{"id":2472,"date":"2019-01-16T18:51:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T18:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/?p=2472"},"modified":"2019-05-16T15:29:30","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T15:29:30","slug":"myths-gender-screen-culture-feminism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/myths-gender-screen-culture-feminism\/","title":{"rendered":"Myths of Gender and Screen Culture: Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Other columns in this series:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Part 1:\u00a0The Myth of Gender<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Part 3: The Myth of Collaboration I<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Part 4: The Myth of Collaboration II<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Part 5: The Myth of Equality<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

When George Miller\u2019s <\/span>Mad Max: Fury Road<\/span><\/i> came out in 2015, the general response from Team Women was strong, but not all women were on board. <\/span><\/p>\n

IT\u2019S NOT FEMINIST!<\/span><\/i> declared one high-profile woman cultural critic, and while I harbor no ill-feelings towards those whose views differ from my own, it struck me how <\/span>vague<\/span><\/i> the term had become, at the expense of propagating\u00a0personal online brands based on specific interpretations<\/span>\u00a0of feminism, rather than the fluid, discourse-provoking notion I understood it to be.<\/span><\/p>\n

This question of feminism is crucial when thinking through women\u2019s filmmaking \u2014 although it\u2019s so often employed broadly as an ideological war-cry, rarely are the terms of engagement specifically defined. <\/span><\/p>\n

For me, that meaning has become not just blurry, but at worst denies room for the productive debates that feminism encourages. For example: it\u2019s important to remember there are both pro-sex feminists and anti-pornography feminists, all of whom claim a right to the label \u201cfeminist\u201d despite having diametrically opposing views on core issues. <\/span><\/p>\n

But in contemporary discourse, the term gets smooshed into one singular, unified whole, whose meaning remains elusive. The word \u201cfeminism\u201d is skewed towards our personal biases, to support our own arguments. In film criticism, this usually plays out when a film is reduced to simplistic, under-explored binaries of progressive vs. regressive, cutting-edge and forward-thinking vs. that omnipresent clich\u00e9, \u201cproblematic\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

This issue of definition has become for me a fascinating elephant in the room: when I see someone using the term \u201cfeminist\u201d, I\u2019m curious about the back-end mechanics of how they deploy it. Is it a starting point, to open up discussion? Or is it a full-stop, a single-word endgame, intent on shutting things down? \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Feminism at its best is a vibrant, urgent space for productive debate, and any functional definition must fundamentally embrace its in-built pluralities and yes, space for contradictions. Many self-identifying feminists now opt for the plural \u2013 \u201cfeminisms\u201d \u2013 avoiding the simplistic reduction of \u201cfeminism\u201d (singular) as a seemingly magic word that somehow denotes instant wokeness. <\/span><\/p>\n

Feminism as a starting place<\/h4>\n

This led me to art historian Peggy Phelan, who offered a possible definition in Helena Reckitt’s 2001 book Art<\/em> and<\/em> Feminism<\/em><\/a>: \u201cfeminism is the conviction that gender has been, and continues to be, a fundamental category for the organization of culture. Moreover the pattern of that organization usually favors men over women\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

After spending an entire year watching films made predominantly by women directors, Phelan\u2019s definition made a notable impact on how I conceive \u201cfeminist filmmaking\u201d. For some, <\/span>any<\/span><\/i> film made by a woman is automatically \u201cfeminist\u201d, which becomes tricky when discussing filmmakers such as Doris Wishman, Roberta Findlay, Elaine May, who have at times explicitly rejected the term (although it can be argued that their working in such a male-dominated industry itself speaks directly to subverting gender relations).<\/span><\/p>\n

Phelan\u2019s definition is most useful because instead of leading me to ask \u201cis this film\/filmmaker \u2018feminist\u2019?\u201d, the question becomes more intricate: \u201chow does this filmmaker tackle the interplay of gender difference and power?\u201d. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For starters, this offers a liberation from the widespread assumption that women filmmakers are somehow duty-bound to make films about women characters. While cinema history is full of male filmmakers who sometimes (OK, a lot) fail in the creation of complex, sophisticated women characters, to say men are somehow biologically incapable of doing so is a downhill slide into essentialist Troublesville; it implies the reverse must also be true, that women filmmakers cannot present complex, sophisticated male characters, a position I wholeheartedly reject.<\/span><\/p>\n

The myth of the feminist film<\/h4>\n

In considering the films of 2018, I came to realize that many of the films that impacted me the most \u2014 in terms of quality and emotional strength \u2014 were woman-directed movies about male characters: Chlo\u00e9 Zhao’s <\/span>The Rider<\/span><\/i> is based on the real-life experiences of cowboy Brady Jandreau, whom Zhao met in South Dakota while making her 2015 debut feature film <\/span>Songs My Brother Taught Me<\/span><\/i>. She cast Jandreau alongside a number of other untrained actors \u2014 his family and friends \u2014 in <\/span>The Rider<\/span><\/i> to present a fictional reimagining of his near-fatal riding accident.<\/span><\/p>\n