Posts tagged film

feministfilm:

clambistrooooooo:

Man, am I ever sick and tired of Joss Whedon. 

In so many of the blogs I read, time and again I see reams of words paying tribute to Joss Whedon’s status as a righteous feminist, because he manages to write reasonably three-dimensional female characters. (Natasha Simmons’ Reconsidering the feminism of Joss Whedon is worth reading.)

When Whedon imagined a hypothetical interviewer’s asking him “So, why do you write these strong women characters?”, his imagined answer was “Because you’re still asking me that question”. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen this excerpted and quoted on Tumblr, every time with a zillion notes.

A more impressive actual feminist response might have been “Because I’m a white guy and we write the bulk of the content in Hollywood, as it’s nearly impossible for women - not to mention women of colour - to sell a screenplay.”

Now, we have to work with what we’ve got: I appreciate that given male screenwriters and directors are in the majority, we should commend those who create good female characters (James Cameron is a tired example from the Clam Bistro hall of fame), but not at the expense of actual female filmmakers.

You do not see the same amount of column or blog space devoted to the work of female filmmakers who are working right now, like Kelly Reichardt, Dee Rees, Zoe Kazan, or Sarah Polley. Instead of rehashing the same old Buffy discussion, why don’t more people write about Leigh Brackett? Why don’t more people know about Leigh Brackett? Why not read FeministFilm instead of AintItCoolNews??

I swear I planned to reblog this before I saw the shouts. But !!

(Source: clambistro)