In the space of two months I have
seen protests about two films- Stonewall and The Suffragette. Both films deal
with historical reality yet distort it to fit a convenient narrative. These
aren’t an aberration but a rule.
As Foucault points out
visibility is a trap. Mainstream cinema is a means of propaganda it soothes our
fears it reduces complex narratives to good and bad. It takes revolutionary
ideas and domesticates them, taking the uneasy aspects of those ideas out. The
stonewall riots were a response to corruption and everyday violence that
threatened the most vulnerable in LGBT community black transwomen. Similarly
the suffragette movement was more than the vote, it was a challenge to unfair
and unequal laws that endangered the lives of women, physically, mentally, and
socially. The vote was only part
of the demands that came from women who were being treated unjustly by a system
that actively worked against them. That Sophia Duleep Singh has been erased is
not surprising it is expected. The presentation of history in film tells us
more about our present than our past. Mainstream cinema can only provide a
comodified version of feminism.
I say comodified because the
edge is taken out of the movement. Emotion replaces the revolutionary ideals of
the movement. We still get the standard heterosexual narrative which allows the
best looking people with a love interest to live and the rest to die. By the
end of the film lose ends are always tied up. Emotions
stand out more clearly than an actual narrative. Nostalgia characterises the
storytelling. This is a clever strategy the heightened emotions on screen are
cathartic.
Feminism is disruptive, it doesn’t make anyone feel good
or triumphant. It is a force that is constantly challenging social boundaries.
Feminism requires personal sacrifices it is not easy or convenient it requires
breaking patterns of behaviour that we take for granted. Cinema of course works
on an opposite model, it soothes all disruptions it creates a space to live out
distress and then calms one down much like a therapy session.
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