Lianne Spiderbaby (Lianne MacDougall) is a writer for Fangoria, Cineplex, Famous Monsters, FearNet, Film Journal International and Video Watchdog magazine. Her new book, Grindhouse Girls: Cinema’s Hardest Working Women, is being published by St. Martin's Press. Lianne is also the host of Fright Bytes, and her journalistic force has started to "bleed" out of the horror genre and into the mainstream. Lianne Spiderbaby holds an honors degree in Film Studies, University of Toronto.
June is Sci-Fi month on Fright Bytes and my co-host, Steve Mac, and I just spent an entire Saturday with talented director Brian Clement shooting an awesome sci-fi alien introduction to celebrate! You will have to wait until June to see the intro, as well as Brian's interview, our discussion of PROMETHEUS and our review of the film, but here are some behind-the-scenes shots to tide you over!
Lianne Spiderbaby and director Brian Clement
Lianne Spiderbaby (space suit) and Steve Mac
Lianne Spiderbaby
Lianne Spiderbaby, Steve Mac and director Brian Clement
Lianne Spiderbaby, Steve Mac and director Brian Clement
I'm so frustrated with film critics who sit behind their computers and judge everything, especially the bodies of young women working in Hollywood today. It happens more often than you may think, and the culprits aren't always men. Case and point: my friend Lori Bowen shared THISarticle with me on Facebook today. A quote from the article:
"A baffling, infuriating trend has cropped up in reviews of The Hunger Games: critics bodysnarking on Jennifer Lawrence. “A few years ago Ms. Lawrence might have looked hungry enough to play Katniss,” writes the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis, “but now, at 21, her seductive, womanly figure makes a bad fit for a dystopian fantasy about a people starved into submission.” The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy comments that Lawrence’s “lingering baby fat shows here.” And—most bluntly—Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells calls Lawrence a “fairly tall, big-boned lady” who’s “too big” for Josh Hutcherson, who plays Katniss’s romantic interest. (In case the message didn’t come through: Wells thinks Jennifer Lawrence is BIG. He also thinks we should be wary of “certain female critics” who “may be susceptible to the lore of this young-female-adult-propelled franchise.”)"
SHOCKING, right?I found this so upsetting. So instead of doing absolutely nothing about it, I decided to visit the website of Jeffrey Wells and tell him how pissed off his comments made me. HERE is his article and you will see my response at the bottom, but I will cut and paste it here to make it easier:
"The only thing disappointing about THE HUNGER GAMES is this awful review and Jeffrey Wells' inability to articulate himself with dignity.
I quote your review: "She's a fairly tall, big-boned lady (I've been in a hotel room with her) who's maybe 5' 8""
She is hardly big boned (I've also met her) but thanks to you, several young women who read this review will believe that she is and start comparing themselves to her. Perhaps a few especially insecure girls will find themselves skipping meals this week. Think before you type. The computer screen is thick and it provides a good shield, allowing anyone who wants to to dish out the dirt. However in terms of this review, it would have been the smart, respectful, and responsible thing to do to leave your opinions about Jennifer Lawrence's body OUT of it.
Last time I checked, you weren't Johnny Depp, either. If I were you, I would leave the personal, physical comments that have NOTHING to do with the film out of your reviews.
Sincerely,
Lianne"
This is the lovely Jennifer Lawrence who plays Katniss in THE HUNGER GAMES:
This beautiful young women is a far, far cry from big-boned and/or fat, even in Hollywood terms.
What Jeffrey Wells said was completely disgusting and unfair, in my opinion.
And just to rub it in a little (why not?) this is a photo of Jeffrey Wells:
The state forces kids into a death match where only one is left standing.
That’s The Hunger Games, correct?
True, but it’s also the storyline for Battle Royale; brutal, harrowing and little-seen Japanese film that beat Hunger Games to the plot by twelve years, based on a 600-page Japanese novel published in 1999.
With all the Hunger Games frenzy going on, Battle Royale (which QT called his “favourite movie of the last 20 years”) might finally get the attention it deserves!
Anchor Bay has just released a four-disc repackaging, Battle Royale: The Complete Collection, on DVD and Blu-ray.
At the dawn of the new millennium, Japan is in a a state of near-collapse. Unemployment is at an all-time high, and violence among the nation's youth is spiraling out of control. With schoolchildren boycotting their classes and physically abusing their teachers, a beleaguered and near-defeated government decides to introduce a radical new measure: the Battle Royale Act Overseen by their former teacher Kitano and requiring that a randomly chosen school class is taken to a deserted island and forced to fight each other to the death, the Act dictates that only one pupil is allowed to survive the punishment. He or she will return, not as the victor, but as the ultimate proof of the lengths to which the government is prepared to go to curb the tide of juvenile disobedience.
When Battle Royale hit the film market in 2000, it couldn’t have been released at a worse time. In Japan, where it was a hit, it was hotly debated in terms of glorifying violence. Though Battle Royale played in at U.S. film festivals, it never received theatrical distribution and some speculated that coming a year after the Columbine massacre and a year before 9/ 11 that no one in the early 2000s wanted to go near it.
A decade on and Battle Royale has built up a fiercely loyal following after being released on video a few years back. And since there, there’s been a total online war as Battle Royale and Hunger Games fans go at each other like they’re the last two survivors in this ongoing teenage war (one that makes the zombies vs. infected people debate or the sparkly vamps vs. bloody vamps debate old and tired).
Some say that Hunger Games is like another Twilight, taking a concept and weakening it with a love triangle. Some say that in every Hunger Games post, a Battle Royale fan has to pop up and claim it’s a ripoff.
Now, with The Hunger Games finally in theatres and Battle Royale getting a renewed push, movie fans will be able to make up their minds about which they prefer.
Whatever the outcome, please check out Battle Royale — which, it should be noted, is not for the very young or the faint of heart! The Hunger Games is in theaters today!
Let the battle rage!
Italian neorealism is a movement characterized by the simple depiction of lower class life that appeared on Italian screens when the Fascist regime fell, giving Italian filmmakers artistic freedom that had been denied to them for over 20 years. During the first ten years of the Fascist regime, the Italian government attempted to revitalize different aspects of Italian culture. Mussolini and his government helped establish essential requirements for a flourishing film industry, and in return many writers, artists and film directors worked to promote Mussolini’s ideas. Over time, Mussolini began authorizing and implementing different strategies that Italians gradually became uncomfortable with. After World War Two, Italian citizens, intellectuals, and artists struggled to overcome the disgraceful culture of the Fascist regime. In both Italy and Germany, totalitarian governments implemented youth education programs that enforced ideas of racial pride and social corporativism (Bordwell and Thompson, 360-362). Germania Anno Zero examines the younger generation living in a war torn country, dealing with lingering fragments of Fascism. Edmund Koeler is a young boy living in postwar Berlin who kills his father and commits suicide by jumping off of a war torn building. The murder of Edmund’s father in Rossellini’s Germania Anno Zero symbolizes the death of the Fascist regime, and the death of Mussolini - the father of all Italians.
It is important to examine a few of Mussolini’s economical and political policies in order to understand Italian society and the troubles that occurred faced during the war. Mussolini took power in 1922 and during his regime he implemented state regulations to control economic and social activities (Bondanella, 33). Mussolini attempted to bring economic prosperity to Italy by introducing several different policies such as high tariff policy to protect Italy from the competition of foreign goods (Gentile, 34). In spite of all his efforts, Mussolini failed to bring prosperity to Italy and improve the standard of living for workers and peasants. As a result, the corporations benefited only the employers, and workers’ interests were sacrificed in the name of national good. Strikes were not permitted, so if there were any wage disputes, workers could only appeal the issues to the Labour Courts. The Labour Courts were dominated by employers and state officials who rarely ever sided with the workers. Thus workers were forced to work without protest (Gentile, 42). During his rule, Mussolini also pursued a vigorous military policy. The army nearly doubled in size—from 175,000 men to 275,000 men (Gentile, 143). Immediately after the war, Italy faced acute shortages of many commodities and problematic inflation coexisted with mass unemployment at approximately 2.4 million persons or 12% of the active population. (Podbielski, 11).
During the regime in the 1920s, Mussolini founded an agency and implemented new laws that benefitted Italian film production. He formed LUCE (L’Unione Cinematografica Educativa), an agency that controlled to control propaganda in the form of documentary filmmaking. The government passed laws from 1931 to 1933 to protect the cinema. In 1932, Mussolini formed the Venice Film Festival to showcase Italians films on an international level (Bordwell and Thompson, 276). In 1935, the Ente Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche acquired authority to intervene in all aspects of the film industry, and although this company controlled only a small fraction of the market, Mussolini had to preview every film made in Italy, although he rarely disallowed a film to be shown. During the late 1930s, the younger generation began to develop attitudes of anti-Fascism due to the fact that they were subjected to the Fascist educational system, propagandist entertainment and the military (Bordwell and Thompson, 279). In Rossellini’s Germania Anno Zero, Edmund’s character demonstrates this attitude. Film historian Ted Perry states that although this film is about Germany, many similar issues were occurring in Italy due to the totalitarian government in power. The younger generation began to debate ideas of realistic art, as they felt that the popular romantic melodramas and comedies in Italy at the time did not represent what was occurring around them. In the cinema, Italians were rarely confronted with any of the economic, social or political problems of the day, thus the sense of security and national pride depicted in the films was a false one (Perry, 4). A few films that portrayed Italy as it really was gained some support during the war, an example of this is Rossellini’s La Nave Bianca (1941).
Italian neorealist films aimed to portray Italian society as it really was: fragmented and devastated as a result of the failed Fascist regime. In these films, conventions such as on location shooting, the use of nonprofessional actors and the representation of everyday lives were implemented to demonstrate the tragic situation in Italy (Bordwell and Thompson, 279). In order to best examine and deeply engage in Rossellini’s Germania Anno Zero, it is important to discuss Italian neorealism in general terms, as a movement with distinct form and style. The films were stylized in a way that allowed for a certain degree of realism to shine through. An advocate for realism and Italian cinema, Andre Bazin argues that Fascism actually aided the essential requirements for a flourishing postwar “humanist” cinema and the Liberation of Italy set these aesthetic trends so completely free as to allow them to develop (Bazin, 17-19). Throughout the postwar period in Italy, neorealist cinema supplied characters, plots, situations and images that were recognizable to them. The characters depicted in the films were often poor, facing financial troubles, had little education, and the Fascist regime had left them with feelings of shame, guilt and inferiority. Neorealism sought to infuse the cinema with a new sense of civil awareness in the postwar period (Gundle, 204). In an interview from Screen magazine conducted with Roberto Rossellini in 1952, he states that, “neorealism is a response to the genuine need to see men for what they are, with humility and without recourse to fabricating the exceptional; it means an awareness that the exceptional is arrived at through the investigation of reality” (Verdone, 72).
With this investigation of reality, several formal innovations were evoked in the films. For example, cinematography tended towards the roughness and raw footage of documentaries, on location shooting allowed for the setting to be as realistic as possible, non-actors were often recruited and three point lighting was avoided due to the fact that shooting took place on the streets. Sound was always dubbed in afterwards, and the narratives took a more ambiguous approach, where plot developments rejected the causality chain that was employed in American films (Bordwell and Thompson, 362-363).
Roberto Rossellini employs all of the stylistic elements listed above in his film Germania Anno Zero, making it a perfect example of Italian neorealist cinema. Often, the ending of a neorealist film is left unresolved, which is what occurs in Germania Anno Zero. In the last sequence of the film on-location shooting is employed as Edmund is shown walking around the streets of Berlin doing nothing in particular. There is rarely a shot in this sequence that does not portray the utter hopelessness of Edmund’s situation and it makes his eventual fate feel inevitable. As he wanders, the camera constantly pans parallel to him from a variety of angles. He does not say a word, but the camera moves closer and then further away from him, and his facial expressions convey feelings of confusion and sadness. Edmund walks into a war torn building where he climbs several staircases, kicking and playing with rocks and objects he finds on the ground. There is a medium shot that shows Edmund coming up one of the staircases, and on way up - he trips - as a normal individual might do in their everyday life while walking up a large set of stairs. This conveys a sense of realism to the viewer whereas in a Hollywood film, if an actor should trip while going up a staircase the shot would end up on the editor’s floor. However, in Italian neorealism, it is these moments that make up the seemingly realistic feel of the film. The camera follows Edmund in long takes to allow action to happen on the screen instead of cutting and editing the shots into smaller sections. Edmund stands in front of a window and his shadow appears on the ground in the building and he beings to playfully shoot at his shadow with an object he has found on the ground. The lighting used in this sequence is natural, unlike the three point lighting system of Hollywood however, not unlike Hollywood films is the nondiegetic music that is playing in the last sequence which serves to add suspense (Torriglia, 35).
The editing of Italian neorealist films is a crucial aspect of style, because editing can allow for a heightened sense of realism. The editing employed in the last sequence of the film is not manipulative and the cuts are made only when Edmund exits the frame. In Cahier Du Cinema, Rossellini stated: “I couldn’t care less about whether I get to the end of the movement so as to fit in with the next shot. When I have shown what matters, I cut: that’s enough” (Hoveyda and Rivette, 213). This allows for many long takes to occur in the film. The long take was championed by Andre Bazin because it allowed the audience to choose what to look at, as if the viewer is looking into real, three dimensional space rather than constructed, two dimensional space. He stated that neorealism allowed for a world that we, as spectators could just watch and observe (Bazin, 23-26). Then beings a sequence in which Edmund watches two men take his father’s dead body away and put it into a truck. Edmund’s sister Eva and his brother, Karl-Heinz run into the frame, as Edmund watches them in a POV shot. Karl-Heinz is played by Franz Kruger, who is one of the only professional actors in the film; Germania Anno Zero was his third film and he went on to act until 1980. Both Ongetraud Hinze (Eva) and Edmund Moeschke (Edmund) are nonprofessional actors (Internet Movie Database). It it becomes apparent that the sound in the film was dubbed in afterwards. It is also possible that different actors provided the voices for the characters, because all of the actors were born and raised in Germany and were most likely unable to speak Italian. This could mean that a certain degree of improvisational acting was employed due to the fact that the German actors were not speaking the same lines as the dialogue. Improvisational freedom in acting and setting created a certain flexibility of framing which is made use of several times in Germania Anno Zero.
The ambiguous ending of Germania Anno Zero begins when Edmund makes the decision to kill himself by jumping out of the window. The ending of this film is extremely ambiguous, which is a product of narration in neorealist films that refuses to yield any sort of omniscient knowledge of the events depicted on the screen (Torriglia, 32). It is as if the film is acknowledging that the totality of reality is unknowable, especially in countries such as post war Italy and Germany. Eva is shown crying and hovering over his dead body, but a train passes by and the camera becomes more focused on the train, tilting upward to watch it pass. The camera continues to tilt to show Edmund’s home, crumbled and in ruins and the screen fades to black. The viewer is not sure what happens to Eva or Edmund’s body: the film simply ends. To a spectator, the film seems as though it has skipped over certain causes for the events depicted on the screen.
The reception received by Germania Anno Zero was mixed due to diverse feelings in America and Italy toward fascism and the war. German replacing Italian setting in the film can serve as one explanation why the film initially was one of Rossellini’s least well received. In July 1954, Rossellini stated: “I don’t think it is possible to say anything worse about a film than what was said about Germania Anno Zero” (Rohmer, Eric and Truffaut, Francois). In this film, he experiments with form in order to transfer to the spectator the emotional experiences of those recovering from the shock of the opposing side of the war. In a New York Times review from 1949, critic Bosley Crowther describes Germania Anno Zero as having “a strange emptiness of genuine feeling... Mr. Rossellini doesn’t spare us... the barren and lethargic nature of most of the characters in the film is one of the reasons for the picture’s emotional emptiness... The sum effect of the presentation is a sense of bleak discomfort and despair, unrelieved by any purge of the emotions” (Crowther, 35). After Rossellini’s past two films showed in the United States (Paisan and Open City), Germania Anno Zero was highly anticipated and critics had high expectations for it. In another article in the New York Times, Irving Drutmanrome wrote about the Film Festival: “Right now producers are pushing ahead their schedules with an eye to next month’s International Film Festival in Venice. Italy’s five entries will almost certainly include the highly-touted ‘Germany Year Zero’” (Drutmanrome, X4). This article about Italian film studios was written a year before the review of the film and it already posed high hopes for Rossellini’s film.
George A. Huaco states that in 1945-1946 the Italian public favoured neorealist films, but by 1947 they were turning back towards escapism. (Huaco, 178). If escapism is what audiences were drawing back to, then a cinema that had a “powerful desire to see and to analyze, a hunger for reality, for truth...”(Zavattini, 69) was not what spectators would have wanted. Cesare Zavattini claims that it is those aspects of neorealism film that distinguish it from American cinema which continues to satisfy spectators with a sweetened version of the truth. (Zavattini, 69). In the case of Germania Anno Zero, Italians may have seen themselves in the film and as it presents no solution or assurance for Edmund, it presents no solution or hope for Italians alike.
The death of Edmund’s father in the film symbolizes the death of Mussolini and the Fascist regime. After following Edmund all over Berlin, he ends up in a tall building and commits suicide because he feels guilt after killing his father, and sadness due to his state of life in general. When Edmund’s dead father is carried out to the truck, it symbolizes the death of Mussolini and the Fascist regime. Mussolini, the father of Italy and controller of the regime is finally dead but the damage has already been done and the youth effected by the war cannot pull themselves out of the past. Rossellini implies that Edmund’s attempt at eliminating the past through an act of violent denial is ineffective. Edmund tries to seek help from his teacher, who should have been able to provide it, but the teacher instead proves to be corrupt and out of his advice, Edmund decides to kill his father. This generates the suicide of Edmund, thus amounting to a denial of the past, the postwar period and the future. There seems to be no alternative for Edmund, so perhaps there is no hope of a future for the younger generations surviving the end of the Fascist regime.
In conclusion, films that convey a strong sense of realism are powerful because they effect spectators in emotional ways, as one can see with the documented reception of Rossellini’s film Germania Anno Zero. Roberto Rossellini wanted to make films that could present the external reality of Italy and its people, politics and economic activities. Both Germany and Italy’s youth experienced horrific events and in many cases they ended up rebelling against the policies of their country and their own families. Edmund Koeler is a perfect example of this sort of rebellion as he kills his father with poison and then kills himself by jumping out of a window. Thus, even though the murder of Edmund’s father in Germania Anno Zero symbolizes the death of Mussolini and the Fascist regime which was a good thing, Edmund (who symbolizes the next generation) cannot seem to save himself from the tragedy of the war and the effects that Fascism had upon himself and society.
... Cute, stylish girls (the lovely Faye Wong in CHUNGKING EXPRESS and Claire Danes in MY SO-CALLED LIFE, two of my favorite films/tv shows)... but that's not all! They also have perfected the use of 'Dreams' by the sweet Irish band, The Cranberries. Let's observe.
'Dreams' is played in Episode #3 entitled 'Guns & Gossip' when Patty enters Angela's room to talk. I'll never forget it, no matter how many years ago.
Not horror related, but we're all film/television fans, here, right?
I will start this post with my editor at Fangoria, Chris Alexander's editorial in Fangoria issue #.
I have been asked over and over again what my thoughts are on his editorial, and I will post those after the jump. But first, the editorial:
Spiderbaby's response:
What do I think about Chris' editorial? First and foremost, I stand behind everything Chris does in terms of the magazine, and I'm completely 100% supportive.
I will say that I think his editorial was poorly worded. It's wasn't his best work in terms of articulation. When using "eat it" with the intent of being offensive, it alludes to "eating" a girl's genitals, and obviously - that was a very bad choice on Chris' part. He was definitely not saying that Women in Horror month should 'suck his dick'.
Chris and I had a conversation one-on-one about the editorial, and I agree with many of his points. Unfortunately, a lot of women out there use the month to serve their own purposes and they lump themselves in with women like Kathryn Bigelow, and that just isn't accurate and/or fair.
Unfortunately as well, there are a lot of women out there who aren't doing positive work within the horror community, especially when it comes to women. I hate to name names, but *Kname removedJ* is one of them. She's competitive, rude, and she will backstab you in a heartbeat. Women In Horror Month is a great opportunity for the women in horror to come together - not to get all individualistic and promote themselves. That's not the kind of woman we need in the horror community, and it does bother me that because of Women In Horror Month, K.J. can celebrate herself alongside someone as brilliant as Heidi Martinuzzi.
So, the month DOES get abused by people out there, and Chris is also right in the sense that we should celebrate women in horror ALL year, and he feels Fangoria does, thus we don't need to dedicate just one month to it. Chris genuinely DOES celebrate women in horror all year - he is SO supportive of his female writers, myself and Debbie and Susan, Rebekah, the list goes on.
I'm proud to write for Fangoria because I know Chris has my back, 100%. He goes to bat for me, and he lets me have freedom in terms of what I want to contribute to the magazine, I get ideas, and he lets me run with them.
He fucked up a bit, mostly with his choice of words and his articulation of it, but having spoken to Chris about the editorial, I know that the way it came across isn't completely how he meant it. "Eat it" was definitely... not a good decision. He didn't want to use the term "fuck off" because he thought it would be too much, and unfortunately he chose another term even more offensive. Ooops. Everyone makes mistakes.
At the end of the day, I'm happy to be on Chris's team, and I thought about writing a "rebuttle" of sorts, and then I decided against it, simply because I don't feel it's necessary right now, and I'm working on too many other articles (many with feminist points-of-view), and I'm just too busy with my book.
Now, the reason why we do need Women In Horror Month is because unfortunately in our society in general, sexism is rampant. Especially in the film industry, it's just so male dominated. Horror involves hard violence on the big screen - this is why we love it - but this is also why it's important to generate some awareness in terms of violence against women and the issues and ideology surrounding it. There are positive ways of showing violence, and negative and degrading ways.
Most men don't understand what it's like to be a woman and why these issues are important to us. I’m made aware of my gender on a daily basis, I never lose sight of the fact that I’m a WOMAN. I experience the world differently than a man does, no matter what. I even watch movies differently than a man does. I can’t help it. Being a woman is wonderful, but it comes with challenges and societal pressures. Regardless, Women In Horror Month needs to exist so that we all make a point of bringing these issues to the forefront, and more importantly - it's a month wherein women in horror can come together and celebrate something (and yes, we should do this ALL year, but we all have very busy lives, like everyone else, and it doesn't always happen). We're not trying to change the genre, we love horror, we just want to create some awareness and share it with eachother. That's all!
In this episode of Fright Bytes, your host Lianne Spiderbaby reviews Drew Goddard's THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, co-written and produced by Joss Whedon. THE CABIN IN THE WOODS is in theaters April 13th, 2012, and that day cannot come soon enough; horror fans have been waiting for this movie for at least two years, and trust us - it's 100% worth the wait!
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You can also follow Lianne Spiderbaby on Twitter @liannespider
While at New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles on March 6, 2012, for a double feature of his films "Switchblade Sisters" and "The Swinging Cheerleaders," legendary cult film director Jack Hill announced that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be doing a first-class restoration of his 1964 directorial debut "SPIDER BABY." AMPAS will be making new prints for distribution, enhancing the movie's soundtrack, and making the changes Hill always wanted to make, including incorporating a scene cut from the original release.
The sold out audience at New Beverly Cinema greeted this news with thunderous applause. "Spider Baby" has a huge cult following that lasts to this very day (and of course, I'm a huge fan). Stay tuned for more on this story, Elijah Drenner and I are cooking up an awesome article on it for the upcoming issue of Fangoria magazine!
The main goal in Annette Kuhn’s wonderful and well articulated article entitled Textual Politics is to address and explore anti-illusionist aspects in the cinema, specifically the feminist counter cinema (which I find terribly fascinating). Illusionist cinema could also be described as realist cinema where the means of production are concealed and hidden from the spectator. Sound confusing? Okay: the camera is all knowing, yet all-hiding, and illusionist cinema signifies to the viewer that what they are seeing on-screen is a reflection of the real world. Illusionist cinema, as Kuhn defines it, would be any film that you have seen in a movie theater this year. The editing is seamless, you identify with the characters, sometimes you even forget that you are watching a movie, you are so engulfed and engaged. The classical Hollywood period in the 1930s-1940s perpetuated this style of filmmaking. Moving on. Kuhn’s essay discusses cinema that works against the realist mode of film, at both the levels of the signifier and the signified. Non-illusionist cinema aims to challenge realist strategies and modes of address (Kuhn, 251). Kuhn argues that the dominant cinema (also illusionist cinema) is full of ideology and the counter-cinema aims to deconstruct this. Annette Kuhn decides to focus on two areas of textual/filmic practice: counter-cinema which makes effort in deconstructing the norms of the dominant cinema, and another form of cinema that is considered ‘other’, such as ‘feminine writing’, which differs from the dominant (Kuhn, 253).
In ‘feminine writing’ cinema, or reconstructive cinema, the spectator is provoked to be aware of the film’s existence (rather than getting lost in the shot-reverse-shot, identifiable protagonist tendencies of the dominant and illusionist cinema). Annette Kuhn states that the spectator is encouraged to develop a critical opinion toward counter-cinema codes. Counter-cinema aims to unsettle the viewer, the spectator is to remain active to “the signification process for certain signifieds” (Kuhn, 253). Annette Kuhn (like Laura Mulvey), believes that reconstructive cinema is not simply a departure from the popular forms of the dominant cinema, but must also be a departure in its content as well. Annette Kuhn defines reconstructive cinema by “it’s articulation of oppositional forms with opposition contents” (Kuhn, 254). Certain distances are created using form and content, therefore distancing the audience so they are able to form a critical stance.
Kuhn states that feminist counter-cinema can challenge the dominant cinema by creating new forms that are not characteristic of the dominant. Deconstructive films will attempt to break down and challenge dominant forms of pleasure, whereas feminine films will attempt to build more radical forms of pleasure (Kuhn, 259). The female voice is privileged in the feminist film, so it remains pleasurable, but also different from the pleasures offered in patriarchal cinema. Annette Kuhn outlines a few ways to foreground the feminine voice in a film; by relations of looking, narrative discourse, subjectivity and autobiography, fiction against nonfiction, and openness against closure (Kuhn, 260). Annette Kuhn concludes her article by stating that although spectators will be unsettled with the presentation of new ideas and new forms, the feminist film will often be working towards a congruent goal that the spectator will be able to make sense of. Kuhn states that a feminist reconstructive film is possible and it should be both feminist in it’s textual applications and feminist in it’s intent (Kuhn, 265).
Naomi Uman’s film Removed (1999, one of my favorite avant garde pieces. I mean, who doesn't enjoy a different take on 70s euro porn, complete with a sexy, retro soundtrack?!) makes use of several reconstructive methods mentioned by Annette Kuhn in her article Textual Politics, but I will first privilege Removed as a separate entity before linking the film to Kuhn’s article. Naomi Uman’s Removed was released in 1999, but makes use of soft core pornography that looks as though it is from the late 60s/70s era. From every frame and shot, Uman has managed to completely remove the female body and replace it with a white, scribbled silhouette. The image of the naked woman is completely whited out where moaning porn stars used to be. The leering men are captured in various ways and poses, and the dialogue track appears to come from the original piece of film, but it is non-synchronous and thrown off from the images. It is possible the film could be dubbed. Uman is trying to create a retort to pornography’s obsession and representation of the female body and form. Where men would normally voyeuristically gaze, the image of the woman is gone and spectators are deprived. A tension is created here between visibility and invisibility, presence and absence. The viewer is unable to look away from the eliminated figure, while trying to make sense of the moaning sounds and the dialogue that is heard. These factors work to unsettle the viewer, as Annette Kuhn would suggest (Kuhn, 254).
In her article, Annette Kuhn states that both oppositional forms and oppositional contents must be employed in order to be successful in terms of reconstructive feminist films. Naomi Uman’s Removed exercises both of these reconstructive strategies. In terms of form, Removed creates conflict by showing a character speaking, even when it appears as though the soundtrack is not actually coming from the character’s mouth. For example, the white silhouette makes the motion of inviting a man over to the bed, and the spectator hears her invitation, but the spectator cannot actually see her mouth moving, giving the man this direction. The man says something in reply, but what is heard over the soundtrack does not make sense and does not appear to be coming directly from his mouth. This use of non-synchronous sound is effective in unsettling the spectator and deconstructing the norm of the dominant cinema. Some of the sounds and voices heard in the film could also be nondiegetic, as coming from a different movie or a different time during the pornographic film Uman uses. Removed is also spatially discontinuous. Due to the fact that large chunks of space and the female’s figure is whited out, it is occasionally hard for the spectator to make sense of space in the film. One scene cuts to another, with two different characters without any explanation. A two-way mirror is mentioned by a male character in the film, and spatially this appears to be true, but when the other sexual figures in the mirror disappear, the viewer is again left confused. Due to the white patches that Uman has created, the spectator is always aware of the film’s existence and there are no opportunities to identify with a character or get lost in the narrative. There essentially is no narrative, and the space in which the characters move is discontinuous. There are also moments where disruptions take place within the short film. For example, the spectator watches one scene with a man and a women (sexual moaning sounds included), and then it cuts off and the spectator sees a numerical countdown on the screen and loud, irritating beeps are heard. Following this, the spectator views the couple that appeared at the beginning of the film. This works to disrupt the spectator, Uman manipulates the editing, space, sound and image to create a film that Annette Kuhn would define as being formally oppositional.
As stated earlier, Annette Kuhn suggests that not only should a film be oppositional in form, but also oppositional in content. In terms of content, there are issues with sexual roles that are played out between the three couples present in the film. Although the female body is whited-out, the spectator is able to identify that the woman silhouette in the first scene is pleasuring herself. With the second couple, the man is pleasuring the female with his hands as he describes another woman’s body to her, that he is apparently able to see through a two-way mirror. At no point is the male spectator granted the pleasure of viewing the female body in her nakedness, due to the scribbling out that Uman has performed. A new gaze is created that both male and female spectators can partake in, but it is a gaze of question and exploration rather than voyeuristic pleasure. The spectator must attempt to make sense of the content that is being presented in the film. The men in the film are essentially drooling over these female silhouettes and this could be a case for homoerotic or narcissistic pleasure from a removed, androgynous figure. The female and her sex have been removed as spectacle. The female body is also severed at the beginning of the film. The film opens with a shot of a women’s face and following it, a shot of a vagina with a hand covering it is shown. This fragments the female body, again depriving the male gaze of it’s voyeuristic tendencies. Annette Kuhn states that feminist reconstructive films are possible, and Removed would satisfy her definition. Kuhn believes that the film should be feminist textually (which Removed proves to be), but also feminist in terms of motivation and intent. Due to the manipulation of the female form Naomi Uman has performed on the retro porn clips, it is clear that her intentions are feminist. Uman’s film encourages the spectator to develop a critical opinion, to question why the female body has been removed. Depending on the spectator and their culture, background and personal experience, certain spectators might even question as to why it was almost always caucasian women featured in early pornographic films. Perhaps by removing the female’s distinct caucasian features from the film with the use of a silhouette, a spectator may read the film to be making a commentary on the racial aspects of early pornographic cinema. Depending on the spectator, different meanings could be interpreted from Removed. However, regardless of who the spectators are, the film aims to unsettle, and the spectator must remain active in the viewing process. In Annette Kuhn’s article, she states that it is important that a feminine piece still remains pleasurable, even though it is making use of new forms. Naomi Uman’s Removed makes use of new forms, makes old content new again, and the film remains pleasurable for both the male and female spectator. As I mentioned previously, who doesn't love vintage retro Euro porn, sexy scenes & sounds? Despite the fact that the women's naked body is absent, the film is still very sexy and intriguing in its own way.
Kuhn, Annette. Textual Politics in Issues In Feminist Film Criticism, 1990.
