Two of the biggest movies around at the moment, both directed and starring strong-willed women, are “Wuthering Heights” (Emerald Fennell) and The Bride! (Maggie Gylennhaal) .
The first title comes with quotation marks, the second is rounded off with an exclamation point.
What can we deduce from these very deliberate uses of punctuation?
The scare quotes on the first comes as a warning that Emily Brontë’s 19th century tale of love and lust on the Yorkshire Moors is used only as a rough guide to the plot of film. There is no pretense that the original setting and storyline will be faithfully rendered. The boddice ripping frenzy captures the spirit of the novel but rides roughshod over the more nuanced details. Authenticity can go hang.
“One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one.” —Simone de Beauvoir
“Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind rule the body? I dunno – The Smiths (‘Still Ill’)
I have written this post – my first of 2024 – to help me to clarify some the mind (and body) blowing ideas contained in Judith Butler’s influential but still controversial book ‘Gender Trouble’ which was first published by Routledge in 1990.
At the heart of Butler’s treatise are two fundamental questions: What is a woman? What is a man?
In her 1999 preface to the 3rd edition, Judith Butler clarifies her intentions stating that one of her primary motivations was to challenge the restrictive definition of gender in feminist theory. She affirms that woman does not only exhibit her womanness through heterosexual coitus “in which her subordination becomes her pleasure.”
We are conditioned to accept the principle that power, reason and rationality should always be associated with masculinity while femininity is confined to a passive role of being in thrall to these qualities. Under the rigid terms of paternal law “the female body [is] characterized primarily in terms of its reproductive function.”
One of the main criticisms of ‘Gender Trouble’ is that it is written in a heightened academic style which many have found both incomprehensible and pretentious. Butler insists “I am not trying to be difficult” yet acknowledges that the book is not written in a populist style. Her defence is that complex subjects do not lend themselves to simplification : “If I treat that grammar as pellucid, then I fail to call attention precisely to that sphere of language that establishes and disestablishes intelligibility.”
When Bella Cherry (not her real name) arrives in America from Sweden, the customs officer asks if her visit is for business or pleasure. Bella replies “Pleasure” with a wry smile. After watching this movie, I’d say she gave the wrong answer. Having lots of sex would normally count as a pleasurable activity but when this is done for money in a mechanical, ritualistic manner then, just as in prostitution, it falls squarely into the category of business.
It is soon clear that Thyberg’s objective is not to make a feminist movie or to criticise pornography. We see a male dominated world in which the women consent to be exploited and abused knowing full well the implications and content of the encounters beforehand.
The Will To Change – Men, Masculinity and Love by bell hooks (Simon & Schuster, 2004)
Every man and woman, together wit those of undecided gender, should read this book. Wary men fearful of yet another feminist tract telling them how shit they are can breathe a sigh of relief.
bell hooks, real name Gloria Jean Watkins, wanted her pen name to be written in lower case so that people focus on her books, not her identity. She said : “I think we are obsessed in the U.S. with the personal in ways that blind us to more important issues of life.”
I confess that I have been unforgivably ignorant of the importance of her writing until very recently. With a crushing irony, my belated discovery came just a couple of months before she sadly passed away at the age of 69. The only positive that might come from her death is that her works will be republished and freshly promoted. Hers is a radical voice for our times with refreshingly inclusive insights such as the recognition that “sexist exploitation [will] not change unless men [are] also deeply engaged in feminist resistance.”
This is a book aimed primarily at changing men but hooks is insistent that this transformation will not happen without a fundamental shift in female attitudes. She is most critical of those sisters who fail to appreciate that men are as much victims of patriarchal culture as they are. Of course, she is not blind to be fact that men benefit most from the system but urges women to make a vital distinction between masculinity and patriarchy. Maleness needs to divorced from the dominator model and to avoid all doubt on the roots of the problem and the scale of the challenge, she proposes the all embracive term “imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.”
In this study, bell hooks defines patriarchy as “a social disease assaulting the male body and spirit” whilst noting that men who are aware of this often find themselves isolated from other men. This certainly rings true for me personally. In the 1990s, I joined a men’s group which took Robert Bly’s ‘Iron John’ as a sacred text. In this environment, it was obvious that it was far from empowering for us ‘reconstructed males’ to declare ourselves as feminists. The overriding suspicion was that people like us were engaging in sexual politics to further our own ends rather than to truly embrace equality between the sexes. The consequence was that the so called ‘new man’ found himself between a rock and a hard place. Crucially, it didn’t pass unnoticed that unreconstructed males got laid more often and achieved a greater social status more easily.
Gloria Jean Watkins aka bell hooks (September 25, 1952 – December 15, 2021)
Writing from a black female perspective, bell hooks is right to observe that her feminist peers strive to win the rewards and privileges of men in positions of power rather than suffer the slings and arrows of misfortune at the other end of the social scale. In so doing, they are merely helping to perpetuate the patriarchal model rather than working to dismantle it. On top of this, hooks concedes that women are capable of being as emotionally abusive as their male counterparts. She writes that “[they] have not proven that they care enough about the hearts of men” reasoning that “it is better to be a dominator than dominated”.
The overriding message of this book is it is only through co-operation and mutual support between men and women that positive change will come about. Taking an unfashionably non-sceptical stance, she asserts that love can transform domination and that feminist writing, whether fiction or theory, should be centred on the premise that “It is possible to critique patriarchy without hating men.”
Dasatskisi (Beginning) directed by Dea Kulumbegashvili (Georgia , 2020)
Winner of best full-length movie at this year’s Trieste Film Festival, ‘Beginning’ has also been shown, and widely acclaimed, at many other festivals including New York, Toronto (where it premiered in September 2020), and Adelaide.
The praise is merited. There are not enough female directors and fewer still prepared to take the risks Kulumbegashvili does. This is her debut feature film but it already shows her to be a woman who combines originality and courage in her filmmaking style. In one interview she says “plot is for structure, the rest is cinema”, “this film is about looking” and “the more action there is on screen, the more passive the viewer is”.
‘Beginning’ is essentially a character study of an alienated woman Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili ) who is married to David (Rati Oneli), a Jehovah’s Witness leader, and who has a young son Giorgi (Saba Gogichaishvili).
The movie is powerful but not without flaws. At 2 hours and ten minutes, it is a good 20 minutes too long. In the final sections there is a shift of focus to the religious indoctrination of children and we briefly follow the husband’s life. These are superfluous distractions from Yana’s story. Continue reading →
Winner of best full-length movie at this year’s Trieste Film Festival, ‘Beginning’ has also been shown, and widely acclaimed, at many other festivals including New York, Toronto (where it premiered in September 2020), and Adelaide.
