Friday 7 October 2011

VIFF 2011 - Miss Representation


Miss Representation
is a fascinating documentary that laid out a lot of information that I already knew in some capacity, but had never seen presented all at once. The effect of so many statistics -- including the very small percentages of women in leadership roles in government, the corporate world, media, and the arts -- was almost overwhelming. It's a slickly-produced film that makes effective use of graphics, interviews with celebrities and academics, focus groups with articulate high school students, and a soundtrack featuring Metric's Help I'm Alive and Gold Guns Girls. I felt pretty satisfied to see a Canadian band with a female lead singer on the soundtrack, and lyrics fit the content particularly well.

The director did a decent job of balancing truly depressing statistics and images with empowering messages of hope. I appreciated the call to action, even if it did carry the ring of preaching to the converted.

Like most pieces of polemic, this doc was of course selective in the media examples it chose. Not all music videos demean women, and not all TV shows and movies have women in ridiculously inadequate "supporting" roles, or (as one commentator deadpanned) "fighting fuck toys." But a great deal of them do. I always feel particularly cynical at Oscar time when so many films that get nominated are inevitably stories of a man's epic struggle against the odds, and oh right, so-and-so plays his exotic dancer girlfriend.

I felt that it would have been really interesting for the director to interview some prominent women who used their sexuality to gain success, and then used their success to further humanitarian or anti-oppressive work. Angelina Jolie comes to mind, and I thought she would have been a particularly interesting voice. How would she respond to a question about whether her influence on young women has been mainly to encourage them to become involved in volunteer work, or to inspire them to get collagen injections?

Since I watched this film last week, I've spent a fair bit of time thinking about its tagline: "You Can't Be What You Can't See."

It helps to have role models. But if you couldn't succeed without one, there would be no pioneers. I wished that there were a few more pioneers in this film. Not just activists, academics, and politicians, but female directors like Sarah Polley or Kathryn Bigelow.

All in all, I was very glad this film was made. Sometimes I spend so much time thinking about gender deconstruction and queer issues that I forget about feminism. I feel as though I've created an essentially women-only social world for myself, and forget that the larger world I live in is in fact misogynistic and hugely male-dominated.

It's good to get young women involved in this discussion as well. And it inspired me to not give up on trying to convince a particularly brilliant friend of mine to run for political office.

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