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Author:
Jessica Silver-Greenberg
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Jessica Silver-Greenberg is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com. She has written previously for The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, Newsweek, and Pacifica Radio's WBAI. Silver-Greenberg has a degree in literature and American studies from Princeton University.
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Jessica left the safe sanctuary of Princeton University to join a different sanctuary, a tight knit group of sometimes surly, always feisty Poles in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Her Jewish parents are still wondering why she went back to Brooklyn after they worked so hard to leave it. Currently, she works as an investigator at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem. You might be able to spot her by her reddish hair and her cowboy boots, which she religiously wears.
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Author:
A.J. Strasser
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A graduate of the New York Film Academy, AJ has completed several short films, none his magnum opus, just yet. He currently freelances as an ad director for an emerging film festival on the Jersey Shore.
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AJ Strasser left investment banking with a flourish to work in advertising, tossing away a hefty wallet and a white loafer for a regained sense of dignity. Most of his former colleagues still wonder where the guy with the long hair went. And so now he does what he loves freelancing as an ad director for an emerging film festival on the Jersey Shore. He considers breakfast to be the fourth estate.
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WHY US?
This article started as a conversation, one of those that could explode into an argument at any moment, a tight-rope talk. We were grappling with a single question: what does an organization dedicated to women in film imply about our society? Before we could delve into other articles that hit on the absence of female directors, the portrayal of women in cinema, the brilliant actresses gracing the stage, or any other topic that struck our fancy, we needed to get at, even if it was a little Meta, why an article like this needed to exist in the first place. Why a special place devoted to women in film?
Clearly other stations and sectors have responded to this need. On any given night, you can watch Oxygen or Lifetime Television for Women, chock full of programming made just for gals. This phenomena leaks to other domains - not surprisingly, in sports, we have the WNBA insinuating that women have their share of a previously male arena, let's say, a league of their own.
The last time we checked, women made up 50% of the population, and they are certainly not a downtrodden group with the newspapers broadcasting new fangled statistics about how women excel at higher rates in academia then men.
| Jessi:
| Hold on, I agreed with you up to this point, but I don't know about that last part. Come on AJ, you point to quantitative equality to prove qualitative equality. Yes, women make up 50% of the population, but they are not viewed as equals by the institutionalized point of view of the other 50%. In all those new fangled articles there is a marked undertone of shock and dare I say, awe that women are achieving at equal rates to men. Newspapers feature these figures to contain them, relegating that achievement to the trend sections as if talking about scrunchies or antidepressants for Beagles.
| AJ:
| Look, I agree with you. But what are you really upset about? That newspapers are picking up on the fact that women are now high achievers? Whether or not you think it should be novel and newsworthy, it is new that women are now excelling at higher rates than men.
These niche markets for women suggest that the standard is masculine. That, in order to find any programming that actually caters to women, there needs to be a gated little market, a secluded garden of feminine programming, maybe even mystique, where women become the subject and standard.
| A.J:
| But I look at that as a privilege. There is special programming made only for women - it's accommodating. I like the fact that when I go to the department store there is a men's cosmetic counter distinguishing me from the typical shopper.
| Jessi:
| Typical? By which you mean women? That's a cheap comparison. A specialized market in film is not like the men's counter at Clinique. I see it as a signal, a siren that the standard of programming is considered to be masculine, filled with male directors, male DP's, and largely all the meaty roles cloistered off in the men's-only section. It's by definition and by relegation programming with the "importante" or "significant" content drained straight out of it.
| AJ:
| That's so self-loathing. Women get offended when they are singled out for having feminine qualities. When I'm called masculine, I take it as a compliment.
| Jessi:
| Well, I don't like being called feminine because it's basically synonymous with being called weak or irrational.
We just saw The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep refuses to don those typically feminine qualities. She did a phenomenal job breathing life and certainly dimension into the role, and at the same time didn't succumb to the allegory of bitchy boss. And the movie did a great job in not debasing the fashion world as merely superficial. In that sense, it's a victory because the film puts a lot of stock in fashion and the women who control it, depicting them as purveyors of culture, and revealing that it has just as much influence as say, banking or law.
| AJ:
| Maybe women need to think more along those lines, completely stepping outside that box that men have architected for themselves. Why should women have to strive simply to oust the kings? What they need to do is set up a new kingdom entirely.
| Jessi:
| In order to get that new kingdom - which trust me I want - women need to make seats for themselves in the existing one, infiltrate it. In order to achieve valued change, women have to continue to get in that door, and maybe achieving that threshold break has required an ugliness, a bitchiness, a crudeness, and maybe even a couple of shoulder pads but if it's for an ultimate goal of change, I think it's justified.
| AJ:
| I agree with you on that. But I can tell you that I have encountered so many women who just want to oust the men, and it's an ugly process. It creates a battle that isn't creative, and no longer about value, but solely about position. I want to see women gain true equality just as much as anybody. Women just need to be mindful of what that true equality is going to look like, beyond mimicking men and usurping the already established positions of power, and actually redefining the positions that they want, independent of men.
Miranda Priestly, the Streep character, is a martyr for that true equality and her bitchiness is her currency to achieve the power that should naturally be hers. But for now Miranda Priestly is still deemed the devil for being a driven, uncompromising, hard-assed bitch intent on success at all costs, familial or otherwise. That's the "double entendre" of the title.
| Jessi:
| See, a man in the same role, with those very same qualities would be praised as a genius. He would be called a leader, better yet, a visionary. And no one would care whether his kids never saw him and his family crumbled. The same qualities praised in men, are condemned in women.
| AJ:
| First of all, I disagree, we do care when men abandon their kids, it simply wouldn't make for interesting cinema because it's unfortunately a story that happens all too often and we don''t like it any more than you do. We may not condemn a guy for those traits that we abhor in Miranda, but we wouldn't memorialize him either. And that is the point that you're missing. It is not interesting to us when another guy is driven and uncompromising. Isn't it the purpose of film to point out when something is diverting and fascinating? Like in this case a driven, not often seen, career woman? Jessi, are you upset about film or the life that film reflects?
In Devil, there's scarcely a strong heterosexual man for miles. Those men that do appear in the film, like Miranda Priestly's beleaguered husband, are pretty disappointed with these powerful women and the damage left in the wake. Later in the film when the husband leaves, we are not shocked. The audience is moved to jot it down as the inevitable consequences of dealing with the career woman. His plight is accepted, and his flight justified.
It was Meryl Streep who made a comparable, yet infamous flight in Kramer vs. Kramer, where she was positioned as wrong, even vilified for leaving her husband and family. In fact, Dustin Hoffman asks her as the elevator doors shut on her contorted face, how she could possibly leave her child and husband. The elevator closes and carries away a monster, one whose flight is not justified.
| AJ:
| Wait! But the elevator doesn't carry away a monster at all: she's crying and heartbroken. She is not vilified at the beginning of the film. We recognize that her decision is intelligent. And Dustin Hoffman's character as an absent father and husband is made very clear in the film from the outset.
| Jessi:
| Yes, I agree Dustin Hoffman is shown to be a bad father and husband initially, but quickly rewarded for cooking French toast and reading to his son. We make him a hero, without ever realizing that when Streep was caring for her son, we thought it commonplace and certainly not worthy of Oscar praise.
25 years later, Meryl Streep has certainly achieved the level of professional autonomy that the character in Kramer desired. She has left home and found a career, and now in Devil, we are seeing the consequences of Meryl's delicate flight. She has achieved a soaring level of professional success but at what price? She is undeniably a bitch -signaling perhaps that now, while we might afford women a longer leash from the home and hearth, we still believe that that professional success exacts a toll from women nonetheless, morphing them into ugly and unforgiving people.
| Jessi:
| I went to school with a troupe of men who had all been suckled on the vocabulary of the feminist movement. They all claimed that they wanted a successful, smart, ambitious woman as their wife. But when put to the task, when that language was tested, they didn't want to make the sacrifices necessary to enable that career. I had a boyfriend who wanted me to be a writer, but wouldn't make any moves to facilitate that. He liked it as long as it didn't threaten his career.
| AJ:
| I think you're judging us by our worst specimens, but - I think you're right; there is a real difference here, and a necessary definition. There is a difference between support and sacrifices which can let the change in, let it thrive. It's so easy for a guy in 2006 to use all the right words to say that he supports a women's career. Men need to stop priding themselves on their ability to "support" their wives - that was novel a quarter century ago. Today, the progressive male needs to be making actual sacrifices to usher in equality. He needs to go far beyond the mere recognition that his wife deserves an equal footing - in 2006 that is neither profound nor worthy of cinema.
If Kramer taught us that a woman craves a professional outlet, Devil seems to warn us of the consequences when women try to pursue that very outlet.
In Devil, we may even be intrigued by Meryl's power and her dynamism. We have a stronger stomach 25 years later for a women in a professional context, and are even enamored by her, but we still believe at the end of the entire ordeal that in order to achieve that level of eccentricity, she has to be a grand dame bitch, and deal with the heart wrenching consequences of losing her husband and neglecting her children. We might watch her brilliant ascent, but it's clear that the ascent came with a real sacrifice - a sacrifice that extends beyond the lonesome husband and neglected child but one that alters the woman herself into a miserable story of underlying guilt and bittersweet success.
It's interesting that in Kramer, we leave Streep sympathetically. Her character - full of undulations and surprises - contains a real complexity and honesty. At that moment, her professional ambitions are still tenuous, immature almost, and delicate. Yet once Meryl achieves those professional goals, as epitomized in Devil, her character becomes far more one dimensional, flatter - with all the complexity drained out during those long hours at the office. She is a caricature, and is unarguably even to the most pardoning of audiences defined by her bitchiness.
It's precisely Meryl Streep's vibrant bitchiness that makes the entire film so noteworthy. The story still ends with an underlying message only representative of a "niche" demographic. Despite all our protestations, and statements about the equality between men and women, films like Devil strikingly reveal that women, placed in the same position as men, have to work harder, push longer and strive further to achieve the same level of success - same position - and yet, a unique level of effort for the same result. The equation of female success still remains tilted toward a male dynamic where women have to be - gasp, bitchy - in order to achieve what they want. And so, their struggle remains exceptional, and must be treated with a cautious eye - like the eye of Women in Film - an eye that recognizes that struggle. We must continue to be reminded that the woman is in fact still different to her male counterpart no matter how many CEO recliners she has enthroned herself upon. And it is film's obligation to continue to note the "exceptionalism" of her plight. Both Kramer and Devil
If Kramer was the start of visualizing professional ambition as it snuck in stealth through that 70's Manhattan apartment, then Devil reveals that ambition in full, reeking Channel bloom. But the problem is that the middle, the struggle and sacrifice that women experience in the interim - the stuff of bitchiness and bravado - isn't visualized. What we miss between these two films is any depiction of Meryl's first struggles once in the professional world. We see her as baby, and then as bitch. But nothing in between. And if we can't visualize the painstaking process where the first Faustian bargain between family and career is struck and signed in blood, then we can't ultimately sympathize with professional women. They become cartoons, and cartoons give birth to easy dismissal - this time from men and women alike. Just last month, Forbes ran a column warning well-meaning men from pursuing those persnickety career gals. Until we make films that truly visualize the struggle of women mounting their own Rocky Balboa staircase to success, those articles will continue to roll out, and women will remain one dimensional in film.
And that struggle as we noted is exceptional, it is eccentric, because guess what, it is harder for women to succeed - even now, and that is precisely what makes our Women in Film as necessary as ever. | AJ:
| Point to the undeniable truth that some semblance of that plight is currently shown on those glittering silver screens. But the work of visualization is far from finished. That works. | Jessi:
| That works for me too. |
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