Female Editors and Representation in the Film and Media
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Making the Cut FEMALE EDITORS AND REPRESENTATION IN THE FILM AND MEDIAE XICERNDUSTRPT FROM PLENARY Y SESSION BY JULIA WRIGHT In the past decade, a higher percentage knowledge they are presenting. I will also rather than emphasizing their versatility; and it of women have worked as editors than as consider what challenges my interviews with also risks undermining the creative importance directors, writers, cinematographers, and female editors have posed in historicizing of the director, an understandable job hazard executive producers,1 yet they are rarely them from a feminist perspective. echoed in many interviews with editors.3 represented in histories by film historians and General cinema history books do not Texts created within the film and media feminist film scholars. The purpose of this historicize editors, but instead celebrate industry by editors and trade organizations paper is not to reveal the “reality” of female directors who have advanced editing: Edwin account for the majority of the historical editors, but to understand what challenges Porter and D.W. Griffith; Sergei Eisenstein information about female editors. These arise in constructing them as historical and Dziga Vertov; and Jean-Luc Godard.2 texts typically subjects. In what frameworks have female Authorship then serves as the dominant characterize the editors been permitted or omitted from historical methodology, which explains the pre-sound era in historicization? What counts as historical omission of the editor and with good reasons: Hollywood as a knowledge and evidence? It is important to the editor’s job, if done correctly, is supposed period when the consider the author, and what impact their to be unnoticed; crediting an editor with a majority of editors politics of location have on the historical discernable style pigeonholes their abilities were women. TG09 SPECIAL ISSUE on THINKING GENDER 2009 7 CSupdateW toc Referred to as “cutters,” they edited film with while giving historical credit to male editors, narrates, “the invisible style of editing kept scissors, and were not seen as a creative force diminishes the work of female editors that editors invisible and unappreciated as well. For but a set of hands. Men began replacing the facilitated many of these celebrated men and years they have been the best kept secret of ranks of women at approximately the same moments: Agnès Guillemot edited the majority the movies.” No mention is made of a female- time that sound technology was introduced of Godard’s films in the 1960s and was the gendered workforce, despite photographs in 1927. The narrative arc continues by only editor to work with both Godard and overlaid with Bates’ voiceover depicting rooms recognizing a series of “token” female editors, Truffaut; yet, she is completely omitted from of women cutters. This history of a pink- and underscores a brief comeback of a female the documentary. James Smith is credited collar workforce is co-opted by the ACE, who workforce during World War II. as D.W. Griffith’s editor, but the documentary reinterpret the lack of professional distinction In response to the increasing employment gives only brief mention of Rose Smith, his given to female cutters as the editors’ of non-workers beginning in the early 1990s, wife, despite her own 20-year career as an genderless story of origin and their humble industry guilds and societies spearheaded editor in which she edited 11 Griffith films, beginnings. a movement towards legitimatizing and including Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. Texts on editing theory are usually authored historicizing their own professions (Caldwell Similarly, Dziga Vertov’s wife, Elizaveta Svilova, by renowned male editors, and reserve a 117-118). The Cutting Edge: The Magic of is credited as his wife and editor, but receives section for what might be described as a vague Movie Editing, co-produced by the American none of the long-overdue star treatment given evolution of the editor-as-artist.4 Adopting a Cinema Editors Society, the ACE, is as much a to the documentary’s male editors. Guillemot’s masculine pronoun, these descriptions are of documentary as it is a promotional campaign. complete omission may be the result of the an ahistorical subject who encounters various Actress Kathy Bates narrates the history of documentary’s focus on American editors; technological innovations that redefine “his” editing, highlighting the names of familiar however, Rose Smith and Elizaveta Svilova role as an editor, from the birth of cinema male directors: Porter, Griffith, Eisenstein, Vertov’s reductive treatment is the result of to the present day. It is precisely this type Vertov, Godard, and so on. This selective professional ambiguity—their roles as devoted of history, in the absence of any historical recollection of the general film history situates partners are somehow inseparable from the evidence, where the covert omission of women the editor as the directors’ chief collaborator, professional partnerships with their husbands. occurs. Female editors undergo a double and their historical presence is then afforded This professional discrediting of female invisibility: already invisible to film history by way of collaborative authorship as a editors continues as the documentary glosses by virtue of their “invisible art,” women are theoretical approach.Yet this same approach, over the early film industry, when, as Bates then edited out of books that intend to bring TG09 SPECIAL ISSUE on THINKING GENDER 2009 8 CSupdateW toc visibility to the editing profession. Consider historicizing texts are primarily concerned with that the advent of sound technology led sexist Rene L. Ash’s 1974 book, The Motion Picture Film legitimizing editors more than reconsidering executives to discharge women from their Editor, which consistently refers to the editor as women, women’s compromised professional jobs. However, this explanation too easily puts “he,” but nonetheless opens with a quote from capital make them less lucrative candidates for blame on a few big bad men without enough Cecil B. DeMille on the invaluable role of the “worthy” historical subjects. consideration for larger circumstances. Massive film editor—never mind that Anne Bauchens, In Walter Murch’s bestselling book, In lay-offs by studios began at approximately the the first woman to receive an Academy Award the Blink of An Eye, the feminine pronoun same time as the advent of sound. Editor Dede in editing, was DeMille’s longtime collaborating is deliberately used to describe editors up Allen recounts that during the Depression and editor and devoted friend. until the “pre-mechanical era,” as a way of for several years after, women were openly Edward Dmytryk and Walter Murch, both recognizing women once made up a majority discouraged from taking jobs from men since well-respected male editors, have written of editors before the introduction of the they had families to support. Scholar Jane theoretical books that make brief reference Moviola. This subtle periodizing device Gaines’ recent work on early cinema cites to early female editors. In On Film Editing, becomes Murch’s way of suggesting that women’s presence and forced departure as Dmytryk uses a footnote to indicate a sexist views of women’s technical capabilities the result of industry economics that allowed discrepancy between the masculine pronouns were the reason for their “disappearance.” women to thrive as producers, directors, he prefers using in the main text, and his actual In interview, Murch remarks, “[editing] was writers, and editors in the industry’s unstable experience. Dmytryk states in a footnote on considered to be a woman’s job because it formative years, but were pushed out of such the second page of his book, that “in the silent was something like knitting, it was something roles when the industry began to realize its days a large portion of cutters with women. like tapestry, sewing. It was when sound came force as a major business enterprise. Prejudices At famous Player Lasky, where I worked, all in that the men began to infiltrate the ranks about women’s technical capabilities may have the cutters were women” (original emphasis). of the editors, because sound was somehow been an argument for explaining women’s Like Rene Ash, Dmytryk’s ahistorical male electrical…it was no longer knitting.” One disappearance, but greater economic stakes subject has less to do with history than it does might speculate this to be part of the reason and competition for jobs suggests larger with advancing an argument for the editor to Vertov and Rose are not given recognition industrial and socio-economic reasons for their be seen as a legitimate artist, submitting to for their contributions, since it so closely decrease in employment after 1927. the old double standard that women do arts resembled a “woman’s job.” Dmytryk offers a Of the female editors who remained and crafts, but men make art. Because these similar explanation in his footnote, suggesting employed after sound, a handful have been TG09 SPECIAL ISSUE on THINKING GENDER 2009 9 CSupdateW toc written about in the pages of The Editors career. Williams believes it was their superior more about creating hierarchies along various Guild Magazine: Anne Bauchens as Cecil B. organizational skills that made women distinctions—for example, union workers DeMille’s editor; Barbara McLean, chief editor successful, adding, “they were better than the versus pre-union era or non-union workers, at Fox from 1949 to 1969; and Margaret Booth, men. At the time, we grudgingly accepted and a reverence for film production over supervising editor at MGM from 1939 to 1968. the fact that they were very capable” (Lewis). television and media. Margaret Booth stands out as being the most These reclaimed histories, coming from recent In order for feminist film theory to broaden celebrated of these women, whose career short articles from the Editors Guild Magazine, its study of historical subjects beyond the spanned from 1920 as a cutter for D.W.