Abuse of the Camera in Searching for Angela Shelton
“A woman-text gets across a detatchment, a kind of disengagement, not the detatchment that is immediately taken back, but a real capacity to lose hold and let go. This takes the metaphorical form of wandering, excess, risk of the uinreckonable: no reckoning, a feminine text can’t be predicted, isn’t predictable, isn’t knowable and is therefore very disturbing. It can’t be anticipated, and I believe femininity if written outside anticipation: it really is the text of the unforeseeable (Cixous, “Castration or Decapitation?�, 53).
Due to my minimal knowledge of feminist theory, I am choosing to respond to Group A’s blog question.
In the “road documentary� Searching for Angela Shelton, the road seems to function as Angela’s path to self-discovery and purgation of her tulmoltuous past. As Angela interviews women across America, the powerful idea of female unity and blacklash against domestic violence becomes secondary to her personal story, which climaxes in South Carolina when she confronts her father. Dispite the fact that she recieves very little closure from her abusive father, Angela seems to have a weight lifted off of her shoulders, reinforced by her symbolic “baptisim� in the closing scenes. The stories of the other women are almost used to compliment Angela’s story, taking an obvious back-seat and not being expanded adaquetely.
Though the narrative seems vain in nature, I believe Angela truly does care about and impact the women she interviews. For example, she changes the life of the woman at the truckstop simply by exchanging stories and making her aware that her and her daughter are not alone in the fight against child molestation. Angela comes across some very strong women, but I feel that she abuses her camera power in the case of the Anonomys Angela Shelton. Her attempt at therapy through fellowship goes too far in this case. As discussed in class, she had absolutely no control over the situation and was bringing up very painful memories for an alcholic that she was probably thousands of miles away from at the time. Her message can be seen as “kitchy� throughout the film, perhaps through some choice editing made in individual women’s stories and overdone intercutting of symbolic images. If I were Anglea Shelton making this film, I would have made clear from the beginning of the narrative that this story was almost fully about myself. Perhaps another solution would have been to create a documentary about her personal journey and another detailing the stories of specific Angela Sheltons across the country. Some of the focus should definitely be taken off her personal life, because after an hour and a half, the audience gets tired of hearing about it.