HEY, YOU GUYS, LET'S TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH THIS YEAR'S OSCAR NOMS SUCK!

[bookshop]

*Best Picture 2010 nominations list*
- Avatar <-- racist, imperialist white liberal guilt fantasy (everyone, native peoples, mountains, animals, trees and tree-nerve-endings, get exploited by white people, awesome!!)

- The Blind Side <-- i haven't seen this, but true story notwithstanding the trailer just me cringe. It really, really seemed

Comments

[bookshop]

I am not pretending Whip It is a perfect film, I'm not saying that at all and I hope that hasn't come across. i think it's a wonderful film because it's so anti-gendered and so antithetical to all these, what I think of as white male narratives. And it's the narrative that makes it feel like a straight white man's story to me, not the directors/actors etc. It's, imo, stories that are played out in a traditionally masculine landscape - stories of war, stories of conquest, and violence - women can participate in these stories and act them out, but the narratives themselves are narratives of conquest, power, and finding meaning in an inherently (or necessarily) violent world. those are the kind of narratives that men have been telling from before the Iliad. It's not that women don't tell/participate in those stories too, but the other narratives that women tell, faith narratives and community narratives and peace narratives, get drowned out by these male narratives of violence/dominance/conquest, over and over again. Does that make sense?

Like, I don't have the academic language to argue this very articulately, but basically I feel like gender roles have a lot to do with who is allowed to tell which kinds of stories about how people are/how different gender roles operate. And like that blog post about film schools teaching people to ignore the Bechdel test points out, when you make a point of excluding non-male voices, your film repertory gets filled with all-male stories.

[tangledtale]

No, that makes sense. I can see what you mean about how certain narrative-types that centre on violence and conquest as its mode of conflict do hold more traction for the (largely white, largely male) Academy and maybe the critical community in general. I remember doing a class on sport once where our tutor told us that the reason Raging Bull and boxing has a primordial fascination is because it tells the story of human history - one man against another - which is probably exactly what I should have expected from a class on sport.

I guess what I feel a bit uncomfortable with is the gendered divide that gets enforced between that type of 'action' film and more introspective movies dealing with personal and communal levels of developement and peaceful interaction because yes, I completely agree with you that it exists and is often used unconsciously as a decider on what is 'worthy' and 'artistic' and what is 'lowkey' or has 'mass appeal', but it feels dismissive of women/female perspectives that do choose to engage in and potentially subvert those narratives and mix the two types of approaches a bit. And I get that this is still a method of highlighting the very tropes you're trying to subvert, and therefore all anti-war movies, say, are still in some way adding to the huge production line of fictional and historical war movies. But stating outright that movies like Inglourious Basterds (which I feel has interesting things to say about violence, real and cinematically mediated) are simplistic reproductions of these themes is unfair on the film even if your target was the industry that creates and publicises these films.

[arboretum]

I still rebel at the notion that violent narratives are male narratives and that peace and faith and community narratives are female narratives

that idea somehow pisses me off lkfjglkdjfg, it's possibly a personal thing though, I just can't ever not be pissed off by the gender divide.

[bookshop]

Yeah, i like... i don't think the gender divide *should* exist, I am just pointing out that for better or worse it does exist, and as long as the traditionally female narratives get bested by the traditionally male ones, there won't be a real path for them to complicate each other and merge so that those roles don't exist.

(up until i moved out here, i genuinely believed that we lived in a post-feminist, post-gendered society and that people were really over these type of gender assignments. i've since realized that we're *not,* and so the last year and a half or so has been huge for me in terms of even realizing just how gendered some of these tropes are. so that's also what i'm reacting to in a major way: the realization that not only is the gender divide still in place but it reveals itself in all these ways like film tropes and meta-narratives, etc etc. i just feel like i spent most of my life being... really blind.)

[quicksylver_btg]

I think that person's point, however, was that your comment did just the opposite and maintained the gender divide, rather than move beyond it. The problem with feminism has always been the underlying assertion that women are superior or better or more goddess-like than men. And in a way, reinforces some of those same female sterotypes by simply inverting the power structure that it proclaims it is trying to destroy. It also has the lovely side-effect of insisting that any "real" woman must somehow encompass, not only that gentle/community-building/emotionally-connected/mother figure, but also the straight-forward/aggressive/protective/working/father figure as well. We can't be people; we have to be superheros. I may be Woman, but I draw the line at wearing tights or a cape.