The Delusion of Hollywood's "Women's Films"

Abstract

The Hollywood season of 1977-1978 was ballyhooed as the year of the woman. At one extreme the phrase reflected a press agent's misguided optimism; at another extreme it represented capitalist exploitation of both current social issues and an oppressed class of people. Regardless, three films which demonstrate American commercial cinema's reaction to women's issues-Julia, The Turning Point, and An Unmarried Woman-tend to be superficial, reductive, and (at times) reactionary. Because these films, for the most part, rely upon standard Hollywood patterns and modes of depiction, they ultimately demean and make trivial the issues they claim to champion. Julia, The Turning Point, and An Unmarried Woman have in common a purported interest in strong female characters with close woman friends. Julia is the story of Lillian Hellman and her friend Julia. The Turning Point concerns the relationship between Emma and Deedee, two women friends whose dancing careers diverged some years before we see them meet again. In An Unmarried Woman, Erica shares the experience of her divorce with a group of friends who meet regularly as a kind of consciousness-raising group. The friendships formed by the women characters are intended to be the focus of each of these movies. In fact, press releases and advertisements urged us to see them on this account, and sought to persuade us that we would see extraordinarily profound relationships among the female characters. Unfortunately, such relationships do not develop in these movies. To create a sense of profound friendship in film, the film makers must commit themselves to substance. Friendship is not simply a label; the mere statement of friendship cannot convince or affect an audience. The notion of friendship describes a relationship between people within the context of their shared experience. Therefore, for us to accept the friendship posited on screen, the shared experience of the characters must be significant. Whatever issues may surround the characters, the film scripts and the cinematic treatment must respect those issues by giving them full and honest treatment. Simplistic cinematic creation of an idea or issue-the mere flashing of an image upon the screen-reduces the films' concerns to the level of commercial advertising. Television and billboard advertising, for example, use a kind of catchword imagery more conducive to mindless reaction than to thought and understanding. The image of the woman on the Black Velvet billboards tells men that if we drink the product we will get sex with a beautiful and submissive partner. The ad, obviously, does not want us to consider whether we like this partner or not, whether we like whiskey better than vodka, or whether we like using alcohol to promote human relationships. It only wants us to link its whiskey with the extremely powerful idea, sex. The ad provides no context or social environment for the woman and her bottle of whiskey because it is really a device for limiting our perceptions and understanding, instead of expanding them. The ad encourages us to buy, not to think. Television creates ideas in similar ways. It may introduce a black character into Archie Bunker's life, or it may-briefly-show two women dancing together in an adult-time movie, but in the former case it does not want us to consider the black experience in a racist world, nor in the latter case does it want us to consider homosexuality. The idea is not to consider anything at all beyond the limited reaction of black or lesbian.