FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2022
We did have to chuckle at this: What does feminist filmistry look like? The elevation of Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles has had us thinking about that.
By happenstance, Jeanne Dielman replaced previous winner Vertigo in the new Sight & Sound survey of the world's greatest films. On its face, that may seem halfway odd, given Alfred Hitchcock's reputation for directing misbehavior at his female stars.
That said, Hitchcock's Notorious (1946) is one of our three favorite films. We love it because it's such a well-crafted thriller, but also because it examines a crucial question:
Why are (some) men inclined to loathe and humiliate the women they're inclined to love?
Hitchcock examined weird male behavior in a long list of films. That said, the fact that weird behavior is being presented doesn't necessarily mean that it's being endorsed.
Anne Bilson advanced that argument in this essay for The Guardian way back in 2018:
Vertigo is not the last word in misogyny, but a feminist deconstruction of it
We see Vertigo as a more aggressive continuation of Rear Window. In each film, the James Stewart character shows a remarkable inability to pay attention to the actual, real-life woman throwing herself at him.
(Grace Kelly in Rear Window, Barbara Bel Geddes in Vertigo.)
By the time of Vertigo, the Stewart character engages in classic delusional / domineering behavior toward a woman he wants to dominate, own, make over. That said, for better or worse, the plot in Vertigo takes us beyond the valley of the wildly implausible. The plot in Notorious makes pluperfect sense.
Should Jeanne Dielman be seen as a feminist film? We have no idea. It may seem to call to mind Belle de Jour. We don't mean that as a compliment.
We could talk about feminist filmistry all day; it's a worthy topic. Another of our favorites, Casablanca, plainly isn't a feminist film, but then again, consider the perfect behavior one of the leading characters displays toward his much-loved wife.
He isn't content merely saving the world. He's a spectacular husband.
In an unrelated matter, we did have to chuckle at this. The piece appeared in the New York Times. These high-end elites today!
Soledad O’Brien’s Painted Hardwood Floors Spark Debate on a New Trend
The broadcast journalist recently painted the floors of her Florida bungalow. Some people loved the idea; others hated it.
"Ms. O’Brien chronicled the progress on Twitter, gushing over every room." Or at least, so the news report said!
Our third and still final favorite film is My Brilliant Career, a classic feminist offering. With great fondness, we recall the way one audience gasped, right there at The Charles, when Judy told Sam, "Sadly, no."
ReplyDelete"We could talk about feminist filmistry all day; it's a worthy topic."
Really? Whatever that thing might be, it sounds to us as an utterly bullshit topic.
...but hey, you are a liberal...
I find it ludicrous to call Alfred Hitchcock any kind of feminist. He was abusive to his actresses (and his own wife) and he portrayed abuse in his films -- feminists can find much to talk about in his films -- but that doesn't make Hitchcock himself feminist. It doesn't make Somerby feminist either. In fact, I find it unsurprising that Somerby likes Hitchcock films, given his own attitudes toward women which he has displayed here.
ReplyDeleteHere is what others say on this topic:
"Hitchcock was definitely not a feminist, but to write off his work as misogynistic would be an oversimplification; his female characters were just as complicated as his male ones. Their darker psyches were often evident despite their perfect facades."
And this:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/oct/21/alfred-hitchcock-women-psycho-the-birds-bidisha
What is feminist about this:
ReplyDelete"Speaking of hairdressing, we must mention Vertigo, a sumptuously clad smackdown of female two-facedness. To cut a long but extremely well-dressed story short, a lying duplicitous woman exploits an innocent vertigo-suffering man, Scottie, by setting him up as a witness in a murder plot. This plot involves a man murdering his wife and making it look like a suicide prompted by mental illness. Shadowing the plan mythically, and providing a kind of psychological alibi, is the tale of the wife's great-grandmother, who killed herself a century before. In this infinite kaleidoscope of mad, sad, bad, super-styled women, only one thing is certain: she who lies, dies (although, come to think of it, the innocent wife died, too). The duplicitous decoy falls in love, as ever, with Scottie, the guy she's supposed to be duping. He gets his revenge by breaking her down and making her into the image of the dead wife. He makes her re-enact the murder at the top of a bell-tower – thereby curing his own vertigo, though the film isn't really about that. She gets what's coming to her and plunges off the edge after being startled by … another woman. A nun."
In other words, Somerby hates Mexicans.
ReplyDeleteAnd Jews.
ReplyDeleteSomerby doesn't understand the difference between feminist content and feminist film making technique. Jeanne Dielman is not feminist because it focuses on a woman, nor because the woman kills a man at the end, nor because she is a sex worker. The intent of the film is not to make judgments or interpretations of the life portrayed in it, but to present the character and action in a manner that allows the audience to wonder about and make thier own judgments about what is happening and why. It keeps the perspective of the director and writer out of the picture, so that the audience can decide what is going on and what it means. Because its strives to impose no meaning on the film, it cannot be said to be feminist, because not even a feminist interpretation is being presented. Instead, it avoids the male approach to film-making, which dictates perspective via the framing and point of view of the camera, and uses a more passive presentation that avoids telling viewers how to think and feel about what is shown.
ReplyDeleteJeanne Dielman is feminist in construction but not in point of view. Somerby doesn't seem to be able to disentangle any of that. He thinks that if a feminist interpretation can be made of Alfred Hitchcock's work, then Hitchcock must be a feminist himself and the content of his films must be feminist. None of that is true and in fact it is so implausible that Somerby's discussion of feminism is ludicrous to the point of offensiveness.
Notice that Somerby praises the male character in Casablanca (not Bogey):
"Casablanca, plainly isn't a feminist film, but then again, consider the perfect behavior one of the leading characters displays toward his much-loved wife.
He isn't content merely saving the world. He's a spectacular husband."
What happens in the film? Ingrid Bergman sacrifices love with Bogart to stay with her husband and help him lead the resistance, while Bogart makes his own sacrifice by sending her away with her husband using a scarce transit visa he intended to use himself. The husband is not doing anything -- all the sacrifice is by Bogart and Bergman, who loves him more than her husband but stays with the husband to help him fight the war.
Somerby ignores Berman's sacrifice and focuses instead on the clueless husband who trusts a wife who loves someone else. Bogart sends her away using his own transit visas because she chooses to stay with her husband because the war is more important than her own happiness.
The woman is the key character but Somerby, characteristically, is blind to what she does and focuses only on the men in the film. And that is what a male-oriented perspective in a film tends to do -- focus on the actions of the male characters, while the women are passive or props or downright evil (in Hitchcock films), says Mulvey, who is actually a feminist film theorist and professor of film and media.
Somerby doesn't even remember the action in Casablanca accurately. The husband did nothing. His wife rejected Bogart and Bogey gave her the visa so she could help her husband save the world, because the husband said he could only do it with Bergman at his side. She said he would be a wreck if she left him, and he was too important to the war effort to knock him out of commission that way.
This tendency to see women as objects and not active participants in a film's plot is misogynist and sexist, whether it is Somerby recalling the film that way, because that is how the director's choice led him to see things, or a male director and screenwriter creating scripts that only portray women as duplicitious, as Hitchcock's did.
Casablanca had three writers, Howard Koch and the Epstein twins.
DeleteMicheal Curtiz was also aided in shaping
DeleteThe rather chaotic production by his wife. I don’t think Lazlo is clueless, he just doesn’t judge her behavior while She
thought he was dead. And Bogart
sacrifices his own happiness as
well. Nothing suggests he was
going to use the exist visa on
himself, He has aided others in
escaping Casablanca. Your
analysis of the film leaves a
lot to be desired.
If a troll says the same thing twice, does it mean Somerby hates twice as many Mexicans?
ReplyDeleteThis essay has nothing to do with "elites." Being a film expert, reviewer, critic or film/media professors doesn't make one an elite. It makes someone an educated person with a specialty, who has knowledge to share in various public forums.
ReplyDeleteAnyone can have an opinion about a movie. Somerby has a bunch of them, some very odd. Having an opinion that is based on theory, a knowledge of film history, knowledge of technical film production techniques, and participation in debate among other film enthusiasts, instead of being pulled straight out of one's ass or being based on one's knee-jerk emotional response, does not make a person an elite of any kind.
Somerby strongly implies that elites are a bad thing. He uses the word to refer to people he disparages, including reporters and journalists, politicians, rich people, and of course professors in other fields. Somerby hints that so-called elites think they are superior to everyday people. Most people I know who might qualify as some kind of elite, go to great lengths not to evoke that reaction. They do not think of themselves as superior because they don't judge or compare themselves to others that way. That is Somerby's grift. He wants his readers to hate those elites because supposedly they are looking down their noses at others, except they aren't doing that. They are going about their lives without worrying about who is superior to who, but focusing instead of finding meaning in films and discussing them with like-minded souls.
Somerby is the one who makes all this about hate.
The commenters on this blog are the true elite.
DeleteWhen was the last time Somerby mentioned the business, CEO class? Has he ever discussed Murdoch, for example? Instead, he goes after “logicians” and film critics, people who, I would argue, have relatively little real power.
DeleteLogicians are the elite of the elite.
Delete@5:45: nice self-own, Sparky.
DeleteYo, check this.
DeleteSpecial girl, real good girl
Biggest thing in my itty bitty world
Called her up and she made me feel right
Wish the bliss could never take flight
Sittin' back with this mic in my hand
Spittin' hot shit tryin' to see grand
Imprinted on my mind every minute
Make my plans and you always in it, yo
Barbara Starr is leaving CNN.
ReplyDeleteHow does a society make progress of any kind, if everyone is afraid to admit knowing anything for fear of being considered an elite?
ReplyDeleteFrom the Guardian article that Somerby quotes:
ReplyDelete"a closer look reveals strong women and weak men were often at the heart of his work"
The problem is that the strong women were also evil and generally got punished for their strength. There is nothing feminist about that.
@5:09: no. If a commenter makes the same comment twice but a minute apart, it usually means that the commenter wasn't sure the first submission went through, so he or she submitted it again.
ReplyDeleteBut thanks for playing.
Yo, check this.
ReplyDeleteSpecial girl, real good girl
Biggest thing in my itty bitty world
Called her up and she made me feel right
Wish the bliss could never take flight
Sittin' back with this mic in my hand
Spittin' hot shit tryin' to see grand
Imprinted on my mind every minute
Make my plans and you always in it, yo
Hello there!
DeleteSo glad you could stop by.
If you would like to meet Mister Fanny, let me know by replying in the affirmative to this comment.
He can make all of your wildest dreams come true.
Trust me, I know.
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ReplyDelete