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Twenty years ago, filmmaker Nina Menkes began to deliver a lecture as a member of the film faculty at the California Institute of the Arts, exploring a hypothesis she had long held instinctively but had only recently begun to flesh out in earnest. Her talk posited that the way most mainstream movies are photographed and edited \u2014 the basics of composition, lighting, framing and camera movement \u2014 is inherently sexist, and that those fundamentals of cinematic style have real-world consequences, in Hollywood and beyond.<\/p>\n
Informed by the groundbreaking work of such theorists as Judith Butler, bell hooks and Laura Mulvey \u2014 who in the 1970s originated the concept of a \u201cmale gaze\u201d in cinema \u2014 Menkes kept refining her talk, loading it with clips from films considered masterpieces and urging her students to look deeper than narrative structure and subject matter to how films are staged, photographed and put together. Her thesis: Virtually since its inception, filmmaking has hewed to unconscious but inviolable \u201claws\u201d wherein women are routinely reduced to hyper-sexualized objects, even when they\u2019re the protagonists of the story.<\/p>\n
In 2017, Menkes wrote an essay for the cinema journal Filmmaker connecting the aesthetic language of film \u2014 the voyeuristic habit of cameras panning up and down female bodies; the predatory metaphor of fragmenting those bodies into close-ups of breasts, behinds or other body parts; the flattening of women\u2019s facial images into airbrushed, lifeless masks \u2014 to the behavior of former film producer Harvey Weinstein and his fellow executives in real life. \u201cWithin this system,\u201d Menkes wrote, \u201cmen are subjects and young women are objects for gratification\/consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n
Menkes\u2019s essay, titled \u201cThe Visual Language of Oppression: Harvey Wasn\u2019t Working in a Vacuum,\u201d became a viral sensation. And it led to Menkes\u2019s being invited to film festivals and conferences around the world to deliver what by then had become a provocative one-woman show propelled by germinal insights, galvanizing outrage and hundreds of film clips from some of the most beloved films in the canon. In January, Menkes debuted \u201cBrainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power,\u201d the documentary version of her lecture, at the Sundance Film Festival. (The film will have a special screening at Suns Cinema in Washington on Nov. 9 and at the Alexandria Film Festival on Nov. 12, with producer Maria Giese in attendance.)<\/p>\n
In early October, Menkes discussed \u201cBrainwashed\u201d during a two-hour Zoom session. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
Q: Nina, in your introduction before the Sundance screening of \u201cBrainwashed\u201d in January, you said that making this film was an \u201cact of liberation,\u201d adding that \u201cI didn\u2019t even know I was in prison.\u201d You\u2019ve been working with this material for over 20 years, and yet this was a process of discovery for you.<\/p>\n
A: My early films were automatically confronting that so-called male gaze way of filming intuitively, from very early [on]. And later, after three or four films, I did get introduced to Judith Butler and Laura Mulvey and bell hooks and all these great people who helped me articulate what I was feeling. And then I was like, \u201cOkay, I\u2019ve got to take this to my production students,\u201d because there\u2019s very often a split, I find. The production students never read film theory, and the film theory people generally don\u2019t make movies. So, I was looking for clips to show my students, and that\u2019s how the lecture developed, [and later] how the film developed. So, you\u2019re talking about a person, myself, who is very well aware of all these issues, has made films that confront these issues, has felt on my skin the oppression of all of this. And yet sitting there for two years and reviewing 600 film clips and putting them together one after the other, was like, \u201cOh my God.\u201d This poison has been sitting in my blood. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m completely free of it, but I\u2019m more free of it.<\/p>\n
Q: One of the things that \u201cBrainwashed\u201d illustrates is just how disorienting and even damaging the act of movie-watching can be for women, because we\u2019re constantly asked to internalize a point of view that is often leering or mocking or reductive or violent. Do you remember the first time you experienced that disconnect as a spectator?<\/p>\n
A: I grew up without a television. We had no TV at home. My mom was against TV. She thought it was a horrible thing. And obviously, when I grew up, there was no internet and no DVD store down the street. So I wasn\u2019t exposed to this barrage that people are now. And, for whatever reason, I never got pleasure from those scenes. I was not the person who got pleasure and then woke up later and said, \u201cEew, that\u2019s gross.\u201d When I did see films, and it wasn\u2019t that often, I remember seeing films with [images of] young, beautiful girls and I would dis-identify with them. They bothered me without [my] having a label for them [as sexist]. I remember having this thought that I\u2019d better get married by the time I\u2019m 25, because otherwise I\u2019ll be too old. So thoughts like that I remember getting directly off the screen.<\/p>\n
Q: For me, it was the scene from \u201cButch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid\u201d that you use in \u201cBrainwashed,\u201d when Robert Redford\u2019s character is about to rape Katharine Ross\u2019s character at gunpoint, until it\u2019s revealed that they\u2019re already lovers. I was probably 10 years old when I saw that movie, and it totally confused me. I understood that I was supposed to find it funny and sexy, but I was also deeply uncomfortable with the latent hostility of it.<\/p>\n
A: I remember when we found that example, because the process of hunting for clips was quite massive, obviously. And we wanted to find a sexual assault kind of scene from an A-list film, but that didn\u2019t \u2014 and this is very on point for our whole discussion \u2014 that didn\u2019t [trigger] people who\u2019ve been raped.<\/p>\n
Q: It\u2019s also the classic cake-and-eat-it-too that Hollywood has engaged with for decades. How can we get the titillation, but with a fig leaf?<\/p>\n
A: Yeah.<\/p>\n
Q: Another idea you explore in \u201cBrainwashed\u201d is how our notions of what\u2019s good and beautiful and of high quality cinematically have been bound up with what the men who control this art form consider good and beautiful and worth looking at. For me, as a critic, that\u2019s been really hard to unpack. I fall into that trance along with everybody else.<\/p>\n
A: As a film viewer and a filmmaker, I didn\u2019t get seduced by those images. But as a person who had to go on a date with a man who I knew was looking at me like that, I couldn\u2019t navigate it. I remember saying to my psychoanalyst [while I was] making the film that it suddenly occurred to me that when I would go out on a date, I would leave myself at home. If you think about what is allowed for a heterosexual man in our culture, they\u2019re allowed to be full-on human subjects who are also sexual beings. They don\u2019t turn into objects when they\u2019re having sex; they stay subjects. But the idea that a woman would just be a full-on human subject who\u2019s also sexual without doing that little swivel to the object position, I don\u2019t see a lot of films where we get examples of that.<\/p>\n
Q: To me, that\u2019s a function not just of what\u2019s come to be accepted as film language, but the gatekeepers saying, \u201cThat\u2019s what I want to see.\u201d I\u2019ve gotten to the point where I think all mainstream cinema is fetish filmmaking. It\u2019s all just what those guys want to see and what turns them on.<\/p>\n
A: Are you going to segue into \u201cBlonde\u201d right now?<\/p>\n
Q: Actually, I\u2019m going to loop back. When you talk about the split, I think a lot of women feel that way \u2014 that we have to leave our authentic selves behind if we want to be loved. But there\u2019s also an element of play. There\u2019s a pleasure we get from looking pretty.<\/p>\n
A: But why is that objectification? I think that\u2019s really important to distinguish. Let\u2019s say it\u2019s Academy Awards night and Mr. So and So is going and he might get an award. Is he going to take a lot of time and get his best suit and maybe go have a massage [and] make sure he gets a haircut or probably even a manicure, and look as flawless as possible? I would say yes. Getting dressed up for a special occasion is not objectification. Even getting dressed up to look nice for work, that\u2019s not objectification. Wanting to look good is a normal human thing, and men want to look good, too. I think that what\u2019s wrong is when looking good is the number one point and the only point, and the main determining point for, like you said, love and companionship.<\/p>\n
Q: One thing you dissect in \u201cBrainwashed\u201d is something I\u2019ve long been vexed by, which is the degree to which women filmmakers have internalized these values. Let\u2019s talk about \u201cHustlers,\u201d about strippers who mastermind a credit card theft scheme. When I saw that movie, I was in that trance, where I was just blown away by Jennifer Lopez and her physicality and her mastery and her ferocious screen presence. She\u2019s such a charismatic performer and dancer, I didn\u2019t have the presence of mind to unpack it the way you do in your movie, so please walk me through \u201cHustlers.\u201d<\/p>\n
A: [In] \u201cHustlers,\u201d we have these women who are supposedly self-empowering through their own self-objectification. But if you look at the camera in \u201cHustlers,\u201d most of the shots in the strip club have the men foregrounded so that we understand that [Lopez] is being looked at. So she\u2019s embodying to-be-looked-at-ness. Also, this film brings up something that I have noticed is a key point for a lot of people, which is: Is self-objectification empowering? Studies have shown that teenage girls and young women who self-sexualize or self-objectify have higher levels of body surveillance and body shame. It also leads them to be desensitized to the victimization of girls and women in real life, and it translates into an increased tolerance for sexual violence and harassment. Another psychological study found that the more girls consume such images, the more they will suffer from low self-esteem, depression and eating disorders. So you have this incredible image of JLo, but she\u2019s there as a sexual object. I think we just have to question why that has to be the way that women are empowered.<\/p>\n
Q: It also exemplifies that cake-and-eat-it-too syndrome I talked about earlier. Now we have this concept of \u201cagency\u201d that is used as a narrative dodge, while leaving dubious sexual politics intact. I\u2019m thinking of the movie \u201cRed Rocket,\u201d about a porn actor grooming a teenage girl, and the way the filmmaker gets buy-in from the audience is to have the girl make the first sexual move.<\/p>\n
A: [Film producer] Amy Ziering calls it reversal of desire. \u201cLolita,\u201d \u201cRed Rocket,\u201d there are so many examples where the young woman is the aggressor. What they\u2019re trying to say is that this object, this underage person, is a subject when she\u2019s not a subject. She\u2019s the object of a predator, and yet they\u2019re trying to make it okay by spinning it.<\/p>\n
Q: Another film that engages some of these issues but lands much more ambiguously is Lena Dunham\u2019s \u201cSharp Stick.\u201d The protagonist isn\u2019t a teenager, but she\u2019s childlike. And she\u2019s on this mission to explore her sexuality.<\/p>\n
A: \u201cSharp Stick\u201d actually starts with fragmented close-up body parts [of actress Taylour Paige], which I was like, \u201cReally, again?\u201d However, it does then cut, and we understand that the point of view is the sister filming her, so it a little bit mitigates it. I can say that on the level of shot design, it does not reinforce the male gaze, with the exception of that opening shot, which I\u2019m really not sure had to be there, to be honest. Why do so many films start with that? \u201cLost in Translation,\u201d \u201cTitane,\u201d \u201cSharp Stick,\u201d the list is long.<\/p>\n
Q: I want to get back to the fig leaves. In addition to \u201cagency,\u201d there\u2019s the dodge of \u201ccommenting on.\u201d And this is where I want to talk about \u201cBlonde,\u201d Andrew Dominik\u2019s movie about Marilyn Monroe. To me, that movie is such a bad-faith exercise in a filmmaker doing the thing he\u2019s pretending to critique.<\/p>\n
A: Let\u2019s look at it from the \u201cBrainwashed\u201d perspective. Let\u2019s start off with point of view: Is the film from her point of view? When we\u2019re talking about shot design, no, it isn\u2019t. Is she objectified within the shot design? Yes, she is. The most extreme examples are the shots taken from the interior of her vagina [during an abortion]. They do it twice, first in black and white and then in color. It\u2019s anatomically impossible for that to be from her point of view. So, okay, it\u2019s got to be from the abortionist\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n
Q: I thought it was the cervix\u2019s point of view, because the speculum was coming toward the viewer. But maybe I\u2019m misremembering it. Actually, I\u2019ve been trying to block it for weeks.<\/p>\n
A: Oh my God. It\u2019s worse than I thought. Whoa.<\/p>\n
Q: This gets into my own challenge unpacking pleasure. In \u201cBrainwashed,\u201d you use those creamy shots of Rita Hayworth in \u201cThe Lady From Shanghai\u201d as examples of 2D versus 3D lighting, where men have crags and shadows and women look like these magazine covers. And even watching your film, while you\u2019re critiquing it, I\u2019m thinking, \u201cOh, God, she is so beautiful.\u201d And I have the same experience watching Marilyn Monroe. So tell me, where do we put our pleasure in all of this?<\/p>\n
A: Well, to return to something I said in \u201cBrainwashed,\u201d if you are a male director and you want to shoot someone\u2019s derriere, I am not the sex police. I am not saying don\u2019t do that. I\u2019m just pointing out that, unfortunately, the vast majority of films we see do that. I don\u2019t think that by itself there\u2019s something wrong with seeing a shot of a beautiful woman. It\u2019s just that it\u2019s part of this tsunami of images which have created a situation where women are the only oppressed people who are a majority on planet Earth. We\u2019re 51 percent [of the population] and we earn less, we have fewer rights, we can\u2019t pass the ERA in this country. So this beauty thing is just loaded down with all this massive baggage that is all around it and on top of it and under it, and it\u2019s damaging. Does that mean we can\u2019t have beautiful women in films? No, that\u2019s not what I\u2019m saying. I\u2019m saying let\u2019s let consciousness illuminate and see what happens.<\/p>\n
Q: One film where I think we saw consciousness being brought to bear in a transformational way was \u201cGood Luck to You, Leo Grande,\u201d with Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack. Consent and humanism are just woven through that film in a way that feels hopeful to me.<\/p>\n
A: Yeah. One of the incredible things about \u201cLeo Grande\u201d is that, basically, the whole movie\u2019s about sex and having sex and sex scenes and she\u2019s 60 and she\u2019s a subject. It\u2019s like, wow. That\u2019s absolutely revolutionary. The fact that [ \u201cLeo Grande\u201d] was made and got a lot of attention is very hopeful. The fact that \u201cNomadland\u201d won an Academy Award starring a 60-year-old woman and it\u2019s her perspective \u2014 whether you like the film or not, it doesn\u2019t really matter. It\u2019s like, there was this 60-year-old woman in a leading role and it was her vision and feeling about life. I\u2019m not saying you have to make a film about a 60-year-old woman, but just that it exists can also give young women, when they go to the movies, the idea that life isn\u2019t going to end when they\u2019re 35. Maybe it\u2019s 45 now.<\/p>\n
View this article at The Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On-screen and off, men are subjects, women are objects: Twenty years ago, filmmaker Nina Menkes began to deliver a lecture as a member of the film faculty at the California Institute of the Arts, exploring a hypothesis she had long held instinctively but had only recently begun to flesh out in earnest. Her talk posited
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