Post #4

According to Bell Hooks in “Making Movie Magic,” she believes that filmmakers do not make movies from a realistic perspective. Because movies are movies, they are made for the purpose of sensationalism and popularity. She claims that providing reality and truth in films drive audience away because reality is something that the audience does not want to see. “Films must be free from all imitations, of which the most dangerous is the imitation of life” (Hooks 1). The audience’s preference is mostly “familiar and fixed boundaries, particularly class locations,” which makes it difficult for them to stray away from their comfort spots into real truth. In relations to this, she also states, “changing how we see images in clearly one way to change the world” (Hooks 6), which emphasizes that the audience should watch the film a more critical eye the next time they see a movie. If more and more audience start to view films from a different and deeper perspective, they will critique the movie and enforce the filmmakers to be critical of the issues when they are creating films, because after all, “they have power over us and we have no power over them (Hooks 3).

Catherine Saalfield, a filmmaker, created her works to involve both her works and activism at the same time. She found it unnecessary to separate her passions to create an honest and decent film. For example, Saalfield co-produced Positive: Life with HIV in 1995 according to the way that HIV-patients and their caretaker would like to portray HIV to the public. This documentary also touches upon many issues regarding HIV. Overall, Saalfield’s attempt to portray HIV was realistic and different from what the public would have thought.

Debra Zimmerman, another female filmmaker and advocate, has put a lot of efforts into having more female filmmakers create films that speak in women’s perspective. She established organization that advocates funding for women films and filmmakers and advocated for the government to fund for female filmmakers so that they can keep on creating films. Zimmerman quoted Trinh T. Minh, “If there was the choice between having her film show at New Directors [a prestigious, mainstream New York City film festival] and having it show in the New York Women’s Film Festival – if there were a New York Women’s Film Festival, which Women Make Movies might even be hosting (in the future) – it would be a very, very hard choice, because New Directors has that prestige value, which is extremely important for her” (Zimmerman 262). This quote caught my attention, because even though Trinh T. Minh is a great female filmmaker who is trying to expand the language of cinema to the audience, it was surprising to me that such a profound filmmaker would find it hard to decide between New Directors and New York Women’s Film Festival because she’s passionate about both places. In another way, it’s sad to know that female filmmakers have very little opinion to a point where they have to sacrifice either their future or passion and not hold onto both at the same time.

Nowadays, television news channels and newspapers aren't the only media sources available to the audience. Anybody with a smartphone or connection to wifi can access news over the internet through websites, blogs, and videos. Overtime, blogs seem to gain a lot of attention and popularity (if they are unique and interesting enough) to a point where those blogs can bring upon changes. There have been stories from a 14-year old girl establishing a petition against models in the front cover of Seventeen magazine being photoshopped to a nine year old girl blogging about her school food (and how crappy it is) that attracted thousands and thousands of audience (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/15/girl-photos-school-meals-blog). So, blogs and videos gives an opportunity for the blogger or the filmmaker to publish issues that hasn't been noticed or mentioned by the main media. One of the most interesting blogger/filmmaker that I found in alternative media was Anita Sarkeesian. I found it interesting how she was able to pinpoint the negative depiction of women in the gaming industry and movies. She posts videos of herself critiquing different movies or games in her website, Feminist Frequency. Because the media is controlled mostly by main media and white men, it is difficult to portray media from a female's perspective. However, in each video, Sarkeesian focuses on a single movie/game and explain how it was successful or not successful in portraying women. For example, refer to Hunger Games - the book (the good) vs. Sucker Punch (the horrible).

 

One of the issues that Sarkeesian focuses specifically is the way women are deconstructed in video games. Too often, female characters in video games are sexualized and passive, even if these characters are part of violent games. It is always the female character crying out for help, captured by the evil villain, and waiting for her prince charming to come and rescue her. Even with Lara Croft, her character became more sexualized over the course of years as new games and modified Lara Croft characters were displayed.

Overall, I believe that Sarkeesian and her Feminist Frequency is very successful. I believe that there are still more issues that needs to be addressed regarding feminism that many people are not aware of. Sarkeesian emphasizes female deconstructed in video games, but she also mentioned the hidden and invisible issues, such as harassment in gaming industry. She also brings up many different ideas that are not addressed by the main media, such as in movies and books. The way that she breaks down and describes the good parts that the director (for movies) or the author (for books) portrayed in women or did not portray and informs her audience what the project lacked and what more can be done to be improved.

Reference

Bell Hooks - "Making Movie Magic" from Reel to Real

Redding/Brownworth - "Catherine Saalfield" and "Debra Zimmerman" from Film Fatales: Independent Women Director

feministfrequency.com