Textual Poaching

There are outward and inward components to identity. The inward is nuanced and has purely to do with our minds. The outward is more social and classifiable. Male, female, black, white, doctor, student, mother, daughter. In my own outward identity, my biggest personal output is “female filmmaker.” With this social external identity comes an external social context. In my work, Understanding the Film (industry), I explore this context in the film mecca itself: Hollywood. And like this identity I have adopted, the art itself is very external and projecting. It is meant to speak for itself without much provocation unlike the inward identity that rests within my mind. However if you probe the pieces just enough, you might just get a glimpse.

This project started weeks before the assignment was announced when I was perusing the film texts at Pioneer Book. I stumbled upon a film textbook published in 1977 titled “Understanding the Film.” The images and aesthetic of the text were inspirational to me, and I purchased it knowing it would come in handy for some art project or another or even just for kicks and giggles. Then for this project I decided to use this textbook as my poached text, using unintentionally symptomatically unrepresentative images and text to show a stark reality juxtaposed with hope and optimism towards the oppressed. I created my own book, taking subtext from a book on the subject I am most passionate about: film. It is this subtext that allowed me to take this mass produced text intended for another purpose, and like the Velveteen Rabbit, make it my own. And as a female filmmaker, I identify this subtext perhaps more easily, and therefore feel obligated to point it out to people whose identities offer them other lenses that don’t quite have the same prescriptions.

Each image was carefully curated and placed during hours and hours of editing. However, the most pivotal image is one that I didn’t touch or mess around with at all. It is an image of a room full of men, with a woman looking through a window with blinds  into the room. In a single image, most likely unintended by the creators of the text, all the context of being a female in a male-dominated industry is powerfully portrayed. In other pages, I play around with the power structures of the characters. In one page, male cinematographers look through their camera up at a female actress. In another page, a woman takes up an entire page surrounded by oscars, while her oppressors taunt and smirk on the other side. I tried to use the book format to my advantage, using the center divide of the book to help play out power structure dynamics. Finally, I include text from the book that lists 101 influential films, every single one of them directed by men.

I think the first step is showing the rest of the world what it’s like through our perspective. That is what this work meant to me. Once we can get past that point and people are aware, just like art generating more art, new perspectives will generate new perspectives. I think Jesse hit it on the nail with the Gentileschi painting. The original painting was from a perspective that provoked a response from another artist who showed us another side of things, and in turn, Gentileschi inspired me in my work to also explore my perspective as a female artist.