A People's History of Film Cinema

The power of "Rethinking Difference" (the title of this week's discussion according to our thesis) is the challenge of continually rethinking our perspective, often in categories largely ignored. Feminist film theory acknowledged the biggest elephant in the room, the female, who although is largest majority in the world, has been dominated through civilization built on gender roles that have history tracing all the way back to the cradle of civilization. Black studies moves into prominence as the "king" of minorities because of the nearly unimaginable history, especially in the United States, of oppression and slavery. Queer studies have an even shorter history. Anyone who saw the film "Milk" will be made aware of how little awareness there is in our country of the struggles of the Gay rights movement (even as its battles for legal equal rights continue everyday). As I read these articles, I remembered a profile of a Hispanic actress in the New York Times years ago about the assumed roles in society. " She [Lupe Ontivero] has played the maid at least 150 times, in films like "As Good as It Gets" and NBC sitcoms like "Veronica's Closet" and, most recently, "Leap of Faith." Basically, these articles made me realize how rarely I step outside my own gender, sexuality, and ethnic background to speculate on perspectives far different than my own.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/16/movies/trying-get-beyond-role-maid-hispanic-actors-are-seen-underrepresented-with.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/H/Hispanic-Americans

Gaines writes, "But exactly how should the feminist who does not want to be racist in her work respond to this criticism (ignorance of Black woman in feminist theory)? In one of the few considerations of this delicate dilemma, Marilyn Frye, in her essay 'On Being White', urges us not to do what middle-class feminists have historically done: to assume responsibility for everyone" (Gaines 33&0. Now that's some good advice... We have to instead cultivate our "determined ignorance" and grasp at the "interacting levels of social formation." Back to the old adage, "the more you know, the less you know."

Film Theory adds such a unique layer on these issues because of the acts of representation and gaze. Watching "To Wong Foo," I was very aware of the "straightness" of Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, and John Leguizamo (just was I in "Milk" of Sean Penn's sexuality). Imagine a group of actual drag queens (and one dray princess) watching this film. That is exactly the mental exercise that should be performed during spectatorship. Without it, we risk as return to white/male dominance in cinema.