Herstory

I started listening to the podcast, You Must Remember This, hosted by Karina Longworth, who has obtained her masters in film, has given lectures, written articles and books about film history. She makes my knowledge of film look pathetic in comparison. I love listening to her podcast, though. It’s so well written, researched, and edited. She analyzes bits and pieces of film history in such a thoughtful way that makes you empathize with certain people a little more and take away some of the glorification from darlings who have proven to be not so darling. I’m kind of glad I didn’t listen to her podcast before starting my own because I would have immediately been too intimidated to embark on such a project.

Reading her website, she said she gained interest in doing this back in 2014 because it gave her an outlet to do research on the things she wanted to know more about on her own terms vs. what an educational environment would be able to provide. For a long time I felt like I should have gone to grad school to get an advanced degree in my studies. I’ve always felt like an academic. I’ve learned over the years I like learning about things. I thrive in academic settings because of this insatiable appetite to know a little bit about everything. Employers have always told me I am a quick learner and I soak things up like a sponge. A month ago my supervisors asked me to research a particular market for the company, and while this is a subject I would never research on my own, I still enjoyed doing it. There’s just something fun about researching things…? I think I’ve lost focus of the plot.

I’d be a great academic. Even if I get sick of a subject, I still need to know everything. This is a good trait to have to a point. My perfectionist personality always feels as if I’m never truly well-versed on a topic because there is always going to be something I’ll miss or never know. I feel like that a lot when I research for my podcast. Like I’m missing something that may not that big, but it still feels significant to the subject I’m studying, and I’m letting people down by not getting that one fact into the episode.

I’ve realized doing this podcast scratches that itch I’ve always had, an activity I love to do, connecting to these topics in a deeper manner than I ever thought was possible. It makes me feel less bad about being in debt because I am finally putting my degree to work. I’m in my element and I hope people can see the connections I try to make or have made in my head. I wish I did this when I got out of college, when I had more time in my life.

Listening to You Must Remember This makes me happy there are women who are analyzing and critiquing film. Karina Longworth picks up on so many interesting nuances, and putting these tragedies and controversies in a new light. I’m starting her podcast from the beginning, and in one of her first Q&A portions of her episode, she mentioned how she pitched a book around trying to expose sexist media and everyone who read her pitch thought she was perpetuating sexism, which was so upsetting to hear considering I understood exactly what she was trying to research. I’m assuming those who rejected her pitch and accused her of sexism were men who were too ignorant to pick up the nuances she really wanted to know more about. There are so many male critics out there in the film world who honestly just miss the point completely or refuse to discuss it. Narratives, critiques, and history have been so wildly distorted due to the majority of men dictating what the narrative was from their one-sided, privileged view of the world.

I was watching a documentary series on Playboy recently, and Hugh Hefner always thought he was a feminist ally because he was giving women the power to be free with their sexuality, provide them job opportunities that would pay them more than any office job ever could, and not feel shame for doing so. However when Feminists started calling him a sexist pig, and accused him of hating women, he was taken aback. He published articles in Playboy on abortion, women’s lib, equal rights—how could he be the enemy when he believed men and women were equal?

The thing Hefner never realized is through his privileged world view is he genuinely thought all of these opportunities he was providing women were good because he was treating them well without realizing the cost of these opportunities—to be sexualized, to be seen as objects, to be the tantalizing, shiny, thing dangled in front of men like a prize to be won. Many Feminists thought he was objectifying women by having them dress as animals instead of viewing them as full human beings, and I can’t argue with that—many women took those jobs not because they wanted to be sexualized, but because it gave them a future and a living they could never have if they were in any other industry. Like any industry, there are some people who genuinely want to be in the industry and others who just get into it for a paycheck. Freedom is knowing you can do what you want, when you want, without compromise. For many of these women, that was never the case because being a woman means being policed every single day.

So much of what is analyzed in pop culture is done through a male point of view, that it doesn’t take into account race, gender, class, or sexuality. How is a man going to view a story about the scrutiny of women’s bodies in early Hollywood if they have never experienced that level of scrutiny on their looks in reality? What it’s like to be constantly judged by their physical appearance? Or maybe an actress’ history of being “difficult” to work with was a rumor spread to hide abusive behaviors? Or, better yet, that a woman dare declare a boundary that a man didn’t agree with or otherwise led to the rejection of his creepy advances?

We need more women in the field to fill in the gaps men have so clumsily analyzed over the decades, and refuse to delve deeper into because it makes them uncomfortable. Without us, we continue to let men dictate the story, and we further perpetuate the cycle of ignorance and stupidity that makes it harder for the world to believe women when they say an injustice has occurred.