Brainwashed: Sex Camera Power (2022)

[bunniefuu]

As a filmmaker and as a woman,

I found myself drowning

in a powerful vortex

of visual language,

from which it is very difficult

to escape.

Yeah, Lara, are you there?

I'm just sitting here

hoping to hear from you,

I don't care if it's three

o'clock in the morning

because, I've been thinking

about all the things

that could possibly happen

to you because of this,

and I don't want you to ruin

your whole acting career

over it.

You know, all they have to do

is call sag

and pull your card

and from now on,

for the rest of your life,

you'll come up not cleared

for work and that's the end.

This visual language,

this cinematic visual language,

dictates to us ways of seeing

that are so specific,

it almost feels like a law.

The great writer

James Baldwin once said,

"not everything can be changed,

but nothing can be changed

until it is faced."

What we're gonna do today is

look at a series of film clips

from a list movies,

the ones that win cannes

and the academy awards,

as well as cult classics,

and other notable works.

And what we're looking at is

how sh*t design is gendered.

That means that male lead actors

and female actresses

are filmed very differently,

consistently differently and

consistently in a certain way

that can be labeled

and tracked and named.

Now, I personally see

a very clear connection

between this visual language

of cinema,

employment discrimination

against women,

particularly

in the film industry,

and an environment of pervasive

sexual harassment, abuse,

and as*ault.

I had the chance to meet

Laura mulvey last year,

the "original gangster"

film theorist

who identified the male gaze

for all of us.

I only actually used the

male gaze once in the essay,

I think, but it's become

its dominant memory.

The essay really came

out of my love of cinema.

Well, having left university

in 1963,

I really spent a lot of my time

just going to the movies.

Only retrospectively realizing

that part of my pleasure

in this film going was that

I was watching these movies

as a male spectator.

Almost all of us are

familiar with the phrase

the objectification of women,

but it's worth taking a

moment to break that down.

What exactly is an object

and what is a subject?

So let's get back

to basic grammar

in like an English sentence

for a second.

The cat eats the mouse.

The cat is the subject,

he's eating the mouse,

the object is acted upon.

Similarly,

the man sees the woman,

the man is active doing

the locking

and the woman is looked at.

Here she comes.

We'd like a statement from you...

This phrase,

to-be-looked-at-ness,

was made famous by

Laura mulvey back in 1975

and used to describe

the basic essential position

of women in cinema.

That dress will be ahead

of fashion a hundred years

from today.

You ain't seen nothing yet.

The accessories are even cuter.

J I can hear the river call j

j no return, no return j

Through time, the woman's body

becomes more and more sexuahzed,

but the basic structure of

looking remains the same.

Even though mulvey's

foundational work

was written in the '705,

we still totally normalize

the male gaze in cinema.

You know, I think

the majority of people

don't ever really question

that form of looking.

It's so normal it's like

the idea of a fish asking

if it's wet.

It's the stuff that

I think you thought,

and maybe I thought,

well, everybody knows this,

it's in the ether,

but it's the ether.

And so to name it and

to show it is, you know,

something that I believe

can change the world.

The poet philosopher,

Ralph Waldo Emerson

once made a beautiful remark

that I feel speaks very well

to the situation.

He said, "perception is

not whimsical, but fatal.

you know, this is something

that people like to say,

like they think creative work

and films are whimsical.

It's just my vision. It's

just my idea. It's whimsical,

but no, it's really serious.

It's fatal, and it impacts us

on the deepest possible level.

As filmmakers

we have to be courageous

and be willing to be that force.

Willing to speak our minds,

willing to say,

"hey, wait a minute,

what's wrong with this picture?

What are you telling me?

What's the visual rhetoric

that we're looking at?

It doesn't feel good.

It doesn't feel correct.

Let's rethink this."

I think sometimes with films

that are considered

part of the canon,

part of, you know,

what are the best

quote unquote films,

there is a reticence to even

question how they were made

and the stories that they tell.

And I think that it's okay to

still love and to see a film

and say it's great,

but that it has some issues.

And I think

without questioning it,

we're doing a disservice

to our own humanity.

Now most of you guys

are probably aware

of the idea that there's

a sexist element to script,

dialogue, and character.

You know, we know that

we'd prefer not to see women

always playing a maid

or a sexy babe,

as opposed to being a ceo

or something like that.

That's something that

we're well acquainted with.

What's less well known

is how sh*t design itself

is perpetuating these

different positions of power.

So when we talk about

sh*t design,

what exactly does that mean?

We're talking about

subject, object,

the visual relationship,

framing, camera movement,

and lighting,

and how all of these techniques

contribute to the narrative

position of the characters.

So the first thing

is subject, object.

When we see a shape like this,

we know it means that

this guy here is looking

at this person over here,

who happens to be a woman.

- Haven't I seen you

somewhere before?

This pov sh*t can be done

in one sh*t, like this.

It's dropping down.

We need to get that adjusted.

It's ridiculous.

I should just drop my brushes,

and just, f*ck it. Oh!

It's amazing what do

you think about that, man?

Pretty amazing. Jerry! Jerry!

Or in two separate sh*ts.

- Hey!

I think a lot about how

to create points of view.

It's not just optical,

it's perceptual,

you know,

we are experiencing the...

You're putting the audience

in the character's shoes

so that they aren't

just seeing directly

what the character sees,

but they are aligned

with them emotionally

and in their thought process.

What's interesting

about Robert Montgomery's,

"lady in the lake" is that

it's an extreme example

of what subjectivity is.

So it becomes

this point of view sh*t

throughout the whole film.

It aligns with my ideas

about a male point of view

and what is the male gaze.

And about sort of the image

of a certain kind

of Hollywood beauty

or Hollywood victim.

Framing of sh*ts.

Women actors are often sh*t

with fragmented body parts.

And that fragmented body

can be part of, of course,

a pov situation.

So you have one sh*t

somebody is looking,

second sh*t, fragmented body.

- What is that noise?

What noise?

Really, sir,

there wasn't any noise.

Or it can be in one sh*t.

And again,

repeating the pov structures.

Another thing that's very

common is a female body

on direct display

for the audience

without a specific person

looking.

This is just like

general audience display.

I think we have to consider

that it is through

the formal visual language

that we are effectively

communicating meaning.

And we inherit

so much subliminally

that comes from this language

and it has to do with how

sh*ts are composed and framed,

how they're assembled and

ordered in a sequence of sh*ts.

All of that becomes

the grammar and syntax

by which meaning

is conveyed to a viewer.

So in a visual culture,

such as ours,

in which there's

a ravenous appetite

towards the female as object,

if the camera is predatory

then the culture

is predatory as well.

Camera movement.

A common thing that we've

all seen a million times

is a pan of a female body.

And that can, of course,

be a horizontal pan

or a vertical pan.

Furthermore, what you

very often see is slow-mo,

as a way to emphasize.

And with men,

when do we get slow-mo?

Action, m*llitary, right?

- Heel kick to diaphragm.

80 men get slow-mo for action,

and women get slow-mo

for sexualization.

The dissemination of

these kinds of sh*ts

is actually a sort

of global hypnosis

around how masculine

power brings satisfaction.

Whether it's objectifying women

or k*lling

or pretending to k*ll.

This is propaganda

for patriarchy.

Lighting. Lighting

is a bit more subtle.

Normally a male lead actor

gets to have 3D lighting

with shadow and depth,

and he's located somewhere real

in a space that we understand,

whereas Rita Hayworth here,

this is two frames

from Orson welles'

"lady from Shanghai,"

Rita Hayworth is sh*t

in this timeless zone

of female beauty.

Women are not allowed to age

and they're not really allowed

to have full-on

lives as subjects.

Myself and other directors,

we have been conditioned

to present women, actresses,

in the best light possible.

So we put nice soft lights up

and use a nice long lens

and, you know,

set it at a high angle,

not looking up at something.

And, you know, all the

different ways to film women.

I don't worry

if a guy has wrinkles,

because that just makes them

look rugged as they get older,

but you don't wanna think

about that for women.

Can I kiss you?

You know, I got this

great movie recently,

it would've moved the needle,

it was very great for me,

and they decided to go younger.

And, what can you say?

So, that happens a lot,

that happens a lot.

I have a lot of sadness,

and just even talking about it,

I have a lot of, oh.

'Cause I love to work.

I think this visual

language really contributes

to female self hatred

and insecurity in a way

that is not insignificant.

What is normalized as beauty

is really seen specifically

and dominantly

through a male gaze.

I think that really changes how

we relate in the world

in general

and not necessarily

in the best way.

sh*t design is the meta message,

right?

It's the aesthetic

that is normalized,

and it's very sneaky

kind of in that way.

- Priest, let me in.

Here in "super fly"

the cult classic

by Gordon parks Jr.,

we can see a number

of the techniques

that we've been discussing

so far.

We have the man

in the subject position.

Although, the two heads are

photographed quite the same,

suddenly we get the music,

fuzzy lighting,

slow-mo,

body pan.

One of my students

when she saw this clip,

she said, "the minute

you see the two heads

in the bathtub,

you start waiting for the pan

of the woman's body."

Obviously they're both naked

in the tub.

We do not see the male body.

Watching this "superfly"

bathtub scene,

yeah, I mean, that's

an actor's worst fear.

That, you know,

they are given a script

that they've agreed to work on,

and the director

totally objectifies her

by the choice of sh*ts,

the placement of the camera,

and the editing choices.

All of these techniques

that we've just reviewed

contribute to the narrative

position of the characters.

And very often in ways that

seemed strangely irrelevant

to the story.

- More!

- No more.

In an ideal world, we would

be able to see a huge amount,

a huge variety of films

getting kind of equal amount

of play.

You know, so if you are

a heterosexual male,

and you want to photograph

some woman's behind,

I am certainly

not the sex police.

I am not telling you what to do.

I'm not saying do not do that.

I'm just pointing out

the fact that a whole lot

of majorly acclaimed

directors through time

have done just that.

And since 96% of the films

through time

have done just that,

there isn't a whole lot

of wiggle room

for those of us who are

sick of seeing these things

and are sick of the result

of that kind of att*ck

on our selfhood.

For women, because you're

looking at those films,

for instance, she would

like to shape herself

to be that object of the gaze.

But she thinks,

some part of me, which is me,

is not matching to that,

you know, image.

So I would just,

kind of toss it out.

So, in that case,

she loses her own self,

she feels empty.

All of her, you know,

attention or energy

is spent for the external,

you know,

establishment of her image.

But when she sits down,

she feels empty.

That's the problem.

So here we have very clearly

the narrative position

of the woman

and her to-be-looked-at-ness

place delineated,

while we hear on audio,

the names of all

the male filmmakers,

and we see the male

cinematographer sh**ting her.

"Our desires," of course,

they're not referring to me.

Traditionally

the audience has been assumed

to be a cis male heterosexual

lined up with the cis male

heterosexual director,

lined up with the director

of photography,

who controls all the sh*ts,

lined up with a male subject

in the frame.

And they are all looking

at the female object.

This is the standard

line of identification.

Now, obviously, if you are

not a male heterosexual,

you're going to inhabit this

process of identification

in somewhat a different way.

And depending on

where you're located,

you know, for example, if you

are a female heterosexual,

which would be me,

how does this play out?

How does this affect us?

When I was a student

at the ucla film school,

I was very completely

obsessed with my work

and I was surrounded by

my films on every level

and I was a complete go-getter.

And if somebody

would get in my way

and I needed to get into

the mix room or something,

I would just be like,

"here's $20 move, go, go.

I need to do my work."

I was a complete subject.

I had no problem with that.

But what happened when

I tried to be romantic

or go on a date,

that's when I got into trouble.

I experienced myself

as to-be-looked-at-ness.

I experienced myself

as an object.

I didn't know how to act.

It was very confusing for me.

And I had a very hard time

integrating those things.

So I sort ofjumped

from object position

to subject position

where I identified

with a male subject

as an active mover.

And I had no idea how to be

a woman as an active mover

and also be sexy.

And this kind of is just

a little tip of the iceberg

about how this stuff

affects us personally.

So here's the next scene

in contempt."

I'm aware that this scene

is supposedly a comment

on female objectification.

Supposedly the producers

forced godard

to show more of

brigitte bardot's behind,

but whether he had an intention

to be sarcastic or not,

the impact on a gut level

of seeing a film like this,

and being told

that this is a masterpiece

along with all the other films

that we'll be seeing today,

that it's one masterpiece

after another,

think about how that affects us

deeply, internally as women.

It's pretty intense.

You know, this talk is

kind of confrontational

and all this stuff,

but I want people to know,

you know,

it's built on my sadness.

I know.

It's built on my struggle.

It's built on my sadness.

You know,

it's not a beautiful thing

that I'm talking about here.

But Nina, don't you think

all women feel that sadness?

All of my own

narrative fiction films

have been centrally

concerned with expressing

the abject feminine

and the wound

that is carried deep inside.

It's really such a sacred

place to make cinema.

It is a sacred act.

You are really entering

people's imaginations

and their psyches

in such a way that

it should be treated with care.

It's a place of magnification,

it's almost like speaking

on a microphone.

Whatever you say it's amplified,

so just being aware of that,

it's so important.

The researchers green and Brock

coined a term,

which is transportation,

transportation is the effect

of movies and television

on viewers that moves us

from where we are,

when we walk into a theater,

into a new world.

It takes us from the

familiar along a continuum,

into a new place.

And we go into a state of

suspension of disbelief,

and in that state, we have

the highest knowledge gains,

the biggest shifts in attitude,

and the greatest changes

in behavior

or behavioral intention.

This is the power of

storytelling on the screen.

In "lady from Shanghai,"

we can see so many

of the basic gendered

sh*t design techniques

that continue to inform

filmmaking today.

Lover, this really concerns

you more than anyone else.

J don't take your arms away j

so here you can see

the men in 3D lighting

and 3D space controlling

the story,

controlling the narrative.

Did you know about that, lover?

No I didn't.

Shut up, George.

Rita Hayworth, of course,

is in a bikini

while everyone else

is fully clothed.

And of course, we have

the ever present male subject

looking at the female object.

Rita Hayworth is floating in

a strange dislocated space.

Maybe we'll call it

male fantasy space.

In this clip

and in subsequent clips,

the beauty of the woman

can be seen

as having a certain power,

you know, the power

to attract the gaze.

This is what we're always told,

like the way to be powerful

as a woman is to be beautiful.

But to answer that

and to respond to that,

I would like

to quote Angela Carter,

who says that women have to

be seduced into femininity.

And what does she mean by

seduced into femininity?

She really means seduced

into powerlessness.

And how are we seduced

into powerlessness?

By glamor.

That's it, keep it up.

Lovely.

Love, love, head up. Head up.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

So glamor, in my opinion,

is a coverup,

is a veil and is a sort of bait

and switch for powerlessness.

A woman's agency

is always interrupted

by the way that we

frame her as a spectacle

at the same time.

Whatever action she's doing

it's super important

to make sure that she

has a certain aesthetic

and a certain look that is

specifically sexually attractive

for a heterosexual male gaze.

Who's that girl?

Which one?

The one I was talking about?

- Yeah.

- The blond? Yeah.

You went with her?

You didn't try to f*ck her?

I try to f*ck anything,

you know that.

She didn't go with it?

No, she didn't go for it.

Naturally, she knew better.

What do you mean

she knew better?

She knew you were an animal.

She knew it was no good

if you go with her.

Her reputation will be ruined.

I thought he was talking to you,

Vicky.

- That's the same guy?

- Yes, it's the same guy.

- I gotta break his neck.

- He was over here yesterday.

- He was here yesterday?

- You missed him.

I was at the house yesterday

and he was over here.

So as usual,

we have the men in 3D space.

We have the men talking to

each other about a woman.

We have her legs fragmented.

We have her legs in slow-mo.

Same old, same old.

There is one interesting

thing though about this scene

that I want to dissect.

And that is the way

that audio is handled.

When you look at the scene,

you notice that,

Robert De Niro

is looking at Vicky

and she's far away from him.

So you think that it makes sense

that we hear Robert De Niro

and his friend talk,

but you don't hear Vicky talk

because she's far away,

but maybe not, okay?

We actually did

some research on exactly

how the scene was sh*t

and laid out the dimensions.

Here's Robert De Niro,

he's with his friend

on one side of the pool,

and here's Vicky way far away.

That's why we can't

hear her talking, right?

But maybe not, because how

come the other two guys

who are sitting exactly

right near Vicky,

we can hear them perfectly well.

And they are equidistant

from Robert De Niro.

So basically what we

have here is something

that when we watch the movie,

we would have absolutely

no awareness of this.

It infiltrates our consciousness

in a subconscious way.

And maybe that's why when

a young woman shows up

to pitch a film

to a male executive,

he just sees her mouth moving,

but he doesn't hear

a single word that she says.

Absolutely objectification

of women

impacts hiring practices.

I think for all of us

who were exposed

to sexually objectifying media,

we all be embed it a bit

in our perception

of how women should be.

It becomes this way

of dealing with women

that is primarily around

their sexual value,

that if they're attractive

to you.

And so absolutely has everything

to do with certainly how

you're treated on the job.

The challenge is that employment

discrimination in general

in the entertainment industry

is not enforced.

Coming out of film school,

we have 50/50 gender parity

and we've had that for a while

in the top us film schools,

and yet the top 250

films directed by women

back in 1998 was 9%.

And moving up to 2018,

we're down to 8%.

People are really happy

for women

to be attending film schools

50/50 at parity with men,

as long as they're paying

money into the system.

But when we move into

the professional playing field,

and we're asking the industry

to pay money out to women,

well, that's where

the doors get closed.

At the very heart of the issue

and the work that I've

been doing is title vii,

which is equal employment

opportunity law.

Hollywood has been

the worst violator of title vii

of any industry in

the United States of America.

Even worse than coal mining.

It wasn't always this way,

in fact, the very first

narrative film,

the very first use of film

to tell a story

versus just documenting

an existing event,

features a woman subject,

a woman protagonist

and was created by a woman

producer, writer, director,

Alice guy blach, in 1896.

During early Hollywood,

during the silent era,

there was a significant amount

of women

working in the new industry

that had a significant amount

of power, of artistic agency.

This is a really special

moment for women directors.

The red kimono"

by Dorothy Davenport

expresses the inner

subjective experience

of the main character,

who was forced into

prostitution.

Once the transition

to sound takes place,

wall street is brought in

because the transition

to sound has significant

financial demands

and so the masculinized culture

of wall street then begins

to structure Hollywood.

The most pressing need today

is to start the flow of capital

which turns the wheels

of industry.

Women are maneuvered

out of these positions

of artistic, creative power,

and then for 40 years

there were only two women making

feature films in Hollywood,

Dorothy arzner and ida lupino.

Go ahead and stare,

I'm not ashamed.

Go on, laugh,

get your money's worth.

Nobody is going to hurt you.

I know you want me

to tear my clothes off

so that you can look

your 50 cents worth.

50 cents for the privilege

of staring

at a girl the way your wives

won't let you.

So that you can go home

when the show is over

and strut before your

wives and sweethearts

and play at being the

stronger sex for a minute?

I'm sure they see through you

just like we do.

Dorothy arzner's

women defined themselves

and very beautifully so.

Sadly, she was a rare exception

and a male perspective

continued to control cinema

for decades.

I think the history of

Hollywood often times, you know,

has made it so that the word

director is synonymous

with a male director.

You know, that's what it

has been for many years

and still is, I think,

to this day.

I, you know, I never thought,

oh, I'm going to go to school

and be a film director.

You didn't say that back then.

Maybe I could be an editor

or a script supervisor

or some other job that

girls could do on a movie.

Never occurred to me

when I was in school,

went all the way through

and got a master's degree,

never occurred to me that

I could be a director.

No, actually I wanted

to talk to you

about dawn's project,

"real life"

it could be exactly what

Cyrus is looking for

and I was thinking we get

somebody really big to direct,

maybe penny Marshall?

What? Shut up, listen,

and learn.

Avoid women directors,

they ovulate.

By the time I started prepping

to make "daughters of the dust"

I was very much aware I was,

you know, a graduate of afi,

a graduate of ucla,

and I was very much aware of

point of view camera placement.

So I very much placed my

camera within the circle,

within the culture of women.

I wanted to depict something

that had never been seen before.

Once I saw a pink satin case

for jewelry for each woman

in a shop window.

I couldn't afford

that case for myself.

And I didn't ask nobody

to buy it for me, you know.

But in my mind I put

all those bad memories

in that case

and I locked them there.

I don't let nothing in that case

or nobody outside the case

tell me who I am

and how I should feel about me.

Yeah, in 1991, when we did,

when we were at Sundance

and I had

"daughters of the dust"

and you had "queen of diamonds,"

we were kind of like

pushed to the background,

it was like "nice job, girls.

See you later."

And all of the other

filmmakers who were there

who were male did go on

to make, you know,

many, many films after that.

I would've sworn that

by the turn of the century

that there will be 50%

of people making films

would've been women.

And due to that,

the whole way of thinking

about the image and about gender

would've been

completely transformed.

And it just seems

extraordinary thinking back,

how little progress

has actually been made.

You know, when I went to

Sundance with my first feature,

I couldn't get an agent and

I couldn't get a distributor.

You know, and I would

have male agents write me

to see the film and then they

would say, "it's not for me

or it's not what

I'm looking for."

And then you would look

at their rosters,

like this was just 2013,

you know, I would look

at their rosters

and their rosters were all male.

Then it's like "okay, well, I

know what you're looking for."

You know, what kind of

coded language is that?

There's still only 3 women

in competition out of 21 films.

And that's because the director

of the film festival said,

"we just look

for the best films.

It has nothing to do

with gender,

we just look for

the best films."

With all due respect,

this comment does not reflect

very much understanding

of the concept of diversity

and the way that the idea

of good film is created

through identification

with what is being shown,

that's how we...

I love this film,

I relate to this film

because,

because it talks to me, right?

That's how we define

what a good film is.

Burn 'em!

Put down the cellphone.

Get out of the way.

I can't get a sh*t!

So Kathryn Bigelow's film

"hurt locker,"

which was the first film

where a female ever won

best director, was a film

about men, featuring men,

watching men in action blowing

things up in slow motion.

It's also quite interesting that

every single department head

in this movie was male.

Gender is a huge factor

when you look around the sets.

Things haven't changed

that much,

I feel like

it is mostly white men

and even in my own productions

where I've funded myself,

I'd hire a white man

and he hires all white men

and I was like, "oh, did I

have to communicate with you,

like, to make it inclusive?"

There's no question that,

because so many men are

directors of photography, 95%,

the male gaze is definitely

normalized in our society.

Even when a woman is the

protagonist of a film,

she is still often

objectified and exploited.

Here's the opening scene

when we are introduced

to Carrie, who's the

protagonist of this film.

We're learning about her

as a person,

she's klutzy at sports,

you can't win a game

with her on the team.

She's bullied a bit.

You eat sh*t.

Then suddenly,

we cut to the interior

of the girls' locker room.

Slow-mo, fuzzy lighting,

naked women.

All while we have the names

of the male filmmakers

superimposed over the scene.

You have to wonder,

I mean, the last time

I was in a woman's locker room

I wasn't prancing around.

- When you see what's happening

is completely predatory.

It takes the development of

that, as bell hooks says,

oppositional gaze

to really kind of like,

not just take things

at face value

and to investigate a little

further and ask, like,

what is this communicating?

So here we get the girl

who was being bullied,

who was the subject of the story

in a completely

non-sequitur scene.

This one student told me,

"when I'm in the shower,

I'm imagining how I look.

When I'm alone in the shower."

You can't even have

an experience of your own body

without seeing your own body

from this like weird

perspective of, you know, that.

So many of the examples, I

wanted to watch and just enjoy,

the way that

they are supposed to be,

the way that they

are supposed to be fun,

the way that they are supposed

to be tantalizing or sexy.

My first reaction was to

just ingest it that way,

because that

was the easiest thing

and I had to consciously

decide to lift the veil

of my perception

and it brought up anger

and it brought up the way

my own mother taught me

to think about my body

and the way she thought

about her body.

And I'm thinking about

the way I'm being taught

to think about my body on

a minute by minute basis.

We've secured the perimeter

but I don't think we should

hold it for too much longer.

Well, in watching

the avengers movies,

even when I'm watching Scarlet

Johansson play "black widow"

and she's taking a very

active role, right?

It still makes me

feel like women,

even at their most empowered

in culture right now

are still subject to this

predatory way of looking.

We're seeing this woman

maybe as a boss,

but we are seeing, you know,

yes, details of her chest

or, you know, boobs, or butt,

or whatever.

So it is working on your

brain in a subliminal way,

like, in a subtext.

I think it does have an effect

and we all are susceptible

to this.

Communists claim to leadership

can't be upheld much longer

and if rapid change

is not forthcoming,

today's relatively calm protests

could be seen as the calm

before the storm.

I've had a pretty shitty day

so far

but it looks like

it just got worse.

Even in Patty Jenkins'

"wonder woman"

the actress almost looks

like she's walking down

a model's runaway.

It's ridiculous when you

have these wonder women,

power women,

and yet they are sh*t

and they're stylized, and

they're costumed to look like,

you know,

another post modern Barbie.

If that's all we're seeing,

it's invisible, it's the air,

you don't notice the air.

So that, it's just as likely

for a woman to reproduce

those tropes as it is for a man.

Notice bill Murray,

we get his face,

we get his feelings.

He's in 3D light.

He's having an experience,

a human experience of his own,

whereas the lead actress

is introduced

via see-through underwear,

fuzzy lighting,

fragmented body.

And one might wonder if this

is supposed to be her face.

"Bombshell" is interesting

because the content of the film

is ostensibly feminist.

It's about women who were

sexually harassed on the job.

Then they went into a

lawsuit against Roger ailes

and they actually won.

There's only one scene

where we see

sexual harassment happening

in front of the camera.

- Let me see your legs.

So let's watch how that

scene was constructed.

- It's a visual medium, Kayla.

Come on.

Higher.

Come on, higher.

That's fine, Kayla.

Needless to say this sh*t

is not from Kayla's point

of view, right?

How would you sh**t that

scene where you really felt

like we're feeling

what margot is feeling,

but not being exploitative

about it or objectifying her?

Could it have been better

if we just implied it

and stayed on her face?

I mean, that would've been

another choice

or if we showed her gaze

on the guy

and just watch her watching

him more, you know.

There could've been

other ways to do it.

As audre lord said,

"the master's tools

will never dismantle

the master's house."

We could apply that quote to

the male gaze way of filming.

When you use those tools to

reinforce, reenact, rekindle

objectifying women,

then there's a problem.

Here's another film,

in this case directed by a woman

that has been described

as feminist.

It features the objectification

of very young girls.

And while your topic

such as in "cuties"

can be about the objectification

of women and girls,

in the case of "cuties,"

you can still perpetuate

a way of sh*t design

that really appropriates

the male way of looking

and really just

regurgitates that male gaze,

even though you're a female

director.

It's important to

remember that the male gaze

onto young girls

is not a new phenomenon.

Pretty baby was nominated

for the palm d'or

at the cannes film festival.

Leon, I think I'm kind of

falling in love with you.

It's the first time

for me, you know.

How do you know it's love

if you've never been in

love before?

'Cause I feel it.

Where?

In my stomach.

The reversal of desire

with younger women

is completely...

It's ubiquitous, it's

pervasive and it's so erroneous

and it's so harmful.

I mean, you see it

time and again

in the way that, like,

courts will rule in favor

of the predator because

they'll say, you know,

"it was consensual."

This whole consensual thing,

right?

I don't know.

I don't think the 13 year-old

even knew what to consent to.

It's difficult to

think of any examples

where boys are sh*t like this.

In fact, boys are recruited

into the male gaze

at a very young age.

Hoochie mama.

What does that mean?

I don't know but it feels right.

Nice.

This right here

is a long standing

and very popular sh*t design

angle on a woman's body.

Of course, we have many

sexy male stars.

How are they sh*t?

Almost always full body and

involved in some sort of action.

In "crazy rich asians"

there's a scene

where the woman character

looks with desire

on her boyfriend.

- Hubba, hubba!

Notably, his body is full frame

and he moves into action.

Her ' e m cuarn's " roma"

there's an unusual case

of full frontal nudity

for a male actor.

And yet consistently

it's full frame on his body

and he's involved in

a m*llitary style action.

Here's even a further example

where we have an overt

sexualized object of the gaze,

men performing

in a club for women.

And yet amazingly their

bodies are not fragmented

for an extended sequence.

I do know and I've been told!

Big d*ck

ritchie got a cock of gold.

- Big d*ck ritchie

got a cock of gold.

- Now, let's give it

up for the virgin king.

- Let's give it up

for the virgin king!

- There's a kind of taboo

on the male body

being exposed

as the object of the look.

So he has to be protected by

having this energetic drive.

Ho, ho, ho, ho!

On the other hand,

the female protagonist

takes on this role of spectacle.

General anesthetic?

General anesthetic.

And the male protagonist is

often controlling the movement

of the story forward,

controlling people,

controlling the woman

and subordinating her

to his will and determination.

How's that?

Perfect.

You know, I always think

of the sleeping beauty story

where you have, you know,

the fairy tale

that we read as children.

The prince is galloping

along and he chops down

all the thorns and he

reaches the sleeping beauty.

You look back on a movie now,

like "sixteen candles"

"oh my god, that was

like a date r*pe drug."

I mean, trying

to get people drunk,

I mean, stuff that we've been

programmed to just accept

and actually not accept,

embrace, you know, emulate.

In fact, the position

of the passive object

is so deeply coded as feminine

and the passivity

of that feminine object

is seen as highly sexual,

to a point where, for

example, in this scene

from "after hours"

the sexy passive object is so

passive, she's actually dead.

I'm dead, in bed, and the

camera does go slowly down

the stream of my body.

Yeah, and I look back at

that now and just like

"wow, what was I...

It was just part of

what you did, you know?

It was part of the storytelling.

Stories about very

beautiful, unconscious women

continue to exert

a certain fascination.

I didn't realize that

as a young man,

I was, in a way, trained

to objectify women.

What I found in watching

this talk was,

if this woman is the object

and we're looking at this woman

from this lens,

we will see so many women

from that lens,

which makes us think

we can just have

whichever one we want, right?

And when that woman doesn't

have the speaking roles,

we see her, like in "raging

bull" we can't hear her talk.

So we have no idea

of her emotion.

You have no idea of

who she is as a person,

to what you were saying.

So it's like, of course I can

just objectify these women

and just use them

and do whatever I want.

Because even in the

imagery that I've seen,

I've never had to think

about how she feels

about my actions.

Harry Dean Stanton in

complete 3D lighting.

His eyes are closed.

We can hear

Natasha kinsky's voice

but we can't see her

because we're completely

in his point of view.

When he looks up, we

get to see the 2d vision

of the young woman.

If there's anything

you want to talk about,

I'll just listen, all right?

I'm a real good listener.

The way we look at films

will always change

and there will always

be a cultural moment

that may allow us to

reflect on a film's impact

in different ways.

There's a nostalgia

that is dangerous.

That when you're putting a

film in a moment of nostalgia

you are saying that

everything it says is perfect

and I think that's where

we get into trouble.

Take your clothes off.

Mooki, I already told you

it's too f*cking hot

to make love.

It's too f*cking hot? Yeah.

Why are you always cursing?

I don't f*cking curse that much.

Of course you f*cking

curse that much.

What the hell are you

talking about, mooki?

- All you do is curse.

- I do not.

Anyway, no rawness is jumping

off tonight, all right?

And that's it.

No rawness?

Mooki, come on.

I mean it. I'm not playing.

I'm not playing.

Spike Lee is, of course,

the director of this film,

as well as being the main

character and the subject.

So, controlling the

story on multiple levels.

Look, freeze, don't move,

I'll be right back, okay?

Just stay there.

Just stay there.

Freeze. Don't move.

I'll be right back.

What the hell you got me

standing on the bed for?

Where the hell are you going?

Thank god for the neck.

Thank god for the knee caps.

Thank god for elbows.

Thank god for thighs.

Thank god for the right nipple

thank god for the left nipple.

It feels good.

Ah, you likes

you likes you likes.

In this clip, first

of all, you, of course,

have the male voice

describing the female body

while she's silent.

But there's another interesting

aspect to this clip.

The beginning of the scene,

spike Lee is trying

to convince this woman

to have sex with him and she's

pretty strong in saying no,

but by the time we get

to the end of the scene,

she's decided to agree.

And she appears

at the end of the scene

to be actually very happy

that she said, yes.

This kind of scene

where a woman says no,

and the man insists and

then in the end she's happy,

this kind of scene we could

make a 10 hour lecture,

just going from one example

to another,

showing kazillion examples of

where that kind of behavior

is normalized

and even celebrated.

And this too

is a very important reason

why we have an epidemic of

sexual abuse and sexual as*ault.

The sudden change in

music tells us exactly

how we're supposed to

feel about this scene.

Music is a super important

element of every film,

but only 5% of film composers

are women.

Will you kiss me?

Did you hear me?

"365 days" was one of

the top watched films

in 2020 on Netflix and they

are now making 2 sequels.

Excuse me, miss.

Shut up. Shut up.

Shut up. Shut up.

Shut up!

You're hurting me.

Shut your mouth

or I'll really hurt you.

Remember you promised me

you'd come back.

I promise.

I just want you to know

I think

you're the sweetest guy

in the world

and the most handsome.

This kind of scene

certainly contributed

to Yale fraternity men shouting

this in front of a woman's dorm.

The challenge with media

images around sexual as*ault

and around r*pe culture and

around how women are portrayed,

is that it normalizes

those types of behaviors

and so what people absorb

is through those images,

then they absorb those

behaviors as normal,

which then translates

to how they treat people

in the actual world.

Extensive research

over decades has shown

that after watching

sexually objectifying media,

men are more likely to

engage in sexual harassment

and abuse.

If you have systems

of representation

that always subjugate

certain people and frame them

and sh**t them and always

makes them the objects

of the gaze rather than

self acting agents,

you're more likely to have

a culture that is susceptible

to r*pe myths.

The male protagonist is the

subject, he is not the object,

he's the hero,

he's who we revere.

That's very hard

to dislodge then,

when you're faced with a

woman telling her truth

and her story.

80% of the entertainment

media content

that is distributed around the

world is made in Hollywood.

These images are coming

from an industry

that is built

on power imbalances,

which results in sexual

harassment and abuse

in the work place.

And the cycle

goes round and round.

One of the people

who was involved with the studio

asked to meet me for dinner.

He was like,

"you could play her roles,

you'll be like the next one."

And I'm thinking, yeah, he's

right. I could be like that.

And I do, I love her.

She's great.

But you know, he was like,

but you have to do this.

I was just thinking like,

"oh, I can't wait to get home.

I wish I hadn't had talked

to this guy tonight"

because I couldn't

see it ending well.

He was still talking

the whole way

and he was getting more and

more agitated as we drove

because I was still just

politely declining his offer.

And he said, "I want you to

take a nude jacuzzi with me.

Can you just come right

now and take this?"

This is ridiculous.

I started to get out of the car

and he reached across me

and palmed the window

on my side and put it,

and blocked me with his arm.

And he said, "look, I can help

you or I can f*ck you up!"

Through the me too movement,

we know that 94%

think about it,

94% of women in Hollywood,

whether they're actresses

or behind the camera

experienced sexual harassment

or as*ault.

Because people think

the entertainment industry

is magical,

they don't remember

that these are workers,

that these are actual human

beings who are on your screen.

The thought pattern

or the assumption

that the actor's body

is fair play,

both within the role

and outside of the role,

has been part of, you know,

sort of the industry's mindset.

It absolutely was that

if an actor said no,

in any way shape or form,

they were absolutely considered

a troublemaker, certainly,

and they would absolutely

be in fear of their job.

They were disposable.

Yeah, Lara are you there?

I'm just sitting here,

hoping to hear from you.

I don't care if it's three

o'clock in the morning.

I can't imagine

what would be so important

to cause you

to do that to yourself.

Please think very seriously

and call me tonight

because I think we can fix this.

If we can get you back

to work in time

to not have it destroy

your life.

So that is the message I

came home to back in 1989

after refusing to do a sex

scene that was not in my script.

And it basically, effectively,

ended my acting career.

Exactly what she said.

I think there's always

gonna be a power dynamic

with people on set

unconsciously,

whether they wanna verbalize

it or not, intellectually

and I feel it

and I've experienced it.

I've been in a couple

of situations

where I'm like trying

to improvise

and someone, the director,

chimes in and says,

"okay, now get down

on your knees

and give this man a blowjob."

Which is like non-consensual,

they didn't talk

to my representatives,

they didn't talk to me

and so I'm like a deer

in the headlights,

that's like pressure,

that's like,

the crew is watching,

what are you gonna say?

Cry and go like,

"please don't make me do this?"

This problem is not

limited to Hollywood.

La seydoux, star of

"blue is the warmest color"

said that the excessive hours

spent naked filming sex scenes

was humiliating and left her

feeling like a prost*tute.

The film won

the top prize at cannes.

Maybe that's why

in his next films,

the "mektoub, my love" series,

which premiered

at the prestigious

venice international

film festival,

director kechiche

felt empowered to use

even more coercive methods

on set.

Reportedly including the

very heavy use of alcohol

in order to obtain his

unsimulated sex scenes.

And then the statements

from directors

saying "oh, I wanted to

get an authentic reaction

from somebody."

Well, that's not the

realm of make believe,

that isn't the realm of drama.

That's the realm of actually

choosing to as*ault somebody

for the sake of art,

or in the name of art.

How is r*pe culture normalized?

- Its ok, don't mind me,

keep on going.

There are really

three key elements

that we see on the

screen and in real life.

One is the objectification

of women's bodies,

another is the glamorization

of sexual as*ault,

especially on the screen.

And the third is disregard

for women's rights and safety.

Even if a hand is not

laid on another person,

these are all of the elements

that create an environment

that allows one group to

gain and maintain power

over another.

I look back at my encounter

with Harvey weinstein

at the Beverly Hills hotel.

He was in his white bath robe

and he wanted me to...

His penis was coming out

of his robe

and he wanted a massage.

I was like no,

but I'll get you a masseuse

and heart racing,

how do I get out of here?

And he says I'm making

a very big mistake,

"you're making

a very big mistake."

And I said

"I'll never be that girl."

The me too movement

spoke out loud about

what so many of us

had experienced privately.

In my own fiction films I often

tried to express cinematically

how it really feels

to be a sexualized object.

"Magdalena viraga"

was my first feature film,

which I made

at the ucla film school.

It stars my own sister, actress,

and long time collaborator,

tinka menkes.

This is one of 5 films

we made together.

Here, she's playing a

highly alienated prost*tute.

The issues that

we are talking about,

they are not just, you know,

the images that we see

in films,

you know, they are not just

who's behind the camera.

The issue is also

in this larger context

of who decides what gets seen.

You know, we have mostly

men making decisions

around what gets distributed.

It's what gets out into the

world is curated by a male gaze.

- Hello, handsome.

Even in this Sci-Fi

vision of the future,

we get the same old

male subject,

sexualized female object

once again.

- You look lonely.

I can fix that.

This cinematic visual language

which surrounds us on all sides

can really feel like the bedrock

language of r*pe culture.

In fact, the name of the female

lead character in this film,

played by Ana de armas, is joy.

But they spelled it

interestingly, j-o-i.

In p*rn culture, j-o-i stands

for jerk off instructions.

So just think how women feel

when they go see this film,

then they hear about all

the academy award nominations

that it's getting or got.

- It's this horrible cycle

that Hollywood has,

because it takes in what the

population has that's toxic

and then it feeds it right back,

which then energizes it

and brings it right back.

So there is this

circle of v*olence.

This is all connected,

it's all connected.

- One key principle of feminism

was that the female body

was a sight of struggle.

But, it shifted to

realizing that the image

of the female body was

also a sight of struggle.

The image does not

refer to women.

This image is being

appropriated and produced

by male consciousness.

All of these techniques,

they're definitely deliberate.

We don't know if they're

conscious or unconscious,

but they're deliberate.

Deliberate decisions.

Someone made a decision

how to sh**t that person.

It's worth taking a moment

to consider

that the objectifying

camera techniques

we've been discussing

can also sometimes be seen

in other types

of very telling contexts.

For example,

in "silence of the lambs"

the character buffalo bill

is in the masculine zone

with the goggles as the m*rder*r

with Jodie foster as

the object of his gaze.

But, when he is

feminizing himself,

when he's in the

so called feminine position,

he is sh*t just like a woman.

- Watching the scene

with buffalo bill

when you have this almost

deformation of self

to uphold this white male

gaze behind the camera,

it was the internalized sexism

and internalized misogyny

that was showing up in that

space for that character.

It's not only for cis women,

but also trans folks

and other folks

who don't fit the boundaries.

As I was re-watching the scene

and just remembering

how much trauma has been

caused by a scene like that.

So I'm gonna show you a film now

that is not an a list movie.

In fact, it's probably an f.

It's been called r*cist trash

by Roger ebert.

And I would agree with that.

But I'd like to take a look

at the scene today,

as it's quite relevant

for our analysis.

We have a white plantation owner

who calls a black sl*ve

to come to her room.

She informs him that if

he doesn't have sex with her,

that she will report him

as a r*pist,

which would be

a death sentence for him.

So basically she's raping him.

The camera pans up

from a fragmented body part.

Notice who's wearing the clothes

and who is being undressed.

The woman is in control of

the scene on many levels.

-Ah, ah!

And finally we get

a long sexy body pan.

The reason I've included

this clip as cringe worthy

as it is,

is I feel it's the exception

that proves the rule.

And when we're talking

about these scenes,

they're not really about sex.

They're about power and the

person who is sh*t like this

is not empowered.

So the example

of "mandingo" shows that

sh*t design

systematically perpetuates

these power dynamics that

exist within our society.

So in that film you see

the same like sweeping pans

of his body,

the fragments of him.

The true essence of like

what we're talking about here

has to do with power.

And commodification of bodies

and how bodies relate

to each other in terms of power.

When you have,

as foucault says, webs,

webs of ideology

and they are all interlocking

and they're all reinforcing

a certain way of looking

and a certain way of experience

that you're locked out of,

it takes a lot of strength

to say,

"I don't see things this way

and I'm going to create

something that is different."

The sexual predators

in amirpour's film

meet a very unexpected avenger.

There's a saying that

people say that if people

were to get rid of all

the sexual predators

that there would be

no film industry.

And they would have to

start from the ground up

and they laugh about it.

They're like,

"haha you know, we would have

to start from scratch."

And I'm like,

then let's f*cking start

from scratch.

You have to build your own house

and you need your own

tools to build your house,

and your tools are your

creativity, your work,

your work ethic and your ability

to produce above and beyond

what someone else is

clamoring for, let's say.

Women directors often

depict their characters

as full on subjects with

their own intense desires.

Nature, nature, I am your bride.

Take me.

Dunye's "watermelon woman"

makes the close ups so close

that we feel the

sensation of the experience

and we are blocked from

gazing in the traditional way.

Without question, throughout

the history of cinema,

sex scenes have been sh*t with

the male gaze appropriating

and objectifying women's bodies.

If that's what we do

then there's a lack

of imagination

that we'll have to make up

for ourselves.

In this scene, Gus Van sant

sh**t male and female bodies

very equally.

Van sant may have been

influenced

by Agnes varda's film,

"happiness."

In my own film, "phantom love"

the sex scene tries to

focus on the woman's psychic

internal experience.

For tarkovsky lovers,

you'll notice my homage.

I think of this poem

by Gwendolyn Brooks that,

it's "still do I keep

my look, my identity."

And she talks about how

each body has its art

and how they're like, whether

they're in a state of abject

whatever, or they're

in an exalted state,

they still maintain this

intrinsic human quality

within them.

In "Juniper tree"

nietzchka keene focuses on

the inner life

of her characters.

People often feel, you know,

I should be freed

from all those things that

are unconsciously soaked

into our own mind.

Those emotions are always

accumulated somewhere hidden,

so that's the part which

is anger or, you know,

the sadness or dissatisfaction,

all these emotions are,

I imagine, like cooking,

these things are ingredients

of your meal.

So you chop, you know, you cook,

you do all these things,

but, by the end, you'd like

to get some nice dish.

So it's a transformation

of this raw material.

Which has lots of

creative energy in there.

Ugh!

Films about female rage

have been made by women

for many, many generations.

So there's a history,

there's a legacy,

but today there's something

very different in the climate,

social, political climate

that is connected

to mainstream media.

And so, it's a really

unique moment for filmmakers

for women filmmakers

who are interested

in taking on these issues.

What are you doing? It's okay.

What are you doing?

What are you doing?

Hey, I said what are you doing?

When it comes to money and

when it comes to opportunity,

things don't change

unless you force change.

My having been able to take

this issue to the aclu,

who began their campaign

for women directors in 2014,

and the eeoc, equal employment

opportunity commission,

that began

their investigation in 2015,

attacking the pocketbooks

of the studios for violation

of title 7, which is equal

employment opportunity law.

So right now, in 2021

we are beginning to see

the results of this action.

In a historic sign

of real change,

Chloe zhao, a woman of color,

won the academy award

for best picture

and best director.

Hey, find anything interesting?

Rocks!

Her film features

the perspective

of a woman in her 605.

What does desire look like

when it's not about subject

and object?

I think we're in a process

of discovery, you know.

Each of us obviously is

in a process of discovery

for ourselves in our own lives.

So now as a filmmaker,

as a non-binary filmmaker,

I'm asking myself,

where does the camera go?

These questions

that you're asking,

well, where does the camera go?

And who am I looking at?

Am I showing how

it feels to be looked at?

And am I showing

how it feels to see

while I'm being looked at?

What is the heroine's journey?

"Portrait of a lady on fire"

is concerned with the issue

of subject and object

in the case of two women

who seem to desire

each other equally.

Here we get the question

of, what is a subject,

what is an object?

And how does the object

find a way of becoming,

discovering their own

subjectivity,

having their own subjectivity

and becoming a subject,

which changes the power dynamic.

In my own films,

working with tinka,

she often broke through

the 4th wall

and confronted the camera,

claiming her own

subjective perception

of both herself and the world.

Would you like a ride?

Whether you're

a heterosexual man

or you're a woman or

you're anything in between

or on the sides or whatever,

you know, how do I

actually experience desire?

How do I actually experience

my day?

You know, because we've

been taught, what is time?

What is sex?

What is a man? What is a woman?

We've been taught

all these things

and if we just accept it,

we're trapped in the

collective consciousness

which tends to be on

a kind of low level.

What happens if you try

to listen inward,

if you try to tune in on

a very, very, very delicate

and quiet way to what

you're actually experiencing

and what would be actually

the true expression

of that experience as

translated into a sh*t.