tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45885136264779052302024-03-13T00:25:41.805-07:00auteuse theory: a blog on women's cinemaThoughts about films made by women, from the 1890s through to the present dayEylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.comBlogger50125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-42320248205142650332017-11-17T07:27:00.001-08:002017-11-21T09:15:05.685-08:00Post-Weinstein reflections on ‘Female Stars of British Cinema’ <br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">MELANIE WILLIAMS</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the things that is telling about the book-writing
process is what you feel anxious about having omitted or fudged once a book is
published and it’s too late to change anything, short of a second edition. With
</span><a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526116819/"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: inherit;">my book on
David Lean</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> it was my unwitting but still problematic editorial squeeze on
material I originally had in the book about Lean’s frequent recourse to work by
gay writers (Coward, Rattigan, Arthur Laurens, E M Forster) who used
heterosexual narratives as allegories or cover stories for exploring the
complexities of closeted gay experience. This ended up being reduced down to
one reference to Andy Medhurst's (excellent) article on Noel Coward's queer
authorship of </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Brief Encounter</span></i><span style="font-family: inherit;">. But
you can’t encompass everything in a single book already straining at the seams,
you tell yourself, and so you move on, striving to be more carefully and thoughtfully inclusive in future
endeavours. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">With my most recent book, </span><a href="https://euppublishingblog.com/2017/08/14/shining-spotlight-british-cinemas-female-stars/"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: inherit;">Female Stars of British Cinema, published this summer</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, the post-publication
worries and regrets have been of a different order altogether. I am still very
proud of the book's detailed analysis of star personae and careers, and still believe
it makes a valuable contribution to our understandings of women's place on
British screens over the last 75 years. But... Weinstein. And everything that’s
happened since. If I had known then what I know now, I would have written an
altogether angrier book. Re-reading it now, its feminist critique seems too
gentle, tempered, modulated, careful: too bloody reasonable by half. At that
point – not that long ago at all – I was not apprised of the full facts about quite
how grimly sexist a place the film industry still continues to be for women, despite
guessing at those darker depths from time to time via allusion, anecdote, or
veiled inference. Although I had noted and critiqued the misogyny of the
critical commentariat and the vile treatment meted out by the press to many of
the stars I discussed, I was not as attentive to the toxic sexism in film
production itself, nor to the pervasiveness of sexual harassment within it. It
is impossible to inhabit that position of ignorance now, with </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/ng-interactive/2017/oct/13/the-weinstein-allegations"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: inherit;">the
revelations around the behaviour of Harvey Weinstein</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> having had a domino
effect in exposing similar cultures of male entitlement and sexual violence not
only in film but in many other professions besides.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the case of Weinstein, it was clear from Peter Biskind's book
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Down and Dirty Pictures</span></i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> that the
producer had always been an obnoxious operator whose business ethics were
questionable to say the least but what hadn't been public knowledge (even if it
had been industry lore) was his status as a sexual predator. Listening to </span><a href="http://video.newyorker.com/watch/harvey-weinstein-caught-on-tape"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: inherit;">t</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: inherit;">he tapes
of his intimidating, emphatic, relentless verbal bullying of </span></span><span lang="EN" style="margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: inherit;">Ambra Battilana Gutierrez</span></span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> as he attempted to
get the aspiring actress to come into his hotel room is a chilling experience. So
is reading the testimony of Rose McGowan, Asia Argento and a mounting number of
other women who accuse Harvey Weinstein of molesting and raping them; this is a
truly rotten, repulsive state of affairs. Understandably the lid was kept very
tightly shut, with </span><a href="https://www.thelawyerportal.com/2017/11/13/non-disclosure-harvey-weinstein/"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: inherit;">NDAs
for all associates and employees of Weinstein</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, threats of legal action from
his crack team of lawyers for anyone who dared to speak out publicly, and even,
it seems, </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: inherit;">ex-Mossad
agents working to discredit any potential whistleblowers</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">. But
simultaneously there was also a smokescreen put up of Weinstein being an
advocate for women: the very tactic he attempted to use, without success, when
he released </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/us/statement-from-harvey-weinstein.html"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: inherit;">his
initial sorry/not sorry statement</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> about needing to undertake therapeutic
self-work to overcome his 'sex addiction’, in which he thought that setting up
a fellowship for women filmmakers at USC would be enough to get him off the
hook and make his mother proud of him again.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It was this same aspect of Weinstein, his desire to be seen
as a friend to women in the industry, that I referred to in my chapter on Judi
Dench in my book, noting that Weinstein had been a powerful advocate and ally
for Dench, and she not only credited him with kick-starting her film career but was also able
to indulge in affectionate practical joking with him. Quoted in innocence and
ignorance, that material now leaves a bitter aftertaste. While Weinstein was proselyting
for one woman's career, he was oppressing and attacking numerous others. An
earlier chapter of my book dealt with teen discovery Emily Lloyd's distressing
experiences of swimming with the Hollywood sharks in the late 80s and early
90s, drawing on material from her autobiography. But I wonder what she might
have said about sexual harassment in the industry if she had been able to write
without being in fear of litigation (especially since she was once up for the
role Uma Thurman ended up playing in the Weinstein-produced <i>Pulp Fiction</i>). Certainly
Hollywood as well as the British film industry found multiple ways to mistreat
Lloyd that are already well documented but it would not be surprising if a
whole further layer of foul behaviour now came to light. And in the conclusion to my
book, I discussed the barriers to British BAME actresses being accorded with
full star status and the repressive nostalgia of the dominant (white) English
Rose ideal but I had no idea how this was so tightly intertwined with the erotic peccadillos
of producers like Weinstein and </span><a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/bimadewunmi/lets-talk-about-black-women-in-hollywood-and-harvey?utm_term=.nuOXm7kklD#.hsbq7kww8a"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: inherit;">their
own racist understandings of who could be considered sufficiently star-worthy,
i.e. ‘fuckable’.</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> As Bim Adewunmi commented</span><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">, ‘</span></span><span lang="EN" style="color: #222222; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The next time you ponder the relative lack of black women
on your screens, consider that the casting process starts long before the
casting call goes out and can be debated, even when talent alone should have
secured the role, taking in factors like the preference of a producer’s sexual
desires.’</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Concluding my book about the chequered history of women’s
place in the British film industry as actresses and stars and then pondering the
future for British female stardom was always going to be a big ask, and it proved so. There have
been advances in some areas but backward steps in others, and given the choice
between faith in gradual progress or despairing nihilism, I would always
choose the former. But admittedly it is hard to sustain one’s optimism in the
wake of such harrowing evidence; evidence of a media industry riddled with patriarchal
power at its most poisonous and malign, of which Weinstein is only the tip of
the iceberg. But I have to draw comfort from the female counter-history of rebellion
and survival against the odds I was able to trace through my research: the warm, witty endurance of stars like Jean
Kent and Diana Dors in spite of the reductive ‘bad girl’ label they had slung
round their necks; the fact that unorthodox female stars like Rita Tushingham
and Glenda Jackson bucked the prevailing trends of what a female star should
look like (and were both erroneously dismissed as ugly as a result) and
triumphed anyway; Emily Lloyd fighting against serious mental
distress, and managing to survive into adulthood. There is much to celebrate in the long history of women on film in
Britain and in the exhilarating possibilities created by its cultures of stardom,
often giving a tangible presence to new and liberatory kinds of feminine
embodiment. But there is equally a great deal to regret and to mourn, and to
get angry about. It seems that we are only at the beginning of knowing the
full extent of the masculine abuse that has delimited and defined the space in which
women have been allowed to operate. But equally it feels like we might be at a
crucial juncture for trying to change that culture forever – and we should
demand nothing less.</span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-69679146167136930662017-11-17T07:19:00.000-08:002017-11-17T07:24:41.620-08:00About Auteuse Theory A RE-POST OF OUR ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION<br />
Welcome to <em>Auteuse Theory</em>. The purpose of this blog is to allow us to think about and write about a range of films made by women, from silent re-discoveries to the latest releases, from activist documentaries to mainstream Hollywood features, taking in examples from across the globe, whether famous or obscure. We have no desire to force ham-fisted links between very different films and very different filmmakers, to insist that they fit some pre-designated template of women’s cinema. Quite the opposite; we want to explore the diversity of forms taken by women’s filmmaking across different nations and eras. So why focus on women as a separate category at all? Why isolate their films from those of their male peers and think about them as some kind of exceptional or special case? Well, there’s still the matter of persistent inequality of opportunity within certain key authorial roles in the film industries. We all know the <a href="http://www.birds-eye-view.co.uk/198/about-us/about-us.html">stats</a>: even now, post-Bigelow Oscar win, women only constitute 10% of directors globally, and 15% of screenwriters. This is an improvement on previous years but it’s still (obviously!) a very minor proportion of the whole. As the British director <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/may/10/cannes-women-directors-ramsay-kawase">Lynne Ramsay</a> has commented, it’s ‘a bit like a country not being filmed – and that country not having a voice. It really does matter.’ And although we are very reluctant to make simple equations between the fact of there being a woman being at the helm of a film and that film offering a more complex picture of femininity (there have always been battalions of male directors who are very good at telling female-focussed stories), there is nonetheless plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that this is often true.<br />
Our main subject is film but we will inevitably make forays into television and other media from time to time. We will be focussing predominantly on films directed by women, but we’re also interested in including films which demonstrate female authorship in other ways (writing, producing or performance). And we won’t be thinking about those films solely as women’s films. We don’t want to ghettoise them, so we’ll be connecting them to the time and place of their production, or their place within a genre or a movement, as much as we connect them to each other. There will be no rhyme or reason to the films that we discuss or the order in which they appear, instead we’ll be hoping for serendipitous connections, unexpected correspondences, sharp contrasts, strange juxtapositions; in other words, a blog that aims to be perpetually different and surprising. Most of the writing will be undertaken by the two main authors but interspersed with guest reviews from others who will each bring a fresh perspective.<br />
And, finally, why the title A<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">uteuse Theory</i>? We were scouting around for a name that indicated a response to the old-fashioned auteur theory, and its insistence on ‘virility’ as a marker of directorial quality (all that Hawks and Ford worship). Women hadn’t only been marginalised in the making of films but the select few who had managed to break through were often given short shrift in the founding critical histories of film (with the exception of the highly problematic case of Leni Riefenstahl), until feminist scholars put Arzner, Weber, Guy-Blache, Lupino and Varda back into the picture. And this work of excavation and rediscovery continues – see the <a href="http://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/">Women Film Pioneers</a> and Women and Silent British Cinema <a href="http://womenandsilentbritishcinema.wordpress.com/">websites</a> for ongoing examples. We are aware of the problems of using the French feminised form of a professional name, drawing a gendered distinction between male and female practitioners (just as some publications reject the word actress in favour of actor for both men and women), but in the spirit of subversion, we wanted to occupy and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">feminise </i>a word - auteur - which still sits at the heart of so much film scholarship and film appreciation. And although the blog is called A<em>uteuse Theory, </em>it might be more appropriate to think in terms of 'theories', the more intellectually generous plural form. These are some theories and thoughts and ideas arising from watching these films made by women. We hope you enjoy reading them…<br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-22610823258720452532016-06-28T06:38:00.002-07:002016-06-28T06:38:28.891-07:00Meek's Cutoff (2010): the unheightened moment; taking aim at the male gazeLISA HOLLOWAY<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc11DtwOc8UK9-dWhW3As6WSMGRlHM5F6VS0icqat2j6PuIFLAolm1fCH4-PDP4UIBUGxhzd8gOdGK3K7s4RUbkRsbGjKLIMwRgruDAn2EZXa7Cz8ha0RWPHMKihbKd4tcNoFvLRObWto/s1600/meeks+cutoff+poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc11DtwOc8UK9-dWhW3As6WSMGRlHM5F6VS0icqat2j6PuIFLAolm1fCH4-PDP4UIBUGxhzd8gOdGK3K7s4RUbkRsbGjKLIMwRgruDAn2EZXa7Cz8ha0RWPHMKihbKd4tcNoFvLRObWto/s640/meeks+cutoff+poster.jpg" width="449" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kelly Reichardt’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meek’s Cutoff</i> (2010) is an independent, art-house, revisionist
American Western that knowingly disrupts and questions the ideals and
traditional elements of the classic Western that trapped women in limiting
codes and conventions. The film unequivocally subverts classical cinema’s
relationship with “the straight, socially established interpretation of sexual
difference which controls images, erotic ways of looking and spectacle”
(Mulvey, 1993 [1975], p.111). <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Women in Westerns have historically been
“trivialized and degraded” (Tompkins, 1993, p.17), “meek and passive, modest
and silent” (Mesce, 2001, p.81). Westerns “tell stories […] from the positions
men occupy in the social structure, […] from the man’s point of view”
(Tompkins, 1993, p.40). Reichardt, a feminist auteuse and academic, reimagines
reality for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">women</i> on the Oregon
Trail by actively overturning and remodelling the Western, “a genre [that is]
uninterested in women at best, overtly misogynist at worst” (Studlar, 2001,
p.43). The film places the experience of women as its focal point to revise the
original mythology of the Wild West, giving us “<span style="background: white; color: black;">the reverse shot of the genre as a whole”<span class="apple-converted-space"> (Binding et al, 2014).</span></span> <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Reichardt investigates the historically
authentic experience for women travelling west in a wagon train in 1845. Rooted
in primary sources, through research of women’s diaries and archives, she
re-presents the story of the Wild West from the women’s perspective: <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Women were the diary
keepers and the diaries offer such a specific take on the history […]. The
exceptions seemed to be the friendships the women formed with each other. […] one
woman [wrote] that she was keeping a diary in case her husband should ever want
to know her (Press Notes, 2010, p.3).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The film provides a greater sense of realism
than the traditional Western, ‘remembering’ the period accurately and providing
what a contemporary audience would find a more truthful depiction of relations
between the sexes in the Wild West: “although women have been censored from the
texts of history, they populate its reality and must be saved from obscurity”
(Doane, 1984, p.67). <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In a purposeful re-framing of the
male gaze, Reichardt asks “‘What would John Wayne’s character look like from
[the perspective of] the woman that served his soup?’” (Mayer, 2016, p.111). Through
the camera, the spectator is encouraged to look at the women much more than the
men. The film is clearly interested in them, but the spectator is required to study
the women in a different way; they are not connoting “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to-be-looked-at-ness</i>” (Mulvey, 1993 [1975], 116). Conversely, Reichardt’s
actors “avoid performing, attempting [to be] as naturalistic as possible”
(Quart, 2011, p.40). The camera does not wander across the women’s bodies via
segmented close-ups, enticing the onlooker to imagine how it might feel to
touch them. However, the viewer is often invited to consider what the women
characters – especially Emily - might be thinking about, through medium close-ups
on their faces. Like the film, this analysis focuses on the character of Emily
Tetherow (Michelle Williams) and directly addresses Mulvey’s gaze theory (1993
[1975]).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In the first shot of all three women together,
they are faceless, unidentifiable figures in diluted pastel colours, a
beautifully composed moving image in long shot, that creates an aesthetic “distancing”
(Morrison, 2010, p.42), with a backdrop of Graces’ ambient music suggesting the
labour of their journey as they walk towards the static camera (see Fig. 1
below). The women trek wearisomely behind the men, hindered by long calico
dresses and bonnets that cut off their peripheral view and ability to hear
clearly, somehow imprisoned within the vast, barren landscape, the caged bird carried
with them a metaphor for their lives. Reichardt echoes this motif in her
decision to use the standard Academy square 4:3 aspect ratio, which literally
cuts off the conventional wide-screen format used in many Westerns that might generically
indicate the male hero’s symbiotic relationship with the wilderness. This
restriction in their and the spectator’s view adds to the uncertainty of the
route Meek ‘navigates’ on their relentless journey, in contrast for instance to
Ethan Edward’s (John Wayne) intrepid mastery of the vast prairie in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Searchers </i>(John Ford, 1956).</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkeEbinSyTA3owtF5rXVVbzdyqa0MQKwmucGxsa2DXnLl0B7OhnrSzl1LOgOQRIM0TA6rC8SKS6h6Kb88UobZPIsSo6xo8P9jPNJea4Kh2ItezhbY3QtiiUDht8_jbSQUIlwQSrtfRcDs/s1600/meeks+cutoff+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkeEbinSyTA3owtF5rXVVbzdyqa0MQKwmucGxsa2DXnLl0B7OhnrSzl1LOgOQRIM0TA6rC8SKS6h6Kb88UobZPIsSo6xo8P9jPNJea4Kh2ItezhbY3QtiiUDht8_jbSQUIlwQSrtfRcDs/s320/meeks+cutoff+1.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Fig. 1. Faceless,
unidentifiable figures in diluted pastel colours<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Whilst adopting recognisable motifs of the
Western -<span style="color: red;"> </span>wagons, guns, the wilderness landscape
and a Native American - Reichardt rejects the more popular conventions and narrative
clichés of Westerns such as the male protagonist’s ability to conquer women and
the wilderness: “Westerns are so macho and masculine. They are collections of
heightened moments” (Reichardt in Quart, 2011, p.41). An example of these “heightened
moments” such as “a man [drowning] in the fording of a river, […] a child’s
death […] as the result of a runaway wagon” (Morrison, 2010, p.42), is provided
in Morrison’s comparison between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meek’s
Cutoff </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Way West</i> (Andrew
V. <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">McLaglen,</span> 1967) a classical
Western about the Oregon Trail. Morrison found “everything that had been
expunged from Reichardt’s fiercely indie film: wide-screen Panavision format,
big stars […], character development, action, drama, romance, a beginning and
an ending” (2010, p.40).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">As opposed to a linear,
active, ‘masculine’ syntax, Reichardt employs “a feminine language […] more
open, [with] multiplicities of meanings” (Kuhn, 1994, p.11). Glory White
(Shirley Henderson) twice asks the other women “what are [the men] talking
about?”. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">We regularly see the men standing around and talking at a distance in
static wide shot, illustrating their separateness from the women. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The
unintelligible plans of the male group are mediated through the women’s perspective,
as in the first few frames of the film, when the men can only just be heard on
the other side of the river. This is political for Reichardt. Director Sally
Potter observes </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">(2011, p.14)</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">: </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Point of view is usually only conspicuous when it
is oppositional. The dominant, prevailing point of view remains invisible or
apparently neutral and objective”. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Neither the viewer nor the
women can hear clearly what potentially life threatening decisions are being
made: “While the women do what has to be done, the men discuss and decide on
the direction to take” (Reichardt in Quart, 2011, p.41). </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Laura Mulvey wrote at
length about the kind of feminist cinema she thought would be sufficient to contend
with patriarchal cinema: what a feminist avant-garde cinema might need to do to
“construct a new language of cinema” (2009 [1978], p.123). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meek’s Cutoff</i> is not quite avant-garde but Reichardt feels “alienated
from mainstream filmmaking” (Reichardt in Quart 2011, p.42). Reichardt has
focused on “the matter of film language itself, probing dislocation between
cinematic form and cinematic material” (Mulvey, 2009 [1978], p.123). </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Meek’s Cutoff </span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">is slow,
art-cinema</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">: ambiguous, </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalist" title="Minimalist"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; text-decoration: none;">minimalist</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">,
observational, with </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">silence, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">pared-down music and </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">narrative and “psychologically
complex characters” (Bordwell, 2002, p.718). Lingering on landscape to allow
the spectator space for contemplation, the journey is apparently never-ending:
you “get the sense that the diaries are the only thing besides the weather that
mark the passing of time” (Press Notes, 2010, p.3). This sense of time passing
is expressed through intricately considered, monotonous chores that are the
women’s duties. This “diffuse temporality” notes Mayer “sets Reichardt’s film
apart from the majority of action-oriented westerns” (2016, p.112). <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Reichardt’s film is not classical in its
textual properties. Very little happens: in terms of character arcs and a
dramatic arc, it is purposefully subdued, capturing a well-documented moment in
history, in the middle of a story, and in the middle of a journey, rather than
providing an imagined, generic overview of the Oregon Trail that might “[imply]
the migration path taken by thousands of settlers in the nineteenth century”
such as in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Way West</i> (Morrison,
2010, p.42). The film seems to ‘want’ to alienate anyone who would expect
conventional pleasures, especially those associated with the genre, but also those
associated with art cinema. It is a dismissal of the generic emphasis on display
and “technological progress” (Mayer, 2016, p.54). It is a film with “many
refusals” (Morrison, 2011, p.43). <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Instead, you have to adjust your expectations
to what the film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> prepared to offer:
a long, subtle, slowly developing exploration of power dynamics and
interpersonal relationships in the arid plains of the American desert. The
real-life Meek (Bruce Greenwood), “a blundering bully who took credit for
others’ work” (Mayer, 2016, p.111) in the event of the “Lost Wagon Train of
1845”, was hired by over 1,000 people to guide them through a dangerous ‘short-cut’
west (Quart, 2011). Reichardt condenses the train down to three families.
Unlike the male protagonist of classical cinema “free to command the stage, a
stage of spatial illusion in which he articulates the look and creates the action”
(Mulvey, 1993 [1975], p.118), Meek is an anti-hero. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">He does
not direct the gaze, nor is he the pivot of the film. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Meek
embodies the long-established attitudes - but not the prowess - of the mythical
male hero in Westerns, particularly with regard to his stance on the Cayuse,
with whom he tries to “assert [his] gender specific domination […] through sadomasochistic
activity” (Studlar, 2001, p.44). <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Meek is far from the “main controlling figure
with whom the spectator can identify” (Mulvey, 1993 [1975], p.116). </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">t is
through Emily that the spectator is given insight. The audience is ‘properly’ introduced
to Emily as she rigorously cleans out a bowl: with a high-angle shot of her squatting
on a rock, the spectator has no view of her cleavage or even her chest, her body
completely covered but for her hands. The activity of cleaning is foregrounded (see
Fig. 2 below). The first time the camera focuses on Emily’s face, is a
23-second, medium close-up of her walking purposefully, the soundtrack to the
shot a mumbled, bombastic account of Meek’s ‘bravado’. With subtle disapproval,
her look influences the spectator to take an early view of Meek’s character. Emily’s
relationship with her husband Solomon Tetherow (Will Patton) is the most
mutually respectful of the husband and wife relationships. Solomon discusses
the men’s concerns about Meek with her:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Emily:
Is he ignorant, or […] just plain evil […]?<span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Solomon: We can’t know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Emily: That’s very comforting Mr. Tetherow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Solomon: Well, we made our decision […].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Emily: I don’t blame him for not knowing, I
blame him for saying he did.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> </span></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXntl5a260_bmP8Ep6LnCd8OvWUZU2MlGdvtNazhim31xl47uOAnjSS-LM6zIGm_-KYr3mr66PddHYckwpF-Qc1ZtrppeCbFWZ2vUSydMEdC-Ru_wFJY69CjXfeuw1vEoQgWFYmS7IfJo/s320/meeks+cutoff+2.png" width="320" /><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Fig. 2. The activity of cleaning is
foregrounded</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Her prescribed role is passive and domestic, as
befits the era, but Emily gains more agency as the film progresses. Emily could
be construed as the ‘real’ Meek’s ‘cutoff’. With astute foresight about his
fraudulence, she cuts Meek off through language (and later through action) symbolising
the threat of castration (Mulvey, 1993 [1975], p.112):<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Meek: We’re going to make it alright.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Emily:
Oh now, you don’t need to patronise me for it.<br />
Meek: Well now I think you’re flirting with me ma’am.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Emily: You don’t know much about women do you
Stephen Meek?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The camera, in medium close-up on Emily, is
more interested in her perspective. Her face defiant, she stares directly at Meek
and smirks at him. Shortly after this, Meek talks to Solomon “Took you a while
to settle down I see. […] You’re a lucky man. Got yourself a nice, young
woman”. Clearly interested in Emily, this dialogue demonstrates that Meek was
probably flirting with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">her</i>. There is
also an implication that because Solomon is older he has done ‘well’ to ‘snag’
himself a young woman. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A key moment is when Emily takes the Indian
water and sews his moccasin, representing an evolved, ‘modern’ attitude; the
relationship that builds from this point, driven by Emily, is “life-saving”
(Mayer, 2016, p.111). Emily has agency in this action, ensuring the Indian “owes
[her] something”<span style="color: red;">. </span>Emily finds further authority
as off-screen she utters “Vanity. That’s all I see” in response to Meek’s
bragging about his slaughtering of Indians. Through medium close-ups on her
face, the spectator reads that Emily is the central character, eventually
representing the group’s voice and emotion, where “feeling rather than action
is the motor” (Mayer, 2016, p.112).<span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Reichardt has created an </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“alternative cinema” </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">that works in
counterpoint to the male gaze</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">of
classical Hollywood </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">(Mulvey, 1993 [1975],
p.113). To examine this juxtaposition, a short analysis of two scenes of ‘girls
with guns’ follows. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In the classic epic Western <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Duel in the Sun</i> (King Vidor, 1946),
Pearl is coded and sexualised for male titillation and overtly connoting “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to-be-looked-at-ness</i>” (Mulvey 1993
[1973], p.116). She wears red lipstick, a red skirt, a flowing red scarf. Raising
a gun to Lewt, as the bullet hits him she dramatically breaks down. We see her
face in extreme-close-up inciting the male viewer to imagine being that close
to Pearl. High angle shots emphasise her breasts as the camera invites the male
viewer to focus on her tight black blouse. She flings her entire body against a
rock, performing emotion. The music is heightened and the moment artificial (see
Fig. 3).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinXV3cpx9aaZQMqQW4CcEXuSPxKVLdCBy_vpNCtD-jvgi2wLl3qMNBgFy7yfKk8Yn9v19pIErZxGUVqPODyVLaCg-8h9dj77bWqdVtzWu_O2Glh-pZrgvSjZVJePcqNKMA5j2bFuNFAEE/s320/meeks+cutoff+3.png" width="320" /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Fig. 3.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Pearl is coded and sexualised
for male titillation</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In contrast <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meek’s
Cutoff</i> endeavours to prevent us from viewing the climactic gun scene as a
traditional spectacular assertion of masculine/phallic action and power</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">.
Emily – an adult woman, serious and expert – is not an erotic object. She wears
a practical dress that covers her from the unrelenting sun. With her bonnet
resting on her back, alongside the spectator she can see and hear clearly now. When
Meek points his gun at the Cayuse in low-shot, Emily lifts a much bigger rifle
to Meek in high-shot, emphasising her power. Emily protects the Indian. A
native American and a woman stand in progressive symphony on a hillside, the
blustering cowboy they look down on consigned to history (see Fig. 4 below).<span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Pearl is a victim of her emotions. Emily is
not. She is in control. It is a deliberately “unheightened moment” (Reichardt
in Quart, 2010, p.41). No shots are fired.</span><span style="color: red; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The hand-held camera invites
the viewer to focus on medium close-up reaction shots of the party suggesting
the destabilising effect this moment has had on the group. None of the men
challenge Emily’s authority. Her movements are minimal, about survival. The
spectator is never enticed by an extreme-close-up of Emily, as we are with
Pearl, but forced to engage with her as a woman of agency. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">She is
leading the action.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> Emily seizes ownership of the symbolic
phallus, perhaps invoking castration anxiety in both Meek and the male viewer,
threatening “to evoke the anxiety it originally signified” (Mulvey, 1993 [1975],
p.119). Although </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Emily is the only character who actually shoots a
gun when she loads a rifle expertly to alert the group to the Indian’s arrival,
she does not use it as “a tool for conquest” (<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">tieman64</span>, 2013). </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">As Meek aims at the Cayuse and Emily
points her gun at Meek, it is reminiscent of a Mexican stand-off, except the
Indian has no rifle and the camera is not s</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">till.
There is no intense music, instead we hear ambient sounds of buzzing insects. There
are no extreme close-ups on the guns cutting to extreme-close-ups on snarling
facial expressions, or fast edits contrasted with slow motion hands moving to
weapons. No one gets killed. The scene is realistic and authentic.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUKNkHpO7GINwzsEkRBVm2VvszbpX7GH1iW3zmjMfVjMm_PYFv43BLqWbxeeqfqDFG7goE2N_rubz3qC-nU5ZhU-FLxv1cn8C2Tfuu5bI_rGyHiTTjZxZonQWjpteAsfCEzoPx8NIT0gM/s1600/meeks+cutoff+4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUKNkHpO7GINwzsEkRBVm2VvszbpX7GH1iW3zmjMfVjMm_PYFv43BLqWbxeeqfqDFG7goE2N_rubz3qC-nU5ZhU-FLxv1cn8C2Tfuu5bI_rGyHiTTjZxZonQWjpteAsfCEzoPx8NIT0gM/s320/meeks+cutoff+4.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Fig. 4.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> A
native American and a woman stand in progressive symphony on a hillside</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">However, there is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">potentially</i> a problem here. The assertion
“All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun”, credited to Godard,
postulated that sex and violence create the ultimate recipe for commercial
cinema. Inevitably this scene invokes a palimpsest of the “aesthetically
powerful juxtaposition” (Van Raalte, 2012) of decades of ‘girl with gun’
images. Has Reichardt inadvertently fetishized Emily by allowing her to adopt
the violent gestures or the tools associated with masculine domination? </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Even this
writer had been compelled to ‘confront’ and highlight the gun scene as the
climactic moment of the analysis, perhaps opting for a masculine stance on the
film.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">It is
an event which the people marketing the film capitalised on. It is in the trailer,
on the poster and its presence in the promotion far outweighs its presence in
the film. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Although Reichardt works hard
to disallow us from reading Emily’s use of a gun as a resort to patriarchal
power, and although this moment in the film comes at a time in which it is
powerfully obvious that we are not watching commercial entertainment, the
inclusion of this scene ultimately endorses Goddard’s sentiments and Emily
becomes a fetishised phallic woman. Perhaps an offscreen Ibsenesque event might
have lent the scene more potency. The viewer already understands that Emily is
pivotal. Her words and sagacity would have served to dissuade Meek from
shooting the Cayuse. Her earlier questioning of Meek that represent the
unspoken feelings of the group and her calm and resolute demeanour is what renders
Emily truly powerful in this film, the use of her intellect far outweighing in
potency the wielding of a heavily loaded weapon. Finally however, the message
is clear: Emily’s use of the gun dilutes, but does not negate, the significance
of Reichardt’s revisionist project.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The most telling part of the story is in the final
scenes, where Meek says that he no longer even pretends to lead. He is
following the Tetherows: “This was written long before we got here. We are all
just playing our parts” says Meek. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Brechtian in essence, this
device, whilst reminding the audience that we are watching a film, brings the activity
to a standstill (Morrison, 2010, p.43). Whereas in classical cinema, the
woman’s role is to disrupt narrative, it is Meek’s presence that “work[s]
against the development of [the] story-line, to freeze the flow of action”
(Mulvey, 1993 [1975], p.116). </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The camera grants Emily the final decision as,</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> framed from within the branches of a tree, her gaze leads
the spectator to follow the Indian as he walks away, suggesting the group’s
choice (see Fig. 5 below). In employing art cinema strategies such as non-linearity,
non-activity, </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“uncoding, de-coding, deconstructing [and] de-familiarization”
(Doane, 1981, p.24) <span style="background: white;">related to feminine or
feminist syntax, </span>there is an intentional “absence of closure” (Kuhn,
1994, p.222). Reichardt offers a deliberately ambiguous ending, playfully ‘cutting
off’ the story and challenging us to employ our intellect to fill in the gaps
and create what happens next by “piecing together fragments of the story”
(Kuhn, 1994, p.165).</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Wk28c7l7WQjXBEU0SOr8PiopGggcsx4QRv-usF7IQ7XqE61naJsEJO3RBuiFgNMYwiY4QcYoMDwpohGBqJUIXPIPTwG4Jywxwkfp5KlHKEDSKLBEo2WQfYiKneJAaFKBT2Lj_r2U-es/s1600/meeks+cutoff+5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Wk28c7l7WQjXBEU0SOr8PiopGggcsx4QRv-usF7IQ7XqE61naJsEJO3RBuiFgNMYwiY4QcYoMDwpohGBqJUIXPIPTwG4Jywxwkfp5KlHKEDSKLBEo2WQfYiKneJAaFKBT2Lj_r2U-es/s320/meeks+cutoff+5.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Fig. 5. The camera grants Emily the final decision<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Fundamentally, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meek’s Cutoff </i>reclaims masculine
territory: Emily asserts power as an individual in her restricted context, and
symbolically Reichardt reclaims a power for women who have been disempowered by
a historically patriarchal, dominant genre, ensuring “the careful work of
feminist archivists, theorists, historians and artists is [not] neglected,
devalued [or] obscured” (Mayer, 2016, p.113). </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The film</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">is refreshing, political and
important: </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“In many ways it is this exploration of “invisible” politics, […]
challenging entrenched perceptions of how the world “is” [that] can contribute
to the business of changing it” (Potter, 2011, p.14).</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="color: red; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Meek’s
Cutoff</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> requires active participation of a different kind from Mulvey’s
voyeuristic objectification or narcissist identification </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">(1993
[1975], p.114): </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Here, at last, the demands of women can have a
determining effect on aesthetics, as the work of feminist film theorists and
film-makers gains strength and influence” (Mulvey, 2009 [1978], p.130). </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In an
“unheightened moment” (Reichardt in Quart, 2011, p.41) Reichardt also raises
her gun: in an indelible remodelling of the Western hero, she takes a direct
aim at the male gaze. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span></o:p></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><u>Bibliography</u></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Binding,
T., Willocks, T. & Wakefield, T. (2014) ‘</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0.75pt; line-height: 200%;">Women’s Shadow in the American Western’</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> [Online], <i>Granta:
The Magazine of New Writing</i> </span><a href="http://granta.com/womens-shadow-in-the-american-western/"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">http://granta.com/womens-shadow-in-the-american-western/</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> [Accessed
27<sup>th</sup> December 2015]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Bordwell,
D. (2002) ‘The Art Cinema as a mode of Film Practice’ in Fowler, C. (ed.), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The European Cinema Reader</i>. London:
Routledge, pp. 94-102.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Doane,
M. A. (1981) ‘Woman's Stake: Filming the Female Body’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Talkies</i>, 17, pp. 22-36. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Doane,
M. A. (1984) ‘The Woman’s Film: Possession and Address’ in Doane, M.A., Mellencamp,
P. & Williams, L. (eds.), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Re-Vision</i>.
Los Angeles: University Publications of America Inc., pp. 67-80.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Kuhn,
A. (1994) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Women’s pictures: feminism and
cinema.</i> 2<sup>nd</sup> edition. London: Verso.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Mayer,
S. (2016) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Political Animals: The New
Feminist Cinema</i>. London: I B Tauris.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Meek’s Cutoff. Preliminary Press Notes </span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">[Online]. Oscilloscope
Laboratories. </span><a href="http://img.fdb.cz/materialy/4137-Meekspressnotes.pdf"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://img.fdb.cz/materialy/4137-Meekspressnotes.pdf</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> [Accessed 20th
December 2015]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="color: #32322f; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Mesce, B. (2001) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Peckinpah’s Women. A Reappraisal of the Portrayal of Women in the
Period Westerns of Sam Peckinpah</i>. Maryland: Scarecrow Press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="color: #32322f; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Morrison, S. (2010) ‘In Transit.
Kelly Reichardt’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meek’s Cutoff’</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cineaction</i>. Toronto International Film
Festival: TIFF, pp. 40-44.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #32322f; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span></o:p></span></i><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Mulvey,
L. (1993 [1975]) ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ in Easthope, A. (ed.), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Contemporary Film Theory</i>. London and New
York: Longman, pp.111-124.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Mulvey,
L. (2009) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Visual and Other Pleasures</i>.
2<sup>nd</sup> edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="color: #32322f; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Quart, L. (2011)<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"> ‘The Way West: A
Feminist Perspective: An Interview with Kelly Reichardt’, </span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; border: 1pt currentColor; color: #32322f; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; padding: 0cm;">Cineaste</span></i><span style="background: white; border: 1pt currentColor; color: #32322f; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; padding: 0cm;">, 36 (2), pp. 40-42.</span><span style="color: #32322f; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="color: #32322f; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Potter, S. (2011) ‘The Prospects for Political
Cinema Today’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cineaste</i>, 37 (1), pp.
6-17.<span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="color: #32322f; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Studlar,
G. (2001) ‘Sacred Duties, Poetic Passions. John Ford and the Issue of
Femininity in the Western’ in Studlar, G. & Bernstein, M. (eds.), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">John Ford Made Westerns. Filming the Legend
in the Sound Era</i>, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 12.75pt; margin: 3.75pt 0cm 0pt; mso-outline-level: 2;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">tieman64 (2013) ‘We're not lost. We're just a little
locationally challenged’,</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">
[Online] </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">IMDB 10<sup>th</sup> May, </span><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1518812/reviews?start=23"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1518812/reviews?start=23</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> [</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Accessed 2<sup>nd</sup>
January 2016]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Tompkins,
J. (1993) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">West of Everything. The Inner
Life of Westerns</i>. Oxford: Oxford University Press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Van
Raalte, C. (2012) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Looking like a hero:
constructions of the female gunfighter in Hollywood cinema.</i> [Online].
Bournemouth University.</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> </span><a href="http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/21402/"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/21402/</span></span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[Accessed 25<sup>th</sup> June 2016].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><u>Filmography</u></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Duel
in the </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Sun</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">
(1946). [film] Directed by King Vidor. USA.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Meek’s<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> Cutoff</span></span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> (2011). [film]
Directed by Kelly Reichardt. UK.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The Searchers</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">
(1956). <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">[film] Directed by John
Ford. USA.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The Way West </span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">(<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">1967). [film] Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen.
USA.</span></span><b><span style="border: 1pt currentColor; color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%; padding: 0cm;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> </span></o:p></span></div>
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-87269936614672712742016-03-04T04:13:00.000-08:002016-03-04T04:16:20.559-08:00Out of the shade and into the limelight: Women Amateur Filmmakers in Britain<div style="text-align: center;">
SARAH HILL (UEA)</div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-i-iLs8Y5fTRHtdi3YjE_7uFZkpgAxwrvoMZsTUclNaDnfR891N5HpgP67eQDE_QXf65C8lqucpF1KsUybEWEpVQJIHYA3VnVGv8vgSonzrdQK5_KXf_-CQOoFI755nv_mvwMUrv_K7Y/s1600/Cat+3580+-+Make+Up+-+Still+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-i-iLs8Y5fTRHtdi3YjE_7uFZkpgAxwrvoMZsTUclNaDnfR891N5HpgP67eQDE_QXf65C8lqucpF1KsUybEWEpVQJIHYA3VnVGv8vgSonzrdQK5_KXf_-CQOoFI755nv_mvwMUrv_K7Y/s320/Cat+3580+-+Make+Up+-+Still+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Joanna Fryer, <em>Make-Up </em>(1978)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">As International
Women’s Day approaches, the East Anglian Film Archive (EAFA), part of the
University of East Anglia, has revealed over one hundred newly-digitised films
by women amateur filmmakers. This fascinating collection offers unprecedented
insights into the concerns and approaches of amateur female filmmakers working
between the 1920s and late-1980s. These Institute of Amateur Cinematographers
(IAC) award-winning films showcase an impressive variety of themes and topics,
including observations of life in Britain (and abroad) and insights into the
various social and cultural changes that took place over the period. These
themes are explored through dramas, comedies, documentaries, animated films and
travelogues.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The films also
highlight the different ways in which women amateur filmmakers worked during
the last century. Previously assumed to play a secondary or incidental role in
amateur film productions, the research undertaken at EAFA during the
cataloguing and digitisation of this collection demonstrates a more complex and
varied range of production practices. These films were made by lone filmmakers,
cine club teams, husband and wife partnerships, young women, students and
children. For example, research carried out by Dr Francis Dyson into
partnerships such as Stuart and Laurie Day revealed that women were key to such
creative collaborations, while the all-female team of </span></span><a href="http://auteusetheory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/identifying-experiences-of-frances-ivy.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Sally Sallies Forth</span></span></i></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
(Frances Lascot, 1928) arose out of cine-club interests. Indeed, the film is
credited as the first amateur film produced wholly and exclusively by women. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">Many of the women
amateur filmmakers went on to make films professionally and the films featured
in this collection offer a rare glimpse at the beginnings of the filmmaking
styles they would go on to develop professionally. For example, Joanna Fryer’s
film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Make-Up</i> (1978), produced when
she was a student, demonstrates her skill for sketch animation which she would
later use as an animator on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Snowman</i>
(1982). Meanwhile, animator Sheila Graber’s early films from the 1970s were
screened at IAC festivals and seen by an agent, which led to her working on the
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Just So Stories</i> (1979) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paddington</i> (1975-1986), and she
continues to </span></span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/sheilagraber"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">produce
short films</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> today.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The films also offer
unique perspectives on significant historical and cultural moments, such as
Eustace and Eunice Alliott’s travelogues, which were produced during their
trips around Europe in the 1930s. The Alliott’s snapshots of their daily life
on their travels are underscored by a sense of foreboding as they depict Europe
on the brink of war. On the other hand, sometimes a film only becomes
significant long after it was made, as is the case with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Her Second Birthday</i> (circa. 1934). The film captures a two-year-old
girl playing in the garden and was not initially intended to be shown outside
the family. This little girl grew up to be June Thorburn, the British actor who
starred in films such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Cruel Sea</i>
(1953) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tom Thumb</i> (1958), Thorburn
was killed in an air crash in 1967, aged 36.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">These distinctive
films shed light on the contribution women have made to amateur filmmaking in
the twentieth century, and they are soon to take their place in the limelight
as films are due to be</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">screened in selected cinemas across the UK from the 3<sup>rd</sup>
of March 2016 to celebrate International Women’s Day. This will be followed in
the coming weeks by special screenings and events to be announced. You can also
find out more about the films via Twitter @EAFAAmateurFilm and </span></span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/femaleamateurfilmmakers/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Facebook</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">The Women Amateur
Filmmakers in Britain catalogue and a selection of the digitised films can be
accessed </span></span><a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/search.aspx?g=1134379"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">here</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">.
For more information on the collection, or to arrange a screening, please
contact </span></span><a href="mailto:S.Hill1@uea.ac.uk"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="color: #0563c1; font-family: "calibri";">Sarah Hill</span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "calibri";">
at the University of East Anglia.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-13499519519429257812015-07-13T03:52:00.000-07:002015-07-13T03:52:08.752-07:00Artisan animation with a social agenda: 1970s children’s television in Finland<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br /></div>
NINA MICKWITZ<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">In October 2014 issue 3
of the Finnish, but Swedish language<a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/NMickwitz15_Artisan%20animation%20with%20a%20social%20agenda.docx" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">[i]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>, publication <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Film Journalen </i>allocated a substantial
amount of space to animation and to women creators. Considering its
international distribution and profile, it is hardly surprising that the cover should
have featured two of the main characters from the 2014 Finnish-French
co-production <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Moomins in the Riviera</i>,
the Snork Maiden and Moomintroll himself. The Moomins have grown to become one
of Finland’s most successful cultural exports and their creator, Tove Jansson (1914-2001),
assumed the status of a beloved national institution already in her life-time.
However, while the article about the Moomin film is given a double page spread,
a far more substantial portion of the journal is given to retrospective appraisals
of domestic animation occasioned by <a href="http://100vuotta.finnanimation.fi/in-english/"><span style="color: #0563c1;">2014 as the centenary year
of the animated film</span></a>. Particular attention is given to a group of female freelance
creators who during the 1970s brought about something of a golden age of home-grown
animation within the Swedish-language children’s programming at the public
broadcaster Yleisradio (translates roughly as ‘Public Radio’), or YLE. There is
an essay running through fifty years of Swedish language children’s animation
(Uggledahl 2014: 14-18), an article by Antonia Ringbom (2014: 20-25) based on
transcripts from her documentary and a shorter piece by Johanna Minkkinen
(2014: 36-37) about the 2014 release of a compilation DVD of animated shorts by
Camilla Mickwitz as a cultural heritage undertaking by the Finland Swedish Film
Centre. Before proceeding I should declare that Camilla Mickwitz (1937-1989),
one of the key figures in Finnish children’s animation of this era, was my
mother. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This means that my understanding
of the topic, although grounded in research, also draws on memory and my position
as an ‘inside observer’ (albeit a very young one) at the time in question. This
piece is not intended to amount to a personal tribute, but it would be churlish
not to include some personal recollection, as and when appropriate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Hailed
as significant and innovative contributors to Finland’s animation history by
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Film Journalen </i>issue and also a
(somewhat patronisingly titled) television documentary, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Berits stall – tjejmaffian/ Berit’s stable – the girl mafia</i> (Pii
Berg and Antonia Ringbom 2014), aired on YLE5 on the 10<sup>th</sup> of October
2014, Christina Andersson, Kati Bondstam, Ia Falck, Estelle Rosenlew, Antonia
Ringbom and Camilla Mickwitz all worked with the children’s television producer
and programmer Berit Neumann between 1968 and the mid-70s. This is a segment of
women’s film history that offers multiple facets worthy of attention: gender
and hierarchies of value in relation to children’s television; creative industries
themes’ such as freelance and project based work, industry awards as
determinants of quality (Connolly, Hanretty, Hargreaves Heap and Street 2015);
barriers to the transnational flows of media in terms of language, and codes of
representation. While dealing with each of these considerations in depth is beyond
the scope here, I will aim to introduce some examples of content, as well as indicatively
consider some contextual factors, in order to situate this fragment of Finnish
animation and women’s film-making history. But the relative obscurity of this topic,
and its cultural context, prompts me to first outline something of a background
sketch. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">There
is a tendency to summarise Finland’s international profile by tentative listing
of a handful of sports stars, design brands and latterly the mobile technology
giant Nokia. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The country’s marginal
position, culturally speaking, seems underlined geographically. Beyond a long
land-border with Russia, it is set apart from surrounding countries by the
Baltic Sea. Speeded-up connections by air travel have not managed to render
this geographical circumstance any less psychologically potent; I grew up in
the capital of Finland with a nagging sense of being incurably tucked away in a
peripheral and parochial European region. It is perhaps unsurprising that, much
later on, reading theoretical postulations about centre-margins dichotomies had
immediate and experiential resonance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">A
relatively young nation, Finland is Nordic, but not Scandinavian, and despite
occupying a relatively large expanse of space, it has a small population and a (first)
language that shares little in common with most other European languages. Historically,
Finland in the post WW2 period has also held a somewhat singular position. Despite
a being a European free market economy and having a fraught historical and
political past with its larger, more powerful neighbour, the country maintained
close ties with the Soviet Union and Eastern European socialist states in terms
of trade, but significantly also cultural links and exchanges. Why is this
relevant here? Looking at the animation that flourished in Finnish children’s
television in the 1970s it is possible to discern a fusion of influences of
1950s American limited animation, its aesthetics and principles, and the stop
motion techniques and artisan production model of Eastern European animation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Used
by animation pioneers such as Winsor McKay and Earl Hurd (who sought to patent
the process in 1914), Walt Disney is most commonly seen as the trail blazer and
dominant figure in the history of cel animation. Cel animation involves creating
the impression of movement by overlaying static and painted backgrounds with transparent
celluloid acetate sheets, on which the figures and their movements are traced. In
a report on Finnish animation published by the Finnish Film Foundation, Juho
Gartz (1975) makes quite clear how despite the awe inspired by the technical
superiority of Disney’s productions, home grown production was galvanised more
radically by the (later) example set by UPA’s adoption of more financially
feasible practices of limited animation. Meanwhile, possibilities of stop
motion animation were vigorously explored in Eastern Europe, in particular in
the, then, Republic of Czechoslovakia. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Stop
motion animation creates movement through the physical movement of elements in
between shots in order to effect the illusion of continuous movement once
projected at a range of typically 12-24 frames per second. Time consuming and painstaking
as this is, it is still less labour intensive than Disney-style cel animation.
It does not, therefore, inherently necessitate an extensive work-force,
especially if the goal is not a feature length film. While this technique also
had proponents in the US and elsewhere, stop motion animation and puppet
animation has a rich tradition in Eastern Europe. Famous names include the Soviet
film maker Aleksandr Ptushko and the Czech Ladislas Starewitch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>John Halas and Roger Manwell (1969: 236) have
accredited the proliferation of puppet animation here to longer standing folk
traditions involving carved dolls. However, it would be wrong to discount the
role of state subsidised cultural production of the socialist Eastern Bloc, which
offered a platform for individuals and small production teams to explore the
medium without the immediate pressure of sustaining profitable box office
returns. This most certainly contributed to the emergence of influential post-
WW2 creators such as Jan Šwankmajer and Jiří Trnka, the latter’s expression of
political dissent in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cS4Th36zN_g"><span style="color: #0563c1;">Ruka</span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">/</span></span><span style="color: #0563c1;">The Hand</span></a></i> (1965) notwithstanding. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">State
sponsored cultural production in Finland should by no means be directly
compared to that of the structures both enabling and constraining the arts in Soviet
era Eastern European countries. But, the 1970s in particular saw a pro-active
arts policy in several parts of Northern Europe (Toepler and Zimmer: 32). Arts
funding in part worked to support social democratic goals of equality and
access for consumers, but also took the form of subsidies and grants schemes
for small groups and individuals. Especially in comparatively small and young
nations such as Finland, funding of artists and cultural producers by means of
grants can be seen as an expression of the wider logic that informed Nordic cultural
policy from the beginning of the 1960s up until the mid-70s; a protective
measure against the perceived threat of commercial interests and a way of ‘strengthening
national identities through cultural policy’ (Duelund 2008: 13<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>According
to this understanding public funding of artistic production, including the
projects of individual and artisan cultural producers, works to protect
authenticity, innovation and quality. The idea that the good of the nation is
in need of such safe-guarding is informed by a view of the cultural industries that
has since been debunked for its paternalistic attitude towards ‘the public’, and
criticised for the dichotomy it constructs between commerce and notions of
value. And yet, despite a rather comprehensive theoretical fall from grace and
further erosion by the general political drift towards neoliberal and
market-led positions, this period of cultural policy produced some interesting
results. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And while the media and
critical attention to this period in Finnish animation history has largely
focused on creator personas, the creative industries perspective is found simmering
not too far under the surface. But more on this later.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Camilla
Mickwitz, having trained as a graphic artist and worked commercially as an illustrator,
began her forays into animation under the wing of Berit Neumann, and tutelage
of Aarre Aalto who ran the YLE special effects studio (Ringbom 2014: 22) in the
late 1960s. At this point, no formal animation education was yet in place in
Finland, and home-grown Finnish animation was most prominently featured in
advertising, or as short segments in live-action programming. Juho Gartz (1975)
has traced historical connections to comic book publishing and illustration, as
well as the influential year-long stay in Helsinki in 1960-61 by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0051135/"><span style="color: #0563c1;">Robert Balser</span></a>, later famed for
his contribution to the Beatles film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yellow
Submarine</i> (1968) and television series <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jackson
Five</i> (1971-72). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Although
the animation of Mickwitz and her contemporaries is far from characterised by
technical sophistication (Gartz 1975: 110; Uggeldahl 2014:15), it did achieve significant
critical acclaim. In fact, technical naiveté to some extent worked to underline
prestige, by defining this group’s work against the slickness, high production
values of large-scale production and ‘mass culture’ status of popular imports
(read Disney). In other words, the work by this group of animators presented an
exemplary fit with the cultural policy of the time. A far more sympathetic fit,
supported by established cultural exchange programmes between Finland and
socialist Eastern Bloc states, was found with the Eastern European craft
orientated aesthetic. However, instead of puppet animation, early Finnish
animation was more often a form of simple 2D stop motion: using cut-out pieces
of paper and making drawings ‘come alive’ by applying basic principles of
animation. This technique is, in fact, also known as cut-out animation. Many of
the creators in question made children’s books as well as animated films, also in
keeping with the Eastern European model. Seemingly driven in equal measure by
the emphasis on a singular creative vision that characterises a field of
restricted cultural production (Bourdieu 1993) and a social agenda, this was
work asserting claims for children’s culture to be taken seriously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because access to these short films is
limited, and translation issues (cultural as well as linguistic) further
complicate their circulation, I feel that some examples of some of the stories
and the characters inhabiting these depicted worlds is needed. It will
hopefully help explain the general outlook of this particular crop of
children’s animation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Christina
Andersson’s (1936-) very earliest film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tugsummarpojken/The
Thumbsucking Boy</i> includes a negotiation between son and father along the
lines of ‘you quit smoking cigarettes, and I will stop sucking my thumb’
(Ringbom 2014: 22-23), </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%;"><a href="http://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=what&p=181&item=T:29452"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">Mats och hans Föräldrar/Mats and his Parents</span></span></a>
</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">(1971)
grappled with divorce and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jakob
Dunderskägg/Jacob Thunderbeard </i>(1979) featured as its central character a distinctly
un-conventional child minder. As far from the prim and proper Mary Poppins as
imaginable, Jakob, a gruff and unkempt pirate captain, showed that values
beyond appearances and conventions ultimately win the day. But perhaps more significantly,
especially when considering that he made his appearance more than twenty-five
years ago, Andersson’s Jakob challenged gender assumptions in relation to child
care. Some years later, taking a broader view and more heavy-handed approach, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anima och Monstret ‘Destruktor’/ Anima and
the Monster ‘Destructor’</i> (1985) by Antonia Ringbom addressed threats to the
environment from nuclear power and the excesses of disposable consumer culture.
At fifty minutes this was a comparatively long film, and thus ambitious in
terms of technical scope as well as its themes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span> </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">With
a decidedly more upbeat quality characterising her body of work, Camilla Mickwitz
went on to publish more than twenty children’s books and write and produce
almost as many animated shorts. She also created the logo and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFILES34wy0"><span style="color: #0563c1;">ident</span></a> for the children’s
television channel ‘Pikku Kakkonen’ (‘Little Two’), which is currently still in
use, and animated a long-running public information film about the dangers of
playing on thin ice. Her very first animation, to the soundtrack of ‘The Mice’s
Christmas Eve’ (which is a well-known by Norwegian songwriter Alf Prøysen), was
aired on YLE’s fledgling Swedish language children’s programme slot in 1968. From
there Mickwitz soon moved on to a more authorial approach; writing, drawing,
directing and eventually also producing her own films. In order of appearance,
her most well-known characters are a small boy called Jason, Emilia (who tells
stories with her father, Oskar), and an anarchic little witch, Mimosa, who travels
by broom-stick and generally takes it upon herself to be an instigator of disorder.
All appeared in several short animations as well as books. The first film
introducing Jason (1971) was no more than 5-6 minutes long. The film opens by
showing the simply drawn shape of a tower block as the voice-over explains:
‘many people live in this house, big people and little people’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiM4hx9ksw3gLJH4dauUJH9Ar8mpK6owjxTeXLG8IcK3_zUeSy_VFoSGhZYLF8TQk1nIrmrCadMfdVpWCVCB5wTgPSWPsG8oSW8SuBjoOty4K3sheD0FteU-H5t6nVXO1BzfEu0FjHFac/s1600/mickwitz+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiM4hx9ksw3gLJH4dauUJH9Ar8mpK6owjxTeXLG8IcK3_zUeSy_VFoSGhZYLF8TQk1nIrmrCadMfdVpWCVCB5wTgPSWPsG8oSW8SuBjoOty4K3sheD0FteU-H5t6nVXO1BzfEu0FjHFac/s320/mickwitz+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Jason himself is first
seen being pulled by the hand by his mother at such speed that he seemingly
flies in her wake; she can’t be late for work and must drop Jason off at the child
minder beforehand. Jason’s mother works on the production line in a factory,
but earns extra cash as a life-drawing model for evening classes at the art
school. In a provocative move, Mickwitz shows her posing between easels, a
thought bubble revealing that she’s thinking about the new winter coat she wants
to buy for Jason with her wages. The story details aspects of the everyday life
this small family unit: watching television together, Jason playing with his
friends and baking at the child-minder’s flat, a trip to the hair- dresser’s
and the treat of an ice-cream cone bought from a small kiosk. But despite its hum-drum
social realism the approach is far from down-beat. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">As unsentimental as it is
visually rich, this is a vibrant colour-world conjured by crayons and water
soluble pencils and characterised by an assured graphic style and sensibility.
The single parent family is represented but never explained, commented or
elaborated on. In the later, and at 13 minutes slightly longer, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jason’s Summer</i> (1973), Jason and his
mother escape the dust and grime of the big city to stay in a rural guest house
run by an elderly lady. Here Jason watches the various guests who all holiday in
the villa while observing strict social protocols not to invade each other’s
personal space. He eventually decides that this is a predictable and dull state
of affairs, and by pushing all the small tables in the dining room together
forces everybody to get to know each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvH9IhzG38DfRUYSYs2vkU_M1QH-qZvNoqIjnudhFYplangtAiLWkSQZ9iCGpKk6iHDxHnmvRwCFa7GaGtgHeJLAe6kx73z8aQwWbx4V8i18k6Fm1ZiQsXiJ1orbjzrJb8A7nhLkTZjdI/s1600/mickwitz+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvH9IhzG38DfRUYSYs2vkU_M1QH-qZvNoqIjnudhFYplangtAiLWkSQZ9iCGpKk6iHDxHnmvRwCFa7GaGtgHeJLAe6kx73z8aQwWbx4V8i18k6Fm1ZiQsXiJ1orbjzrJb8A7nhLkTZjdI/s1600/mickwitz+3.jpg" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGyzUKDyGIEeQHxjgOtszXENCeIW4ZYFs66cP64ZKV_WjartozkyRKNPXNhEWEV-V-kw2CmiKfGGeNoLyu940D4g8wC7HmPraixz21InMAOJL7Ls62lGHnx0mnaD55WXbo-wqwjZTjjSU/s1600/mickwitz+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGyzUKDyGIEeQHxjgOtszXENCeIW4ZYFs66cP64ZKV_WjartozkyRKNPXNhEWEV-V-kw2CmiKfGGeNoLyu940D4g8wC7HmPraixz21InMAOJL7Ls62lGHnx0mnaD55WXbo-wqwjZTjjSU/s200/mickwitz+4.jpg" width="153" /></a></span></span><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_7"
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<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Sharing,
intergenerational relationships and the foibles and (ultimately redeemable) shortcomings
of adults are recurring themes in Mickwitz’ work. In another Jason story, Angry
Agnes, the bad-tempered neighbour who complains about noise on the landing, has
an unexpected change of heart. When tooth-ache causes Agnes to swaddle her head
in a thick shawl, she finds the isolation of complete silence disconcerting.
This helps her realise that rather than just aggravating noise, sounds of other
people in the building are in fact reassuring signs that she is not all alone.
The Emilia stories tackle a variety of topics: sea pollution (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Emilia and The Twins</i>); totalitarianism and
simultaneously the power relations between big people and small people (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Emilia and King Oscar</i>); elderly ladies reclaiming
a sense of purpose as they interact with neighbourhood children (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Emilia and Three Little Old Ladies</i>); and
not least, the story about the small boy who, despite wishing for a doll to
dress and bathe and play with, only ever receives toy cars and trucks on
birthdays and Christmases (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Emilia and the
Doll</i>).</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Gcv1R_9Owla5yKxPGokfjfipEVPPJEn534X2WmBkwfOL73rhxmU3NFyWhUzB8poHfCdGs1th0v2EiVd6_cEAhiQHjZy826CeXJfnukamoLrcZXr-rzBMOnAfJe-XEdGI-C9Grg6Kvrs/s1600/mickwitz+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Gcv1R_9Owla5yKxPGokfjfipEVPPJEn534X2WmBkwfOL73rhxmU3NFyWhUzB8poHfCdGs1th0v2EiVd6_cEAhiQHjZy826CeXJfnukamoLrcZXr-rzBMOnAfJe-XEdGI-C9Grg6Kvrs/s1600/mickwitz+5.jpg" /></a></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Presumably as a result of
his thwarted childhood desires, when as an adult this protagonist meets a girl
who looks exactly like a doll, he finds her irresistible and they soon move in
together. But Nora (with a none-too-subtle nod to Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen)
eventually outgrows the doll’s house he has built for her and she leaves. The
story ends by a conciliation on a park bench, as Nora (in a more fresh-faced
and less frilly incarnation) and her newly re-constructed man agree that real
persons are not objects to be owned. Perhaps a tad clunky, but as a politically
engaged film aimed for child audiences, it also seems remarkably ahead of its
time. Presenting a clear and radical counterpoint to the gender politics
associated with Disney princess films, this contribution in fact significantly
pre-dates the majority of them, with the exception of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Snow White and the Seven Dwarves</i> (1937), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cinderella</i> (1950) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sleeping
Beauty</i> (1959). So evidently, stylistic markers and production models are
not the only aspects worthy of consideration. I think it is true to say that
the public funding model and cultural policy that contributed to this work’s
emergence, in effect, reproduces the ‘charismatic ideology’ (Bourdieu 1996/1992:
167, cited by Hesmondhalgh 2006: 212) and consecrates of the individual creator.
At the same time, it enabled the production and circulation of perspectives and
values not necessarily made available in dominant market-led cultural
production, producing added breadth in terms of resources for the construction
of subjectivities and identities. The observational humour and determined social
engagement that characterises this work is no less pronounced than the deliberately
hand-crafted aesthetic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Within
the relatively small-scale national context of these films, their profile as
domestically produced and pioneering products was further bolstered by critical
attention in the form of awards. Prizes and awards are important mechanisms for
attributing value by means of industry/peer recognition (Hanretty, Connolly,
Street and Hargreaves-Heap 2015: 268). And as in any kind of award and grants
economy, also familiar in academic contexts, having proven ability to attract
funding significantly adds weight to future proposals. It is therefore a
crucial consideration. International film festivals, and especially animation
festivals such as the ones held in Bratislava and Annecy were not just
networking opportunities. Recognition abroad reverberated back home with
considerable effect. Andersson was awarded a prize from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prix Jeunesse</i> Foundation in Munich in
1972, which was followed by several domestic awards. Mickwitz also has a
considerable list of Finnish prizes and accolades. Among others, she was
awarded the Finnish State Award for Children’s Literature in 1973, and again in
1976 and 1986, followed by the State Award for Children’s Culture a year later.
However, most commentaries on her career focus their attention on a prize given
at the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hollywood International Television
Awards </i>in 1974. Despite its grand name, this was in fact a small and local industry
festival that did not achieve the longevity of some of its competitors, and has
since disappeared without trace from festival listing and archives. It is
likely that the film was originally submitted by YLE as part of a promotional
drive; exposure aimed to drum up interest from overseas networks. When the film
was selected for special commendation, this recognition of a Finnish animator
(with the instant glamour of the Hollywood name and kudos of the ‘International’
in its title) was picked up by the main national newspaper, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Helsingin Sanomat</i>. This in turn ignited interest
from a slew of women’s magazines. This short-lived, but nonetheless potently frothy
flurry of attention helped cement the idea of Mickwitz as a figure of note on
the Finnish cultural scene. The chimera of ‘the Hollywood prize’ still lingers seductively
and has become a staple in narratives surrounding Mickwitz’ contribution to
Finnish animation and children’s culture.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Confirmations
of international recognition are thus an important element in this particularly
fertile and productive period in the history of Finnish animation. But despite
such industry acknowledgements, and despite being showcased at larger European
trade-fairs, most of these animated shorts were taken up and bought mainly by other
Nordic broadcasters. It would seem that single parent families, artist’s models
and the revolutionary overthrow of authoritarian patriarchs was deemed
inappropriate content for children’s television further afield. Granted, this
was several decades ago. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ3lrhPz258_TLitT3XwY_VeBr8ghohETRXYzgKil7ZU_BtluxwVrlNFDzXp2cxxOHJxLbB0Sqn73F_GxYXWSjiqOBHAlQmZKSk96tibe8qDXfIRYZ-iHbV4gHTjZbYEXlGLgzvWFI66I/s1600/mickwitz+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ3lrhPz258_TLitT3XwY_VeBr8ghohETRXYzgKil7ZU_BtluxwVrlNFDzXp2cxxOHJxLbB0Sqn73F_GxYXWSjiqOBHAlQmZKSk96tibe8qDXfIRYZ-iHbV4gHTjZbYEXlGLgzvWFI66I/s320/mickwitz+6.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3"
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">But although topics such
as marine pollution (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Emilia och
Tvillingarna/ Emilia and The Twins</i>) would be unlikely to raise objections
today, I struggle to imagine Jason’s mother’s evening job depicted on our
screens even now. This display of asexual nudity (a concept that seems utterly incomprehensible
beyond a Nordic setting), especially in the context of children’s programming, would
surely cause extreme reactions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Time
to return to issues of production. This particular interlude of Finland’s
public broadcasting corporation YLE, and in particular its Swedish language
children’s television, as a showcase and conduit for artisan animation came to
an end in 1975 due to a pay dispute. The work produced by this group of
creators was on a freelance basis, and considering the labour intensive
processes involved, it is perhaps unsurprising that the lack of contracts and conditions
of pay eventually brought about this eventual collapse. Ia Falck (Ringbom 2014:
23) recollects limited understanding of the time scale involved in animation on
the part of YLE’s finance department and studio booking system. Moreover, the
conditions under which much of this work was produced, gave YLE the complete copyright
to all of the films. Hence none of them have been released on video, or DVD<a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/NMickwitz15_Artisan%20animation%20with%20a%20social%20agenda.docx" name="_ednref2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">[ii]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>. Antonia Ringbom (ibid:
25) explains how the women animators decided to join the union for freelance
programme employees (FOT), which organised editors, graphic artists and others
who were mainly employees of YLE, but working to fixed-term and project-based
contracts. 1975 saw the first round of strike actions, and an organised boycott
meant no more animation would be produced for the corporation. For some of the
women who had collaborated with Neumann’s children’s TV department, these
development prompted new directions and a move into other forms of production.
But for Mickwitz this did not spell the end. She continued to build on a body
of work that has come to, for some, earn her the moniker ‘the godmother of cut-out
animation’ (Fransberg 1994:81, cited by Uggeldahl 2014: 16). From 1976 to her
pre-mature death from an aneurism in 1989, Mickwitz created a large number of
films with the independent production company Epidem. Having an established reputation
no doubt facilitated further production grants from the Finnish Film
Foundation, and YLE now had to pay fees when broadcasting her films. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">There
are complex dynamics of cultural value at work in this narrative, and the
uneven relations outlined above, between the symbolic sway of awards and
accolades and the power struggles between institutional structures and
producers working under untenable economic conditions and terms of employment
is one such tension. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another is the
status of children’s media and culture in relation to cultural fare aimed for adults.
According to a purely (simplistic) economic analysis it is logical that
attention and effort should be concentrated on producing cultural goods with
appeal to the parts of the population with the most disposable income. But such
an instrumentalist view only gives a partial account, and there are other
factors to consider, as well as the consequences. Viewing children’s culture as
being of lesser consequence clearly has implications for producers of
children’s culture, and the conditions under which they produce their work. Children
have also notably been deemed a demographic that is particularly vulnerable to
the damaging ‘effects’ of media products, and therefore in need of protection
by codes and censorship. Connected to this, yet a quite separate, if equally thorny
issue is the idea of ‘childhood innocence’ as a quality in need of
safe-guarding. Cultural constructions of childhood present complicated debates,
and would quickly take me beyond the scope of this contribution. But power
relations between adults and children was a noticeable concern in much of this
glut of early 1970s Finnish animation, as was the refusal to patronise young
viewers by preconceived notions of what kind of content is suitable for them. I
would suggest that a key characteristic of these films is that the children
depicted<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> in</i> the films, as well as the
audiences the films are created for and addressed to, are fundamentally conceived
as actors with social and political agency.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">And
last, but certainly not least, it is unlikely to be mere coincidence that all
of the animators in this group are women. In a patriarchal social structure the
nurture of, in particular young and pre-school, children is a traditionally female
domain, and the gendered allocation of professional roles some forty years ago
would have been more normative than <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>might
be the case today. Some of the attitudes by which these producers were met in
the institutional contexts in which they initially developed their
story-telling techniques would have been coloured by condescension both on the
grounds that they were making work for children and that they were women. But the
1970s also included lively and loud challenges to the status quo, as
exemplified by feminist and environmental movements. And the work by the women
creators of this particular time and place is undeniably suffused by such a
zeitgeist. Ringbom (2014: 25) points out the revolutionary spirit of 1968 as a
profound influence for their generation, stating that ‘we wanted to impact the
future, the whole world, through children’ (my translation), no less. With
hindsight such earnestness might seem gauche. Yet the ambition exuding from the
work of these women animators is difficult to deny, as it covers both textual content
and the instigation of new working practices within the existing institutional
frameworks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Perhaps
the best way to sum up will be by conjuring from personal memory. High/low culture
and avant-garde/mass trash distinctions were never in question in my childhood
home, nor was the privileging of individual creative genius. Mediocrity and
petit-bourgeois convention were dispatched with disdain in accordance with the worst
snobbishness of bohemian traditions. At the same time, and somehow unencumbered
by the inherent paradox, the robustly socio-political agenda of my mother and
her colleagues is testament to a progressive politics of change, equality and
social responsibility. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">My
aim in writing this piece has been to insert what I consider a simultaneously vibrant
and contradictory historical fragment into a broader transnational context of women’s
film heritage and animation history. Going back to my earlier comments about
centres and margins, I feel this history deserves some form of presence and
connection beyond the northern shores of the Baltic Sea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 1cm;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sources<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Bourdieu,
Pierre. 1993. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Field of Cultural
Production</i>. Cambridge: Polity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Duelund,
Peter. 2008. ‘Nordic Cultural Policies: a critical view’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">International Journal of Cultural</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Policy</i> 14 (1): 7–24.<span style="background: white; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gartz, Juho. 1975. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elävöitettyjä Kuvia: raportti suomalaisesta
animaatioelokuvasta/Animated Pictures: a report on Finnish animated film</i>.
Helsinki: Finnish Film Foundation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Halas, John and Roger Manwell. 1969. <i>The
Technique of Film Animation</i>. London: Focal Press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Hanretty, Chris, Sara Connolly, John Street,
and Shaun Hargreaves-Heap. 2015. ‘What makes for prize-winning television?’<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>European Journal of Communication</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> 30 (3): 267 –284.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Hesmondhalgh,
Devid. 2006. ‘Bourdieu, the Media and Cultural Production.’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Media, Culture & Society</i> 28 (2):
211–23.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Minkkinen, Johanna. 2014.
‘Film Centrum Vill Bevara den Finlandssvenska kulturskatten’/ ‘Film Centre Wants
to Restore a Cultural Treasure’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Film
Journalen</i> 3: 36-37.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Ringbom, Antonia. 2014.
‘Den Animerade Tjejmaffian’/’The Animated Girl Mafia.’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Film Journalen</i> 3: 20-25.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Toepler, Stefan and
Annette Zimmer. 2002. ‘Subsidizing the Arts: art and government in Western
Europe and The United States’. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Global Culture: Media, Arts, Policy, and
Globalization</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">, edited by<b> </b></span>Diana
Crane, Nobuko Kawashima and Kenichi Kawasaki, 29-48. Hove: Psychology Press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Uggeldahl, Krister. 2014.
‘Teckna, Klippa, Knåpa, Plåta: Femtio år av Finlandssvenk barnkammaranimation’/
‘Draw, Cut, Craft, Shoot: Fifty Years of Swedish Language Kids’ Animation in
Finland.’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Film Journalen</i> 3: 14-18.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://100vuotta.finnanimation.fi/suomalaisia-animaatio-tuotantoyhtioita/"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://100vuotta.finnanimation.fi/suomalaisia-animaatio-tuotantoyhtioita/</span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.fot.fi/historia/"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://www.fot.fi/historia/</span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://www.kirjasampo.fi/fi/kulsa/saha3%253Auc45fb9f0-f432-4f60-8e08-870641cb2d1d#.VYkonflViko"><span style="color: #0563c1;">http://www.kirjasampo.fi/fi/kulsa/saha3%253Auc45fb9f0-f432-4f60-8e08-870641cb2d1d#.VYkonflViko</span></a></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Camilla Mickwitz
Filmography:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #1b0000; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">1968 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hiirten jouluaatto/ The Mice’s
Christmas Eve</i><br />
1969-1971 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Max ja Murre/Max and Murre</i><br />
1971 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pikku Kanin hassu päivä/ Small Rabbit’s
Funny Day</i> (with Kati Bondestam)<br />
1972 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sormus/The Ring</i><br />
1972 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jason</i><br />
1973 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jason ja Frans/ Jason and Frank</i><br />
1973 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jasonin kesä/Jason’s Summer</i><br />
1974 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jason ja vihainen Viivi/ Jason and
Angry Agnes</i><br />
1976 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ollaan yhdessä/ We’re Together</i><br />
1976-1979 The Emilia series: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #1b0000; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">Emilia ja omenapuumetsä/ Emilia and the Orchard,
Emilia ja Kolme Pikkuista Tätiä/Emilia and Three Little Old Ladies, Emilia ja Kuningas
Oskari/Emilia and King Oscar, Emilia ja Nukke/Emilia and the Doll, Emilia ja Onni/
Emilia and Happiness, Emilia ja Kaksoset/Emilia and the Twins</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #1b0000; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="background: white; color: #1b0000; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"><br />
1982 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mimosa </i><br />
1985 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">...Ja sinusta tulee pelle/ …And you
get to be the clown</i><br />
1987 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mimosan syntymäyö/ Mimosa’s
Birthnight</i><br />
1989 Pieni enkeli/ Little Angel</span></div>
<br />
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br /></div>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/NMickwitz15_Artisan%20animation%20with%20a%20social%20agenda.docx" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">[i]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Officially a bi-lingual country, Finland
has a population of just under 5 and a half million, 5.5 % of which is Swedish
speaking. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/NMickwitz15_Artisan%20animation%20with%20a%20social%20agenda.docx" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: #0563c1;">[ii]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> The recent publication of a dvd of
Mickwitz’ work (2014) includes only her later output, produced with </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Epidem</span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;">, which according to web pages in
honour of the centenary of Finnish animation production, is the oldest Finnish
production company specialising in animation. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<br /></div>
<h3 class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<br />
<br />
<br />
</h3>
<h3 class="MsoNormal" style="mso-element: endnote;">
Since
completing doctoral study in the Department of Film, Television and Media at
UEA in 2013, Nina Mickwitz has been working as a visiting lecturer and
associate tutor at University of East Anglia, University of Hertfordshire and
Anglia Ruskin University. Her monograph ‘Documentary Comics: graphic
truth-telling in a skeptical age’ (Palgrave-US) is scheduled for publication in
December 2015. Nina is one of the organisers of Transitions: New Directions in
Comics Studies, an annual
symposium at Birkbeck College, London. Current research interests include
seriality and the symbolic construction of ‘Fortress Europe’ in European
television drama.<o:p></o:p></h3>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span> </span> </div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<br /></div>
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-65901783998522724972015-06-24T04:08:00.000-07:002015-06-24T04:08:18.529-07:00‘Solide mais pas Solitaire’: Female Solidarity and Feminist Empowerment in Girlhood (Bande de Filles, Céline Sciamma, 2014)DESPOINA MANTZIARI<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs9h2SDGB-uuumN67aMNhPRS9VdADLIJ0IdxnTzJXZlE7tyz-6bmLwblYlWmRcrxV7Yndlq8dOc5d-ybyK61CX6HPwRghf4Q9WlHADn6dVbHGb2lc8SCgK5E5-Eii_1vQPNAflu0LilZM/s1600/girlhood+red+carpet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs9h2SDGB-uuumN67aMNhPRS9VdADLIJ0IdxnTzJXZlE7tyz-6bmLwblYlWmRcrxV7Yndlq8dOc5d-ybyK61CX6HPwRghf4Q9WlHADn6dVbHGb2lc8SCgK5E5-Eii_1vQPNAflu0LilZM/s320/girlhood+red+carpet.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span lang="EN-US">C</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">é</span></span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">line Sciamma’s
latest film, introduced at the Cannes Film Festival 2014 during the Directors’
Fortnight, has become a worldwide sensation. After travelling the festival
circuit (Toronto IFF 2014, Sundance FF 2015), it was finally released in UK
cinemas in May 2015. Its contemporaneous release with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boyhood </i>(Richard Linklater, 2014) has had an ambiguous effect
regarding its critical reception, as it has tempted most critics to somehow
compare the two. Sue Harris in her review noted the differences between the two,
describing it as “much more defiant and unsettling than Richard Linklater’s
subtle meditation on middle class American suburban boyhood”</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/Girlhood%20review.docx" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: blue;">[1]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Cambria;">.
Mark Kermode has gone further in finding visual and thematic kinship between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Girlhood </i>and the British films <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kidulthood </i>(Menhaj Huda, 2006) and its
sequel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Adulthood </i>(Noel Clarke, 2008)</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/Girlhood%20review.docx" name="_ednref2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: blue;">[2]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Cambria;">.
And of course, its generic predecessor, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La
Haine </i>(Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995), has been frequently conjured up in
discussing the film’s contribution to the French cycle of realist banlieue
cinema. However, it seems more tempting to consider this film alongside Andrea
Arnold’s 2009 film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fish Tank</i>, for its
focus on the underrepresented and marginal social group of working class
adolescent women. The portrayal of the stifling environment these young women
are growing up in, and the difficulties they have to face in order to fulfill
their desire to transcend these barriers that time and again are raised in
front of them in their journey towards adulthood, is the strongest point of
comparison, which are lacking in the rest of the films other critics have referred
to. Both girls, Mia and Marieme, are strong and solitary</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/Girlhood%20review.docx" name="_ednref3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: blue;">[3]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Cambria;">
in their struggle to adapt and survive in a world that is fundamentally hostile
to them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">And yet, the comparison to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boyhood </i>may seem inevitable due to the
choice of the English title <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Girlhood</i>.
The film’s original title <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bande de Filles</i>
would be more accurately translated as Girl Gang. In her review, Harris comments:
“[t]his cookie-cutter title, while great for distribution, does a great
disservice to [the] film”. Initially this may seem like a just comment, but one
could argue that this choice is actually a stronger statement, challenging
mainstream assumptions concerning the semantic category that the word girlhood
triggers. It is too often that we get this type of over-generalised title – and
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boyhood </i>is a case in point – to refer
to an unmarked <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">minority</i> in society,
i.e. white and middle class. Films like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Women </i>(Diane English, 2008) and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sex
and the City </i>franchise come to mind as examples of a multitude of screen
products that unashamedly adopt these overarching titles to portray a very
specific type of glamorized, Western, white, upper class femininity. And
although the issues presented in them point to the wider social structure and
the problems it presents [some] women with, one can only celebrate the
ramifications of a different use of such an all-encompassing term. Therefore it
can be argued that what sets this film apart from the films mentioned by other
critics, is its feminist attitude in challenging pre-existing assumptions
concerning young women of the social periphery. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">A lot can be said about this film and the
complex account it presents audiences with, concerning the inextricable link
between gender, sexuality, race and social class in the constant negotiation
for individual identity. The present review focuses on the manifestation of
feminist authorship in terms of the representation of the empowering
possibilities, as well as the vulnerability, of homosocial female bonding within
a strongly patriarchal society. I will specifically address the main character’s
need to belong and be accepted by society, which is the central factor
impacting all her actions up until the very end, where the film insinuates that
she is resolved to venture out on her own. The individual’s need for society
has been observed as far back as Aristotle’s time, as well as women’s inferior
position caused by legal subordination and poor education. Sciamma, through<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>the depiction of Marieme’s struggle
with the social role she is expected to perform as a black woman of the
banlieue, produces a passionate social critique, which beautifully completes
her trilogy of non-conformist coming-of-age femininity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span lang="EN-US">The film starts with the scene of a group
of girls playing American football. The powerful physicality and the vociferous
celebration of homosocial female bonding comes in stark contrast with the
behavior of these young women outside the pitch, where they have to keep quiet
and bow their heads in front of men. From the very first moments the film makes
a statement concerning women’s strength as a collective and their vulnerability
as individual entities within a patriarchal society. Marieme, facing hostility
on all fronts (state represented by the school counsellor, family, and the
hyper-masculine world of the banlieue), finds solace, even if temporary, in
these all-female groups (e.g. her sisters and the girl gang she joins). And yet
these relationships are constantly threatened by male intervention and are only
‘allowed’ as long as they reinforce the status quo. For instance, Marieme’s relationship
with her younger sister, B</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">é</span><span lang="EN-US">b</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">é,
reflects the solidarity as well as the delicacy and vulnerability of their bond.</span><span lang="EN-US"> During a tender scene where they are alone in their room Marieme playfully
teases B</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">é</span><span lang="EN-US">b</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">é
about her budding breasts. They are laughing and shouting, but they immediately
fall silent when they hear their older brother, Djibril, come out of his room.
They wait until he leaves the flat to resume their chat, at which point they
are both serious and Marieme asks her sister whether Djibril has noticed the
change. She advises her to wear baggy T-shirts in order not to draw attention
to the fact that she is growing up, which creates the impression that becoming
a woman for them is dangerous, as it seems to accompany further restrictions
and cruelty. They both seem terrified of Djibril and Marieme is systematically
bullied and beaten by him.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">This sisterly alliance within the domestic space
mirrors the supportive bonds that are created amongst the members of the girl
gang within the wider social structure of the banlieue. Marieme becomes
acquainted with the girls – Lady, Fily and Adiatou – after she quits school,
because she is not allowed to progress to general high school. Once stripped of
this opportunity, and as a direct consequence of the state’s inability to
support people from less privileged backgrounds, she joins the girl gang. Despite
her initial reluctance she gets into a lifestyle of petty crime and violence
(shoplifting, gang fights, etc.). However, the film does not adopt a judgmental
attitude towards these gangs, showing that this disruptive behaviour is a
result of their effort to create a little space within their restricting environment
where they can forget their problems and enjoy each other’s company. When the
girls are alone they can experience a sense of freedom, but they have to create
alternate tough-girl personas (Sophie/Lady, Marieme/Vic) for their public
encounters with other gangs. They have to constantly prove themselves to the
boy gangs by literally fighting for social status against other girl gangs. Quite
tellingly the only time Djibril acknowledges Marieme is after he finds out she
has beaten another gang’s leader in a street fight.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">Therefore it seems that male power is predicated
on dissolving the supportive bonds between women, and Marieme once again hits a
brick wall in her desire to develop as a person and transcend the boundaries
that restrict her. After she has achieved Alpha female status in the group, Marieme
sees her sister with her friends, bullying a younger girl and stealing her
purse. She immediately heads to that direction, grabs her sister and commands
her to go home. When </span><span lang="EN-US">B</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">é</span><span lang="EN-US">b</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">é talks back she does not hesitate to slap her
hard in the face, at which point </span><span lang="EN-US">B</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">é</span><span lang="EN-US">b</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">é tells her that she is just like Djibril. Their
solidarity comes near breaking point and it is a moment of realization for
Marieme, who leaves the group and goes home with her sister. Not long after,
once her secret relationship with Ismael is revealed, Djibril is once again
violent and beats Marieme. This leads to her decision to leave the
neighbourhood and she cuts off her ties with her sister and her friends. She
meets Abou, who employs her as a drug trafficker, and although the girls try to
dissuade her from leaving, Marieme sees no alternative and makes one more
attempt to gain some kind of independence. Her visual transformation – dressing
in high heels, a red mini dress and a blonde wig while at work and changing
into loose trousers and baggy T-shirts after the deliveries – marks her effort
to be perceived as one of the boys thus discouraging sexual attention from the
men in her environment. However, Abou tries to force himself on her during a
party, which results in her running away once again. It seems therefore that
for a young woman in her position relationships with men (familial, romantic or
professional) seem to only bring her trouble one way or another. Ismael is the
only one who seems to genuinely love her and he offers to marry her in an
effort to repair her reputation within their social circle. However, Marieme realises
that by accepting his proposal she will have to settle for the life of a housewife
and she expresses her desire for more than this life can offer. The film ends
with Marieme alone crying, finding herself at an impasse and not wanting to
return home. As the camera moves forward, she is left out of the frame her
crying still audible. At the last minute, the sobbing stops, Marieme, looking
strong and determined, moves in the centre of the frame from the right side and
walks out of the frame on the left side. The open ending leaves a glimmer of
hope that Marieme will keep on struggling for the improvement of her situation
and the fulfillment of her innermost desire to find a viable place within
society.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;">In her final installment to her
coming-of-age trilogy, Sciamma delivers a beautifully crafted yet disturbing
picture of the difficult transitions a woman has to face growing up in the
Parisian banlieue. Even if Marieme is solid and solitary, the same cannot be
said for the director, who is part of an increasing number of women directors
who can rightfully claim the status of a feminist auteur within global art
cinema. Without being patronizing she makes a film “with” black women instead
of “about” them, as she herself has commented</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/Girlhood%20review.docx" name="_ednref4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: blue;">[4]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Cambria;">.
Sad and touching but not “misery-mongering”, as another critic has commented</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/Girlhood%20review.docx" name="_ednref5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: blue;">[5]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Cambria;">,
it can serve as a strong social critique demonstrating the need for feminism in
creating a fairer society not only to the usual middle-class art cinema
audiences but to young black female audiences as well</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/Girlhood%20review.docx" name="_ednref6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: blue;">[6]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Cambria;">.
A celebration of female strength and resilience in the face of adversity, which
crosses geographic boundaries, and provides a relatable experience for women
who are facing similar restrictions the world over.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/Girlhood%20review.docx" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""></a><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US">1</span></span><span lang="EN-US"> “Film of the Week: Girlhood,” Sue Harris, last updated May 11,
2015, accessed June 9, 2015, <a href="http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/film-week-girlhood"><span style="color: blue;">http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/film-week-girlhood</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/Girlhood%20review.docx" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: blue;">[2]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> “Girlhood review – electrifying portrait of a French girl in the
hood,” Mark Kermode, last modified May 10, 2015, accessed June 9, 2015, </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/10/girlhood-gritty-teen-life-review-mark-kermode"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Cambria;">http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/10/girlhood-gritty-teen-life-review-mark-kermode</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/Girlhood%20review.docx" name="_edn3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: blue;">[3]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> This phrase, “solide et solitaire”, is used by Abou, Marieme’s drug
trafficking boss, when he meets her after she runs away from home.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/Girlhood%20review.docx" name="_edn4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: blue;">[4]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> “The stars of Girlhood: ‘Our poster is all over Paris, with four
black faces on it…’,” Jonathan Romney, last modified April 26, 2015, accessed
June 9, 2015, </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/apr/26/girlhood-film-karidja-toure-assa-sylla-celine-sciamma"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Cambria;">http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/apr/26/girlhood-film-karidja-toure-assa-sylla-celine-sciamma</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/Girlhood%20review.docx" name="_edn5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: blue;">[5]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Cambria;"> “Girlhood,” Sheila O’Malley, last modified January 30, 2015, accessed
June 9, 2015, </span><a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/girlhood-2015"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Cambria;">http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/girlhood-2015</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn6" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/mhg09hfu/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.Outlook/XQ7O94Y1/Girlhood%20review.docx" name="_edn6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS Mincho"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: blue;">[6]</span></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Cambria;"><span lang="EN-US"> This intention was achieved by a series of screenings in multiplex
cinemas outside the P</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">é</span><span lang="EN-US">rif</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">é</span><span lang="EN-US">rique to target specifically young black women.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<br />
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-63683346561874414452015-04-26T04:17:00.001-07:002015-04-26T04:18:01.334-07:00Tied Up In Knots: In Defence of Fifty Shades of Grey<a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br />
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><strong>Richard McCulloch (Regent’s University
London)<o:p></o:p></strong></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">After several
weeks of </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/the-best-worst-fifty-shades-of-grey-reviews--gkimbyJ82e"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">critical derision</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">, </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/three-women-arrested-after-man-5169837"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">rowdy cinemagoers</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">, and one bizarrely controversial
</span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/50-shades-grey-world-book-8782981"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">fancy-dress costume</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades of Grey</i> now appears to have stepped into an elevator
and walked out of our lives; at least until the sequel. Many people, I’m sure, will
be relieved to see the back of Sam Taylor-Johnson’s adaptation of E.L. James’s phenomenally
successful erotic novel, but I am not one of them. I saw the film the weekend
it opened, and have been arguing about it with my students, friends and
colleagues ever since.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Yes, it
is rife with contradictions. Its tone, for instance, appears playfully ironic
one moment, deadly serious the next, while its gender politics seem to tread a
peculiar line between misogyny and female empowerment. But it is precisely
these contradictions that I think make the film so interesting and effective. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">I cannot
remember the last time I went to the cinema and left with such an overwhelming <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">need</i> to talk about what I had just
experienced. I had absolutely no idea whether I had enjoyed myself or not, nor
could I say how I felt about either of the protagonists, yet these ambiguities fascinated
me. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Having
now watched it for a second time, what I want to do in this article is to
address some of the prevailing complaints directed at it by professional
critics, and offer up a defence of sorts. It is not exactly a masterpiece, but I
think <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades</i> is far more
sophisticated than has so far been acknowledged, and it certainly deserves
better than to simply be laughed at and discarded. What many people have
dismissed as a trashy mess – a tame, vanilla porno with unrealistic characters
– I see as an entirely self-conscious romance, whose only major ‘failing’ is that
it does too good a job of aligning us with its protagonist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">CRITICISM
#1: It’s not sexy enough<o:p></o:p></span></u><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">COUNTER-ARGUMENT:
Ana’s reaction to the sex is far more important than the sex itself<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">When
they weren’t competing with each other to see who could come up with the best headline
(‘</span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?FID=137881"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">Porn again, Christian</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">,’ ‘</span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/11/fifty-shades-of-grey-review"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">Making a bad fist of it</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">,’ etc.), most critics spent
their reviews of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades</i> explaining
how dull they found it. The bulk of this criticism, however, had little to do
with pacing or the romantic drama at the centre of the plot, and instead focused
on the film’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sex scenes</i>. Reviews were
littered with lines such as:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">‘About as erotic as an ad for Pottery Barn’<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>(</span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/fifty-shades-of-grey-20150211"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">Rolling
Stone</span></span></i></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">‘Porn for people who shop at Marks &
Spencer’ (</span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-reviews/fifty-shades-grey-review-mans-5147642"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">The
Mirror</span></span></i></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">‘Those looking for hot, kinky sex will be
disappointed’<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>(</span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2015/02/10/50-shades-of-grey-review/23154403/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">USA
Today</span></span></i></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">‘Nobody in the film has visible genitals’<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>(</span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.ew.com/article/2015/02/10/fifty-shades-grey-ew-review"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">Entertainment
Weekly</span></span></i></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">‘Anyone hoping the movie would really push
the S&M envelope may find Christian’s tastefully shot toy room a little…
vanilla’<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>(</span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/fifty-shades-grey-movie-review-article-1.2109147"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">New
York Daily News</span></span></i></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Clearly,
critics not only wanted but also <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">expected</i>
some kind of sexual ‘excess’, and became frustrated when the film apparently
refused to give it to them (ahem). What these complaints demonstrate is a
struggle over the film’s genre; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty</i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shades</i> is implicitly being
categorised as erotica/pornography above all else – sexually explicit material whose
primary goal is to arouse its audience. One reviewer even went as far as
calling it ‘</span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/features/2015/50shades/index.html"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">the movie that promised to be the most titillating
motion picture ever made</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">.’</span><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">But where
on earth has this generic expectation come from? It seems to me that this criticism
has much more to do with the hype surrounding <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades</i> (both novel and adaptation) than the movie itself. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Its
marketing campaign undoubtedly has a lot to answer for here, with posters and
trailers continually teasing prospective audiences about Mr. Grey’s ‘very
singular’ sexual predilections. Promotional materials often chose to hide parts
of Christian (Jamie Dornan) from the audience, depicting him from behind,
through enigmatic close ups, or with his face partially obscured (Figure 1). <span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQge7gZLKqmN61sgUWmXQ_s_T95jfxc5py3luQKfZlwRgFCV4e65clAAjFz5n0nZcqudO3FxNGHxRJHrPBiNlOIBh3f9Ifp2wd85AFKBWxOyJhT5ffjyTij5gFH83ZCpgAp_JdswBCBGY/s1600/50shades1.jpg" height="400" width="282" /></div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">- Figure
1.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Fifty Shades of Grey</i> poster (2015)</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Similarly,
trailers gestured towards steamy sexual encounters without really revealing
very much. Perhaps, then, some critics took those gestures as ‘promises’ of what
the film would surely deliver – the equivalent of a TV episode delaying viewers’
gratification by demanding they ‘tune in next week’ for narrative closure. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">I
actually agree that the film is not especially risqué, but mainstream Hollywood
has historically shown little interest in on-screen depictions of sexual
dominance and submission. Why should we expect <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades</i> to be any different? </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">While critics
overwhelmingly bought into the idea that the film was trying and failing to be
sexy, I would argue that those scenes were never <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">intended </i>to be focal points. Instead, they seem to function more as
character identification devices than isolated moments of spectacle. In fact,
there is ample evidence for this across various promotional materials. For
instance, in spite of all the whips, restraining devices, and orgasmic writhing
that the trailer fleetingly shows us, its clearest emphasis is on reaction
shots of Ana (Dakota Johnson) (Figure 2). <span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFHOMegA-SJyaijrzsHtPtGFtnBrvx8hO9yFVn-esCTZEShRM3Hs6uwzT1m1kvCxQ19D2RSCPd41T5MVYN_Skjjmd_Bg9ItBvxZ1Kmp_O-V0i5-8HY0K41xDh_eDznW5qYObr0chQwzDo/s1600/50shades2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFHOMegA-SJyaijrzsHtPtGFtnBrvx8hO9yFVn-esCTZEShRM3Hs6uwzT1m1kvCxQ19D2RSCPd41T5MVYN_Skjjmd_Bg9ItBvxZ1Kmp_O-V0i5-8HY0K41xDh_eDznW5qYObr0chQwzDo/s1600/50shades2.jpg" height="400" width="212" /></a></div>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">- Figure
2. Reaction shots of Ana, as seen in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty
Shades of Grey</i> </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://youtu.be/SfZWFDs0LxA"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">official
trailer</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: red; font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">These
shots position her as audience surrogate, and suggest that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">her response to</i> (and curiosity towards) BDSM is far more important
than the sex itself. Significantly, the </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://youtu.be/z4nJX8snP4s"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">first
full-length trailer</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">
for the movie ended with Ana’s coquettish request for Christian to ‘enlighten’
her, while posters generally led with the tagline, ‘Curious?’ In one sense,
then, the film adopts a strangely paradoxical attitude towards its own sexual
content: BDSM is presented as both non-normative <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> a central selling point – elusive yet alluring. And crucially,
this is just as true for Ana as it is for the mainstream viewer, both of whom experience
the sex scenes as ‘educational’ rather than titillating. They might be fun, but
ultimately they are just brief forays into implicitly unfamiliar territory. </span></div>
<br />
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<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">CRITICISM
#2: It’s sexist<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">COUNTER-ARGUMENT:
Christian is sexist, but the film is not</span></u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">At one
point in the movie, Christian explains his fondness for dominance/submission by
telling Ana, ‘By giving up control, I felt free. From responsibility. From
making decisions. I felt safe. You will too, you’ll see.’ On first viewing, I
read this as blatant ideological conservatism – a barely-concealed dismissal of
feminism, empowerment and individual agency: Be a dear and stop dreaming of
freedom – if you do everything I want you to do, we all win! Similar concerns
were echoed in a large number of reviews and think pieces, with writers
variously proclaiming ‘</span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/fifty-shades-of-grey-a-movie-where-misogyny-never-looked-so-mesmerising-30991454.html"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">misogyny never looked so mesmerising</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">,’ or arguing that the film ‘<a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2015/02/50-shades-grey-film-about-male-power-idealising-emotional-abuse-sexy-when-it-isnt"><span style="color: blue;">idealises
male power and emotional abuse as something seductive and sexy</span></a>.’</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">My
second viewing, however, made me realise that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades’</i> ‘problematic’ moments are never actually presented as
the ‘correct’ choice for Ana. Again, what many writers see as grounds for
criticism, I see as psychological realism; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty
Shades</i> does such an effective job of aligning us with Ana’s emotions that
we come out of it feeling just as conflicted, frustrated and unsatisfied as she
does. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">In the
opening half-hour, for example, both Ana and the film are detached, cynical and
playful, especially in their attitude towards Christian. When interviewing him
near the beginning, she deviates from her roommate’s mostly deferential questions,
calling him ‘lucky’ and a ‘control freak’. Importantly, her refusal to take
Christian at face value is one of the things he seems to like most about her,
as well as being one of the film’s central pleasures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Ana also
jokes that he would make ‘the complete serial killer,’ and in one of the film’s
funniest scenes, drunkenly berates him for being ‘so bossy.’ Her subsequent
impersonation of him undermines his hyper-masculinity (she adopts an
exaggeratedly gruff voice) and his indecisiveness (‘Ana, let’s go for coffee!
No! Stay away from me Ana, I don’t want you! Get away! Come here, come here! GO
AWAY!’) Moreover, some of Christian’s most frequently-maligned lines of
dialogue (‘If you were mine you wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week’) are
met with incredulity from Ana, who delivers a brilliantly deadpan ‘What?!’ on several
occasions. Moments like these consistently construct Christian as a ridiculous,
unbelievable character, whose desire to control Ana deserves to be laughed at
or criticised, not celebrated. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">It is no
coincidence that the film’s detached, playful tone gradually disappears at the
same time that Ana herself begins to take Christian more seriously. Their
ensuing romance is characterised by an increasingly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">uncomfortable</i> tension between their competing desires. Ana is clearly
attracted to him and intrigued by the BDSM, but yearns for a fairly
conventional romance that never fully arrives (‘Why do I have to sleep in [a
different room]? We slept in the same bed last night, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">normal</i> people!’). Christian, on the other hand, only seems interested
in their sexual relationship, and repeatedly shows that he is unwilling to
cross the line into romance. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Because
the film encourages such tight identification with Ana, the failure of the
couple’s relationship is placed entirely at the feet of Christian and his
refusal to compromise on his own desires. The tension between the two
characters is manifested in the battle between her desire for ‘conventional’
romance and his desire for ‘unconventional’ sex. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">The
contract they negotiate throughout the film is thus very much a tangible
reminder of Christian’s inflexibility, yet along the way there are plenty of
hints that perhaps he isn’t really as stubborn as he appears: he insists, ‘I
don’t do the girlfriend thing,’ but then sends her first editions of a
selection of novels by her favourite author; he refuses to touch Ana until he
has her written consent, but then declares, ‘Fuck the paperwork,’ and kisses
her passionately in the hotel elevator; the first time the couple have sex is
extremely conventional – nothing non-normative, a nice clean bedroom, and far
closer to Ana’s idea of perfection than to his; and he sleeps in the same bed
as her twice in the opening 45 minutes, something he claims he ‘never’ does.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">In
short, Christian seems to want Ana far more than he wants to stick to his own ‘rules’,
which are held up as preposterous and antithetical to the film’s narrative. In
order for the narrative to conclude as it ‘should’ (i.e. with the union of the
final couple), it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">him</i> that needs
to change, not her. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Yes,
siding with Ana means that we want her to end up in a happy relationship with a
ridiculous, controlling man, but this is not the same as saying that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades of Grey</i> endorses an abusive
relationship. On the contrary, like Ana, we find Christian’s domineering
behaviour both laughable and impractical. The closer their relationship veers
towards the dominance/submission that Christian desires, the less happy Ana is,
and it is absolutely significant that her final words to him are ‘STOP!’ and
‘NO!’ </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">CRITICISM
#3: It’s unrealistic<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">COUNTER-ARGUMENT:
The film is consciously exposing the gap between the ‘fantasy’ and ‘reality’ of
romance<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">When reviewing
a new release that also happens to be a widespread cultural phenomenon, it is
easy enough to get swayed by the power of consensus. Reading several reviews in
preparation for writing this blog, however, I was struck by how few critics
seemed willing to take <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades</i>
seriously. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Daily Mail</i>’s<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2949883/Sorry-ladies-Fifty-Shades-movie-spanking-great-bore-JAN-MOIR-sees-world-premiere-year-s-hyped-film-t-whip-enthusiasm.html"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">Jan Moir’s review</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"> is typical in this regard,
describing the film as…</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">‘A tale of two lovers exploring a
relationship that takes in the wilder shores of bondage, submission, dominance
and terrible dialogue. “Laters, baby!” cries hero Christian Grey, as he leaves
his lover, Anastasia Steele […] “That was nice,” she says, after taking a bit
of a thrashing from Grey. Nice? You’d think he just gave her a half-hearted
peppermint foot rub.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/fifty-shades-of-grey-review-expecting-trash-you-might-be-in-for-a-surprise--but-not-a-pleasant-one-20150211-13cc93.html"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">Philippa Hawker</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"> of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sydney Morning Herald</i> spoke in correspondingly negative terms,
insisting that ‘no one can make the trademark phrase “laters, baby” sound
anything other than ludicrous.’</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">It
absolutely baffles me that anyone could criticise the film’s dialogue in this
way, quite simply because it completely ignores the way in which the lines are
delivered, and the context in which they appear. ‘Laters, baby’ is said first
by Christian’s adopted brother to Ana’s roommate. When Christian then repeats
it to Ana shortly afterwards, he does so with a knowing smirk on his face, highlighting
its ‘corniness’ and turning it into an inside joke. In this moment, even
Christian is capable of drawing attention to his own artificiality. Equally,
the use of the word ‘nice’ to describe their sexual relationship is explicitly marked
as incongruous by Christian, who says, ‘it’s been <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nice</i> knowing me?! Let me remind you how <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nice</i> it was!’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">In a
wonderful article for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Slate</i>, </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/02/12/fifty_shades_of_grey_is_a_great_bad_movie_it_s_perfect_for_hate_readers.html"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">Amanda Hess</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"> goes as far as reading the film
as ‘a kind of fan-fic of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades </i>the
book.’ She argues that, between Sam Taylor-Johnson’s direction and Kelly
Marcel’s screenplay, the source novel’s dialogue is laced with irony, which in turn
makes its ‘bad’ qualities more palatable. While</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am not
entirely convinced that the film deems itself ‘superior’ to the book
(fanfiction is not always resistant, for example), Hess persuasively
demonstrates just how important tone is to understanding and appreciating the
events on screen. Taylor-Johnson seems to want us to laugh at the silliness of
love while simultaneously being swept up by it. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">But <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades of Grey</i> knows exactly what
it is doing, and is extremely self-conscious and upfront about just how
fantastical its romance narrative is. The clearest example of this is when the
couple spends the night together for the first time, following Ana’s drunken
night out in a bar. She awakens to find painkillers and fruit juice at her
bedside, along with notes reading ‘Eat me’ and ‘Drink me’, respectively. These overt
references to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland</i> mark the couple’s relationship as dreamlike and fantastical from
the start.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">The
movie’s soundtrack plays a central role in heightening this sense of fantasy,
with lyrics often referring to escapist pleasures:</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">The
opening montage unfolds over Annie Lennox’s cover of ‘I Put a Spell On You’,
acknowledging romance’s potential to mislead and distort our perception of
reality<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Their
first formal ‘date’, in which Christian whisks her away in his private
helicopter, is accompanied by Ellie Goulding’s ‘Love Me Like You Do’. She sings,
‘I’ll let you set the pace / ‘Cause I’m not thinking straight / My head
spinning around I can’t see clear no more / What are you waiting for? / Love me
like you do.’ These words explicitly draw attention to Ana’s state of mind and
the astonishing (albeit pleasing) unreality of this as a romantic experience,
while the final two lines hint at her willingness to buy into the fantasy that
Christian represents<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">The
other song at the centre of the film (and its marketing) is a slowed-down,
sexed-up version of Beyoncé’s ‘Crazy in Love’. Again, this is a song that, as
its title implies, is very much about the potential for love to alter our sense
of normality (‘Such a funny thing for me to try to explain / How I’m feeling
and my pride is the one to blame / ‘Cause I know I don’t understand / Just how
your love can do what no one else can’)</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">If the
film is signposting its own fantastical elements so consistently, there seems
little value in dismissing its dialogue, characters, gender politics and/or sex
scenes as ‘unrealistic’, let alone ‘harmful’. Taylor-Johnson’s goal is to not
to see things objectively, but through Ana’s eyes, simultaneously finding Christian
attractive and infuriating. The sex is an interesting distraction, but is
certainly not the focal point of the film’s drama. By the half-way point, it is
abundantly clear that Ana is less keen on an odyssey of sexual discovery than
on a relatively ‘normal’ relationship. Her frustration and upset stems from her
realisation that the relationship she yearns for is nothing but a fantasy, and
impossible in practice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">CONCLUSION:
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades</i> and women’s cinema</span></u></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">The
reference point I keep coming back to in relation to all of this is Paul
Verhoeven’s infamous <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Showgirls</i>
(1995). Roundly dismissed as trash? Check. Implausible characters, dialogue and
acting? Check. Sexual content that ‘fails’ to titillate? Check. Yet <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Showgirls </i>has enjoyed a modicum of
critical re-evaluation since its release, with a growing number of people entertaining
the idea that its ‘unpleasantness’ is actually intentional satire, not incompetence
(Hunter, 2000; Mizuta Lippit et al., 2003; Nayman, 2014).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Also
like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Showgirls</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades of Grey</i> already has all the trappings of a stone cold
cult classic – a chaotic production process (</span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/01/fifty-shades-of-grey-sex-scenes"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">James and Taylor-Johnson argued extensively</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">), critical derision, passionate
fans, wildly divergent interpretations, and cultural notoriety. Yet the
criticism surrounding the film has been so vehemently gendered that anyone who
actually likes it has to either call it a ‘guilty pleasure’ or keep schtum. It
is significant that, when I first told my students how great I thought it was,
the reaction was overwhelming laughter, followed by disbelief. It is also
significant that I knew such a reaction was likely.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">The idea
that movies aimed at women are inherently less valuable than those aimed at men
is as pervasive as it is ridiculous, making it difficult to avoid being taken
in by the </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://badassdigest.com/2015/02/13/fifty-shades-and-the-cultural-narrative-that-womens-movies-suck/"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">cultural narrative of critical haughtiness</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">. Debates around both novel and
film have, for example, been characterised by a sneering condemnation of female
sexuality (particularly regarding older women and ‘mommy porn’), and
accompanied by a succession of news stories about unruly women behaving
hysterically. One widely-publicised report even described how a woman watching <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades</i> in Milton Keynes literally </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/usvsth3m/50-shades-grey-cinema-evacuated-5235936"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">lost control of all her bodily functions</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">, causing the cinema to be
evacuated. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Of
course, when you read past the headlines, it becomes clear that this admittedly
unfortunate incident had more to do with the lady in question being heavily
drunk than the film she happened to be watching at the time. But it’s not a
story if it’s reported like that, is it? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Like
Christian Grey himself, critics have remained fixated on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades</i>’ sex while refusing to take its romance seriously.
Pejorative references to Mills & Boon novels, daytime soap operas, and
uncritical female audiences position the film as ‘lowbrow’, and</span><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> romantic love
stories as intrinsically worthless. Needless to say, there is a great deal of
hypocrisy in criticising something for being anti-feminist while simultaneously
deriding a genre traditionally associated with female audiences. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Significantly
for this website, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades of Grey</i>’s
opening weekend in North America </span><span lang="EN-US"><a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/fifty-shades-scores-biggest-opening-773601"><span style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><span style="color: blue;">broke box office records for a female
director</span></span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">.
Not only that, but this cultural phenomenon has been built on a rare degree of
female authorship. Between Stephanie Meyer’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twilight </i>novels on which E.L. James’s based her fanfiction and
subsequent novel, Kelly Marcel’s screenplay, Taylor-Johnson’s direction, and a
widely-praised performance by Dakota Johnson, this is by some distance one of
the most prominent examples of women’s cinema to come out of a major Hollywood
studio in recent years. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Irrespective
of all the hype, critical backlash and commercial success, however, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fifty Shades</i> is also a really sophisticated
piece of filmmaking. I admit I went in expecting a load of trashy nonsense that
I could laugh at. What I didn’t expect was a film that was in on the joke, but
also smart enough to slowly reel me into the narrative without having realised
it. I left the cinema despising Christian Grey but somehow also annoyed that he
and Ana do not end up with each other, and it took me a good 24 hours of
introspection and discussion with others before I managed to come to terms with
that contradiction. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">After
Ana first meets the much-hyped but mysterious Christian, she tells her
roommate, ‘He was very smart and intense […] I can understand the fascination.’
I’m saying the same about the film as a whole. If you stayed away because of
the bad reviews, or if you saw it once and hated it, I urge you: cast aside
your preconceptions and try again. I can’t promise you won’t end up like Ana –
frustrated and yelling for it to stop – but find out for yourself what makes it
tick rather than just believing all the rumours you’ve heard. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">BIBLIOGRAPHY<o:p></o:p></span></u></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 1cm; text-indent: -1cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Hunter, I.Q., ‘Beaver Las Vegas!
A Fan-Boy’s Defence of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Showgirls</i>’. In
Xavier Mendik and Graeme Harper (eds.) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Unruly
Pleasures: The Cult Film and its Critics</i> (Guildford: FAB Press, 2000):
189-201.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 1cm; text-indent: -1cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Mizuta Lippit, Akira, et al.,
‘Roundtable: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Showgirls</i>’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Film Quarterly</i>, 56.3 (Spring 2003):
32-46; <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 1cm; text-indent: -1cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";">Nayman, Adam, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It Doesn’t Suck: Showgirls</i> (Toronto: ECW
Press, 2014).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 1cm; text-indent: -1cm;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Gill Sans MT";"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-76565119115318057432015-02-09T06:23:00.000-08:002015-02-09T06:23:59.980-08:00Le Petit Prince a dit (Christine Pascal, 1992)NEIL SINYARD<br />
<br />
<a class="iol_imc" href="https://www.blogger.com/null" idx="8" style="height: 331px; left: 325px; top: 99px; visibility: visible; width: 500px;"><img class="mainImage" src="http://cdn-premiere.ladmedia.fr/var/premiere/storage/images/photos/diaporama/le-petit-prince-a-dit/le-petit-prince-a-dit-1992__1/4372447-1-fre-FR/le_petit_prince_a_dit_1992_portrait_w858.jpg" style="background-color: white; height: 331px; width: 500px;" /></a><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
When I first saw Christine Pascal’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Le Petit Prince a dit</i> (1992) some
twenty years ago at my local arts cinema, I was so moved that I missed its
next (and final) showing because its poignancy was still resonating so powerfully
in my mind. I’ll catch up with it again later, I thought. I’m still waiting. On
my list of favourite movies awaiting a proper dvd and blu-ray release, this has
occupied top spot for some time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The subject-matter could hardly be
less enticing, concerning a ten-year-old girl who is diagnosed as having an
inoperable brain tumour and only a short time to live. Yet Pascal’s handling of
it is faultless. All dangers of mawkishness or morbidity are scrupulously
avoided. For one thing, father (Richard Berry) and mother (Anemone) are not
happily married but happily divorced, which is a piquant complication. Also the
girl, Violette (Marie Kleiber) is not cuddly cute but plump and petulant i.e.
real and believable. And the handling of the revelation of her illness is
satisfyingly oblique rather than overtly sentimental. Her scientist father<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>accidentally discovers it through an
overheard conversation<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and his scrutiny
of a scanner screen in a cold hospital room. Her actress mother learns about it
midway through rehearsing an opera in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Milan</st1:place></st1:city>.
Life has a way of cutting the rug from under your feet when you are least
expecting it. When the father has to explain her illness to the girl, he does
it by diagram and behind dark glasses: evasion takes a while to give way to
emotion. He will eventually snatch her from the examining table and take her to
visit her mother in Milan and then to their family home in Provence, believing
that prolonging the child’s life for two more years of painful surgery will be
less beneficial<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>than a joyful holiday
break and perhaps the illusion that father and mother have been reunited.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The midsection of the film makes
superb use of its locations. The off-season hotels and the open roads, with
their deceptive promise of release and freedom, gather a momentum of gentle
melancholy. During the final scenes a stray dog that Violette has adopted on
their travels goes missing; the father is distracted as he eases Violette’s
stepmother out of their cottage so the parents can be together for what could
be the girl’s final hours; the mother adopts a tone of strenuous cheerfulness;
Violette becomes a bit exasperating. Everything builds to the concluding
moments where the girl is about to fall asleep, with her head hurting terribly.
The father grips her pillow so tightly that his knuckles show. A mercy killing,
if not enacted, is surely being contemplated, at which point the film
mercifully stops. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
The performances are all superb,
and Bruno Coulais’s lovely score put me in mind of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ravel at his most gravely beautiful. One
particular image has stayed with me: the moment when a butterfly lands almost
caressingly on Violette’s forehead whilst she is asleep in the country and then
flies away. It is as if Nature has come to bless a departing spirit.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Two years or so after seeing the film, I read with
deep sadness and shock that Christine Pascal had committed suicide at the age
of 42 by throwing herself out of the window of a private hospital near <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Paris</st1:place></st1:city> where she was being
treated for severe depression. ( Her psychiatrist was later fined and
imprisoned for ignoring the danger signs and not ensuring her safety and
protection.) Not having seen her other films as writer/director, I remember her
mostly though her career as an actress, particularly in five fine films she did
for Bertrand Tavernier; and I think of her as someone who, like her one-time
flat mates, Isabelle Huppert and Isabelle Adjani, could have become a leading
light of post-1970s French cinema. She is extraordinary as one of the sisters
in Andrzej Wajda’s <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>exquisite <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Young Ladies of Wilko</i> (1979). Her superb
acting of the young woman’s breakdown when the hero departs seems to pierce
further than mere romantic disappointment: it is more suggestive of someone
sustaining an emotional wound that a lifetime will not heal. That kind of
hypersensitivity permeates <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Le Petit
Prince a dit</i>, which for me belongs with Rene Clement’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jeux Interdits </i>and Louis Malle’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Au Revoir les Enfants</i> as one of the great French films about
childhood and about the unforeseen tragedies that can befall children. Yet as
with Christine Pascal, so with the film: it is the beauty that lingers in the
memory more than the sadness. What is sad is that a dvd copy of the film is
still so hard to obtain. The film should surely be part of a full, widely
available retrospective set that commemorates and celebrates the acting and
directing career of this remarkably talented artist. I am ready for my second
viewing now. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">[first published in <em>Sight and Sound</em>, January 2015]</span></div>
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-83992843682621838752015-01-26T02:39:00.001-08:002015-01-26T02:40:03.230-08:00Marleen Gorris and Antonia's Line (1995)NEIL SINYARD<br />
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<o:p><a class="iol_imc" href="https://www.blogger.com/null" idx="9" style="height: 370px; left: 300px; top: 79.5px; visibility: visible; width: 550px;"><img class="mainImage" src="http://thetfs.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/antonia.jpg" style="background-color: white; height: 370px; width: 550px;" /></a></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antonia’s
Line</i> won the Oscar for the best foreign language film of 1995, the first
film by a female director ever to accomplish this feat. The woman in question
was the Dutch film-maker, Marleen Gorris, who had sprung to prominence with her
sensational debut film, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Question of
Silence</i> (1982). Under the guise of a thriller about the seemingly
motiveless murder of a male boutique owner by three women previously unknown to
each other, the film was an audacious feminist polemic that stormed the
citadels of oppressive patriarchy. Made almost as a kind of avant-garde movie
which therefore pulled no punches, the film’s uncompromising originality
propelled it into the mainstream, where it became hugely controversial. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather like the legal figures at the end of
the film who fail to see that the huge explosion of derisive female laughter is
directed at them, hypersensitive male critics missed the film’s mode of black
comedy and were offended by its seeming proposition that the solution to patriarchy
might be murder. (It was not proposing that, any more than cannibalism was
being seriously offered as a solution to poverty and starvation in Jonathan
Swift’s political pamphlet, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Modest
Proposal: </i>both satirists were taking up an extreme position and suggesting
a metaphor that highlighted the horror of a particular social situation in the
hope that the oppressors might feel some guilt and shame.) Possibly goaded by
the angry accusations of an anti-male bias that bordered on hatred, Gorris’s
second film was the even more ferocious <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Broken
Mirrors</i> (1984), whose main setting is a brothel in a city where a serial
killer is on the loose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1They’re all
bastards,’ says the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>proprietor about the
clientele of her Happy House brothel to a new girl, who, significantly, has
become a prostitute out of economic necessity. ‘Even the nice ones aren’t
nice.’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ironically, the only sympathetic
male character in the film is literally a dirty old man,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a harmless, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>unseen hermit who is befriended by the
brothel-keeper, but who ,to her dismay, is expelled from his hideaway because
he is not ‘normal’, the implication being that the ‘normal’ male is much more
of a threat.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
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The vehemence of Gorris’s feminism
in her first two films even discomfited some feminists, who accused her of
being not so much provocative as paranoid. (See, for example, Pam Cook’s review
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Broken Mirrors</i> in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monthly Film Bulletin,</i> April, 1985: 114)
Nevertheless, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Last Island</i> (1990)
continued in much the same vein, being a feminine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lord of the Flies </i>for grown-ups, in which a motley group of men and
women are shipwrecked on an island, fall out, turn violent, and where only the
women survive. Still, the characterisation of the men is more complex than
before; and this strain is continued in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antonia’s
Line</i>, which is mellower and even upbeat in effect and allows some males to
exhibit such hitherto unacknowledged characteristics as kindness, unselfishness
and compassion. Here the nice ones <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stay</i>
nice. Admittedly, the narrative is still unashamedly female-driven and dominated,
and the most sympathetic man is a philosophical recluse who would make even <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Schopenhauer look cheerful by comparison. Yet
there is a greater generosity of spirit to all humankind, and an exuberant
relish for life’s variety that sweeps up everything in its path. When it was
shown at the Toronto Festival, the film was given a standing ovation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
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The story is told in flashback by
Antonia (a superb performance from Willeke<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>van Ammelrooy), remembering her past on what she has decided is to be
the last day of her life; and also by a narrator who only at the end reveals
herself to be Antonia’s great-granddaughter, Sarah. The point of view is
important, for, whereas at the beginning<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>it is said of their community that “ men’s noise rode roughshod over {a
woman’s] silence”, the women<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>will
gradually be given a voice; will insist on making themselves heard; and
will<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>assume power over their own lives
and, crucially, their own sexuality. When Antonia and her daughter
Danielle<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Els Dottermans) have first
returned to Antonia’s home village just after the war to attend to her dying
mother and take over the family farm, they have walked past a wall which has
the sign ‘Welcome To Our Liberators’ scrawled over it. It no doubt refers to
the Allied soldiers who have liberated the village after the war, but, in
retrospect, it will apply equally to Antonia and Danielle, who will go some way
towards liberating the community from its chauvinism, prejudice and conformity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
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Over a number of years Antonia’s
farm will become a kind of benevolent matriarchy, a haven for the misfits and
the maltreated of the village. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These
include the retarded Deedee (Marina de Graaf), who, in an early scene
reminiscent of Thomas Hardy, has been offered up for sale by her brutish father.
When she is being sexually abused in a barn by her brother, Pitte, Danielle
leaps to her defence by impaling Pitte with a pitchfork and taking her back to
the farm. Deedee will bond with Loony Lips, who has been taken under her wing
by Antonia when he is being persecuted by the sons of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Farmer Bas (Jan Decleir), a relative newcomer
to the village (he has only been there twenty years). Bas will be impressed by
Antonia’s humanity and courage and will propose marriage. ‘The sons need a
mother,’ he says. ‘But I don’t need your sons,’ says Antonia, who will refuse
his offer but will later enter into a relationship with him of deep mutual
affection. In the meantime, the growing Danielle decides she wants a baby. ‘And
what about a husband to go with it?’ asks Antonia. ‘I don’t think so,’ she
replies. Danielle will have a daughter, Therese (Veerle van Overloop), who will
turn out to be a mathematical genius. Danielle herself will become a gifted
painter and fall in love at first sight with Therese’s teacher, a moment signalled
when Danielle, who has always had a vivid imagination,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>immediately transforms her in her mind’s eye
into a vision of Botticelli’s Venus.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
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And so it goes on. A friend, who
has helped Antonia find a suitable young man to father Danielle’s child, turns
up at the farm and immediately falls for a curate, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>who has just left the church because he found
it too constricting for his innate sense of happiness; and together they will
produce twelve children. If all this sounds impossibly idyllic, one should add
that the film is not blind to the darker sides of life. Although a kindly and
much loved tutor to Antonia’s offspring, the hermit Crooked Finger (Mil
Seghers) can never shake himself free from his conviction of the fundamental
cruelty and futility of existence, and he will commit suicide. Loony Lips will
die in an accident and Deedeee will be inconsolable, until reminded that ‘life
wants to live’ and she must carry on. In the most disturbing section of the
film, Deedee’s contemptible brother, Pitte returns to the village and, in
retaliation for Danielle’s attack on him all those years before, pays her back
by raping (offscreen) her daughter, Therese. All out for revenge, Antonia will
arm herself with a shotgun, but, on confronting the rapist, she curses rather
than kills him, saying that killing is not in her nature. Women give life, not
take it; to do the latter would be fighting a monster like him with the very
weapons they deplore. Curiously, though, the curse <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>casts its spell. Later that night, Pitte is to
be beaten up by the sons of Farmer Bas; and when he returns home, he is
murdered by his brother, who has always hated him.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
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The fulfilment of Antonia’s curse
seems like an element in a fairy-tale, and is an example of the film’s
narrative and stylistic fluidity. Although grounded mainly in earthy
naturalism, paying particular attention to collective enterprise and the women’s
domestic labour on the farm, the film also has whimsical flights of fantasy and
surrealism. Antonia’s mother sits up in her coffin to sing ‘My Blue Heaven’ at
her own funeral ; a statue of Mary suddenly smiles; a stone angel uses its wing
to clobber an unholy priest who has refused the last rites to a man who
sheltered Jews during the war. This rich stew of disparate elements- magical
realism, bucolic revelry, Europeanised gloom- was not to everyone’s taste; and
even an admirer of the film like Robin Wood thought that the film’s Utopian
fantasy, ‘miraculously exempt from the incursions of corporate capitalism’ was
inconsistent with other details of the film, such as the fact that this
village, which seems removed from most of the trappings of modern civilisation,
is nevertheless situated in close proximity to a large modern university. ‘We
need empowering utopian fantasies,’ he wrote, but added that ‘they must take
into account the conditions within which we actually today exist and struggle,
for how can we strive to reach a utopia in which it is impossible to believe?’
(Wood: 316-17) However, it is possible to take the film as essentially as a
folk-tale or matriarchal fable with, in the words of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sight and Sound</i> review (May, 1997: 59) “all the magic of a Chagall
painting.” Certainly the film is less concerned with social realism and evolution<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>than with the eternal life-cycle of birth and
death. This is<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>nicely conveyed in the
circling camera movement as Therese’s new-born baby girl is handed from
villager to villager in an act of communal blessing; and also suggested in the
narrator’s summation that ‘as this long chronicle draws to a conclusion,
nothing has ended.’<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
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Since <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antonia’s Line</i>, Gorris has moved from filming her own original
screenplays and tended to specialise more in heavyweight literary adaptations.
She crafted a fine cinematic interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s feminist
classic, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mrs Dalloway</i> (1997),
starring Vanessa Redgrave; and an interesting version of Vladimir Nabokov’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Luzhin Project </i>(2000), with John
Turturro and Emily Watson. With Emily Watson again, she also made a compelling
adaptation of Eugenia Ginzburg’s harrowing but ultimately heroic personal memoir
as a literary professor in the Stalinist era sentenced to ten years hard labour
in <st1:place w:st="on">Siberia</st1:place>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Within the Whirlwind </i>(2009), which has had only a limited worldwide
release. Recently she has directed a television mini-series about the life of
Rembrandt. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antonia’s Line</i> remains her
biggest international success thus far, with audiences relishing its warm
vitality, lusty femininity and gutsy resilience in the face of patriarchal
prejudice and pressure, though, in my view, Robin Wood is right in suggesting <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
Question of Silence</i> still stands as ‘her finest achievement to date’ (Wood:
317) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In that film, the women’s laughter
in the courtroom that concludes the trial, undermining the confidence and
certainty of arrogant male authority, is as liberating as<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ibsen’s notorious and resonant slammed door
that concludes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Doll’s House</i>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Question of Suilence</i> alone will ensure
that Gorris remains a permanent icon of feminist film at its most
powerful,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>provocative and pertinent.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Suggested <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Reading</st1:place></st1:city><o:p></o:p></b></div>
<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Pam Cook<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Review: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Broken Mirrors</i>,’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monthly Film
Bulletin</i>,<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>April, 1985,p.114.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Maggie Humm<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Author/Auteur: Feminist Literary Theory
and Feminist<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Film’ in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Feminism and Film</i>, Edinburgh University Press,1999, pp.90-111.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Barbara Koenig Quart<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Women
Directors: The Emergence of a New Cinema,<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<br />
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:state>: Praeger, 1988.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Neil Sinyard<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘A Question of Gorris’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dutch Crossing, </i>Winter,1997,<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pp.100-116.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Tom Tunney and <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Geoffrey McNab<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Review: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antonia’s Line</i>’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sight and
Sound,</i> May, 1997,p.59.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
Robin Wood<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sexual Politics and Narrative Film</i>, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Columbia</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>
Press, <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1998, pp.315-17.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-91693726875055229052014-11-21T03:45:00.000-08:002014-12-05T04:47:53.075-08:00Cold and Hungry: Discourses of anorexic femininity in Frozen (2013)<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIRpyhZUnqKvO4UjvAtGm_Z8w-wWKJaP47hOyTBdqu97VViOoFhxgUxpP62x50nRbkxA_jROd0sHHQvxkyla8cRbHldh8d0PrCrQBqtpnPMZTwuateg81sk1dnFccisCLEVkHhisoSKtE/s1600/frozen+1.jpg" height="139" width="320" /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">On the 14<sup>th</sup>
November, 2014, I had my first McDonalds. As I was driving home I leant forward
and instinctively clicked on song no.22: ‘Let it Go’. Purchased for my 3 year
old daughter, this was not a song that I usually listened to alone. It was
normally the context for a rousing duet, belted out between us in the car (even
whilst I am instructed, at regular intervals, to ‘stop singing Mummy!’). But as
I listened and sang, the words began to get stuck in my throat and I felt hot
tears streaming down my face. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What was
going on?</i> I had listened to this song at least 100 times before. I mulled
over the experience for a couple of days before typing the words ‘Elsa/
anorexia/ Frozen’ into Google, and felt a mixture of fear, surprise and
recognition as the search returned a sizeable number of results. What had felt
like a deeply personal or even ‘crazy’ reading was suddenly made real and given
social validation. As one blogger <a href="http://smdeatingdisorders.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/frozen_movies/" target="_blank">wrote</a>, ‘I’m glad it wasn’t just me who saw it’<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, </i>whilst another stated, ‘To me,
the whole story seemed to accurately parallel the path I and many others have
taken to suffering and recovering from an <a href="http://truehealthyme.wordpress.com/2014/06/10/how-disneys-frozen-is-really-an-eating-disorder-recovery-story/" target="_blank">eating disorder</a>’.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>I’m not sure about ‘accurate parallel’
(and as someone who lectures on and writes about the media, I’m aware of a
heightened and pre-disposed cynicism toward the Disney films, particularly with
regard to the representation of the female leads). But I do know that having
suffered from anorexia for 20 years, and after being fully recovered for five
(it just took me a while to tackle a McDonalds), <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt a personal connection with<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Frozen’s</i> lead song and then, as I
thought more, with the symbolism of its characters and narrative possibilities.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Well, now they know…’<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></b></div>
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Given<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Frozen’s</i> unprecedented popularity (and it is also the first film
to be (co) directed by a woman to gross over one billion <a href="http://www.themarysue.com/frozen-billion-dollar-jennifer-lee/" target="_blank">dollars</a>),
it will no doubt become the focus of considerable academic research. So far, however,
it has been popularly deconstructed in blogs, reviews, fan forums, fan fiction,
and social media, clearly questioning the idea that Disney ‘successfully
invites mass audiences to set aside their critical faculties’ (Bell et al,
1995: 4). Commentators have variously debated its apparent status as Disney’s first
real venture into feminism, its potential for a ‘queering’ of the Disney
fairytale, its problematic status as quite literally, Disney’s whitest film,
and the extent to which it can be read as a narrative about mental illness and
the social stigma, struggles and isolation which sufferers may <a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/as-frozen-hits-another-record-elsa-s-ice-powers-likened-to-mental-illness" target="_blank">endure</a>.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Some
bloggers have offered quite detailed comparisons of how Elsa’s narrative of
repression, secrecy, loneliness and ‘othering’ can be read in relation to the
plight of anorexia, with comparisons made to their own experiences. <a href="https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5520555/Obsessed-with-Elsa" target="_blank">Others</a> have
created fan-fiction in which Elsa is literally anorexic, whilst others still have simply wanted to
share interpretations and to stimulate debate. As one pro-ana <a href="http://www.myproana.com/index.php/topic/188398-dont-you-think-elsa-from-frozen-is-the-stereotypical-anorexic-girl/" target="_blank">blogger</a> asked, ‘</span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Don't
you think Elsa, from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frozen</i>, is the stereotypical
anorexic girl?’, whilst a <a href="http://smdeatingdisorders.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/frozen_movies/" target="_blank">male</a> viewer confided: ‘</span><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">When my wife
and I saw <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frozen</i> for the first time
with the kids a few months back we left the theater overwhelmed with the eating
disorder connection. No one we talked to saw the symbolism’. Critics and fans
were also quick to point out that the second version of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Let it Go’ was released by Demi <a href="http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/frozen-let-it-go-idina-menzel-demi-lovato" target="_blank">Lovato</a>, ‘</span><span class="s1"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">whose struggle with eating disorders and triumphant
public reemergence has uncanny parallels with Elsa's plight: Substitute rehab
for an ice castle and you can fill in the details yourself…' There has even been the suggestion that the message of the film, and ‘Let it
Go’ in particular, offers helpful discourses on recovery, with one American clinic
even using its symbolism and lyrics in eating disorder <a href="http://www.waldenbehavioralcare.com/how-disneys-elsa-can-help-adolescents-in-eating-disorder-treatment/" target="_blank">therapy</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Women in the Disney animation
films have been regularly lambasted for their perpetuation of extreme and
unrealistic images of the slender ideal and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frozen,</i>
which has drawn its female leads with exaggerated eyes wider than their waists
and ‘lollipop’ heads, has generated particular <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2013/nov/28/frozen-disney-female-body-image" target="_blank">concern</a> in this regard. As such, the suggestion that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frozen</i> may have something to say about the potentially fatal misery
of anorexia, as well as the possibility of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">conquering</i>
it, is surely worth some thought. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="s1"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Female
Sexuality: ‘Conceal it, don’t feel it…’</span></b></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">If considered in relation to
the abundant feminist work on eating disorders and anorexia in particular, these
readings of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frozen</i> are simply offering
particular interpretations of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">femininity </i>in
the film – a topic which has been unsurprisingly prominent in debates about the
Disney princess films (Bell, et al, 1995, Davis, 2007). This is because much
feminist work on anorexia has argued that the problem is an extreme
manifestation of the oppressions, struggles and contradictions involved in inhabiting
a female identity in Western patriarchal society. T</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">he early authors, writing just after Second Wave
feminism and in a culture that was apparently witnessing a considerable rise in
eating disorders, linked the problem to the consequences of the Women’s
Movement, and the resulting contradictions and pressures surrounding the female
role (see <a href="http://kbjournal.org/grey" target="_blank">Houston Grey</a>, 2011). Some
authors invoked the importance of the mother-daughter relationship (Chernin,
1985, Orbach, 1986), emphasising the anorexic’s fear of assuming a traditional,
domestic and maternal role. Desire was also seen as particularly central here, in
so far as anorexia was seen as the ‘solution’ to a culture in which, despite a
process of socialisation intended to curtail the woman’s needs, she continued
to feel ‘her own needs and desires intensely’ (Orbach, 1986: xvii). In this
respect, starvation was theorised as a means of controlling, containing or even
eradicating female desire. Yet feminists also see the political connotations of
anorexia as contradictory. So whilst the anorexic body might be seen as taking
the patriarchal slender ideal to extremes, it can also be seen as <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">a form of </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">resistance </i>through the body<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>- the rejection of traditionally female subjectivity and sexuality, and
an escape into a childlike, boyish or defeminised form (Bordo, 1993).</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">If anorexia
is about female sexuality, so is the narrative and symbolism in<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Frozen</i>. </span><span class="s1"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Frozen</span></i></span><span class="s1"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> is
loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Snow Queen, </i>and in in fairy tales, magic is often linked to <a href="http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/frozen-let-it-go-idina-menzel-demi-lovato" target="_blank">sexuality</a>.It </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">is thus not a
huge leap to read Elsa’s magic abilities as a metaphor for powerful female
sexuality, and as one <a href="http://www.btchflcks.com/2013/12/frozen-disneys-first-foray-into-feminism.html#.VGyc3NJybcs" target="_blank">critic</a> notes, her powers ‘are connected to her emotions and mature with age’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore,
the mantra of ‘conceal it, don’t feel it’, is handed down via the patriarchal
lineage of her father (and her mother, in contrast, plays no significant
narrative role). What is presented as a great responsibility clearly weighs
heavily on young Elsa, and the rules she must follow require her to remain
sequestered in the private sphere. Anna emerges here as the confused younger
sister, bewildered about what is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wrong </i>with
her older sibling, compared, in some <a href="http://www.waldenbehavioralcare.com/how-disneys-elsa-can-help-adolescents-in-eating-disorder-treatment/" target="_blank">readings</a>,
to the extent to which siblings are often misguidedly shielded from the
realities of an eating disorder and any ‘talk of the illness’ within the
family. Anna’s repeated pleas to engage in playful activities – as articulated
through the keyhole in Elsa’s door - offer an evocative image of a childhood
lost to anorexia. Elsa’s incarceration, and the repeated shots of Anna knocking
at her door, also fit neatly and visibly with feminist writer Marilyn
Lawrence’s description of anorexia as living <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">‘behind the walls of your own solution… [Anorexia] is in a real sense a
“No Entry” sign (1984: 21). Elsa, like the anorexic, represents a walled self, someone
who is ‘closed up’ and ‘not receptive, nor there for others’ (Ibid: 94) (‘Go
away Anna’). As Lawrence expands, self-denial in our culture is often regard as
a ‘good thing’ from a moral point of view, but this is especially the case for
women who are seen as ‘more inherently prone to ‘badness and moral weakness’
(Ibid :95). </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">To be sure,
Elsa’s incarceration can be <a href="http://www.btchflcks.com/2013/12/frozen-disneys-first-foray-into-feminism.html#.VGzHCtJybct" target="_blank">read</a> as a metaphor for queer sexuality which must be shut away for fear that it will
influence or ‘infect’ her younger sister. In fact, it is important to note here
that the queer and anorexic readings need not be seen as oppositional or
separate. The feminist (and certainly the psychiatric) work on anorexia has
historically pivoted on an assumed heterosexuality. But more recent empirical
research has shown how, with regard to lesbian girls/ women, anorexia can
indeed develop as a means of repressing or evacuating the feelings of
‘forbidden’ lesbian desire,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>whilst
offering a means of ‘looking straight’ by taking to extremes the thin,
heterosexual ideal <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">(see Jones and
Malson, 2013 ).</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">But the moral and social
restrictions placed upon Elsa can just as easily be read a hyperbolic dramatisation
of the condition of femininity, to which many feminists read anorexia as a
response: if Elsa’s magic powers stand in for female sexuality, she is effectively
being warned by her father of the appropriate sexual conduct of a woman
befitting her royal (class-defined) status - instructed to live a cold and
solitary life disconnected from her own desires. As Cassandra Stover observes,
the newer Disney princess films from the early 1990s onwards tend to dramatise
seemingly more liberated heroines who are trapped in the worlds created for
them, yearning to escape (2012: 4). In positioning the women in what are
effectively pre-feminist worlds (trapped by ‘marriage pressure or royal
status’), this enables their feisty spirit and ‘breakout’ strategies to offer
an illusion of post-feminist autonomy. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frozen</i>
might well be seen as fitting this trajectory given that Elsa’s enforced
incarceration appears very far from ‘modern’ – later enabling the great
‘breakout’ sentiment of ‘I’m free’ - and her royal status and magic powers can
be read as effectively a cover story for a ‘general discomfort around <a href="http://www.btchflcks.com/2013/12/frozen-disneys-first-foray-into-feminism.html#.VG-DDyiAbdl" target="_blank">sexuality</a> in all its forms’.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> <span lang="EN"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">‘You
look<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> beautifuller’</i>: Eating desire</span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<span lang="EN" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Yet what is clearly Anna’s
budding and growing sexuality appears to cause no such consternation or
trouble. Anna is not only warm, vibrant and funny, all the things that Elsa is
apparently not, but we also see evidence of literal, and not just sexual, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">appetite. </i>As she leaps exuberantly
around the corridors on coronation day singing ‘For the first time in forever’,
she tells with yearning of the things the day may bring, including a potential male
partner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Overcome with excitement and
anticipation, she sings: <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">I suddenly see him standing there,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">A beautiful stranger tall and fair [shot
of a male bust made of chocolate].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">I want to stuff some chocolate in my
facccccccccccceeeeeee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The last line is muffled as she gorges
on handfuls of chocolates – although she notably partially hides her face
behind her fan which offers a more delicate and traditionally ‘feminine’
signifier than eating. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anna then picks
up the chocolate bust and throws it, with the sculpture landing with a ‘plop’ on
top of an elaborate cake. The equation of eating / sexual appetite is explicit
here: her imaginary suitor is made <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">of </i>chocolate,
and the mountain of chocolates appears as an ‘answer’ to her desire (she has
not met him <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yet</i>). This equation
between food and desire is also apparent in ‘Love is an Open Door’, when Anna
completes Prince Hans’ line ‘We finish each other’s’ with the word
‘sandwiches!’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In comparison, witness
the exchange between the two sisters when they meet for the first time in years
at the coronation dance:</span></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPp0GYjy9xnWnWurdVNRJfq-Re-4aGynvM4cLEkRgFbNcQmUaavhs1uN-h8gI1W4BjUqg5CZAYO9yqipmaa4sY0QnNTZYx-_Wb_k8Q7TehGBrC4VvvL1U8A58Dka2477rBv-mzqp_y15U/s1600/frozen+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPp0GYjy9xnWnWurdVNRJfq-Re-4aGynvM4cLEkRgFbNcQmUaavhs1uN-h8gI1W4BjUqg5CZAYO9yqipmaa4sY0QnNTZYx-_Wb_k8Q7TehGBrC4VvvL1U8A58Dka2477rBv-mzqp_y15U/s1600/frozen+4.jpg" height="143" width="320" /></span></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
</div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Elsa: You look beautiful<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Anna: Thank you – you look<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> beautifuller</i>… I mean not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fuller.</i> You don’t look <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fuller,</i> but… more, more <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">beautiful</i>…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Elsa: What is that amazing
smell?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Elsa/ Anna (in unison): <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chocolate!</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Not only does Anna’s comment
make clear that to be full in figure or stomach is not to be beautiful, but her
stuttering anxiety about how to refer to Elsa’s physical appearance is
comparable to the minefield of how (or whether) to refer to an anorexic’s
physicality. (Don’t say ‘you look well’, ‘you look better’, and definitely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">don’t</i> say ‘you look fuller’). Their
giggly celebration of ‘chocolate!’ - which immediately brings them together in
both speech and movement - also seems to represent a throwback to childhood: it
recalls a playful time when they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">were </i>together,
before responsibility, repression and restriction got in the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">But in comparison with Elsa,
Anna, it seems, shows just the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">right
level</i> of desire. Although she is chastised in the narrative for being too
hasty and ‘desperate’ in her search for a male suitor (she nearly dies at the
hands of the uncaring and exploitative Prince Hans whom she agrees to marry
after one day), her desire is acceptable because it is channelled into
heterosexual courtship and ultimately, we assume - with regard to her
relationship with Kristoff - marriage. (The narrative rejection of Hans for
Kristoff also emphasises the importance of a more egalitarian and ‘modern’
relationship).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This differing treatment
of the two female leads may further support a queer reading, and Elsa is
certainly horrified when Anna’s announces that she is eager to cement her
status as a heterosexual bride and marry Prince Hans. But the really
interesting point about Elsa is that she is constructed as essentially <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a</i>sexual. This is not so much at the
level of physicality: although stick thin, the women have hourglass figures,
and Elsa is sexualised during the transformation sequence in ‘Let it Go’, which
is complete with falling tresses and a ‘come hither’ glance over her shoulder.
But she is represented as asexual in the clear absence of human-directed desire
which, as suggested, is symbolised by her magic powers. This indeed seems to be
a departure for Disney, and can again be read in relation to discourses of
anorexia. The anorexic is often read in terms of asexuality, whether this is
interpreted as a retreat from (or resistance to) adult femininity, or an
‘excessive’ attempt to emulate the unattainable slender ideal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It
is important to note, however, that one of the most obvious triggers for
anorexic readings of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frozen,</i> and ‘Let
it Go’ in particular, is found in Elsa’s references to the ‘good’ and ‘perfect
girl’ (‘<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Be the good girl you always have to be’/
‘That perfect girl is gone!’). When one <a href="http://www.myproana.com/index.php/topic/188398-dont-you-think-elsa-from-frozen-is-the-stereotypical-anorexic-girl/" target="_blank">blogger</a> asks </span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">‘Don't you think Elsa, from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frozen</i>,
is the stereotypical anorexic girl?’, her reference to the word ‘stereotype’
attests to the fact that the post-war stereotype of the white, middle-class girl
</span>with perfectionist
tendencies (who is terrified of not living up to parental expectations) still
holds a certain currency. The American psychotherapist Steven Levenkron who
treated Karen Carpenter, for example, wrote a popular book on anorexia entitled
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Best little Girl in the World </i>[1978]
(Saukko, 2008: 63). Yet again, although specifically highlighted in relation to
anorexia, this can be read as merely a hyperbolic dramatisation of the
expectations surrounding femininity as socially <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pleasing</i>, reflecting the early feminist arguments that anorexia
speaks to women’s wider troubles relating to self-determination and
entitlement. Feminist work has seen the idea of thin and frail femininity for
example, as exemplifying the extent to which women are supposed to take up less
physical and social space. In comparison, ‘<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">‘Fat’ is the external sign of voracious appetite; it intrudes into
masculine space’ (MacSween, 1995: 249). Indeed, in a critique of how the female
characters in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frozen </i>have ‘eyes
larger than their wrists’, it was reported in a <i><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2526126/Her-eyes-larger-wrists-Disney-heroine-Frozen-STILL-ridiculous-proportions.html#ixzz3JMSfktWr" target="_blank">Daily Mail</a></i> article how </span>‘<span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ansi-language: EN;">the Disney characters’ diminutive features
send the troubling message that to be loveable, it’s best to take up almost no
space at all…’</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">‘No right, no wrong, no rules for me’?
<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">If drawing on my personal experience,
there is little doubt that ‘Let it Go’ blasts out a triumphant and rousing sentiment
that is evocative of recovery from anorexia, or from an eating disorder more
generally. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The suggestion that:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">It's funny how some distance</span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Makes everything seem small</span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">And the fears that once controlled me</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Can't get to me at all!</span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">offers a powerful reminder
of what is it like – once recovered – to look with incredulity at the rules,
restrictions and punishments you have faithfully followed for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">so long.</i> The suggestion that ‘</span><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">It's time to
see what I can do/ To test the limits and break through’ also conjures up the
feeling of what it was like to try to restart my life after 20 years, waiting
to embrace the opportunities of life which suddenly seemed so plentiful, so
open and so endless. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I was free.</i></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Yet this sentiment, as well as the promise of ‘Let it Go’,
is also somewhat utopian. In ‘Let it Go’, Elsa equates society, and social
rules, with the suppression and repression of her true self. But as her
self-incarceration in the beautiful but isolated ice castle shows, it is not
possible to live <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">outside </i>of society
and its expectations and ‘rules’. (Plus, as any anorexic knows, the cold<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>is actually a killer). After all, she
realises in ‘For the First Time in Forever (Reprise)’,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘I’m such a fool I can’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">be</i> free! (no escape from the storm inside)’. This is not to suggest
that full recovery from anorexia isn’t possible. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It is</i>, I’ve done it: food no longer invades my every waking minute and
dominates the structure of each day. But if, as the feminist work argues, </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">‘troubles relating to self-determination and gender identity
affect <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> women in sexist societies,
with anorexics simply representing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the
gravest end of the continuum<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> </span></i>[my
emphasis]<i>’</i> (Saukko, 2008: 5), then even in recovery, there is no utopian
space ‘outside’ of the female social self. In a culture which foregrounds
dieting and calorimetry as normal preoccupations for women, the female self (often
reduced to body) will always be judged and surveilled, seen as the most
important indicator of her being. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Let
it Go’ is powerful because it offers an impossible, or at least only temporary,
fantasy that it is possible to be live outside of social norms. Returning a
considerably tempered Elsa to Arendelle - she will only use her powers in what
appear to be ‘de-fanged’ and insignificant ways - <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frozen </i>is in fact realistic about the impossibility of living in a
world in which the subject is entirely autonomous and self-governing. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">To be sure, there are
certainly limitations to the feminist work on anorexia. It fails to account,
for example, for why not all women suffer from anorexia, and why some (like
Elsa), are the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chosen</i> ones. But it
nevertheless provides a compelling account of the ways in which anorexia is
inextricably linked to the condition of femininity in patriarchal society, and
why anorexia should be positioned on a continuum with ‘normal’ femininity. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frozen</i> invokes connotations of anorexia
because the film is about the repressions and restraints of being female.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">But whatever its meanings, and
for whomever, ‘Let it Go’ is a beautiful and powerful song. Now, when we play the
song in the car, I listen to my daughter sing along, missing out words as she
eagerly waits for the chorus. I hope every day that she will find an easier
route to growing up female than Elsa, or me. Maybe one day I will tell her
about my journey, and why her Mum more than shared her fascination with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frozen</i>. But for now, I just enjoy the musical
pleasure we share. I click on the song, put the car into gear, and I smile. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">References<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Bell, E, Haas, L and Sells, L (eds)
(1995) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">From Mouse to Mermaid: The
Politics of Film, Gender and Culture, </i>Indiana: Indiana University Press. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Bordo, S (1993) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">. </span></i>London: University of
California Press.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Chernin,
K (1985) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Hungry Self: Women, Eating
and Identity. </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">New York: </span>Harper
Collins.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Davis,
Amy (2007) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Good Girls and Wicked Witches:
Women in Disney’s Feature Animation,</i> London: John Libbey. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Jones,
R, Malson, H (2013) A critical exploration of lesbian perspectives on eating
disorders. <i>Psychology and Sexuality </i>4 (1): 62-74. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Lawrence,
M (1984) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Anorexic Experience<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">. </span></i>London: The Women’s Press.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">MacSween,
M (1995) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anorexic Bodies: A Feminist and
Sociological Perspective on Anorexia Nervosa. </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">London: </span>Routledge.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Orbach,
S (1986), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hunger Strike: the Anorectic’s Struggle
as a Metaphor for Our Age.<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> </span></i>London:
Faber & Faber.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Saukko,
P (2008) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Anorexic Self: A personal
and Political Analysis of a Diagnostic Discourse. </i>Albany: State University
of New York Press.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Stover,
C (2012) ‘Damsels and Heroines: The Conundrum of the Post-Feminist Disney
Princess’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Journal of Transdisciplinary
Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University, </i>Volume 2,
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/lux/</span></div>
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-46866096935535795892014-11-17T02:33:00.001-08:002014-11-17T02:33:17.576-08:00A new cinema, a new interest – women’s issues and new Romanian cinema<!--[if !mso]>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">ANCA CARAMELEA </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">For the past decade, Romanian cinema has seen a prosperous
period, gaining positive critical and public reception. Previously unknown to
critics and scholars, Romanian cinema secured itself a leading role in world
cinema. Considered by many a new wave, the filmmakers themselves have preferred
the term of ‘new generation’ instead, putting similarities on account of their
common upbringing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An interest for same
thematic platforms, realism, and similar stylistic choices are just some of the
common traits which have enabled films scholars to place the majority of
Romanian films under the same umbrella. One of these aspects is represented by
the interest in women’s issues and female characters. Telling stories with and
about women has never been a major line for Romanian cinema; films made during
communism until the inception of the new wave have been limited to displaying
stereotypical female characters, life situations and experiences. This has been
changed by the new generation, and an important share of the films made in the
past ten years have been interested in women’s issues or presenting life
situations from feminine perspectives. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days </i>(Cristian Mungiu, 2007)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, Ryna </i>(Ruxandra Zenide, 2005)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, First of all, Felicia </i>(Melissa de
Raaf, Razvan Radulescu, 2009)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Happiest Girl in the World </i>(Radu Jude,
2009)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>are just some of the latest
productions which deal with women’s issues. The new modes of women
representations by the new Romanian cinema are not limited to these films,
instead are to be found in various forms throughout the works of the new
generation. The alternative modes of representing women proposed by latest
Romanian films can be seen as a medium of dealing with women’s issues, female
character and femininity in cinema. The filmmakers do not express any feminist
agenda, the products are not explicitly women cinema, but they hint at possible
ways of empowering female characters and displaying women’s experiences on
film.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKtsmzBW2Xi-BJupCIVsu-YaDgcBnV1rOwScNMyH2mDA8MVRLMmvE_hQil8w2EYWxmdb4Tdy7iLMBkbggcY8gx7GgJr1_nDcDz85jJTwjaA3ms4bnQ7d7DUkTmI_7kOxM8dYHqvOn7SUo/s1600/Untitled1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKtsmzBW2Xi-BJupCIVsu-YaDgcBnV1rOwScNMyH2mDA8MVRLMmvE_hQil8w2EYWxmdb4Tdy7iLMBkbggcY8gx7GgJr1_nDcDz85jJTwjaA3ms4bnQ7d7DUkTmI_7kOxM8dYHqvOn7SUo/s1600/Untitled1.png" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-tDpcWq6G_KCyQ5Oe1FNymRUWPI74O2w2WrWONmNcqW0zmfbs-kJGztxuIi1fIfxFx4MRQHPiwV8ZYdBJBiP-txYDDh4LkS_CSH23rXQlEOxg91UgJNnOPnfCSC2M6YJy1iXXaArhE4A/s1600/Untitled2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-tDpcWq6G_KCyQ5Oe1FNymRUWPI74O2w2WrWONmNcqW0zmfbs-kJGztxuIi1fIfxFx4MRQHPiwV8ZYdBJBiP-txYDDh4LkS_CSH23rXQlEOxg91UgJNnOPnfCSC2M6YJy1iXXaArhE4A/s1600/Untitled2.png" /></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;">1.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">4 Months, 3 Weeks
and 2 Days</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;">2.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tuesday, After Christmas</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4588513626477905230" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4588513626477905230" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Most of the characters are still placed in patriarchal
embedded situations and are positioned in domestic areas; however, they do not
tend to be dependent on the men around them, they are not being defined only through
their relationship with men or their gender. A very important new aspect brought
in by Romanian cinema is represented by realist characters; the women are not
labelled in boxes or objectified, they are constructed as human beings, active
and outspoken, with flaws and aspirations, having professional life and
families. They are frustrated, irritated or dreary with the patriarchal modus
operandi, and the inability of men to understand and appropriately communicate
with them. The female characters seem to be more prone to change and action, even
when they cannot change things, they voice their complaints. This energetic
process of character development, completed with a predisposition towards
women’s issues and feminine subjectivity can be interpreted as a search for
identity of most women represented in the new Romanian cinema. The variety of
female characters and women experiences found in the new generation of films
proves more feminist than the display itself, acknowledging the diversity of
women and the manifold implications of being a woman. The films offer a great
range of characters - from prostitutes to middle class students and high end
overprotective mothers, a variety of situations past and present which have
taken their toll on women. Completing the narrative techniques, the visual
style, cinematography and editing choices are working towards the centrality of
female characters and women’s issues. The cinematography of films such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Francesca </i>or
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Happiest Girl in the World </i>is based
on the centrality of female characters, with the shots are constructed around
the women, with the character placed in the centre of the image. The shooting
angles and editing techniques are allowing a greater space for women to perform
and present their realities.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXxI7hG8hkOXhGuIfDna2TwXPtjCkNN1OoPTesvcV9tuafV-z3RerRtPP7CEXYky6uhmuzdA-RJ1eysF3MOTYXD9DyStN3y5uUaXdnn8GnOQY2ByCyi9mpubHsq7uUkcIMr9mTY5l6pts/s1600/Untitled3.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXxI7hG8hkOXhGuIfDna2TwXPtjCkNN1OoPTesvcV9tuafV-z3RerRtPP7CEXYky6uhmuzdA-RJ1eysF3MOTYXD9DyStN3y5uUaXdnn8GnOQY2ByCyi9mpubHsq7uUkcIMr9mTY5l6pts/s1600/Untitled3.png" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; color: black;"></span></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimYk_t4n9t5CWAX-3iVdmnjWNKv8f32ThEoEbyX_46usAwuCd6UNXgjGlDNtkzyzlb5ppb1OyvO5AGMZ8pet5dj43TEv1F9t8OOHgPd_W_VHJZpYIQNmpKozjhOS7PJ4prvWyRQ3ngKJU/s1600/Untitled4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimYk_t4n9t5CWAX-3iVdmnjWNKv8f32ThEoEbyX_46usAwuCd6UNXgjGlDNtkzyzlb5ppb1OyvO5AGMZ8pet5dj43TEv1F9t8OOHgPd_W_VHJZpYIQNmpKozjhOS7PJ4prvWyRQ3ngKJU/s1600/Untitled4.png" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;">3.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Happiest Girl in
the World</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;">4.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Child’s Pose</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;">A different cinematic agenda (the new generation of
filmmakers have been exploring alternative narratives in their quest to
distance themselves from previous Romanian cinema), or a formula for
international success are all possible explanations or, at least points of
discussions for the interest new Romanian cinema has in women’s issues.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-88095307162189511032014-08-22T09:02:00.000-07:002014-08-22T09:02:08.607-07:00Female authorship and the rape-revenge narrative: Ida Lupino’s 'Outrage' (1950)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSubPpkbexGftFHUfpindl9x-pRm_B8TGH-Hltphv57PWIu-7nR-N1sU1htqwUdvekRwJYjBBjAXxUktocL9CYAKg7N5HdWsSKXJz7yOrHdzjD3v4l3OKsB2E9QB06zBIqgtS1GDIIxNY/s1600/Unknown.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSubPpkbexGftFHUfpindl9x-pRm_B8TGH-Hltphv57PWIu-7nR-N1sU1htqwUdvekRwJYjBBjAXxUktocL9CYAKg7N5HdWsSKXJz7yOrHdzjD3v4l3OKsB2E9QB06zBIqgtS1GDIIxNY/s1600/Unknown.jpg" height="320" width="251" /></a></div>
<br />
DESPOINA MANTZIARI<br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The present review focuses on Ida Lupino’s
film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Outrage</i> starring Mala Powers as
Ann Walton, the victim of a brutal sexual assault. As a pre-1970s rape-revenge
film it barely foreshadows the developments that were to surface with the
arrival of second-wave feminism. Yet its feminist potential has been largely
undervalued due to the tendency in the narrative to pathologise the rape victim
and her reliance on Rev. Bruce Ferguson (Todd Andrews) to defend her in front
of the authorities as well as to ensure her social rehabilitation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">However, Pam Cook’s statement that the film
“seems to embody the fluctuating, unsettled nature of th[e] boundary” between
classicism and post-classicism in Hollywood (156) hints at the film’s ideological
ambiguity, which was also detected by Claire Johnston in relation to Lupino’s
oeuvre (38). Having this as a starting point I would like to provide a brief
analysis of the way the rape-revenge narrative functions in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Outrage </i>to destabilize, even if
temporarily, the wider patriarchal ideological context.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The title sequence of the film starts with
a high angle shot of a street at night and a woman running, trying to escape an
unknown as yet to the audience threat. The film’s title enlarges on screen
while the image of the woman staggering is still in the background. This poignant
opening leaves no room for doubt as to the certainty of the crime and the
film’s condemning attitude towards it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Subsequently, the narrative resumes a
conventional chronological sequence by introducing Ann’s character, running to
the canteen outside her work. The man working at the canteen flirts with her
but she does not respond. She goes to meet her boyfriend and he announces his
promotion and asks her to marry him. He tells her that she can now quit her job
since he will be able to support her. She happily accepts and they make plans
for announcing their decision to her parents. It is important to note that until
this point the couple seems to be on an equal plane in terms of the power
hierarchies in their relationship and the rape follows Ann’s relinquishment of
her independence. Generally women in films at the time are usually punished for
transgressing the traditional norms that prescribe their place in the domestic
sphere. It is therefore noteworthy that the moment Ann loses that equality with
her partner she is immediately afterwards sexually assaulted, which results in
a literal violation of her subjectivity and effectively undermines her place in
society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The actual rape, in accordance with censorship
restrictions, is not shown. Yet the scene leading up to it successfully conveys
the heroine’s psychological turmoil. It starts with an intercutting of shots of
Ann leaving the office and the canteen owner closing up, a technique that
gradually increases psychological tension and creates suspense. A close-up shot
of the man reveals a scar on his neck, a key feature in the identification of
the rapist. The camera then cuts to Ann coming out of the building skipping on
her way home after her last day at work. The man shuts his canteen and follows
her shouting “Hey beautiful!” to which she does not respond. He persists,
lurking in a predatory manner, trying to call her over repeatedly. The pace
quickens and eventually Ann reaches a parking lot and tries to call for
attention by pressing the horn of a lorry. Her last effort to evade her pursuer
is unsuccessful as she stumbles and falls in a semi-conscious state. Through a
point of view shot of the man his face remains hidden. However, his scar is
visible and as he approaches, the image gets increasingly blurry indicating
Ann’s loss of consciousness. The camera moves quickly away and upwards revealing
a neighbor coming to check out the noise. Failing to see anything, he goes back
in and the camera fades to black.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">In the next shot, Ann is seen staggering to
her house and the non-diegetic solemn music accentuates the tragic incident
that has just occurred. The whole scene of Ann’s pursuit and the off-screen
rape starts 9 minutes into the film and lasts for about 5 minutes. The
remaining 60 minutes of the film deal with the aftermath and the process of
Ann’s recuperation and re-integration in society. She arrives home in deep shock,
unable to respond to her mother’s worried inquiries. In the next scene the police
come to speak to her and she has a nervous breakdown. Ann’s father says to the
policeman: “Tonight my daughter was brutally attacked. Why don’t you do
something about preventing crimes like this?” and he adds: “Is this why you
raise a daughter? Is this what you love and sacrifice for? What kind of times
are these that such things can happen? Only this morning she was carefree and
happy and now…”. This poignant speech shows his devastation as he comments on
the larger social issue of the threat women face. It also expresses the gravity
of the issue even if it remains unspoken, as the word rape is never mentioned
throughout the film. Simultaneously it foreshadows the difficulty in overcoming
this trauma, which usually involved killing the perpetrator after the victim
was already dead.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Therefore the importance of this film lies
in focusing on the process of surviving this traumatic experience. Shortly
after her rape, Ann tries to resume her normal routine but she quickly
perceives that the way other people see her has changed drastically and she is
primarily defined as the victim of a sexual crime. Jim provides a solution to
move away and start a new life, but she rejects his proposal and breaks off the
engagement. In order to restore her violated subjectivity she runs away so as
to be around people that do not know anything about her, which is achieved in
the small farming community she finds refuge. Also the rejection of her
father’s and her fiancé’s protection and assistance in her recovery indicates
her need to regain agency and take control.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Bruce plays a huge part in Ann’s
recuperation firstly due to his discreet attitude. He gradually gains her
trust, which is highlighted in the scene at the countryside where he tells her about
his past. He says, “We all go through dark times” explaining that after the war
he lost his faith. It is possible to detect a potential parallel that is
created here between the traumatic experiences of war and rape. Both characters
have had a profound identity shock, which puts them on an equal plane and
allows them to connect. The insinuation regarding the similarity of their
experience further emphasizes the severity of rape as a crime or as an act of
“political terrorism” (Morgan 135), which is of course equally applicable to
war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Yet I would argue that the revenge part of
the narrative is the most ideologically transgressive aspect in the film. It is
a case of “displaced revenge” since the heroine takes her revenge on another
man and not the actual rapist (Read 95). 54 minutes into the film, and after
Ann has slowly begun the process of recuperation, there is the scene of the
dance during which Frank (Jerry Paris), approaches her romantically. When she
refuses his advances he becomes even more determined to woo her. She repeatedly
tells him to leave her alone but he ignores this adding that he doesn’t want to
hurt her but only to kiss her. When she runs off once more, he grabs her and she
falls back. As he approaches and continues talking to her, there is a close-up
on his mouth and neck. At this point there is a short sequence of alternating point
of view shots between Frank’s and the rapist’s necks. The camera then cuts to
Ann’s terrified face as she reaches out, grabs a wrench and hits Frank over the
head. Here the film offers the most usefully ambiguous for a feminist reading
opportunity, since it is insinuated that there is a thin line between an overly
keen suitor and a rapist. Therefore the film creates, even if temporarily, an
uncomfortable equation between a sociopath and an otherwise ‘innocent’ man.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">However, the aftermath of Ann’s ‘revenge’ functions
to re-establish the shaken patriarchal values in the film, since Ann is
apprehended for the attack on Frank and she is only exonerated after Bruce says
that her act was caused by “temporary insanity”. She is examined by a
psychiatrist and is subsequently put under Bruce’s supervision to ensure she
rehabilitates in society. Moreover, the characterization of the rapist as “a
neurotic” not only eliminates responsibility for his action, but it also
creates a safe distinction between him and other male characters. Thus any subversive
elements in the ideological fabric of the film are safely ironed out in the
end, but their inclusion, in view of the film’s production context in post-war
America, is important nonetheless.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Consequently, even if <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Outrage</i> may not explicitly set out to tell a feminist story (Read 77),
there are a number of elements inserted into the film, which make a feminist
reading possible. This review emphasizes its uniqueness as a female-authored
pre-1970s rape-revenge film in presenting the possibility for such a feminist
reading.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US">Bibliography<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 35.45pt; margin-right: -36.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; text-indent: -36.55pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Cook, Pam. “No fixed address: the women’s picture from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Outrage </i>to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blue Steel</i>.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Screening the
Past: Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema</i>. London: Routledge, 2005. 146-64.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 35.45pt; margin-right: -36.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; text-indent: -36.55pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Johnston, Claire. “Women's Cinema As Counter-Cinema.” <i>Notes on
Women's Cinema</i>. <i>Screen </i>(Pamphlet 2): 24-31.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 35.45pt; margin-right: -36.0pt; margin-top: 0cm; text-indent: -36.55pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Morgan, Robin. “Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Take Back the Night: Women on Pornography</i>.
Ed. Laura Lederer. New York: William Morrow, 1980. 134-40. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Read, Jacinda. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Avengers: Feminism, Femininity and
the Rape-revenge Cycle</i>. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000.</span><!--EndFragment-->
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-64622106565833727522014-07-29T05:19:00.001-07:002014-07-29T05:19:38.686-07:00Phantom Lady: Joan Harrison (26 June 1907 – 14 August 1994)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">TIM SNELSON<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">2014 marks both the 20th
anniversary of Hollywood producer Joan Harrison’s death and the 70th
anniversary of her first and most celebrated production Phantom Lady
(1944). This blog reveals the parallels between the protean female producer and
the resilient heroines in her mystery films, and asks what it might tell us
about women’s roles in wartime Hollywood and beyond. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">In an October 1945 Chicago Tribune article on Hollywood
producer Joan Harrison titled “Glamour Galvanic,” noted film critic Hedda
Hopper describes her as “a 33 year-old, golden-haired ball of fire with a
temper of a tarantula, the purring persuasiveness of a female archangel, the
capacity for work of a family of beavers, and the sex appeal of a No. 1 glamour
girl.” Hopper’s characterization of “Hollywood’s most successful lady” as a
hybrid creature—simultaneously aggressive spider woman and ethereal innocent,
desirable pinup and desiring predator—reveals much of the simultaneous
liberations and limitations facing women working in wartime and postwar Hollywood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the immediate postwar context of October
1945 Harrison— a former protégé of Alfred Hitchcock who had worked her way up
from his secretary in London in 1933 to his assistant and scriptwriter in
Hollywood in the early 1940s— reflected on a career as Universal’s first female
producer that had lasted only 18 months. In this time she had transformed from
heroine to femme fatale in the eyes of Universal’s executives, as both her own
and her onscreen alter-egos’ syntheses of multiple femininities and skills for
masquerade became undesirable within the “boys’ club” of Hollywood following
the war. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<table align="left" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a data-ved="0CAUQjRw" href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&docid=kPQ-3ytvNSSxYM&tbnid=BfCez6w8bNha2M:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Facertaincinema.com%2Fmedia-tags%2Fjoan-harrison%2F&ei=Uo_XU4yNGIvT7AaQsYG4Ag&bvm=bv.71778758,d.ZGU&psig=AFQjCNHlU8fu8yKK5rLRwxcLHjk2zt0H4A&ust=1406722254582545" id="irc_mil" style="border: 0px currentColor; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><img height="320" id="irc_mi" src="http://acertaincinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/joan-harrison-charles-maynard-celluloid_opt.jpg" style="margin-top: 0px;" width="272" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: small;">Joan Harrison in the cutting room</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">In mid-1943, Universal had appointed
“Hitchcock alumna” Harrison to produce mystery films “from the woman’s angle.” As
Barbara Berch of the New York Times explained, her gender and her
experience with the “master of horror” put her in a unique position to bring a </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi;">profitable
female perspective to the burgeoning horror and mystery market</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">. Harrison’s appointment </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi;">is
a clear example of Hollywood bringing in female expertise in order to target a
newly realized female audience for horror and crime films during the war. These
gendered shifts in wartime audiences</span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> <span lang="EN-US">and the resultant changes to Hollywood’s production strategies are
discussed in my forthcoming monograph for Rutgers University Press, </span></span></span><a href="http://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu/(S(r0wec445homau0i1vwfnuq55))/product/Phantom-Ladies,5321.aspx"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Phantom Ladies:</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> Hollywood Horror and the Home Front</span></span></a><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">, which, as you can see, takes its name from Harrison’s film. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Harrison chose Cornell Woolrich’s (under
the pseudonym William Irish) crime novel Phantom Lady (1942) as her
first project, but significantly reconstructed the source material to privilege
a female protagonist’s point of view. In the novel the secretary Carol “Kansas”
Richman is a marginal figure—only the suspect’s girlfriend, not his work colleague.
In the film, however, she takes on the traditionally male investigator’s role. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi;">Like
Harrison, Kansas transcends her role as secretary to excel in the perceived
male world of mystery and terror because of, rather than in spite of, her
gender. </span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">In Phantom
Lady, Kansas (Ella Raines) swaps
secretarial duties for hard-boiled detective work when her boss, Scott
Henderson (Alan Curtis), a civil engineer, is sentenced to death for murdering
his wife. She sets out to track down his alibi—the eponymous woman with whom he
shared the night in question but did not exchange names. Mysteriously no one
remembers the “phantom lady” despite the elaborate hat that she wore, which
seemed to get her noticed at the bar where she met Scott and the show she
attended with him. Kansas is plunged into a corrupt New York underworld of
lies, payoffs, betrayal, and murder. In the film’s most celebrated and
controversial jazz club scene—respected critics James and Manny Farber loved
this “orgiastic” sequence, whilst the Production Code Administration,
Hollywood’s internal content regulator, feared its “offensive sex
suggestiveness”—Kansas masquerades as a “hep kitten” called Jeannie to seduce a
lascivious drummer and key witness, Cliff (Elisha Cook Jr.). This frenetic
montage sequence utilizes disorienting camera angles and close-ups as it cuts
between the musicians performing and Kansas dancing, pouring liquor, kissing
Cliff, and applying makeup. It culminates in a frenzied drum solo that cuts
back and forth between Cliff’s increasingly sweaty, manic face and Kansas’s
feigned ecstatic expression (see below): </span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> <iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/5vEgZM5x0ik?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></div>
<div class="p" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"></span></span> </div>
<div class="p" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0cm; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">This
scene is typically attributed solely to director Robert Siodmak—with whom
Harrison, and Raines, would collaborate on her next and final film for
Universal, The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945)—but for me it is the
embodiment of Harrison’s quest to capture the complexities and contradictions
of women’s wartime experiences and expectations. The scene perfectly captures Kansas’s
skill for masquerade but also the multiple pressures placed upon women on the
American home front. The spectator appropriates Cliff’s point of view as he
scans her legs adorned in fishnet stockings, but unlike Cliff, the spectator is
aware that this is an elaborate ruse to entrap the predictable drummer.
Harrison herself was well aware of the advantages her sexuality might offer in
the male-dominated world of Hollywood. In an article on Phantom Lady in Time magazine,
she differentiated herself from other producers by saying “I use my sex,” even
exploiting “some leg art” in her studio publicity photographs. The article
continues, “Besides using a pair of ah-inspiring legs, she also uses a mind trained
at the Sorbonne, Oxford, and by England’s shrewdest director.” Like Kansas,
Harrison suggest she was able to get ahead by manipulating the male gaze. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Phantom
Lady</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> was, on
the whole, a critical and box-office success and afforded Harrison more power in
wartime Hollywood. However, as the war came to a close these powers were
retracted and her image as an assertive, independent woman became increasingly
policed and tamed by critics and studio publicists who claimed, for example,
that despite her reputation as a </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi;">“stormy petrel”, </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">her biggest fear was running out of butter at dinner parties.
Like her films, which celebrate wartime career women’s abilities to synthesize
the twin demands of desirability and productivity, the appeal of the “galvanic”
Harrison was seen as increasingly redundant following the war, as men returned
to reclaim their roles and restore women’s central productive roles of
housekeeping and childbirth. Harrison quit Universal in 1945 after the studio
refused to back her in a long-running battle with the Production Code
Administration over </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi;">The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi;">The
film’s morally ambiguous ending was seen as unpalatable for immediate postwar
audiences and </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">the
studio’s acquiescence to a tacked-on “dream ending” brought Harrison’s Universal
career to a strange but certainly not dream end. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Tim Snelson, lecturer in media history at University of East
Anglia. He has a forthcoming monograph tilted Phantom Ladies: Hollywood
Horror and the Home Front published with Rutgers University Press to be
published in October 2014. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span></div>
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<o:p> </o:p></div>
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-75629249086830808892014-06-05T03:48:00.000-07:002014-06-05T03:48:13.368-07:00Identifying the experiences of Frances, Ivy, Nora and ... many other women in the first generation of British cine-clubsFRANCIS DYSON<br />
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<a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/3823"></a></o:lock><a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/3823"></a></v:path><a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/3823"></a></v:stroke><a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/3823"></a></v:shapetype><a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/3823"></a></span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRN-SKF_tce9lrRFmtUgy1TTy4qraPsxkLiITqWOV3UzTB9pr3Ii5y830Ld4x_v4LvEAC1d60m9HgAOLHGE9fTbHfSoTUl0YOniIHagpneLszp5-pO4eqyaBgJ3Gh0hCGGpF7mwiSqKgQ/s1600/sally+sallies+forth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRN-SKF_tce9lrRFmtUgy1TTy4qraPsxkLiITqWOV3UzTB9pr3Ii5y830Ld4x_v4LvEAC1d60m9HgAOLHGE9fTbHfSoTUl0YOniIHagpneLszp5-pO4eqyaBgJ3Gh0hCGGpF7mwiSqKgQ/s1600/sally+sallies+forth.jpg" height="246" width="320" /></a></div>
</b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sally Sallies Forth</i> (1929),
heralded at the time as the first amateur film produced wholly and exclusively
by women, the IAC film collection, held at the East Anglian Film Archive. To see the whole film go to <a href="http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/3823"><strong><span style="font-size: small;">http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/3823</span></strong></a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 8pt;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In recent years the
involvement of women in amateur film-making has attracted the attention of a
number of scholars and film archivists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As far as the involvement of British women in amateur film production is
concerned, valuable work has been performed in identifying individual women
amateur film-makers in the 1920s and 1930s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This scholarly work usually makes use of home movies, highlights the
work of individuals and focuses attention on the person in possession of the
camera, identifying in the process films produced by women as important historical
records in their own right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, the
focus on female film-makers also overlooks the experiences of many women who
engaged with film production in the collaborative environment of Britain's
inter-war cine-clubs, particularly in the production of amateur fiction films
in the cine-club studio environment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Cine-clubs emerged in
Britain as sites for an amateur engagement with film production, distribution
and exhibition from the mid-1920s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still
relatively unexplored as a collective form of leisure, reports submitted by
cine-clubs to amateur film-making magazines in the 1930s indicate that these
clubs offered women opportunities to engage with film culture as film-making
democratised, even though the contributions women made to club life were only
very rarely acknowledged by editorial decisions taken in the production of
these magazines.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Although the
participation of women in cine-clubs was largely ignored by these magazines,<span style="color: red;"> </span>the very same magazines often included still
photographs of cine-club productions. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These
photographs not only indicate that women took part in film production but that
they often did so in productive roles which did not involve filming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Notably, stills published in these magazines indicate
that much of their activity was engaged in jobs and roles that frequently went
unrecorded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unlikely to be credited on
screen, recorded or valorised in amateur film magazines, this activity falls
into what has been referred to in the commercial environment as the invisible
labour of women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In April 2014, I
presented a paper, '<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sally Sallies Forth</i>:
The involvement of women in the first generation of British cine-clubs', at the
second international conference of the Women's Film and Television History
Network - UK/ Ireland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Using information
I had accumulated over the last five years about the involvement of women in
the first generation of British cine-clubs, I appraised the activities of women
in the collaborative environment of the London Amateur Cinematographers'
Association ("London ACA"), one of the first British inter-war
cine-clubs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">My paper identified in
this inter-war middle class association an environment that offered women an
interaction with film culture and film production.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also identified a clear contradiction
between the culture of the London ACA, which encouraged individuals irrespective
of gender to develop skills and an understanding of all aspects of film
production, and the opportunities open to women in the production
environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although it is clear that
women in the London ACA were not restricted in any formal way from participating
in the club's activities including film production, it is nevertheless apparent
from my research that the production culture in the cine-club might have
prevented them from participating on an equal basis in film production.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While it is difficult to detect "formal gendered
pathways" as well as "more informal mechanisms, habits and working
practices" in a leisure environment in the same way that Vicky Ball and
Melanie Bell have been able to in the organisation of labour in film and
television industries, it is notable that the experiences of women in the
production environment of the London ACA were different to men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Women in the London ACA only very rarely moved
across different production roles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This contrasts
starkly with the experiences enjoyed by men in the club.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Drawing on information I had pieced together
about the experiences of Frances Lascot, Ivy Low and Nora Pfeil, my paper
speculated on the networks that existed in the London ACA, the opportunities
available to individuals and the informal gendered pathways that existed in the
club.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I observed, as in the case of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sally Sallies Forth</i>, that it was
possible for women in the London ACA to control productions and to undertake a
variety of production roles but, unless a woman was able to break into male
social networks, to do so required determination, finances and an ability to
construct her own networks in the club.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-62423206540151402592014-06-02T09:22:00.000-07:002014-06-02T09:22:01.704-07:00Three Lives by Kate Millett: A Women's Liberation ProductionCLARISSA JACOB<br />
<br />
<img alt="ThreeLivesPoster" height="251" src="http://www.threelives-themovie.org/images/ThreeLivesPoster-web.jpg" width="400" /><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="WordSection1">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Featuring………
Mallory Millett-Jones<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lillian Shreve<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robin Mide<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Co-directors………….
Louva Irvine<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>Susan
Kleckner<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span>Robin Mide<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Production……………
Louva Irvine<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Susan Kleckner<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 3;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bici Forbes<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Sound
and …… Mallory Millett-Jones<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Production<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Lighting………<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jean Carballo<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Susan Kleckner<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Camera……….
Leonore Bode<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Camera
……… Gloria Stein<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Assistant<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Sound…………
Lisa Shreve<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Production
…… Louva Irvine<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Manager<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Editors…………
Ann Sheppard<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ellen Adams<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">In the early 1970s, the feminist activist and author
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sexual Politics</i> (1970), Kate
Millett, collaborated with a group of women filmmakers to make a movie about
women’s liberation. Writing in her 1975 autobiography, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flying</i>, Millett explained that making the film was her way of
counter-acting the ‘ego-tripping’ she feared in the wake of the success of her bestselling
feminist thesis; using her new-found wealth she hoped to ‘multiply my
accidental good fortune, share it, make something for all women.’ The result, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Three Lives, </i>featured her younger sister
Mallory Millett-Jones; Lillian Shreve, mother of the film’s sound recordist;
and Robin Mide, one of the film’s co-directors. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Three Lives </span></i><span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">can be considered part of
the wave of non-fiction films that emerged at the initial intersection between
the women’s liberation movement and underground filmmaking of the era: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Woman’s Film </i>(San Francisco
Newsreel, 1971), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Growing Up Female</i>
(Jim Klein and Julia Reichert, 1971) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It
Happens to Us</i> (Amalie Rothschild, 1972). In 1972 an interview, co-director
Louva Irvine recalled that Millett had been inspired by the independent
filmmaker Shirley Clarke’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Portrait of
Jason </i>(1967). Like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Portrait of Jason</i>,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Three Lives </i>appropriates the sixties’
cinéma vérité aesthetic and the format of the portrait film, but with an end to
visually convey the experience of a feminist consciousness-raising session.
Since the late 1960s, consciousness-raising groups had become the driving force
behind the growing women’s movement and helped set the agenda for feminist
activism and theorising. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Three Lives </i>can
therefore be seen as an cinematic extension of their cell division-like
proliferation: its three subjects testify, rap and reflect on their lives as
women and their experiences as girls, lovers, wives, mothers, workers and
artists. ‘I’ll bet that’s the first time a lot of guys had to sit and listen
uninterruptedly to women’, a female film student reportedly remarked following
a screening in 1972, ‘I wonder what it means to them to listen to women without
having the chance to butt in and have their say!’ (from Julia Lesage’s </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">‘The Political Aesthetics of Feminist Documentary
Film’, 1978).<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The
film’s collective production methods similarly reflected the emotional
instensity of the CR group. Despite not having a clear idea of what working as
a collective might mean, Millett has said that at the time, ‘it was my dream to
be peers, artists together’ (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flying</i>,
163). For her, ‘the movie will always be the shooting, never that thing on the
screen which I made, editing it alone. It will be what we endured together
making it, our orgies of recrimmination and recreation’ (167). In a 1972 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Filmmaker’s Newsletter</i> interview,
co-director Susan Klechner described the successes of this method, in which the
group would ‘unite to the point where there would be a huge amount of energy
and that would be the creative force. […Where] everybody is connected to the
person who is talking about her life. That’s when the film becomes powerful’ (32).
However, the process also entailed its fair share of strife; at one point in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flying, </i>Millett described ‘the company’
as ‘a nest of oppressed women screaming at me like machine guns’ (163).<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The
film opened at the Bleecker Street Cinema in New York on 4<sup>th</sup>
November 1971 and was met with mixed reviews from the feminist and mainstream
press. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times </i>critic Vincent
Canby called it ‘a moving, proud, calm, aggressively self-contained documentary
feature’ that could not have been made without its all-female crew. On the
other hand, Ruth McCormick, writing in the left-leaning film journal <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cineaste </i>in 1972, remarked that more
militant feminists would be dissapointed by the absence of Millett’s more
radical political perspective and the lack of explicitly feminist analysis in
the film. Although she continued to work with film intermittently throughout
her carrer, Millett revealed in a 1974 interview with French film magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cinéma</i> that despite the film’s
successes, she belived she was more likely to reach a wider audience through
her writing. Nonetheless, feminist film critics such as Julia Lesage have
heraled the film an important part of the ‘establish[ment] and valoriz[ation] a
new order of cinematic iconography, connotation, and a range of subject matter
in the portrayal of women’s lives’ and a key tool for women’s ‘subcultural
resistance’.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-82543541153352653532014-05-20T10:12:00.000-07:002014-06-02T09:24:17.731-07:00Louisa Wei's Golden Gate Girls and the (re)discovery of Esther Eng<div style="text-align: center;">
MELANIE WILLIAMS</div>
<br />
<br />
One of the highlights of the 'Doing Women's Film and Television History' conference in Norwich last month was the chance to see S. Louisa Wei's beguiling documentary on a women director I'd never even heard of before, the Chinese American film pioneer Esther Eng. Eng made a number of films in America, China, Hong Kong and Hawaii from the 1930s to the early 1960s before switching careers altogether and becoming a celebrated New York restaurateur. Wei carefully contextualises Eng's life and career in terms of Sino-American relations and the upheavals created by global conflict but also on a more personal level as an openly gay woman and one of a very limited number of female directors working at that time. Wei cleverly and subtly interweaves Eng's story with those of actress Anna May Wong, another Chinese American woman trying to carve out a successful career in film, and also Dorothy Arzner, the only other women director working in feature film in the US at the same time, and another out lesbian; Wei finds some fascinating parallels between their cool mannish styles of dress. The film is gorgeously illustrated throughout with stunning black and white photographs of Eng and her associates, many of them found in a box left for the refuse collector which was then reclaimed from the dustbin of history by a canny passerby. These still pictures of Eng are complemented and commented on by Eng's surviving relatives and friends, tracked down by Wei, and they help to round out the portrait of Eng not only as a filmmaker but as a kind, compassionate, clever woman. The fascinating interviews and the plenitude of stills partially compensates for the fact that many of Eng's films are lost, like the intriguing-sounding <em>It's a Woman's World </em>(1939) in which all the characters on screen are female (rather like Cukor's more familiar variation on the same theme <em>The Women, </em>also from 1939) or the evocatively-titled melodrama <em>A Night of Romance, a Lifetime of Regret </em>(1938). One film of hers still extant is <em>Golden Gate Girl </em>(1941), a Cantonese-language film made and set in San Francisco which boasts the first screen appearance of Bruce Lee as the heroine's chubby-cheeked baby. <br />
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So we may not have all her films to look at but what we do have, in the shape of Wei's documentary, is a renewed awareness of Esther Eng's significance as a remarkable woman filmmaker who had a truly transnational career and who deserves to be much better known and more widely recognised as a film pioneer.</div>
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-72128814700195798262014-05-12T07:52:00.002-07:002014-05-12T07:52:59.071-07:00Women Directors – Who’s Calling the Shots? A Report by Directors UK<a href="http://www.directors.uk.com/about-us/news/whos-calling-the-shots"><img src="http://www.directors.uk.com/sites/all/themes/directorsuk/images/default-thumbnail.gif" /></a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.directors.uk.com/about-us/news/whos-calling-the-shots" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This report from Directors UK</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, out last week, made some interesting observations about the startling underrepresentation of women directors in contemporary British television. As the report point out, 'despite women representing almost 30% of the TV and film directing workforce, attitudes within the media industry are preventing women from reaching their full potential'. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These were their key findings about why it's happening:</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Decisions on hiring are influenced by the opinions (or perceived opinions) of commissioners, in a risk-averse culture that keeps hiring the same directors. </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Calibri,Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri,Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Production executives responsible for hiring are unaware of low figures for women directors. </span></span></span></li>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri,Calibri; font-size: small;">
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is no uniform or consistent monitoring of the freelance workforce throughout the industry. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Beyond a trusted few, there is a lack of awareness of a large number of highly qualified and experienced women drama directors. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gender stereotyping is prevalent when hiring in specific genres in drama, factual and comedy. </span></li>
</span></span></ul>
<span style="font-family: Calibri,Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri,Calibri; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And their main recommendation to counteract this bias was to set '<span style="font-size: small;">a minimum 30% target for women directors across all broadcasters’ programming output, to be achieved in 2017'. It will be interesting to see what comes of that recommendation and of the report's finding in general. But, as Directors UK point out, it is clear that 'the current situation is not balanced if 30% of our membership is not accessing 30% of the work.'</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span>Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-64579342687626014492014-05-12T07:30:00.000-07:002014-05-12T07:30:49.019-07:00New infographic on women directors at Cannes over the last decade: 'No Cannes Do'This comes courtesy of Melissa Silverstein of 'Women and Hollywood' (<a href="http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/">http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/</a>)<br />
<br />
<img src="http://d1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net/3e/e9/657f46ba42fd985190291c230e0e/cannes-director-infographic.gif" />Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-38754771661449051342014-03-08T06:08:00.002-08:002014-03-08T06:08:36.207-08:00A post for International Women's Day 2014Two little gifts for #IWD2014<br />
<br />
A <a href="http://theconversation.com/festivals-and-funding-need-to-support-female-film-directors-22451" target="_blank">short piece about women directors</a> Melanie Williams (@BritFilmMelanie) wrote for The Conversation UK<br />
<br />
and details of the forthcoming <a href="http://www.uea.ac.uk/film-television-media/news-and-events/-/asset_publisher/kjSGAyICejY5/blog/doing-women-s-film-and-television-history-conference-2014/10165?redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uea.ac.uk%2Ffilm-television-media%2Fnews-and-events%3Fp_p_id%3D101_INSTANCE_kjSGAyICejY5%26p_p_lifecycle%3D0%26p_p_state%3Dnormal%26p_p_mode%3Dview%26p_p_col_id%3Dcolumn-2%26p_p_col_count%3D1" target="_blank">'Doing Women's Film and Television History' Conference</a> which will be happening in Norwich in April - we really hope you can make it along!Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-30767405479255324242013-12-09T01:51:00.000-08:002013-12-11T13:49:30.697-08:00'Women Without Men': Flowers in the Desert?<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Siobhan Hoffmann-Heap </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Helvetica;">When I was a teenager, malleable of mind, I watched <i>The House of Sand and Fog</i>. Echoes of that were stirred by this fim, and two themes from it lodged in my mind to be be fired up by <i>Women without Men</i>: the first was a problematic depiction of ‘The American Dream’ - how Americans struggled to make ends meet – coerced into an uncomfortable synergy with foreign interpretations of the same concept. It made me wonder whether all of humanity was perpetually undertaking a universal quest for happiness - or at least the creation of a personal utopia. Many of the characters in the film seemed to be desperately searching for a home, for contentment, for silence and a place to rest. This theme is revisited in <i>Women Without Men</i>; Munis wonders: “What is it about people, that their hunger, their desires seem to eat everything?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Helvetica;">The second piece of brain shrapnel was the story and the associated imagery, of Massoud’s (Ben Kingsley’s character) existence before he left Iran:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Helvetica;">It was a wonderful idea to cut down the [cypress] trees at our house on the Caspian, to have the sea spread before us, to reach infinity with our eyes… Our lives went the way of the sea when the Ayatollahs ripped the soul out of our beautiful country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Helvetica;">I never fully understood the cultural allusions that the film made to Iran, since I had no understanding of the area, or the history, and even now my knowledge on it is still sketchy<span style="color: #fb0007;">.</span> The history curriculum in this country is limited, mentioning anything remotely related to the Middle East and the lasting impact British and American intervention had on that area, way before my generation were forcefully made aware of it in the 90s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Women Without Men</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> follows the metamorphoses of four women from various walks of life within that lost generation, in Tehran in 1953, using the CIA and M16 orchestrated coup that removed left-leaning Dr Mohammad Mossadegh from power, as a backdrop. Mossadegh’s Achilles Heel had been his government’s creation of a policy that nationalized the Iranian oil industry - an industry that had been under British control, via the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) now British Petroleum (BP), since 1913. You will have heard of BP, but Mossadegh? No?? It’s ok… Apparently even Tony Blair (as PM) didn’t know who Mossadegh was or why Iran hated the British so much… (he was obliged to rather sheepishly consult the font of all knowledge, Jon Snow). Apparently, bungled interventions and militarism spurred on by interest in oil provision isn’t, and never was, a new idea. Mossadegh claimed that “long years of negotiations with foreign countries... [had] yielded no results”, coming to the conclusion that “With the oil revenues we could meet our entire budget and combat poverty, disease, and backwardness among our people.” Can’t argue with that.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Helvetica;">The director of <i>Women Without Men, </i>Shirin Neshat’s stock in trade is photography, and it shows. She initially aimed to create a series of separate stories based on the 1989 novel by Shahrnush Parsipur, and present them as art installations across the globe, before her bright idea of editing them into the feature film occurred. This feature film (her first) deals with, amongst other things, arranged marriage, rape, prostitution, unrequited love, religion, and death (not to mention Communist and Fascist politics), but in a typically Persian poeticist way, and stretched over a robust historic framework. The film is studded with quotable lines, sparse but emphatic dialogue, features beautifully choreographed action sequences and camerawork that references classical art and literature: Zarin (the prostitute), is discovered floating, Ophelia-like in a pool in the orchard, surrounded by aquatic greenery, simultaneously wide-eyed and comatose; Munis finds a new life as a revolutionary after faking her own death to avoid an arranged marriage, reborn from the earth into which she is buried, Lazarine and determined, and her internal monologues punctuate much of the film, often alongside slow-motion scenes of watery submersion or falling. She falls to her death, petticoats fluttering in the breeze at the end of the film, with the words “Death isn’t so bad. You only think it is. All that we wanted was to find a new form, a new way.” Being a political radical is just as problematic as being a woman.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Helvetica;">An elemental metamorphosis is constantly alluded to in the film whether through rebirth, epiphany, cleansing, or changes in dress. The theme of water is one that is visually referred to, in a callback to Islamic and Middle Eastern historical tradition. Islam, a religion born of the desert, understandably places huge importance on water and nature. The Gardens of Babylon, were, according to Dr Stephanie Dalley (Oxford) located near Ninevah, in northern Iraq. Huge feats of engineering prowess were executed by the Sassanians to bring water to pleasure palaces located in arid mountainous regions. In Islamic art, rock crystal holds huge material significance as representative of solidified water, a precious commodity. Unsurprising, then, that Farrokhlagha’s orchard is a place of sanctuary, or that the changes that take place in the female characters are signified, without exception, by them shedding their black shawls to reveal flowery dresses beneath. Faezeh is proposed to by Munis’ brother with the words, “A woman’s body is like a flower. Once it blossoms it soon withers away”; the fall of the regime that fosters growth in the tradition of art and culture, or the dashing of romantic hope, or gender emancipation linking with the sickness of the orchard, and the death of nature are not coincidental.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Helvetica;">After the upheaval, and the catharsis experienced by individual characters (and by proxy, the viewer,) all that is left is society - the everyday. The music ends, the party is over, and we are given the impression that despite the finite nature of human life, these stories hold universal piquancy, and humanity is composed of individuals in a cyclical search for belonging, and the unerringly predictable failure of humanity to achieve it: "In this turbulence and noise, there was almost silence underneath. The sense that everything repeats itself over time. Hope. Betrayal, Fear. </span></div>
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-28918370795721065962013-11-26T09:32:00.000-08:002013-11-26T09:32:06.986-08:00Films directed by and/or written by women perform well at British box-office, BFI research suggests<br />
<span class="content-introduction-text"><span>from <a href="http://ht.ly/r9hLx">http://ht.ly/r9hLx</a></span></span><br />
<span class="content-introduction-text"><span></span></span><br />
<span class="content-introduction-text"><span>"New BFI research indicates that
films written and/or directed by women performed strongly at the UK box office
between 2010 and 2012.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="embed image" style="width: 100%;"><img alt="" src="http://bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/styles/15_columns/public/image/phyllida-lloyd-abi-morgan-iron-lady-premiere.jpg?itok=y5lNLlr1" />
<span class="description">Phyllida Lloyd and Abi Morgan attend the premiere of The
Iron Lady (2011) at BFI Southbank.</span> </span><br />
<br />
Employing more women in writing and directing roles makes sound business
sense for the film industry, according to <a href="http://www.bfi.org.uk/statistics/reports">new research</a> from the BFI.
Analysis of the performance of UK films between 2010-2012 shows that a high
percentage of the most successful and profitable independent British films had a
female screenwriter and/or director attached.<br />
<br />
Women are under represented in writing and directing roles in the film
industry. For all UK independent films released between 2010 and 2012, just
11.4% of the directors and 16.1% of the writers were women. However, for the top
20 UK independent films over the same period, 18.2% of the directors and 37% of
the writers were female. And for profitable UK independent films, 30% of the
writers were female.<br />
<br />
The Rt Hon Maria Miller, Culture Secretary and Minister for Women and
Equalities comments:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
This is encouraging news and highlights the skill and talent of women working
in the film industry today whose work both excites and inspires audiences. The
creative industries underpin this country’s economic growth and are increasingly
front and centre in representing Britain on the world stage. Of course, there is
still a long way to go to address under-representation across the sector in
general but with the number of women being employed within the creative
industries growing year by year I know we can look forward to a future for film
where the talent of women can shine.</blockquote>
<br />
Amanda Nevill, CEO of the BFI comments:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
Women are creating stories and characters that resonate with audiences in the
UK and around the world, and it’s encouraging, and absolutely no surprise, to
see films from women writers in particular really making an impact.
Frustratingly, overall the numbers of women in writing and directing roles
remains low and there is still much work to do to ensure female voices can come
through. It is pleasing to see that investment through BFI Lottery funding and
also our partners at BBC Films and Film4 plays an important role in championing
women, supporting them to develop and consolidate their writing and directing
careers and long may this continue.</blockquote>
<br />
Successful women writers and directors working in the UK independent sector
over the period included Jane Goldman (The Woman in Black and Kick-Ass),
Phyllida Lloyd and Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady), Debbie Isitt (Nativity 2), and
Dania Pasquini and Jame English (StreetDance 3D and StreetDance 2 3D).<br />
<br />
A number of women also saw success on UK films which were financed by major
studios in the US, including Sarah Smith (Arthur Christmas), Susanna White and
Emma Thompson (Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang), Jane Goldman (X-Men: First Class)
and Lone Scherfig (One Day).<br />
<br />
A key feature of the research is the number of successful female writers and
directors attached to more than one project over the period, with many of the
directors also having directing credits in other dramatic media including
television and theatre. This indicates the development of a critical mass of
women with consolidated writing and directing careers, developed through film
and also television and theatre, and on-going relationships with producers and
funders of films. The same factors are shown by research to be present in the
careers of successful male screenwriters and directors.<br />
<br />
The report also shows that films with female writers or directors were more
likely to have female producers or executive producers, and have received
financial support through BFI Lottery and BBC Films or Film4.<br />
<br />
Today’s announcement comes hot on the heels of Creative Skillset’s 2012
Employment Census 2012, which showed that employment of women in the creative
media industries has grown by almost 16,000 since 2009, with representation
rising from 27% to 36% of the total workforce. This reverses the previous
decline seen between 2006 and 2009, where the representation of women in the
workforce reduced from 38% to 27%. Within that total, representation within film
and TV is actually higher than the average across the wider creative media
industries. In 2012 women made up 46% of the total film workforce (not including
freelancers)."<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.bfi.org.uk/statistics/reports">Read the full report,
Succès de plume? Female Screenwriters and Directors of UK Films, 2010-2012.</a><a href="http://ht.ly/r9hLx">http://ht.ly/r9hLx</a>Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-14931728327431091982013-11-22T04:08:00.000-08:002013-11-22T04:08:21.903-08:00The Song of the Shirt (Clayton&Curling, 1979)<br />
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<!--StartFragment-->
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAf-6tplhyphenhyphenLSDyD1SUUnlUEmE4B5mq79pA9uj9DTz0gWw68GYPB-rx_OhpfpmkAoR-F87VmGxVK-m5xOTmTcaXuGDdM3HrcNNROuIWzcIqSGKGv4w5XNtlR6NAH15yHhozQACcFlSwNGY/s1600/348-Song+of+the+Shirt+screening+Poster+for+WEB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAf-6tplhyphenhyphenLSDyD1SUUnlUEmE4B5mq79pA9uj9DTz0gWw68GYPB-rx_OhpfpmkAoR-F87VmGxVK-m5xOTmTcaXuGDdM3HrcNNROuIWzcIqSGKGv4w5XNtlR6NAH15yHhozQACcFlSwNGY/s320/348-Song+of+the+Shirt+screening+Poster+for+WEB.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">JACK
BRINDELLI @JackBrindelli<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">At first glance, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Song of the Shirt </i>is hard to enjoy. The opening consists of migraine-inducing
overlapping texts; squawking free-form clarinets, and jumbled quick-fire quotes.
It seems initially that this attempt to deconstruct the grand narratives of
liberal history, and reform the component parts into a radical critique, lacks
any kind of structural coherence. However, it soon emerges that this actually a
brilliant foreshadowing of the structure of the film. Eventually, out of the
chaos comes a brilliantly orchestrated profundity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">From a 21<sup>st</sup> century perspective, Sue Clayton and
Jonathon Curling’s film grates at first, but when it comes together, it
resembles a beautiful pointillist portrait – putting small particles together
to construct a meaningful whole. It is a style that has since become
common-place in mainstream cinema. From <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pulp
Fiction </i>(1994) to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cloud Atlas </i>(2012),
this non-linear, scrap-book-narrative style is one many cinema goers<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>will now be familiar with. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Were the film made today, with the benefit of other
forebears laying groundwork, Clayton and Curling’s vision would be a great deal
more polished, and probably better remembered. As it is, the film has lain
dormant amongst a catalogue of similar forgotten pioneers. Fortunately, it was
dusted off and revived this week by the Genesis Cinema in Whitechapel, London,
as a result of Sue Clayton’s new work for the Leydon Gallery, resurrecting the film’s
character of the seamstress, placing her in modern London. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In the film, as the fragments of the past come together, we
see through the plight of the penniless seamstresses, supposedly beneficiaries
of the industrial revolution, how capitalism reduces millions of people to
lives of exploitation, bereft of hope and dignity. However, whilst class is
central to its message, the film makes as an important point when it then
brings in a second strand of oppression that interplays with it; gender. We see
how those critical of the suffering brought about by economic relations, and
those who advocate the emancipation of the working man, can also conflictingly
reinforce the subjugation of women. Clayton and Curling flag up crude, hypocritical
domination of male trade unionists decrying how women are driving down their
husband’s wages, and calling for women to withdraw to home-life; but we also
see this coupled with a critique of the ideological objectification that women
suffer in patriarchal literature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This is illustrated by a behind-the-scenes-style exchange
between the authors of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wrongs of a
Woman</i>, a Victorian newspaper serial, in which the impoverished female
protagonist falls for a wealthy student. After part 3 leaves the couple in each
others arms, a discussion takes place as to how it should end – the “inevitable”
conclusion being that “she should commit suicide” to further illustrate the
horrors of poverty. The male authors are displayed here as key to patriarchal
ideology, as objectifying female characters like this perpetuates their domination
– depriving women of agency, making them hapless tools of the fates, and dependent
on men of power, and men more generally, to ensure their survival.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The film itself by contrast is unwilling to give us even this
depressing closure in its conclusion. The women of the piece - exploited and
desperate as they are - are neither driven to suicide or to revolution. Their
fate remains ambiguous, as if to suggest that the struggle remains unresolved
to this day. This is the genius of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Song of the Shirt </i>though; it pulls apart the grand historical narrative of
male-driven progress – found in ‘factual’ and fictional materials - and
reconstructs the constituent parts into a call to arms against modern-day
patriarchal capitalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The film’s
revival should not stop here then – after all this time, it deserves greater
recognition than a one off screening. This forgotten gem about ‘lowly’
seamstresses counters the grand historical fabrications that working class
women’s fate is in anybody’s hands but their own – a lesson that still needs
learning, over three decades later. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />
Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-15869104519800726192013-10-09T02:38:00.000-07:002013-10-09T02:38:34.418-07:00WOMEN ON WOMEN <div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="" aria-busy="false" aria-describedby="fbPhotosSnowliftCaption" class="spotlight" height="320" src="https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/2558_661475183881606_780622100_n.jpg" width="228" /></div>
<br />
CATARINA NEVES RICCI<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi;">After
reading the manifesto of French feminist collective La Barbe on regarding the
inexistence of women directors in the 65<sup>th</sup> edition of Festival de
Cannes, producer and director Catarina Neves Ricci decided to give voice to
female filmmakers. And so was born <a href="https://www.facebook.com/#!/WoWfilm?fref=ts"><span style="color: blue;">WOMEN ON WOMEN</span></a>. The
film, now in development and seeking more co-producers, is written, produced
and directed by Catarina Neves Ricci and co-produced by the Istanbul based
Ajans 21, an established art-house production company specialized in
documentaries on a wide range of social and cultural issues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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seeing its consequences, I questioned myself: how can we keep working when it
is systematically proven that distribution and promotion are not equal inside
the film industry?” This could be a whole subject for a film, however WOMEN ON
WOMEN goes beyond that. The director explains the artistic process she has been
through since that day “I started to wonder about femininity, that particular
ability to transform and to resist as a big core of the film I was willing to
make. One of the sides of femininity is an appeal for challenge boundaries, to
understand and seduce the dangerous, the no-fear. And that's the answer to how
can we keep working anyway and after all”<br />
<br />
WOMEN ON WOMEN wants to takes us on an unexpected journey across the life and
work of 5 female filmmakers around the world. Although all the names
have not yet been disclosed, two are already known: Handan Ipekçi, awarded
Turkish director, known for her socio-critical films; and the Milano based
Alina Marazzi, who’s cinema always speaks for herself: ironic, rigorous and
bold, abolishing boundaries between documentary and fiction.With assumed influences from video art, experimental cinema, architecture and
dance, WOMEN ON WOMEN fits in the perfect borderline between the poetic –
providing a sophisticated visual language and sound - and the drama of what is
narrated.<br />
<br />
Due to its locations and characters this documentary touches directly on some
of the hottest conflicts contemporary society is facing nowadays. The deep
insights and questions these filmmakers and their films provoke on the audience
are undeniable. As undeniable how important their presence is for a more
creative film industry, and their roles as cultural agents on disclosure old
taboos in their home territories.<br />
<br />
“The methodologies are obviously multiple and diverse, but all the artists
presented in this documentary are united in their use of cinema as a mean of
intervention and attitude, taking on the role as outspoken and leading
advocates for social and political matters “ stands Catarina Neves Ricci. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-10554445824085397292013-08-16T05:00:00.000-07:002013-08-16T05:00:01.705-07:00Wadjda (Haifaa Al Mansour, 2013)<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;">EYLEM ATAKAV</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">@eylematakav </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The first ever feature film
entirely shot in Saudi Arabia, where there are no cinemas and public spaces are
segregated according to gender, is written and directed by a woman, Haifaa Al
Mansour. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue Light"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
film tells the story of Wadjda, a rebellious 10-year-old girl, who enters a
Koran-reading competition at her <i>madrasa</i>, planning to use the prize
money to buy herself a bicycle, in a culture where women are not encouraged to
cycle.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; letter-spacing: .75pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Helvetica Neue Light"; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">There is a lot
to be praised about <i>Wadjda</i>. Indeed, there are so many powerful scenes in
the film which delicately tell us about womanhood and women’s place in a
culture dominated by religious values and rules. The camera travels between a
house, a school, a playground, a little street with a bicycle shop, and a roof
top. Wadjda, living within this limited and conservative space, is a witty,
clever and, at the same time, powerful character whose imagination and ideas
are limitless. It offers an interesting parallel with Al Mansour, who had to film
Wadjda’s limitless world from within the very limited space of a little van.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> Indeed, she
directed the exterior scenes in Riyadh from inside a van, watching the actors
on monitors and communicating via walkie-talkie. As she explains in an
interview, ‘Conservatives may have interrupted filming had they seen me or called
the police. We had sandstorms to deal with, getting access to locations – we
didn’t need to worry about people protesting, too,’ she laughs. ‘I didn’t want
to go and fight with people, I’m not an activist, I’m an artist.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The references to polygamy, loss of
virginity, child brides, the implications of veiling, and religion’s place in
education make the film thought-provoking. One scene in particular, however, is
remarkable: Wadjda is secretly learning to cycle in the rooftop of her house,
but she panics as her mother approaches, falls off the bicycle and hurts her
knee. As she cries out ‘I’m bleeding!’ the mother covers her face with shame
mistakenly thinking her daughter is bleeding for having ridden the bike and
lost her virginity. The scene is astutely narrated, skillfully performed and brilliantly
filmed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">In an
interview with the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n3cstlf8" target="_blank">BBC</a>, Al Mansour discusses the importance of introducing
change in Saudi society while acknowledging that ‘change is a painful process’,
and that she wanted ‘to allow people to embrace change in their own pace’ as
‘change has to come from heart.’ Both Al Mansour and Wadjda present us with an idea
of change around the perceptions of womanhood and women’s place in Saudi
society that is not imposed upon people but one that is heartfelt and embraced
by them. Change is embedded in the film in the image of a bicycle. The bicycle represents
independence, mobility, freedom and imagination. At the end of the film when we
see Wadjda cycling to the borders of the town and stopping by the motorway, we
are assured that there are new worlds and possibilities she is now able to
explore. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Al Mansour
engages in self-expression through a subtle yet powerful focus on the social, the
cultural and the political through the story of a little girl who dares. It is
not surprising to learn that Wadjda’s character is very similar to Al Mansour’s
in real life. Indeed, she states on the film’s website that she comes from a
small town in Saudi Arabia ‘where there are many girls like Wadjda who have big
dreams, strong characters and so much potential. These girls can, and will
reshape and redefine our nation.’ This message of female solidarity also comes
across in an interview with Al Mansour in which she emphasises that "women
have to stick together and believe in themselves and push towards what makes
them happy. We just need to push a little bit harder against tradition. We need
to do things and make things and tell the stories that we want to tell. And I
think the world is ready to listen." What <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wadjda</i> tells us is that there are no limits to how much women can
push for change even from the limited space of a little town or while directing
a film from within a little van.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4588513626477905230.post-74414296277070398502013-07-25T08:24:00.002-07:002013-07-25T08:24:54.935-07:00
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<b><span style="color: #cc00cc; font-size: 20pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">CALL FOR PAPERS<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #1f497d; font-size: 28pt; line-height: 115%; mso-style-textfill-fill-gradientfill-shade-linearshade-angle: 5400000; mso-style-textfill-fill-gradientfill-shade-linearshade-fscaled: no; mso-style-textfill-fill-gradientfill-shadetype: linear; mso-style-textfill-fill-gradientfill-stoplist: "0 #BED3F9 4 100000 tint=40000 satm=250000,9000 #9EC1FF 4 100000 tint=52000 satm=300000,50000 #003692 4 100000 shade=20000 satm=300000,79000 #9EC1FF 4 100000 tint=52000 satm=300000,100000 #BED3F9 4 100000 tint=40000 satm=250000"; mso-style-textfill-type: gradient; mso-style-textoutline-fill-alpha: 100.0%; mso-style-textoutline-fill-color: #4579B8; mso-style-textoutline-fill-colortransforms: "shade=88000 satm=110000"; mso-style-textoutline-fill-themecolor: accent1; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-align: center; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-compound: simple; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dash: solid; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-dpiwidth: .415pt; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-join: round; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-linecap: flat; mso-style-textoutline-outlinestyle-pctmiterlimit: 0%; mso-style-textoutline-type: solid; mso-themecolor: text2;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Doing
Women’s Film and Television History<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #365f91; font-size: 20pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: accent1; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Second International Conference <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #365f91; font-size: 20pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: accent1; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">of the <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #365f91; font-size: 20pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: accent1; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Women’s Film and Television History Network – UK/Ireland<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #17365d; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span><b><span style="color: #17365d; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">10<sup>th</sup> - 12<sup>th</sup> April 2014<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #17365d; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The University of East Anglia, UK<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><b><span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;">Conference
organisers: </span></b><span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;">Laraine Porter (De Montfort University), Yvonne Tasker (University
of East Anglia) and Melanie Williams (University of East Anglia)<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;">B</span></o:p></span><span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">uilding on the success of the first ‘Doing Women’s Film History’
conference held in 2011, this three-day international conference will bring
together researchers in women’s film and television history, archivists,
curators and creative practitioners to explore and celebrate all aspects of women’s
participation within the visual media industries across the globe and in all
periods. The conference will provide a forum for the latest research into
women’s work in film and television production (both on and off screen), in
film distribution and exhibition, their roles in television ranging from
presenters and personalities to commissioners and controllers, as well as
women’s activities as film and television critics, consumers and fans.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We welcome papers on <b>any </b>topic related to women’s film, television
and media history but we are also interested in hosting panels and strands on
the following areas: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
<span style="color: #17365d; font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;">women and documentary: </span><span style="color: #17365d; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;">whose voices, which audiences, to whose benefit?</span><span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #17365d; font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">screenwriters and scriptwriting: the
woman writer<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #17365d; font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">women’s contributions to non-Anglophone
film and television industries<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #17365d; font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">feminist filmmakers and filmmaking
collectives<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #17365d; font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">female film and television fan
cultures<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #17365d; font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font: 7pt/normal "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><span dir="LTR"></span><span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">teaching women’s film and television
history<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Proposals of 300
words for papers should be sent to </span></span><a href="mailto:doingwomensfilmandtvhistory@uea.ac.uk"><span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="mailto:doingwomensfilmandtvhistory@uea.ac.uk ">doingwomensfilmandtvhistory@uea.ac.uk</a></span><a href="mailto:doingwomensfilmandtvhistory@uea.ac.uk "></a><span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #17365d; mso-themecolor: text2; mso-themeshade: 191;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">no later
than <b>31<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">st</span></sup> October 2013</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Eylem Atakav and Melanie Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00768554683943848390noreply@blogger.com0