By
BRAD WEISMANN
She’s
Beautiful When She’s Angry
2014,
92 min.
Dir:
Mary Dore
Prod:
Pamela Tanner Boll, Abigail Disney, Mary Dore, Geralyn White Dreyfous,
Elizabeth Driehaus, Nancy Kennedy
Scr:
N/A
Phot:
Svetlana Cvetko
Ed:
Nancy Kennedy, Kate Taverna
It’s
great to see a dynamite film history on the topic of women’s liberation, not
least because . . . well, how come someone hasn’t done this before?
Director
Mary Dore sculpts a narrative that seems concise and expansive at the same
time, a documentary that breathes. It helps that it is populated by many of the
prime movers of the Second Wave of the movement: Brown and Millet, Ceballos and
Brownmiller, and more, who rehash the culture war they waged against sexual
discrimination.
The
period covered, from roughly the publishing of Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique”
in 1963 through Roe v. Wade in 1973,
is richly documented in contemporary media as well, and Dore adds powerful segments
from the front lines – some of the faces from which contrast vividly with their
present-day selves, creating an illuminating counterpoint. The founding editors
of “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” then and now, resemble nothing so much as a bunch
of genial, witty, and genteel revolutionaries.
Archive
footage brings back vivid memories of the modest, aproned housewife archetype, her
suffocating lack of choice and independence and resources driving her nuts. Society
was programmed to mimic the Space Age nuclear family, whether it had resonance
or not. (Ellen Willis’s daughter Nona notes perceptively that sexual prejudice
today is more subtle and pervasive, more difficult to name and battle. This mirrors
the kind of struggle African Americans faced in the North during the Civil
Rights movement, where prejudice was more covert.)
The
constellation of challenges facing women in America: perpetual lack of basic
health and child-care services, the condescension, the sheer ever-present physical
danger, the return of female objectification, the marginalization of gay and
African American women, and a hundred other vital ideas are spilled out here in
an adroit mix of testimony, quotation, vintage film, and reenactment. What
makes “She’s Beautiful” work is the unbuttoned, free-swinging truthfulness that
all the film’s protagonists possess so serenely. Disputes, desertions, factions,
ideological wars, are all on the table here, which gives the history a texture
of complexity, a dynamic that demonstrates that it’s all still playing out, in
process.
The
screening I attended was enlivened by the appearance of activist, author, educator,
and editor Marilyn Webb. Webb, who featured prominently in the film, was a co-founder
of the SDS, pioneered in the women’s studies movement, and published the first
feminist newspaper. Her notorious booing by male members of the peace movement
in Berkeley signaled the fact that chauvinism didn’t adhere to political
leaning. “And it was my debut speech!” she recalled.
Webb
reinforced the idea that it is vital and valid for individual action to every
level of society in order to transform it. While emphasizing the gains made in
the ‘60s and ‘70s, she reiterated warnings about fighting “backsliding” – the erosion
of rights that continues across the country.
And,
like an empowered audience, the discussion continued, and a contact list was
spontaneously passed around.
Well
played, “She’s Beautiful.” We were already organizing.
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