-centered is standard, and everything female-centered is female…What that means in practical terms is that women will plonk down dollars to see a male-dominated action movie, a girl-gobbling horror flick, or a dude-centric comedy just as easily as they’ll pay for the kind of female-fueled movie that is literally made for them. Men, meanwhile, have apparently been so conditioned to find anything female emasculating (notwithstanding the expectation that their girlfriends find anything male, including “Thor,” scintillating) that they cannot be moved to sit through any movie with a fully developed woman at its center.”

With a film written and directed by a woman, with a stellar cast of talent, the same applies here: we need to vote with our dollars.

Westfeldt wasn’t initially going to direct but she stepped into the role of director in order to remain on the tight filming schedule. But that doesn’t mean Westfeldt doesn’t recognize the importance and power of female filmmakers:

“It’s really been a year of sisters doing it for themselves. At Sundance there were, like, five movies where women were writing roles for themselves. And the success of women like Lena Dunham and Miranda July and Tina Fey and now Kristen [Wiig], among others; it’s a pretty cool time to see how much has evolved in that regard…I’m happy to be part of that wave, and I’m inspired by how much of that is going on. It feels like there’s a wave happening of women taking a little more control of their own creative fates.”

Amen, sister! So in honor of all the “sisters doing it for themselves,” I will be seeing Friends with Kids this Friday (March 9th)…and I hope you all will too.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Stephanie’s Picks:

Celebration at Sundance from Wellywood Woman

New feature: Challenging rape myths in the mainstream from The F-Word

Amber‘s Picks:

French women directors: the great news & the not-so-great from Wellywood Woman

Why I’m (Probably) Not Watching ‘The Game’ from The Crunk Feminist Collective

International contest of short films against homophobia from The F-Word

LEGO & Gender Part 1: Lego Friends from Feminist Frequency



Megan‘s Picks:

Red Tails and Tuskegee: The Women Left Out of the Picture from The Root

The Athena Film Festival: 10 Movies That Can Change the World from Huffington Post 

Vanity Fair‘s Hollywood Issue Pushes Actresses of Color Aside (Again!) from Jezebel

Why Is Hollywood So Afraid of Black Women? from ColorLines

Sexism Watch: Film Trailers from Women and Hollywood

Can Lena Dunham’s Girls Be a Game Changer? from Women and Hollywood 

What have you been reading–or writing–this week? Leave your links in the comments!

Quote of the Day: Julie Dash

Julie Dash speaking at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival
In 1991, Julie Dash won the Sundance Excellence in Cinematography Award for Daughters of the Dust. Set in 1902, the film examines the lives of a family’s Gullah (also sometimes called Geechee) culture, which still thrives on the Sea Islands, off the coast of South Carolina and in coastal Georgia. 
Recently restored, Daughters of the Dust screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and Dash was interviewed by Nelson George.
George: You grew up in a household with this [Gullah] culture around you even though you grew up in New York City. What’s the journey from there as a child to you deciding to make the film? 
Dash: Once I decided I was going to tell stories through film, and once I decided that I was not going to be a documentary filmmaker, but I was going to tell narrative stories (because I was excited about the literature of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison and all the poets of the time), I decided that I wanted to tell a story that was authentic to African American culture – authentic to the point where it was not like something you could turn on the television and see. I wanted it to be more like a foreign film and so deeply into the culture that it appeared to be foreign.
I’m fascinated by her statement about wanting Daughters to be “more like a foreign film.” While it’s safe to say that Gullah culture might be “foreign” to some people in the U.S., I think she’s saying something more. It’s not simply a lack of familiarity, a different language, or a setting outside one’s home country that makes a “foreign film.” It’s a certain quality, a certain uniqueness. When Dash speaks of authenticity, what remains unspoken is reference to depiction of African American experience in other films–she speaks of novelists and poets–and, perhaps, that is what she’s talking about when she talks about the desire for Daughters to appear foreign.

More than 20 years after Julie Dash made Daughters of the Dust, how many “authentic” films do we see?

‘Fire’: Part One of Deepa Mehta’s ‘Elements Trilogy’

Fire (1996)
Fire is the first film in Deepa Mehta’s Elements Trilogy (Earth and Water follow). Made in 1996, it focuses on a middle-class family in present-day (funny how I still think of the 1990s as “present day,” despite the global changes of the past fifteen years) India.
The film centers around two married couples–Ashok (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and his wife Radha (Shabana Azmi), and Ashok’s brother Jatin (Javed Jaffrey) and his wife Sita (Nandita Das)–who run a carryout restaurant and video store, and who share a home with the brothers’ mother, Biji (Kushal Rekhi), and their employee, Mundu (Ranjit Chowdhry). Jatin and Sita are newlyweds, but we quickly learn that Jatin loves another woman (Julie, a Chinese-Indian woman who has perfected an American accent and dreams of returning to Hong Kong), and married a “traditional Indian woman” out of pressure from his brother and mother.
The film offers the womens’ perspectives on the conflicts between desire and duty, and between tradition and the realities of a modern India.
As with almost any film centering on family drama and dynamics, we see the tensions simmering beneath the surface as the film focuses on the two women and their lack of fulfillment from their marriages. Mehta, in the DVD’s Director’s Notes for Fire, states,
I wanted to make a film about contemporary, middle-class India, with all its vulnerabilities, foibles and the incredible extremely dramatic battle that is waged daily between the forces of tradition and the desire for an independent, individual voice.
More than 350 million Indians belong to the burgeoning middle-class and lead lives not unlike the Kapur family in Fire. They might not experience exactly the same angst or choices as these particular characters, but the confusions they share are very similar–the ambiguity surrounding sexuality and its manifestation and the incredible weight of figures (especially female ones) from ancient scriptures which define Indian women as pious, dutiful, self-sacrificing, while Indian popular cinema, a.k.a. “Bollywood”, portrays women as sex objects (Mundu’s fantasy).
To capture all this on celluloid was, to a large part, the reason I wanted to do Fire. Even though Fire is very particular in its time and space and setting, I wanted its emotional content to be universal.
Sita learns very early in her marriage that her husband is in love with Julie–he doesn’t hide the relationship from her–and she seeks solace and comfort from Radha. Radha hasn’t been intimate with her husband in 13 years; when Ashok learned she was unable to conceive, he sublimated his desires (and began channeling a good bit of their income) into religious study with his swami. The friendship between Sita and Radha soon evolves into a sexual relationship, and when the women are found out by their family, they must decide whether to obey tradition or follow their hearts.
Radha and Sita
The film explores what traditional marriage has done to alienate these women–particularly Radha–from their own desires. The desire for intimacy and sex, sure, but also the desire to live their lives for themselves, rather than for their husbands. My reading of the film is certainly from a Western perspective, however, and you could argue that the film is about discovering desire (rather than reconnecting to it after a period of alienation), since the traditional, conservative Hindu/Indian culture didn’t allow much–if any–space for individual desire for women. Sita embodies changes in the society, as she comes from a traditional family, but is more critical of the traditional rituals and more in touch with her body and her desires. (When we first meet her, for example, she playfully tries on her new husband’s pants and dances around their bedroom, unashamed of her body.) Sita is also the one who initiates a physical relationship with Radha.
Depicting a lesbian relationship on film fifteen years ago proved hugely controversial, and Fire was immediately banned in Pakistan, and soon after pulled from Indian cinemas for religious insensitivity. Although the film twice passed the Indian censor board–they requested no editing, and no scenes removed–violent protests caused movie houses to stop showing the film. In “Burning Love,” Gary Morris writes,
The reaction of some male members of the audience was so violent that the police had to be called. “I’m going to shoot you, madam!” was one response. According to Mehta, the men who objected couldn’t articulate the word “lesbian” — “this is not in our Indian culture!” was as much as they could bring themselves to say. 

It isn’t only the tangible pleasures of a lesbian relationship that created such heated reactions, though that’s certainly the most obvious reason. This beautifully shot, well-acted film is a powerful, sometimes hypnotic critique of the rigid norms of a patriarchal, post-colonial society that keeps both sexes down.

The controversy surrounding the film may have superseded the film itself–which is beautifully shot, heartbreaking, and even darkly comedic at times. Fire contains so many elements that I love in film: strong female characters, an exploration of complex issues that is never oversimplified and that never leads to individuals being labeled good or evil (although they certainly behave in good and/or evil ways), and immersion into a culture that isn’t entirely familiar to me. Speaking to a Western audience, Mehta has stated that one of her goals in filmmaking is to “demystify India,” its culture and its traditions. Fire complicates our understanding of a traditional patriarchal culture, and throws into sharp relief the ways these traditions impact women in particular.

Again, here’s Mehta on Fire:

We women, especially Indian women, constantly have to go through a metaphorical test of purity in order to be validated as human beings, not unlike Sita’s trial by fire.

I’ve seen most of the women in my family go through this, in one form or another. Do we, as women, have choices? And, if we make choices, what is the price we pay for them?

***

There is a ton of information online about Fire. Here are some selected articles for further reading:

Question of the Day: Favorite Female Filmmaker?

One of my favorite kinds of posts to write–although we haven’t posted very many of them yet, and very few people ever comment on them–is the Director Spotlight. (If you haven’t already, check out spotlights on Allison Anders, Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Tanya Hamilton, Nicole Holofcener, Deepa Mehta and Agnes Varda.) While the posts themselves are fairly cut-and-dry, I always enjoy focusing on a woman who makes (or who made) movies and learning about her filmography.
Though most of the women we’ve profiled are already fairly successful, I also believe these posts do a service: more female filmmakers should be household names (think for a moment about all the male filmmakers who are), and by calling attention to them, maybe a few more people will know them as such.
We can all agree that if more women make films, and if these women get more attention, depictions of women in all forms of media has a chance of improving over time. So, in the spirit of celebrating women who make movies comes today’s question:

Who are your favorite female filmmakers?

Here’s the part where we ask for your help.

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–Amber & Stephanie

Director Spotlight: Nicole Holofcener

When Megan Kearns reviewed the documentary !Women Art Revolution, she began her post with a challenge to readers: Name three artists. A simple request, and one she suspected would yield an answer consisting of three male artists. 
If challenged to name three directors, would responses be similar–three male directors? If you’re familiar with this site and others that focus on women and film (I’m thinking of you, Women and Hollywood), maybe not. But my guess is that a majority of the population would, because women represent a small minority of directors, and few have gained enough acclaim and/or fame to become household names.
The lack of recognition of women who direct movies is the impetus behind our Director Spotlight Series. We know there aren’t enough female directors (or cinematographers, or writers, or producers, etc.) out there, but we can shine a light on the ones who are working, with varying degrees of success, in Hollywood.

You can read previous Spotlights on Allison Anders, Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Tanya Hamilton, and Agnes Varda, and a Quote of the Day on Dorothy Arzner.

On to today’s spotlight: Nicole Holofcener.
Director Nicole Holofcener
Nicole Holofcener has directed several films, along with numerous episodes of television shows. Her most recent project was directing an episode of Parks and Recreation (season three’s “Eagleton”) and the TV movie I Hate That I Love You. Other television work includes episodes of Six Feet Under, Bored to Death, Enlightened, Gilmore Girls, Leap of Faith, Sex and the City, and Cold Feet.

I’ve seen three of her films, and it’s fair to say that one of the major themes she’s interested in is how to be wealthy and privileged in a society that largely isn’t. One could lob this at her as a criticism–that she’s interested in rich white women–and it’s not untrue. However, I’ve always found her movies thoughtful and aware of privilege, rather than flaunting it unawares, and her characters flawed, complex, contradictory, and, ultimately, realistic. Women are always at the center of the story, and we all know how rarely that’s done, much less done well.

Holofcener has written and directed four feature films. Here they are.

Please Give (2010)

Please Give is Holofcener’s most recent film. It won the Robert Altman Award and was nominated for Best Screenply by the Independent Spirit Awards, and was nominated for a Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) Award. The film was distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. The movie  has an 88% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (which, I know, isn’t the most objective or accurate system, but, still is worth noting).

I saw the movie when it was in theatres, and remember heated conversations about its characters and its ultimate meaning. Most of the discussions involved its ambivalent ending, and if you’ve seen it, I suspect you have strong feelings about that ending, too.

Here’s a bit of the synopsis, from the official website:

Kate (Catherine Keener) has a lot on her mind. There’s the ethics problem of buying furniture on the cheap at estate sales and marking it up at her trendy Manhattan store (and how much markup can she get away with?). There’s the materialism problem of not wanting her teenage daughter (Sarah Steele) to want the expensive things that Kate wants. There’s the marriage problem of sharing a partnership in parenting, business, and life with her husband Alex (Oliver Platt), but sensing doubt nibbling at the foundations. And there’s Kate’s free-floating 21st century malaise–the problem of how to live well and be a good person when poverty, homelessness, and sadness are always right outside the door.

Watch the trailer:

Friends with Money (2006)

This is the one Holofcener movie I haven’t seen. Starring Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Keener, and Frances McDormand, I’d say this movie has the most commercial appeal of her work, but not the highest ratings. Friends with Money won McDormand a Best Supporting Female Independent Spirit Award, and Holofcener an Independent Spirit Best Screenplay nomination. She also won the Dorothy Arzner Directors Award.

From the official website‘s synopsis:

FRIENDS WITH MONEY examines the shifting relationships between four women who have been friends all of their adult lives. Now as they settle into their early middle age, their friendship is increasingly challenged by the ever-growing disparity in their individual degrees of financial comfort. It is a poignant snapshot of the way we live today, where the safe divisions that class and money have created are eroding under the unstoppable force of everyday life and the result is a painfully hilarious examination of modern life that manages to be both brutally honest and ultimately uplifting.

Watch the trailer:

Lovely & Amazing (2001)

Lovely and Amazing is my favorite of Holofcener’s movies, though it’s been several years since I’ve seen it, and can’t provide many specific details other than a major focus in on the relationship between a mother and her daughters. It’s definitely worth renting.

The movie’s website is gone, but here’s the plot summary from IMDb:

The Marks family is a tightly-knit quartet of women. Jane is the affluent matriarch whose 3 daughters seem to have nothing in common except for a peculiar sort of idealism. Setting the tone of vanity and insecurity, Jane is undergoing cosmetic surgery to alter her figure, but serious complications put her health in real danger. Former homecoming queen Michelle, the eldest daughter, has one daughter of her own and an alienated, unsupportive husband. Elizabeth, the middle sister, has an acting career that is beginning to take off, but is timid and insecure, and habitually relieves her trepidation by taking in stray dogs. Only the youngest sister, Annie, an adopted African American 8-year-old, stands a chance of avoiding the family legacy of anxious self-absorption. If only her intelligence and curiosity will see her through what promises to be a confusing adolescence. Each of the women seeks redemption in her own haphazard way.

Watch the trailer:

Walking and Talking (1996)

I couldn’t find a trailer for Walking and Talking (if you find one somewhere, please let me know!), but it seems you can watch the whole thing on YouTube, if you’re so inclined. Better yet, rent it and watch with some friends. It’s a quiet movie, in that not a lot happens (as the title suggests), but it’s engaging and just good.

Here’s a synopsis, from Netflix, that doesn’t really do the movie justice:

Amelia (Catherine Keener) and Laura (Anne Heche) have been best friends since the sixth grade. For the first time, their lives are taking different paths: Laura is in love and planning her wedding, while Amelia begins to despair that she’ll ever find the right man. But as they try to adjust their childhood friendship to the challenges of adulthood, these friends continue to laugh together at life and love.

Who’s up for a Holofcener marathon?! Hey, come to think of it…

Kickstarter Helps Young Filmmakers Bypass Studio System

We received the following press release in our e-mail inbox. Please consider supporting Michek’s film. Fundraising officially ends Saturday, August 6, 2011.
 
Independent filmmaker Alyssa Michek uses kickstarter.com to fund It’s All In My Head, a short film about breaking-up told from the woman’s perspective.

Silver Spring, MD — Independent filmmaker Alyssa Michek must raise $5000 online to fund her short film “It’s All In My Head” in 30 days or less. The 25-year-old filmmaker is directing and producing her first professional short film. With experience directing student films, “It’s All In My Head” is her most ambitious yet, spanning five locations, shot on 16mm color film, with a professional cast and crew. Without a website like kickstarter.com Michek’s film would most likely never be made.

Kickstarter is a new way of funding creative projects “powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.” Instead of pitching to a studio, creators pitch to the kickstarter community, then use their network of supporters and self-promote in order to fund creative projects. In the first week Michek raised almost $1,500 and with 15 days left to go she is almost halfway there.

To promote “It’s All In My Head,” Michek, a DC native, is offering DC area residents access to special events. For a pledge of $150 spend a day on set. For $200 be an extra in the film with an open bar. With a pledge of $250 the backer and a guest will be VIPs at the film premiere.

“I’m a feminist,” says Michek, “and I think female perspectives are often under-represented in mainstream films.” Her film will center a woman’s story and encourage male viewers to identify with her, as the only fully realized character. “I wanted to come at this with a female perspective, but also have it be universal.”

“It’s All In My Head” is a 20-minute short film exploring the break-up script and how our culture shapes our concept of love. The film follows Alex and Michelle through their break-up showing the highlights of their relationship in flashbacks with voice-over from Michelle commenting on the relationship. Michelle criticizes the typical break-up speech and its excuses. She imagines herself in classic films that have shaped her concept of love and dreams a happy ending interspersed with contemporary film references. When she comes back to reality she finds that life is not like the movies.

“I do think our expectations and our concept of relationships are very much shaped by pop culture” says Michek “and most movies create unreal expectations.” With her film she hopes to combat and comment on these expectations and the culture that creates them.

Fundraising for “It’s All In My Head” ends August 6, 2011. If Michek does not meet her goal, she gets nothing. If all goes as planned, the film will shoot at the end of August and beginning of September and should be finished by the end of the year. Those interested in supporting the project should visit http://kck.st/nEZV4W to learn more.

For more information about this project or to schedule an interview with Alyssa Michek, contact her at alyssamichek@gmail.com or at itsallinmyheadfilm@gmail.com.

Kickstarter site: http://kck.st/nEZV4W

Quote of the Day: Judith Mayne

Directed by Dorothy Arzner by Judith Mayne
 
We have yet to talk about Dorothy Arzner at Bitch Flicks. But her work demands attention in any discussions of feminist film theory. While I haven’t seen all the films she directed, I can say with confidence that most, if not all of them, pass the Bechdel Test. (Which has become somewhat of a feat these days, with the misogynistic drivel churned out and sponsored by The Never Ending Hollywood Backlash From Hell.)
To give myself a reprieve from summer blockbuster depression, I’ve been rereading Judith Mayne’s book, Directed by Dorothy Arzner, and I’m especially captivated by her take on Dance, Girl, Dance. Of course, that famous speech in the film always gives me chills. But first, a little background: 
In the early to mid-1970s, when Arzner’s work was brought to the attention of feminists, her films were deemed particularly important for their criticism of Hollywood films “from within.” Pam Cook and Claire Johnston described how the universe of the male was “made strange” in Arzner’s films, how women’s “rewriting” of male discourse subverted the established conventions of Hollywood. At the time Cook and Johnston’s essays were published, film theory was very much preoccupied with the notion of “making strange,” with the possibilities of a Hollywood film that critiqued itself and its own assumptions. Cook and Johnston brought a strong theoretical approach to Arzner’s work, while other critics of the era were simply delighted to find a woman director among all of the men in Hollywood film history.

Mayne points out that Dance, Girl, Dance is probably Arzner’s most well-known film and is a staple in feminist film theory. She summarizes the plot as follows:
The plot of Dance, Girl, Dance concerns the differing paths to success for Bubbles (Lucille Ball) and Judy (Maureen O’Hara), both members of a dance troupe led by Madame Basilova (Maria Ouspenskaya). The dance troupe performs vaudeville-style numbers in bars and nightclubs, much to the chagrin of Basilova (who bemoans her status as a “flesh peddler”). Bubbles has “oomph,” a kind of dancer’s version of “it,” and eventually she leaves the troupe and enthusiastically pursues a career as “Tiger Lily White.” Judy, in contrast, is a serious student of ballet, and the protegee of Basilova. However, it is Bubbles who gets the jobs, and she arranges for Judy to be hired as her “stooge,” i.e., as a classical dancer who performs in the middle of Bubble’s act, and thus primes the audience to demand more of Bubbles.

Toward the end of the film, Judy stands on stage and refuses her role as stooge. She defiantly crosses her arms and moves closer to the audience, and she gives the spectators a piece of her mind: 

Go ahead and stare. I’m not ashamed. Go on. Laugh! Get your money’s worth. Nobody’s going to hurt you. I know you want me to tear my clothes off so’s you can look your fifty cents worth. Fifty cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won’t let you. What do you suppose we think of you up here–with your silly smirks your mothers would be ashamed of? And we know it’s the thing of the moment for the dress suits to come and laugh at us too. We’d laugh right back at the lot of you, only we’re paid to let you sit there and roll your eyes and make your screamingly clever remarks. What’s it for? So’s you can go home when the show’s over and strut before your wives and sweethearts and play at being the stronger sex for a minute? I’m sure they see through you just like we do. 

I love that moment. I love it because she critiques the men who look at women as sexual objects, and the women who do so as well. I love it because Dorothy Arzner directed this film in 1940. It’s now 2011. And I can’t even imagine a speech like this existing in a current Hollywood film. (If you can think of any that make such astute observations about sexual politics, please, clue me in.)
Mayne further complicates this famous scene in her analysis of it, so I’ll leave you with that, and the always impossible-to-answer questions surrounding self-objectification as either a form of empowerment for women, or as nothing more than internalized patriarchal exploitation. Or neither. Or both. Hmmmm:

I see Judy’s confrontation less as a challenge to the very notion of woman as object of spectacle than as the creation of another kind of performance. Oftentimes the scene is discussed as if the audience were exclusively male, which it is not, even though Judy addresses men in her speech. When the camera pans the reactions of the audience to Judy’s speech, the responses of women are quite clearly visible. Women squirm uncomfortably in their seats just as surely as men do, and when release occurs in the form of applause, it is a woman–Steven Adams’s trusty secretary–who initiates it. Arzner’s view of performance and her view of the relationship between subject and object were never absolute; women may be objectified through performance, but they are also empowered; men may consume women through the look, but women also watch and take pleasure in the spectacle of other women’s performance.

Thoughts?

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Hermione Granger: The Heroine Women Have Been Waiting For from Huffington Post

Spotlight on the Samsung Women’s International Film Festival from Gender Across Borders

Best Ever Hindi Films by Women Directors from Rediff Movies

Mila Kunis Is SO HORRIBLE! (This, too, is sarcasm.) from Shakesville

2011 Kids’ Movie Titles Feature 11 Male Stars from Reel Girl

Violence Against Women in Peru, and the Films of Claudia Llosa from Bad Reputation

Murder, She Blogged: Mrs. Columbo from Bitch Magazine

Tell Got Milk to End Its Sexist “PMS” Ad Campaign from Change.org 

Leave your links in the comments!

Quote of the Day: ‘Movie-Made America’

Movie-Made America by Robert Sklar
I came across this interesting piece from Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies, in which author Robert Sklar talks about a fairy-tale aspect of acting (being “discovered”), the patriarchal foundation of casting, and the behind-the-scenes women of the 1910s and 1920s. I’ve added some links to the original text for further reading.
In the World War I era–an unsettled period when late-Victorian mores persisted side by side with an emerging image of a “new woman”–it could only have been disconcerting to respectable Americans to see photographs of determined young women in the ankle-length dresses, high-button shoes and broad-brimmed hats standing in long lines outside a Hollywood casting office. The American middle class had only just begun to regard movies as something other than immoral trash for working-class people; and suddenly their daughters were packing up and leaving home to seek their fortunes in the movies.
If they had to go, the least one could do was give them sound advice, most of it intended to be discouraging. A girl should plan to have enough money to survive for a year without additional income; authors of advice books and articles for the movie aspirant set the minimum figure at $2,000. She should have resources enough to be able to acquire her own wardrobe, since extras in those days had to supply their own outfits for scenes of contemporary life. She should consider what abilities she possessed and perhaps direct her ambitions to other interesting work in motion pictures.
Studios needed talented dress designers, set decorators, film cutters, all jobs that were open to women. In fact, the motion-pictures studios in the 1910s and 1920s gave more opportunities to women than most other industries, far more than they ever did again. Many of the leading scenario writers were women, among them Anita Loos, June Mathis, Frances Marion and Jeanie Macpherson. Lois Weber was a well-known director and independent producer, and Elinor Glyn, Dorothy Arzner and other women directed films during the 1920s. Women were occasionally found in executive positions in Hollywood producing companies. And if a woman possessed none of these talents, there were always jobs as secretaries, mail clerks, film processors, and in other modest but essential roles in the making of movies.
But what women wanted was to be actresses. They could see that other girls, many still in their teens, without acting experience, were making it. Why not they? But no one informed them that a fair share of the young girls with film contracts were “payoffs,” as Colleen Moore called them: players who were hired as a favor to influential people or to pay back a favor they had done the studio. Moore got her start because her uncle, a newspaper editor, gave D.W. Griffith help in getting his films approved by the Chicago censorship board, and Griffith repaid him with a contract for his niece. In Silent Star, Moore reports that Carmel Myers, Mildred Harris (a bride at sixteen to Charlie Chaplin) and Winifred Westover, who began acting as teen-agers, were all “payoffs” in similar ways.