Introduction
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Notes Introduction 1. See, ‘The Cannes Film Festival Begins, but Are There Enough Women Directors In it?’ Metro (14 May 2014) accessed at: http://metro. co.uk/2014/05/14/the-cannes-film-festival-begins-but-are-there-enough- women-directors-in-it-4726722/; and Melissa Silverstein, ‘Cannes Watch: A Call to Action on Behalf of Female Filmmakers’, Forbes (14 May 2014) accessed at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/melissasilverstein/2014/05/14/ cannes-watch-a-call-to-action-on-behalf-of-female-filmmakers/ 2. For an analysis of this trend in the 1990s, see Laurie Ouellette, ‘Reel Women: Feminism and Narrative Pleasure in New Women’s Cinema’, The Independent (April 1995), 28–34. For indications of this trend in the 1980s see Michelle Citron, ‘Women’s Film Production: Going Mainstream’, in E. Deidre Pribram, ed. Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television (London: Verso, 1988). 3. It may be worth noting that Hollinger leaves out Orlando, which may be a reflection of her criticism of the film with which I engage in Chapter 1. 4. Data taken from boxofficemojo.com 5. McRobbie speaks to this idea of individual female success as representa- tive of postfeminism’s taking feminism ‘into account’ in her article on postfeminism (see previous note) by referencing the right-wing UK press’s endorsement of the ambitious ‘TV Blonde’ type (see page 31). The excep- tional successful female is easily co-opted by neo-conservative rhetorics of individualism that suggest that feminism is not necessary because ‘success’ for women is a matter of choice. 6. See Karen Hohne and Helen Wussow, eds., A Dialogue of Voices: Feminist Literary Theory and Bakhtin (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1994). Conversation also evokes Edward Said’s ‘contrapuntal’ readings of culture and history: Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1993), xxix. 7. Even in this electronic and digital age, we experience conversations as shared ‘space’ – we describe someone as being ‘on’ the phone, ‘on’ being a spatial term. Even chat rooms or instant messaging require computer space which is then compartmentalized into further spaces through the varying programs for chatting (or conversing) online. The word ‘room’ in chat room, again, understands conversation as happening in a space. Instant messaging has its own visual space in a separate window that shows both the name or tag of the user of the computer at hand but also the name of the other person in the conversation. That person may physically be in a whole other country, but on the computer screen the two people in conversation appear by name in the same visual space. 148 Notes 149 1 Envisioning Judith Shakespeare: Collaboration and the Woman Author 1. See Alexandra Twin, ‘Bravo Sofia! Now What?’, CNNMoney, 26 February 2004, accessed at: http://money.cnn.com/2004/02/24/news/oscars_ women/. 2. See Manohla Dargis, ‘How Oscar Found Ms. Right’, New York Times, 10 March 2010, accessed at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/ movies/14dargis.html?_r=0. 3. The skyscrapers of the city in the shot make it clear that the scene is in contemporary London, and in the introduction to the published script Sally Potter writes, ‘The novel ends in 1928, but in order to keep faith with Virginia Woolf’s use of real time in ending the novel (with the story finishing just as she puts down her pen to finish her book), the film had to end when it was completed – 1992.’ Sally Potter, Orlando (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), xiii. 4. Sally Potter, Orlando, 62. The complete lyrics to the song are as follows: I am coming! I am coming!/I am coming through!/Coming across the divide to you/In this moment of unity/I’m feeling only an ecstasy/To be here, to be now/At last I am free-/Yes-at last, at last/To be free of the past/ And of a future that beckons me./I am coming! I am coming!/Here I am!/ Neither a woman nor a man-/We are joined, we are one/With a human face/We are joined, we are one/With a human face/I am on earth/And I am in outer space/I’m being born and I am dying. 5. Other film studies work on women filmmakers include the following: Pam Cook, ‘Approaching the Work of Dorothy Arzner’, in Feminism and Film Theory, edited by Constance Penley (London: BFI,1988); E. Ann Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (London: Methuen, 1983); Charlotte Brunsdon, ed., Films For Women (London: BFI, 1986); B. Ruby Rich Chick Flicks, Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998). 6. My emphasis here is on English language filmmakers of North America, the UK and Australia. 7. See Andrew Sarris’s, The American Cinema: Directors and Direction 1929–1968 (New York: Dutton, 1968). 8. See The Women’s Film Pioneer Project: https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu. 9. Jane M. Gaines testifies to my first two points: ‘Some efforts were made by feminists, beginning in the 1970s, to restore to critical importance the work of such silent-film directors as Alice Guy-Blaché and Germain Dulac and such sound-era pioneers as Ida Lupino and Dorothy Arzner. Then the pipeline of discoveries seemed to dry up and, like other feminist scholars, I assumed that there had been only a handful of women working in the U.S. and European film industries – a few in the silent era before 1927 and a few more in the sound era.’ Jaine M. Gaines, ‘Of Cabbages and Authors’, in A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema, edited by Jennifer M. Bean and Diane Negra (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 89. 150 Notes 10. Potter has spoken about how the reputation of The Gold Diggers was used against her when she sought funding for Orlando. See, Lizzie Franckie, ‘A Director Comes in from the Cold: With the Making of Orlando, Sally Potter Has Thrown Off Her Sombre Reputation’, The Guardian: Features (11 March 1993). 11. Antje Ascheid discusses some of these films in the context of a larger view of femininity and heritage films. See ‘Safe Rebellions: Romantic Emancipation in the “Woman’s Heritage Film”’, Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies, 4 (February 2006), (1 September 2007) accessed: at http:// www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/article.php?issue=4&id=124 12. A parallel can also be made between Woolf’s playing around with bio- graphy as genre and Potter’s playing around with the conventions of heritage cinema. 13. See also Hollinger and Winterhalter (2001: 252). 14. The BBC television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice aired in the United States in January 1996. 15. In addition to Corrigan, Higson, Collins, Cartmell (‘Becoming Jane’), and Haiduc also link Mansfield Park and Shakespeare in Love. 16. Haiduc also sees the opening images as a ‘figurative landscape’ (59). 17. See Shea for example. 2 Adapt or Die: The Dangers of Women’s Authorship 1. Recently, commentators have been making the point that a woman has never been given the chance to direct a high-profile, potentially high- grossing superhero film, including Bigelow who is known for her skills as an action director. See Susan Wloszczyna, ‘Dear Hollywood: Hiring Women Directors Could Rescue the Superhero Movie. Love, Half the Human Race’, RogerEbert.com, 8 July 2013, accessed at: http://www.rogerebert. com/balder-and-dash/who-says-a-woman-cant-direct-a-superhero-film- hollywood-so-far. 2. See Miller (1985) for example. 3. As Andreas Huyssen points out in ‘Mapping the Postmodern’, ‘Isn’t the “death of the subject/author” position tied by mere reversal to the very ideology that invariably glorifies the artist as genius, whether for marketing purposes or out of conviction and habit?’; Andreas Huyssen, ‘Mapping the Postmodern’, New German Critique, no. 33 (Fall 1984): 44. 4. In order: Kiri Blakeley, Forbes, Baz Bamigobye, Daily Mail; Jane Ridley, New York Daily News. 5. Duncan Petrie, Screening Scotland (London: BFI, 2000), 216. 6. Williams (2002); Brooks (2002); Ebert (2003); Mitchell (2002). 7. For an analysis of Morvern Callar as Art film and Scottish film, see John Caughie, ‘Morvern Callar, Art Cinema and the “Monstrous Archive”’, Scottish Studies Review, vol. 8, (2007) no. 1: 101–115. Notes 151 3 Authorizing the Mother: Sisterhoods in America 1. ‘Sisterhood’ as a term related to and inflected by feminist politics is usu- ally dated to the publication of Robin Morgan’s anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful (New York: Vintage Books 1973), which includes the anecdote about a pamphlet written by Kathie Sarachild that included the phrases ‘Traditional Womanhood is Dead!’ and ‘Sisterhood is Powerful!’, which was distributed at an anti-Vietnam rally in 1968. 2. For more on how postfeminist constructions of sisterhood reduce poli- tics to affect see Anu Koivunen, ‘Confessions of a Free Woman: Telling Feminist Stories in Postfeminist Media Culture’, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, vol. 1 (2009) accessed at: http://www.aestheticsandculture.net/ index.php/jac/article/view/4644 3. All ranking and financial data is taken from boxofficemojo.com, accessed at: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=littlewomen.htm 4. See Helene A. Shugart, ‘Isn’t It Ironic?: The Intersection of Third-Wave Feminism and Generation X’, Women’s Studies in Communication, vol. 24, no. 2 (2001): 131–168. 5. See Elsa Barkley Brown, ‘African-American Women’s Quilting: A Framework for Conceptualizing and Teaching African-American Women’s History’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 14, no. 4 (Summer 1989): 921–929 and Cheryl B. Torsney, ‘The Critical Quilt: Alternative Authority in Feminist Criticism’, In Contemporary Literary Theory, edited by G.