Culture

In 1980, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert hosted a special edition of their Sneak Previews PBS show, and used the opportunity to decry an emerging “Women in Danger” genre of horror thrillers:

It’s important to note that this was only the opening salvo of exploitation horror. New technology, changes in distribution, the continuing emergence of independent filmmaking, and a host of other factors lead to a glut of popular yet despised horror films. The dominant sub-genre of these films was the Slasher film, but Siskel and Ebert were talking about this so early in the process that the much maligned sub-genre hadn’t even been named yet. There is something prescient about the two film critics putting this episode together when they did. The heyday of the slasher was only beginning and would last another three years before it even started to subside.

Indeed, it must have been more than a little odd to have been present while all of this was happening. I actually like slasher movies and have watched a lot of them during my annual Six Weeks of Halloween horror movie marathon, but even I would probably have had a different reaction back in 1980. Apparently one of the things that prompted Siskel and Ebert to dedicate a show to the behavior of the crowd during the film I Spit On Your Grave, as they shouted and cheered the rape sequences in the film. That has to be a disturbing way to watch a movie. But with time and perspective, things have changed a bit.

Enter Carol Clover, a Professor at UC Berkely, who wrote several essays on horror films that have since been collected in the book Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film:

This book began in 1985 when a friend dared me to go see The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I was familiar with the horror classics and with stylish or “quality” horror (Hitchcock, De Palma, and the like), but exploitation horror I had assiduously avoided. Seeing Texas was a jolting experience in more ways than one. (Page 19)

Alerted to the genre, she started to explore territory she had avoided, and “against all odds” she has “ended up something of a fan”. She certainly doesn’t go too easy on the genre, and in many ways, her critiques mirror Siskel and Ebert’s, but perhaps with the perspective of time, she has also found value in these films, and she did so at a time when they were universally reviled and never given much of a thought. Her essay on slasher films first appeared in 1987 (just as the genre was in its final death throes) and was revised in this book in 1992, and immediately changed the landscape. In this essay, Clover coins the term “Final Girl”, and notes that even if audiences identify with or cheer on the killer early in the film, they always experience a reversal as the Final Girl fights back. Reading this now, it seems odd that anyone would be surprised that a male viewer could relate to a female protagonist, but this was apparently a surprising thing that people were still working through. As Erich Kuersten notes: “I wasn’t afraid for girls, or of girls, I was afraid through girls.”

Again, the fact that Clover finds value here does not mean she’s blind to the issues with slasher films, but she also thinks its worth discussing:

One is deeply reluctant to make progressive claims for a body of cinema as spectacularly nasty toward women as the slasher film is, but the fact is that the slasher does, in its own perverse way and for better or worse, constitute a visible adjustment in the terms of gender representation. (Page 64)

Clover’s slasher essay shines a light on a reviled sub-genre, and is clearly the centerpiece of the book, but there are several other chapters, all filled with similarly insightful looks at various sub-genres of horror. In one, she tackles occult films, with a focus on possession films like The Exorcist, and contrasts with the slasher:

It is in comparison with the slasher film that the occult film (above all the possession film) comes into full focus. Both subgenres have as their business to reimagine gender. But where the slasher concerns itself, through the figure of the Final Girl, with the rezoning of the feminine into territories traditionally occupied by the masculine, the occult concerns itself, through the figure of the male-in-crisis, with a shift in the opposite direction: rezoning the masculine into territories traditionally occupied by the feminine. (Page 107)

I don’t always buy into all of this, but then, I came of age when all these films were playing on cable. I grew up with strong Final Girls, so the notion that “strength” would ever be “gendered masculine” seems a little silly to me, but perhaps 30-40 years ago, that was not the case (and vice versa for the male-in-crisis movies). I probably never would have used the same terminology or articulated in the same way, but I’ve clearly internalized these notions.

There is a chapter on Rape Revenge films, which I am actually not very well versed in (because I was reading this, I watched I Spit On Your Grave this year), but which makes a fair amount of sense. It’s easy to see why these movies are controversial, especially something like I Spit, but Clover manages to find value in these films (one of which includes the all male Deliverance) and makes all sorts of clever observations about commonalities in the genre (in particular, there isn’t just a male/female dichotomy in these films, but also a city/country or sophisticated/redneck component to the rape and revenge). Finally, there is a chapter on “The Eye of Horror”, which spends a lot of time looking at perspective shots and “gazes.”

It’s a fascinating book, filled with interesting observations and a motivated perspective. There are certainly nits to pick (for instance, at one point, she claims that Werewolf stories are about a fear of being eaten by an animal, which I guess is there, but the real fear is becoming a werewolf yourself, losing control, being overwhelmed by your animal desires, etc… The enemy within, and all that…) and I don’t always agree with what she’s asserting, especially when she starts down the rabbit hole of Freudian analysis and some of the broader topics like “gazes” and “rape culture” and so on. I could quibble with some of her key films in each chapter (she perhaps overestimates The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and its impact on the genre, though it’s clearly a great example for Clover’s thesis) and the notion of closely observing a few films and extrapolating that into an entire sub-genre will always cause some dissonance, but Clover clearly did her homework and has seen not only the famous horror movies, but also her fair share of obscure ones. Like the Bechdel Test, the perspective here is narrowed to gender, which of course, isn’t the only perspective to have while watching movies. Also like the Bechdel test*, there’s this notion that you have to take individual examples of something and treat it as a representative of a much broader trend. This doesn’t make these analyses any less interesting though!

When you look at Siskel and Ebert’s response to these films, then Clover’s response (years later and with some unique perspectives), it’s easy to see how much we inform our reactions to film ourselves. Siskel and Ebert saw only misogyny, which is not entirely incorrect, but Clover looked at the films differently and managed to find value. I think a lot of people would find both analyses absurd, and they wouldn’t be entirely wrong about that either. People often complain that critics never represent the mainstream, perhaps because the mainstream never really concerns itself with context or perspective. They’re looking to be entertained for a few hours on a Friday night, not discuss the reversal of gender politics or other such high-minded affairs. In the end, a book like Men, Women, and Chain Saws probably says just as much about Carol Clover as it does about the films themselves. You see what you want to see in movies, and while that can be interesting, that’s not always the whole story.

To a remarkable extent, horror has come to seem to me not only the form that most obviously trades in the repressed, but itself the repressed of mainstream filmmaking. When I see an Oscar-winning film like The Accused or the artful Alien and its blockbuster sequel Aliens, or, more recently, Sleeping with the Enemy and Silence of the Lambs, and even Thelma and Luise, I cannot help thinking of all the low-budget, often harsh and awkward but sometimes deeply energetic films that preceded them by a decade or more – films that said it all, and in flatter terms, and on a shoestring. If mainstream film detains us with niceties of plot, character, motivation, cinematography, pacing, acting, and the like, low or exploitation horror operates at the bottom line, and in so doing reminds us that every movie has a bottom line, no matter how covert or mystified or sublimated it may be. (Page 20)

* Interestingly, horror movies tend to pass the Bechdel test at a much higher rate than most other genres (just shy of 70% pass the test, as compared to stuff like Westerns or Film Noir, where it’s more like 25%). This says nothing about the quality of the films or their feminist properties, but it’s an interesting note…

For the uninitiated, the Bechdel Test is meant to gauge the presence of female characters in film. In order to pass the test, a film must meet three requirements:

1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man

The test is named after Alison Bechdel, a cartoonist who formulated the rule as a setup to a punchline in a 1985 comic strip for Dykes to Watch Out For (the punchline: “Last movie I was able to see was Alien…”) There are many variants to the rules, but the one listed above seems to be the most common – it adds a requirement that the two female characters have to be “named” to avoid counting stuff like a female clerk giving a woman change or something (a reasonable addition). It has slowly but surely ingrained itself into the popular culture, especially on the internet in the past few years. Indeed, it’s become so popular that it’s now frequently used incorrectly!

BechdelTest.com seems to be the best resource for this sort of thing, and the statistics are interesting. Out of 4570 movies, only 2555 (55.9%) pass the test. The trend does seem to be (very slowly) improving over time, but it’s a pretty dismal portrait.

The Bechdel Test is far from perfect (more on that in a bit), but I do find it to be interesting for two reasons:

• It’s objective. Discussions of identity politics seem to angry up the blood, especially on the internets, so the removal of any subjectivity from the test is a good thing. These are facts here, not opinions.
• It really does illustrate a certain type of gender imbalance in film. This is an important observation, if not the end-all-and-be-all of feminist criticism.

Alas, there are some rather severe limitations on this test:

• It says nothing about the quality of the film in question. For instance, Citizen Kane and Casablanca fail the test. On the other hand, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (12% on Rotten Tomatoes) and The Smurfs 2 (14% on Rotten Tomatoes) pass.
• It says nothing about how “feminist friendly” the film is. For instance: Showgirls passes the test, and while I don’t have a specific reference for this next one, I’m positive that there are lesbian porn movies (made explicitly for the titillation of men) that would pass the test too.

This isn’t mainsplaining or patriarchy speaking, these are acknowledged limitations of the test. Of course, finding ironic counterexamples is missing the point. It’s not that a given movie passes or fails the test, what matters is when you look at the film industry as a whole.

This, however, is the biggest flaw of the test. It’s a macro test applied at the micro scale. The test says nothing about an individual film’s worth (feminist or not), but the test must be applied to individual films. This leads to a whole boatload of misunderstandings and misguided attempts to tarnish (or praise) a movie because it failed (or passed) the Bechdel test. BechdelTest.com is filled with objections to a given rating and debate about whether an individual film is feminist enough to pass and other such misunderstandings of the rules (for instance: something can’t “barely” pass, it either does or doesn’t). This account of two students attempting to dominate their class by using the Bechdel Test to dismiss any film that didn’t pass is another demonstration. “They labeled any film that didn’t pass the test as unworthy of praise and sexist. … I’m not exaggerating in that statement, the pair literally dismissed Citizen Kane altogether and praised Burlesque.” (Of course, as the first commenter notes, both the account and the two students were applying the test incorrectly). Swedish movie theaters are instituting a new rating system that labels films that have passed (I’m not entirely clear of the implications here, but it’s still kinda missing the point).

The list could go on and on, but severe limitations like this make it clear that the Bechdel Test has a limited application. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that and it does illustrate something about the industry, but let’s stop applying it where it doesn’t belong.

Some other assorted thoughts on the Bechdel Test:

• One of the things that has always irked me about the test is the lack of a stated baseline. I’d be curious to see what a “reverse” Bechdel Test would show, and I think it would give greater context to the numbers being thrown around. Yeah, a 55.9% pass rate sounds low, but what if the “reverse” test showed a similar number for male representation in movies? Of course, it’s blindingly obvious that the male rate is significantly higher (my guess: 80%-90%), but it’s worth noting that just because a movie fails the Bechdel Test doesn’t mean it would pass the reverse test (in particular, I think the “about something other than a man/woman” rule would hit both sexes in the same movie pretty often. Having a baseline would better underscore the issue.
• It’s ironic that one of the test’s biggest strengths, it’s objectivity, is also one of its biggest weaknesses. This, however, is true for just about any objective measurement ever conceived (i.e. not just for film). Objective measurements only ever tell a small proportion of the story, and you can’t judge an individual movie’s worth by checking boxes on a form (unless those boxes are for subjective measurements). If the Bechdel Test is your only way of evaluating movies, you will get a very myopic view of the industry.
• Are there better, simpler metrics that could illustrate a similar issue? For instance, in an industry where the Auteur theory seems to be generally accepted, the director of the film is considered to be the primary author. Guess how many movies are directed by women? It’s somewhere on the order of 5%-10%, and most of them are tiny indies that you’ve never heard of… When you add in writers, producers, editors, etc… the numbers are still pretty low.
• So what to do about the Bechdel Test results? I imagine this is where most arguments get really heated. I don’t know the answer, but given the above bullet, it looks to me like we need more female filmmakers. Artists tend to focus on what they know, and since the grand majority of filmmakers are men, it’s not surprising that female representation is low. How this would happen is a can of worms in itself…
• It strikes me that the misunderstandings and limitations surrounding the Bechdel test are emblematic of debate surrounding identity politics in general. In particular, the resolution of individual/group dynamics is what trips a lot of people up (i.e. the Bechdel test says nothing important about individual movies, only groups of movies, yet because of the need to apply the Bechdel test at an individual level, the discussion often stays at that level). When it comes to insidious systemic issues like this, there’s a narrow line to walk, and it’s very easy to veer off the path.

Well, I think I’ve blabbered on long enough. What say you?

A few weeks ago, Hunter Walk posted a short blog post about reinventing the movie theater by allowing wifi, outlets, low lights, and second screen experience:

Some people dislike going to the movies because of price or crowds, but for me it was more of a lifestyle decision. Increasingly I wanted my media experiences plugged in and with the ability to multitask. Look up the cast list online, tweet out a comment, talk to others while watching or just work on something else while Superman played in the background. Of course these activities are discouraged and/or impossible in a movie theater.

But why? Instead of driving people like me away from the theater, why not just segregate us into environments which meet our needs. … If you took a theater or two in a multiplex and showed the types of films which lend themselves to this experience I bet you’d sell tickets. Maybe even improve attendance during the day since I could bang out emails with a 50 foot screen in front of me.

Personally, this experience holds little to no interest to me (I can do that at home pretty easily), but I can see why it would be attractive to the Hunter Walk’s of the world (he’s a venture capitalist with kids and very little free time) and the notion of creating separate theaters for this sort of experience is fine for me (so long as the regular experience remains available). I mean, I probably wouldn’t partake in this sort of thing, but if there’s a market for this, more power to the theaters that can capture that extra revenue.

Of course, that’s not the reaction that Walk got from this post, which went much further and wider than I think he was expecting. It looks to me like a typical personal blog post and thought experiment(probably jotted out quickly on a second screen, heh), but it got picked up by several media outlets and the internet lost its collective shit over the suggestion. Some responses were tame, but many went for hyperbole and straw-manned Walk’s idea. He wrote a followup post responding to many comments, and again, I find Walk’s perspective perfectly reasonable. But then things exploded.

As cuckoo-nutso as this debate already was, Anil Dash came along and lobbed a grenade into the discussion.

Interestingly, the response from many creative people, who usually otherwise see themselves as progressive and liberal, has been a textbook case of cultural conservatism. The debate has been dominated by shushers, and these people aren’t just wrong about the way movies are watched in theaters, they’re wrong about the way the world works.

This is a bit extreme, but maybe I can follow this. People do refer to texters and the like as “heathens” and joke about the “downfall of society” as represented by rude people at theaters. Then he goes here:

This list of responses pops up all the time, whether it’s for arguing why women should not wear pants, or defending slavery, or trying to preserve a single meaning for the word “ironic”, or fighting marriage equality, or claiming rap isn’t “real” music, or in any other time when social conservatives want to be oppressive assholes to other people.

Zuh? What the hell is he talking about? Is he really equating people who shush other people in movie theaters with people who defend slavery? I suppose he’s trying to show a range of attitudes here, but this is absolutely ridiculous, and the entire thing is premised on a straw man of epic proportions. Dash goes on:

People who have fun at the movies can make almost any movie better. When the first Transformers movie came out, one of the key moments in the film is the first time the leader of the Autobots transforms in grand fashion from tractor trailer to giant robot, and pronounces “I am Optimus Prime”. At that precise moment, the guy next to me, a grown man in his early 30s, rose to his feet and shouted “YEAH!” while punching his fist in the air. I could see from his sheer emotion that he’d been waiting for this day, to hear this voice say those words, since the moment his stepdad walked out on his mother. This was catharsis. This was truly cinematic.

Dash is absolutely correct here, but, um, that’s not the sort of thing people are complaining about. He’s positioning shushers as people who disapprove of emotional responses to movies, as if people get shushed for laughing at a comedy or pumping their fist and shouting “Yeah!” during rousing action sequences. Of course, no one is complaining about that. Even at the most venerated theaters that treat the moviegoing experience with reverence and awe, like the Alamo Drafthouse, actively encourage such behavior! More:

The shushers claim that not giving a film on the screen one’s undivided attention is apparently unspeakably offensive to the many hardworking scriptwriters and carpenters and visual effects supervisors who made the film. Yet these very same Hollywood artists are somehow able to screw up their courage, grimly set their jaws with determination, and bravely carry on with their lives even when faced with the horrible knowledge that some people will see their films in a pan-and-scan version on an ancient CRT screen of an airplane that has an actual jet engine running in the background behind their careful sound mix. Profiles in courage.

This is, at best, a secondary concern. The complaint isn’t about the filmmakers, it’s about the other people in the theater. If you take your phone out in a dark theater and start talking (or texting), it’s taking away from the experience for everyone surrounding that person in the theater. Someone who laughs during a comedy or shouts “Yeah!” during an action movie? They’re contributing to the fun experience. Someone who’s talking to their spouse on the phone (at full volume) about tomorrow’s dinner party is seriously fucking with the people around them. You think I’m joking? That very experience happened to me last night during a screening of You’re Next (i.e. a horror film that is constantly building and releasing tension, often through silence).

It’d be easier for you to have exactly the hermetically sealed, human-free, psychopathic isolation chamber of cinematic perfection that you seek at home, but if you want to try to achieve this in a public space, please enjoy the Alamo Drafthouse or other excellent theaters designed to accommodate this impulse.

Again, no one is asking for hermetically sealed isolation chambers. At the aforementioned You’re Next screening, there were plenty of other people who were clearly into the movie that would occasionally blurt out “No, don’t split up!” or groan in empathetic horror when something violent happened – and those things added to the experience. The asshole talking about his rump roast with his spouse, was NOT. Incidentally, no one “shushed” that fucker, which leads me to wonder who the hell Dash is referring to when he talks about these mythical “shushers”.

Incidentally, the theater chain that Dash mentions as if it promotes this isolation is Alamo Drafthouse, which is indeed very intolerant of texting and rude behavior in theaters. But it isn’t hermetically sealed at all. For crying out loud, it’s got a full service restaurant thing going on, with people constantly walking in and out of the theater, eating food, and drinking beer. People are getting drunk at these theaters, and having a great time. I have no idea where Dash is getting this isolation thing from. Also, he mentions the Alamo Drafthouse as if there’s one in every neighborhood. I’d happily go to one if it existed within a hundred miles of my house, but there’s only 24 theaters in the country (16 of which are in Texas). And again, the only difference between the Alamo Drafthouse and every other theater in the country is that they have the manpower to actually enforce their rules (since waiters are in and out of the theater, they can see troublemakers and do something about it, etc…)

The intellectual bankruptcy of this desire is made plain, however, when the persons of shush encounter those who treat a theater like any other public space. Here are valid ways to process this inconsistency of expectation:

• “Oh, this person has a different preference than I do about this. Perhaps we should have two different places to enjoy this activity, so we can both go about our business!”
• “It seems that group of people differs in their standard of how to behave. Since we all encounter varying social norms from time to time, I’ll just do my thing while they do theirs.”
• “I’m finding the inconsistency between our expectations about this experience to be unresolvable or stressful; Next time we’ll communicate our expectations in advance so everyone can do what she or he enjoys most.”

But shushers don’t respond in any of these ways. They say, “We have two different expectations over this public behavior, and mine is the only valid way. First, I will deny that anyone has other norms. Then, when incontrovertibly faced with the reality that these people exist, I will vilify them and denigrate them. Once this tactic proves unpersuasive, I will attempt to marginalize them and shame them into compliance. At no point will I consider finding ways for each of us to accommodate our respective preferences, for mine is the only valid opinion.” This is typically followed by systematically demonstrating all of the most common logical fallacies in the process of denying that others could, in good conscience, arrive at conclusions other than their own.

If steam wasn’t already shooting out of your ears in frustration at Dash’s post, this is where the post goes completely off the rails. The hypocrisy is almost palpable. Let’s start with the fact that most movie theaters are not, in fact, public spaces. They are privately owned buildings, and wonder among wonders, the owners have defined general guidelines for behavior. When was the last time you went to a movie theater and DIDN’T see a plea to turn off your fucking phone at the beginning of the movie. In other words, theaters “communicate our expectations in advance” of every movie they show. It’s the Dash’s of the world who are ignorant here. This is precisely why I wasn’t that upset with Hunter Walk’s original suggestion: If a theater wants to allow texting and talking and second screen experience, more power to them. Every theater I’ve ever been to has pleaded with me to consider the other people in the theater and, you know, try not to ruin other people’s experience.

Dash’s stance here is incomprehensible and hypocritical. What makes rude people’s differing standards more relevant than the “shushers”? He calls shushers “bullies” in this post, but they’re simply trying to uphold the standards of the theater. Why are rude people entitled to ruin the experience for everyone else in the theater? I honestly have no idea how someone like Anil Dash, who I know for a fact is a smart, erudite man (from his other writings), could possibly think this is an acceptable argument.

Amusingly, American shushers are a rare breed overall. The most popular film industry in the world by viewers is Bollywood, with twice as many tickets sold in a given year there as in the United States. And the thing is, my people do not give a damn about what’s on the screen.

Indian folks get up, talk to each other, answer phone calls, see what snacks there are to eat, arrange marriages for their children, spontaneously break out in song and fall asleep. And that’s during weddings! If Indian food had an equivalent to smores, people would be toasting that shit up on top of the pyre at funerals. So you better believe they’re doing some texting during movies. And not just Bollywood flicks, but honest-to-gosh Mom-and-apple-pie American Hollywood films.

He’s right, American shushers are a rare breed – I think I may have seen people get shushed 2 or 3 times in my life. And I see a TON of movies, to the point where examples of people doing rude things like talking about other subjects, answering their phone, etc… are countless. Usually, people just grin and bear it. And then give up going to the theater. Why spend $30-$40 to see a movie with a friend when you’ll just get frustrated by assholes doing rude shit during the entire movie?

India sounds like a horrible place to see a movie, but whatever. I imagine these theaters are pretty clear about what this experience is going to be like, so fine. Is anyone shushing Indians in those theaters? I find that hard to believe. But we’re not talking about India, are we? They clearly have different cultural norms than we do in America, and that’s awesome!

So, what can shushers do about it? First, recognize that cultural prescriptivism always fails. Trying to inflict your norms on those whose actions arise from a sincere difference in background or experience is a fool’s errand.

Someone is attempting to force their culture on someone else here, and it’s not the shushers. Dash clearly likes the way things work in India, and is arguing that we should adopt that here. If he’s talking about creating separate theaters for his preferred experience, then go for it! We’ll let the market sort out what people like. I’ll even concede that Dash could be right and his partial attention theaters will swallow up traditional American theaters whole. Of course, in that situation, I’ll probably never go to a theater again, but such is life.

Then, recognize your own privilege or entitlement which makes you feel as if you should be able to decide what’s right for others. There’s literally no one who’s ever texted in a movie theater who has said “Every other person in here must text someone, right now!” Because that would be insane. No one who would like to have wifi at a theater has ever said “Those who don’t want to connect should just stay at home!” Because they’re not trying to force others to comply with their own standards.

They’re not forcing me to text to talk on the phone, but they ARE forcing me to listen to them talk or see them text. Perhaps if we were talking about a true public space, this would be the case, but we’re not. The private owners of these theaters are asking you not to do this, therefore the entitlement is on the texters and talkers.

Dash has since written a followup that is much more reasonable (it makes me wonder if his initial post was just link-bait or some other cynical exercise), and again, I agree with the idea of producing new theaters around this concept. They may even experience some success. I just won’t be going to any of them.