Oscar and the Feminists

This is the year things have started to change. There has been a power shift and women are taking control. No longer are they happy to stand silently while men dictate their every move. Harvey Weinstein will never work again and women will be able to go to the Oscars without the focus being on what they are wearing.

This year, I had seen a lot of the nominated films and liked them. I was impressed with the number of strong women in them. Stories centred around women and that was unusual. The Post, Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Lady Bird and I Tonya are all women’s stories.
“Oh no, what about the men?” I hear you cry.
Well, there was Dunkirk and The Darkest Hour and there were still more men in the films about women.

Credited Characters on IMdB

I’m sure feminist film scholars will apply the Bechdale test and find that women speak less than men in all the nominated films. I hope they include the signing that Eliza does in the Shape of Water but I know there will be eye rolling at the fact they made the main character mute. Obviously, art only reflects life and we shouldn’t worry about these things. After all, in life, those men, they never stop talking. Chatter, chatter, chatter. Poor men can hardly get a word in edgeways.

It is good that these changes are happening and we have to notice the discrepancy to be able to make changes. The ‘we’ I’m talking about is the whole of society, not just men or just women. Not just feminists, or just misogynists. Not just artists, or just scientists. However, you divide the world most people from each group have colluded with the idea that women are somehow less and their ideas should be heard less. We’ve colluded in the belief that men are sexually dominant and that romance is the same as a woman being overpowered by a man.

The problem with all these feminists making us aware is that it spoils everything. I’d enjoyed the Shape of Water until I realised that she wasn’t even allowed to tell her own story and thought that Three Billboards contained the most amazing acting until I felt uncomfortable that it was still a story about a rape and murder that some unnamed man got away with (and a rape that another named man might have got away with).

At the theatre, I enjoyed Young Frankenstein much less than I would have because the monster drags his bride into a cave to rape her until she enjoys it and instead of enjoying 42nd Street for all its sequins, tits, tap and teeth I was horrified by the Harvey Weinstein type boss who rubs himself inappropriately against and kisses the young star to get her to perform. Even watching a opera left me feeling a bit grubby.

As a teenager I laughed, with everyone else, at those feminists that tried to point out our stories were all wrong. Authors like Ann Sexton and Angela Carter, who rewrote the fairy tales from a feminist perspective were to be avoided. Nobody really wanted to be seen that way. It was unfeminine. I was cross with my friend for spoiling Pretty Woman for me. I had thought it was a film about love and romance but she saw a film about prostitution an the transfer of power over one woman to a single rich man.

To point out the problems in our stories makes us uncomfortable and people rebel against stories that take it too far the other way but we should be expecting subtle changes. We should expect to hear women talk more. We should be able to see an equal amount of male and female flesh. We should expect see less rape and have the men who take part in this crime not be glamourised.