[As readers of this blog may or may not know, I do some freelance work for
SEE Magazine, a local alt-weekly here in Edmonton. Below is my review for
Who Does She Think She Is?, a 2008 documentary that's screening here later this month.
It seemed appropriate to re-post here because it's a film about the battle many women face between being strong, independent artists on the one hand and loving, nurturing mothers on the other. This is something Katie and I have talked about dozens of times -- I was kind of worried she'd yell at me if I
didn't take on the assignment.]
Oh, how easy a target this seems. An ultra-earnest documentary about women who shake frame drums and talk about unlocking your inner goddess, who make paintings called
Confronting Your Own Worst Fears with no awareness of how hokey it sounds, and who struggle daily to balance their artistic careers with the demands (not to mention societal expectations) of being an attentive mother and wife.
Wait—what was that last one again?
Yes, the first thing you’ll realize during
Who Does She Think She Is?, the 2008 documentary from Pamela Tanner Boll, is that the very mechanism that makes people roll their eyes at the premise is what makes the film so necessary. That’s because feminism and gender equality are currently in a very weird limbo stage: they’ve been completely absorbed into the cultural discourse—ad nauseum, many would hasten to add—and yet at the same time they’re completely unrealized. As Boll tells us, even though the vast majority of artists are women, the vast majority of art exhibitions still only showcase male art. For those women who want to be both artists and parents, domestic as well as cavalier, there is much work to be done; we’re rolling our eyes at a revolution that, for all intents and purposes, never actually happened.
Boll spends time with five different women from across the United States, all of whom are artists. Some paint, some sculpt, most sketch, one is a singer. They seem like wonderful people across the board, pragmatic and intelligent, but they’re being painted with a particularly nasty brush. Because they need to coop themselves up in a studio by themselves for an hour or two every day, there’s a growing assumption from their communities that they must somehow be derelict parents.
After all, there’s only room for one absentee parent, and dads, with their long-nights-at-the-office and boys’-nights-out, have had that territory wrapped up for centuries.
By far the best decision Boll makes is to build her argument from these case studies, where we see the damaging effect this latent misogyny has on a very personal level. Even the spaciest, most New Age-y of the subjects makes her case convincingly, and there’s not a single interviewee that you don’t root whole-heartedly for.
Less successful, however, is when Boll tries to shoehorn in a smattering of peripheral issues, like how female gods and artists were written out of the history books, leading to today’s fundamentally patriarchal system. It’s a vague way to assign blame, and particularly since it’s a problem that’s accrued gradually, over several millennia, identifying the cause isn’t nearly as interesting or important as is the cure.
As for hope that things are improving, well, let’s see where these women end up. Two are divorced and on the wrong end of custody battles. Two forego their work altogether in favour of teaching—a decidedly more nurturing, domestic role that marks a clear defeat in contrast with the film’s initial ambitions. Another woman tries to end on a positive note by saying her dedication to her art sets a good example for her kids; the only problem is she has two sons.
Only one, a sculptor named Janis Wunderlich, gets to have her cake and eat it too. She’s last seen beaming at a big exhibition of her work, with her husband and five doting children in tow. What does she do right? It’s hard to say. I like to think it’s because she’s the most talented in the group, but more likely is that she simply caught a lucky break.
