What the mothers did, I didn't know

[sovay]

I almost did not purchase the revised and expanded edition of E. Ann Kaplan's Women in Film Noir (1978/1998) despite the fact that at this point I have kind of a moral obligation to read it because I opened first to an essay about lesbianism in The Haunting (1963) that was full of Freud and then an essay about Double Indemnity (1944) that was also full of Freud and the prospect of having to fling around serious consideration of Oedipal drama and castration anxiety in order to continue writing about film noir made me think maybe I should just take up stamp collecting instead, but then I found Richard Dyer's "Postscript: Women and Queers in Film Noir" which begins "Gilda seems unusual among films noirs for having as its hero an ordinary guy who also has a homosexual relationship" and closes "I'm inclined to believe that most culture works to hold the line of sexual differentiation, but not film noir, or at any rate, not always definitely" and I decided the book was worth its used trade paperback price, because that I can get behind. Kaplan's "The Place of Women in Fritz Lang's The Blue Gardenia" also looks good; she reads it as genre-savvy meta on the normal roles of women in film noir, for which I will forgive some overstatement and some points of interpretation on which I flatly disagree. The book's appendix is extremely valuable: a list of "Films with a central involvement of women," broken down into "Films involving women writers (but not central female characters)," "Films involving women writers or producers, and central female characters," and "Films involving central female characters (but not women writers)." It's not complete—I've seen examples not listed in all three categories—but it means people have been paying attention to this question for at least the last twenty years and maybe the last forty and really the last thing the field needs is me writing about these movies, but I happen to enjoy it. Also I don't talk about Freud all the time, so there's that.

Comments

[justice_turtle]

Not talking about Freud is a valuable addition to almost any field. ^_^

[radiantfracture]

Agree! Though I have a lingering attachment to Lacan that I can't defend. (Not so much the cinematic gaze as the symbolic order.)

Whatever else has been written, you have something to contribute based on your own perspective / analysis.

Your points of disagreement, to begin with, maybe? That's sometimes the tiny wisp that begins a massive endeavour -- like the small spiral that begins the yellow brick road...

[sovay]

Though I have a lingering attachment to Lacan that I can't defend. (Not so much the cinematic gaze as the symbolic order.)

Well, if that's part of the Other, it's useful!

Whatever else has been written, you have something to contribute based on your own perspective / analysis.

Thank you. I hope so. The last essay in the book is Angela Martin's "'Gilda Didn't Do Any of Those Things You've Been Losing Sleep Over!': The Central Women of 40s Films Noirs," which I enjoyed immensely because its whole thesis is that not every female character in noir is a femme fatale, specifically examining the heroines of Laura (1944) and Gilda (1946) as popularly characterized femmes fatales that are no such thing, but also I feel I have nothing to write about now, because Martin noticed this situation in 1998 and the fact that I discovered it independently is irrelevant. I knew I couldn't have been the first person. It just took me until now to find the book and way too many critics of the last twenty years plainly haven't seen it either. I mean, I'm not going to stop writing. But I think if I had actually been in this field in any formal sense, I would have been expected to know from the start.

[edit] I am sorry to be so downbeat when you leave encouraging remarks about me and film writing. I had a traumatic experience of grad school (medical crash + bad advisor + department that took student drop-out as a sign of doing it right = me leaving with no PhD, no self-esteem, and life-altering health issues to this day) and even a dozen years later I have serious impostor syndrome and general gun-shyness. I do appreciate the support.

[radiantfracture]

These are all very valid reasons. In a world of disappointing graduate programs, that program sounds extra awful.

I'm sorry that a thing that should (in some alternate reality) have been about intellectual joy (though I mean has it ever actually been that? probably not) was a catastrophic trauma. That's an awful way to be wounded.

Just -- being a sort of shadow academic -- I don't have better language for saying "I value this work you're doing, and I think a larger audience of knowledgeable people would value it and engage in interesting discourse with you about it."

So, you know, that. But I don't actually mean that I think you should want academia itself. You've found a cool model in Patreon.

{rf}

[sovay]

I'm sorry that a thing that should (in some alternate reality) have been about intellectual joy (though I mean has it ever actually been that? probably not) was a catastrophic trauma. That's an awful way to be wounded.

Thank you. I loved what I did. It made me happy. I was told by my advisor that many people love things they aren't good at. I am not sure that holds the record for unforgivable things that have been said to me, but I think it's got to be up there.

Just -- being a sort of shadow academic -- I don't have better language for saying "I value this work you're doing, and I think a larger audience of knowledgeable people would value it and engage in interesting discourse with you about it.

I appreciate it. I would like to be able to make that happen, since my Patreon audience is forty-one paying customers and I assume about another dozen people read the posts on Dreamwidth as they go by. I'm just trying to explain that a bomb went off in my head and I'm sorry you got shrapnel; it's not a good return for support.