3 minute read
Promising Young Women
Meet the Women in Film Association at Long Beach State University.
Image capture by Caroline Smith
by Caroline Smith
As much as I love film, it gets frustrating to see that the industry does not often love or respect my fellow women and I back. The film industry is not kind to women.
On the screen she is a sexualized mass of misogynistic tropes.
Behind the camera, her work goes un-awarded and un-celebrated in favor of her male counterparts.
And in the field, her work is constantly considered second best and she is lucky to have a career. At LBSU, members of the Women In Film Association are working to combat the patriarchy and oppression towards underrepresented groups in film by building a supportive community of motivated students.
Under normal circumstances, the club empowers its members with knowledge and hands-on experience through camera, grip, and lighting workshops.
Now, virtual meetings have shifted to include discussions on tropes and representation and guest speakers like cinematographer Chloe Weaver and production manager and producer Julie M. Anderson. When school gets stressful, meetings involve watching short films and talking about mental health.
Vice President Jessica Scott would like to clarify that even though it’s called Women In Film, “People should know it's not exclusive to only people who identify as female, we use it more as a tagline for branding. But really it has evolved to encompassing everyone of any gender. Everyone is welcome,” Scott said.
Majors also range from film to business, but everyone is interested in the silver screen.
When asked about the obvious ways women are discriminated against in the film industry, President Victoria Cota said, “Behind the camera there is a severe lack of representers. We talk about lack of representation on screen, which is important, but we need people behind the camera for there to be accurate representation. Not a lot has changed for the past 40 years, there’s not a lot of women behind the camera.”
When women and underrepresented groups are written and directed by men, you get tropes like the “manic pixie dream girl” and the “final girl,” Bechdel Test failures, and the ever-present male gaze.
In WIF, there is an effort to look deeper at these tropes and patterns and understand what is at the root of them.
“There is the literal male gaze where the woman is sexualized and the camera favors her body. We see a woman changing, the camera pans up her legs, goes up her body, and it's normalized. Culturally, it is what is sexy, what is pleasurable,” said Cota. “But we don't talk enough about how it tends to [sexualize] the extremely young. There is a tendency to fetishize innocence because the camera is doing all this work where the character might not even be in a sexual moment.”
The constant mis-representation of women and girls in film has long lasting effects on how they perceive themselves, and it gets exhausting. Once you notice the patterns and tropes, it’s all you see.
Well what do women want?
“As a woman of color, there’s not enough fun roles for us. I’d like to see a woman of color as the lead in a romcom,” Cota said. “I think that there should be more angry women,” she continues. “We get antihero men all the time, I want to relate to a woman like that psychologically. I also want to see women and their fun hijinks, like the guys get in high school comedies. Films like “Booksmart”, girls being girls.”
Basically, women are tired of being objects in film. If you can pull a “Christmas Story” and replace a female character with a sexy lamp without much changing, you’re not treating women as people.
Ultimately, that’s what motivates many WIF members. They see the same old disrespect on screen and say, “F*** that, we can do better.”
As for how the association is helping members to achieve their ambitions, Scott explains, “Everyone will tell you that film in general is all about making connections.
Here you make connections with like-minded people who will make you more confident in yourself and abilities as a filmmaker and as an underrepresented person in the industry.”
It’s about the support system, the community that makes opportunities, and the sisterhood made along the way.
The Women In Film Association meets Fridays 6 to 7 p.m.
