Men's fantasies?

"Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe if from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth"—Simone de Beauvoir.

Like everything else in our society, the movie industry is controlled by white middle-class males. The people who finance this industry determine what we see and how we see it—the movies at the cinemas are no more than their fantasies about the way the world is, and should be. This power clique creates for us a one-sided view of the world and passes it off as total reality. For instance, the 'black' movie Shaft presents us with the white-culture hero with a black mask. Here, as usual, the realities of the sub-culture are denied. What this kind of propaganda does is to convince the oppressed that there is no other way of looking at reality, makes them doubt their own perceptions, makes them accept the values system of their oppressor.

In this as in many other aspects of the culture the role of the critic is crucial. A critical elite composed of the same white middle class males who control the film industry decide what is good, bad, real movie—all on the basis of a set of biased cultural assumptions.

We have had plenty of movies about male courage, violence, strength, hard-headedness; where do we ever see women who have these qualities? Who decides that these qualities are to be admired above gentleness, warmth, fragility, vulnerability? In movies as everywhere, not only are human qualities strictly sex-types, but it is made quite clear which sex has the more admirable ones. Male characters who do not dominate are portrayed as losing, and strong women are shown as bitches (e.g. Scarlett O'Hara).

I hope to see in these feminist movies or in any good political movies, 'the concrete analysis of concrete conditions', and the myths about women exploded. I would like to see a recognition of the fact that in male-dominated society the unhappy, disturbed woman is not a freak but its natural product. I would like to see what movies usually ignore: the daily-life activity of women as it really is.

However, the oppressed need more than the realisation of their oppression. More than any other oppressed group women lack positive role-models. I would like a feminist movie to show women not just as victims but also as rebels. A counterculture movie can show us that change is possible; can challenge the stale metaphysics of the film industry telling us that human nature opreates according to immutable laws. As long as male-dominated class society exists, the film industry will only let us see the unreal Hollywood fantasies it would like us to believe in. But, as change accelerates, counter-cultural art such as these movies can help us not only to be aware of what is actually happening now, but also of what can happen, of what changes can take place, to give us a vision of life in which 'the potentialities of things have opened in and through the conditions of reality'.

—Debbie Jones