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Theme:
As women and as Canadians we share the problematic goal of emerging as users of the tools of media as opposed to being tools of those who use media.
Remembrance:
Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice. Jane Austen should have laid a wreath upon the grave of Fanny Burney, and George Eliot done homage to the robust shade of Eliza Carta — the valiant old woman who tied a bell to her bedstead in order that she might wake early and learn Greek. All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds,
— Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own,” 1928.
There is a double edge to these words of Virginia Woolf: an understanding of art in relation to the mass, and an understanding of the collectivity of women’s experience in the arts, an experience which has been political/economic as well as creative/individualistic. No artist creates in isolation, although it may seem that way — art either challenges or perpetuates ideology, the illusions we are fed by the ruling system. I would, therefore, like to offer the following points to take into account when preparing to study women’s history in the media:
1) That media, as we know it, is essentially mass media, designed (mechanically reproduced) to reach as many people as possible. 1
2) that, therefore, any study of media must look carefully at the relationship between the product and its audience (which no one has yet figured out how to do) — how do images relate to social reality? What do they reinforce and what do they challenge?
3) Such a study must also consider the relationship between the maker of the product and the ideological and economic structures of her or his society. Who is saying what to whom and for what reason? (Note that it’s much easier to maintain established ideologies than to change them.)
4) That, as Virginia Woolf pointed out with reference to women writers, a woman must first have a room of her own if she is to create, that is, she must have a measure of economic independence.
5) And so a history of women in media must take into account the economic history of women in the twentieth century and also the economic history of the media.
More words from the past: There is nothing connected with the staging of a motion picture that a woman cannot do as easily as a man, and there is no reason why she cannot completely master every technicality of the art. (Referring to the need for long careful study of photography and stage direction
Barbara Halpern Martineau is currently teaching film production and theory at Queen’s University in Kingston. She recently completed Good Day Care: One Out of Ten, a half-hour documentary film.
she concludes) both are as suitable, as fascinating and as remunerative to a woman as to a man.
— Alice Guy Blaché, ‘Women’s Place in Photoplay Production,’ “Moving Picture World,” July 11, 1914. 2
From Alice Guy to, I would argue, every woman and man engaged in the practice of filmmaking today, we all know that money and economic considerations are crucial. What is needed is an understanding of the connections between the economics of the media, particularly as they relate to women, and the ideology or counter-ideology of films in their effect on audiences.
hoto: W. Doucette
Recordak camera is loaded by Pat Poulton at the NFB laboratories, John and Susses Streets, Ottawa (1947)
Now:
It is only six years since we first began to realize that there is material for a history of women in the media, only six years since the first international festival of women’s films in New York opened the way which other festivals and then study groups and conferences and women’s studies courses and writers and scholars were to follow, of finding forgotten and neglected films made by women, bringing them together for screenings and discussions, looking for confirmation that women can make films, that we have since the beginning of filmmaking made films, that therefore we have every reason to assume we will continue to make films in increasing numbers. Because it is very difficult and very commonplace, we all know, having grown up female, to be told — you can’t do that — girls can’t do that — only boys can build towers, play baseball, fly planes, earn money, make films.
Cinema Canada/31