feminist media
throughout this class my eyes have been opened alot through the films and other medias we have looked at. my two favorite pieces were byron hurt's beyond the beats and rhymes and Aishah Shahidah Simmons' no!. i would classify these films as feminist films. i think any film that discusses or examines issues that feminists discuss can be classified as a feminist film. i don't think the mediamaker has to stand up and shout from the rooftop "i am a feminist filmmaker!" also i don't think just because someone does declare that, that their films can automatically be classified as a feminist film. i think the art itself and the viewers need to be the speaker of if it is feminism.
the problem or frustration i guess i have with the idea of feminist media is that it is usually made by feminists for feminists. what i mean by this is, a filmmaker like Aishah Shahidah simmons makes her No! film and because of her place in the hierarchy of movie making only a limited amount of people see it, particularly people who are already interested or aware in some way of the issues she discusses in the film. for example, if i never took this class i probably would have never seen that film in my whole life. the thought of never seeing that film makes me cringe because it affected me so much. these feminist films NEED TO BE SEEN. they need more agency than they are getting. the media culture is basically driven by $$$, if your film is not going to bring in the money then your not going to get the exposure you more than likely deserve. i am a bit perplexed with this question of what is feminist media because as i try to answer i create even more questions that i can't really answer. one in particular, that i posed in my final paper is basically, can feminism or feminist media be "sexy"? just because the mediamaker wants to give feminism a voice does that mean that it can be visually pleasing? for instance, the dove real beauty campaign, i would classify as like "mainstream feminism", yeah they are using more "real" women. tall ones, short ones, fat ones, old ones, but still the women are not "ugly" they are all what i would say is attractive. do i think this lessens there feministic qualities, no. i think in order to have a voice, a voice that is actually heard, feminism needs to go mainstream, they need to "play the game".