Category Archives: Documentary

Live Nude Girls Unite!

Year:
Country of Origin:
Format:
Running Time: 80 min

live-nude-girls-unite

Live Nude Girls Unite! is a documentary about the efforts that went into creating a union for sex workers at the Seattle strip club The Lusty Lady. Taking place from 1996-1997, it was released in 2000. This documentary argues that sex work is legitimate labor and that sex workers are insufficiently protected by current labor laws. It also posits that sex work isn’t an inherently antifeminist practice. The structural practices that encompass sex work are just, in most cases, anti-woman (as well as racist and classist.) The abuses that they protest include: discriminatory hiring based on race, not doing enough to protect the dancers’ privacy, and under paying them. It’s also about the relationship one of the directors – Julia Query – has with her mother. Query’s mother, Joyce Wallace, is a prominent doctor and activist for sex workers in New York. For decades, she drove around in a van handing out condoms and performing STD tests on NYC streetwalkers. She raised her daughter a feminist. Still, Query has trouble telling her that she’s a stripper. When Wallace does learn, she reacts badly. Despite her activism, she believes that sex work is demeaning to women. This reveals the stigma that sex workers have to combat even amongst their most natural-seeming allies. After intense negotiation, they reach a compromise with The Lusty Lady, turning it into the only unionized strip club in the United States at that time.

Whether sex work can be feminist has been a contentious issue within the movement since the 1970s. Known as the Feminist Sex Wars, the discussion is divided into two camps – the anti-pornography feminists and pro-sex feminists. The point of contention is whether sex work is inherently based on the exploitation of women. Anti-pornography activists point to the structural abuse and misogyny inherent in most sex industries, while pro-sex feminists argue that this blanket condemnation overlooks the agency of individual women in the sex industry. In this film, Wallace is anti-pornography while Query is pro-sex. The film itself is pro-sex. Live Nude Girls Unite! contains testimonials from dancers who identify with feminists and describe their sex work as empowering. While the film criticizes the exploitative institutions that house sex work, the dancers/protestors are framed as admirable in seeking their own worker- and performer-centric establishment. The film’s perspective on anti-pornography feminists (via its depiction of Wallace) is disappointment that they can’t overcome their prejudices regarding sex work to engage with a younger generation of activists.

Live Nude Girls Unite! also depicts an intersection between feminism and the labor movement. According to Wikipedia, the labor movement is, “the collective organization of working people developed to represent and campaign for better working conditions and treatment from their employers and, by the implementation of labour and employment laws, their governments.” In the documentary, dancers at the Lusty Lady unionize in order to combat low wages, discriminatory hiring practices, and insufficient protection from abusive clients. Feminist labor movements face the added challenge that women’s labor is often undervalued. For example, mainstream economics has historically ignored unpaid labor performed by women, such as domestic or caregiving work. Sex work, while paying, is deeply stigmatized. Live Nude Girls Unite! documents the ways in which employers try to downplay sex work as labor. The Lusty Lady’s owners were particularly adamant about retaining a description of the performance as “fun.” Alongside downplaying the job’s physical and emotional toil, this would have helped them frame dancing as lower-paying and less regulated “part time” work in court.

At the end of the film, the workers win many of their proposed gains and unionize. In 2003, the Lusty Lady become a worker’s cooperative. It was an important experiment in a sex work establishment owned by the workers themselves. The Lusty Lady closed its doors in 2013 due to declining profits and failed rent negotiations. Julia Query went on to become an author and public speaker. Vicky Funari continues to make documentaries about women’s labor, such as Maquilopolis. (2006)

Links

Interview with Joyce Wallace about her work combatting AIDS in sex workers during the 1980s.

Vicky Funari’s filmography.

Retrospective on the Lusty Lady as of its closing in 2013.

Overview of the Feminist Sex Wars.

Books on The Lusty Lady.

Eaves, Elisabeth. Bare on Women, Dancing, Sex, and Power. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Print.

Langley, Erika. The Lusty Lady. Zürich: Scalo, 1997. Print.

Other films by Vicky Funari on tripod. 

Paulina. Dir. Vicky Funari. First Run/Icarus Films, 1997. Videocassette.

Maquilapolis (city of Factories). Dir. Vicky Funari. California Newsreel, 2006. DVD.

 

Jesus Camp

Year:
Country of Origin:
Format:
Running Time: 87 min

jesustitleIn their film, directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady offer their audiences a glimpse into the experiences of some of the people who form the radical Christian Evangelical subculture. Jesus Camp follows a group of children as they participate in a summer camp called “Kids on Fire,” run by Pastor Becky Fischer. The footage documenting events, and interviews of the participants and their parents at the summer camp, are framed by excerpts of a radio talk show hosted by Mike Papantonio. Papantonio represents the voice of dissent in a film whose subjects purport a very singular religious-political ideology.

The film begins with images of the road and towns in Missouri, while the sound track switches between radio stations reporting the news of Sandra Day O’Connor’s resignation from the Supreme Court and those on which talk show hosts say things like, “We are engaged today in what they call a Culture War. We didn’t start it, but by His grace we’re going to end it. Say, ‘Yes, we want to reclaim America for Christ.’” From here the film goes into Papantonio’s studio where we see him critiquing the religious-right’s role in the political arena. The directors use the first four minutes of the film to establish a political framework through which interpret the events that will unfold.

Most of the remainder of the documentary consists of shots of camp activities and interviews with camp participants Levi (age 12), Tory (age 10), and Rachael (age 9), their parents, and Fischer. Through these interviews we learn that many of the children are homeschooled by their Evangelical Christian parents and are taught things like creationism and that science is untrustworthy. The camp activities range from the more common Christian camp activities like group prayers in which participants beg forgiveness for their sins to seemingly very political activities like praying over a life-size cardboard cutout of George W. Bush.

Given the controversial nature of many of the things shown and said (at one point Fischer compares her summer camp to Palestinian militant training camps for child soldiers), the directors tried to keep their presentation as objective as possible. They expressly desired to keep their own bias out of the film and accomplished this through some interesting documentary techniques. For example, the directors are never seen in the film; the audience only ever hears the answers and the questions posed during interviews. Following the first screening of their film in New York’s Tribeca Film Festival, the directors changed the musical score because they “felt that it was too judgmental-sounding and [they] were painfully trying to come to the film with a neutral eye.”

Despite their efforts to be objective documentarians, Ewing and Grady expressed not being able to resist placing the story of “Kids on Fire” into a national context by putting it in conversation with liberal-Christian Papantonio’s radio talk show. This occurs very literally when, at one point, Fischer calls in to the show and the two hold a debate on the matter of indoctrinating children. Even with the political framework that the directors explicitly create for the story of the camp, the film does manage to present all opinions expressed with respect and in such a way that leaves the audience to come to their own conclusions and question their beliefs.

Nw York TImes review: http://movies.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/movies/22camp.html?_r=0

Interviews with filmmakers: http://www.nycmovieguru.com/rachelgradyheidiewing.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWFBfh7gmZc

 

Conjure Women

“The work is about life. It’s about experience. It’s not about academics and it’s not about theory. And it’s not about processing out who you are. It’s very much about personal experience. And so if I want to talk about personal experience and I have to talk to those people who are interested in that and who live it. Not people who are interested in it, but those who live their experience. You know, those who don’t use theory as a sort of chart  or gauge by which to monitor their lives.”             -Carrie Mae Weems

Conjure Women highlights the work and careers of four African-American female artists: choreographer Anita Gonzalez, performance artist Robbie McCauley, photographer Carrie Mae Weems, and singer Cassandra Wilson. The film explores the complex identity of African-Americans and the positionality of women within this identity. Each woman portrays African American culture in arenas it which is hasn’t typically been acknowledged. Their work is a way to teach, but also to find their place within and connection to the community from which they originate. For example, Anita Gonzalez performs a piece about handling African-American’s hai, emphasizing attempts to suppress kinky curls in favor of straight hair or braids. The performance not only becomes a look at black hair, but also at what African-American women do in order to feel beautiful, no matter how damaging the process.

Each artist uses her work to explore the African diaspora on a global level. African-American women’s experiences are connected to men’s, but the distinctions are often not tackled. These four women are striving to tell the narrative surrounding African-American women by reclaiming their history and the stories of their families. They are keeping African-American history and traditions alive, while modernizing them to inform the current generation. Conjure Women is a beautiful documentary exploring the experience of not just African-American women, but all women. Unfortunately, the documentary hasn’t received the attention it deserves, but each artist featured is well established and easy to explore individually.

Resources:

Between Women: Trauma, Witnessing, and the Legacy of Interracial Rape in Robbie McCauley’s Sally’s Rape

Cassandra Wilson on NPR

Anita Gonzalez’s Website

Carrie Mae Weems’ Photography Website

Say My Name

Chocolate_Thai_02

Director: Nirit Peled

Year: 2009

Country of Origin: United States

Format: Documentary, color

Run time: (78 min)

 

“The voice of female hip-hop is  not the voice of a single woman, but countless women. And their successes can not be measured by the payouts, but by the stories they bring to life, and the impressions they leave behind…”

Say My Name, directed by Nirit Peled, is a feature documentary about female MCs in the music industry. Peled accumulated a multitude of artists all over the world from all walks of life. From New York there’s Queen Latifa and Monie Love, to Sparky Dee, Roxanne Shante and newcomer Chocolate Thai. In London, we have Estelle with Neo-Soul and the GTA crew demonstrating grime. There are immigrants to New York from other countries like Trinie from Trinidad, as well as MCs from Canada, Detroit, and Atlanta. The film exemplifies the diaspora of hip-hop and shows that no matter where you’re from or how successful you are, female artists in hip-hop have one voice made up of many voices that share the experience of struggling through oppression in an urban society, battling misogyny, and the burdens of womanhood.

The commonality of the MCs’ goals is indicative even within the title of the film. Say My Name asks us to pay attention to the names of these women, as colorful as their names are, as they tell us their stories. The refusal to be ignored is apparent even within the first shot of the film. The voiceover of Erykah Badu tells us how the most beautiful music comes from pain, originating in the Blues and jazz. This music will reveal truths about the society we live in, and it is important that these truths are coming from the mouths of women.

For more information please visit the websites below:

http://www.saymyname.org/saymyname/Welcome.html

http://www.hiphoparchive.org/circle/film-review-say-my-name

http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c754.shtml

Jasad and the Queen of Contradictions

Year:
Country of Origin: ,
Format: ,
Running Time: 40 min

This documentary from Lebanese director Amanda Homsi-Ottosson explores the controversy surrounding Jumanah Sallum Haddad’s magazine Jasad. Published quarterly, Jasad is an erotic cultural magazine through which Haddad, a writer herself, hoped to provide a forum for Arab men and women to read and write about arts and literature surrounding sexuality and the body.

Jasad and the Queen of Contradictions mostly focuses on the debate that has sprung up around Jasad, focusing both on critics who find the magazine to be inappropriate and shameful and on those who believe that it is not serving Arab women in the way it should be. The documentary includes interviews with Haddad herself, those who read her magazine, those who wish to ban it, and various professionals, such as a sexual health counselor, whose lives are touched by the issues covered in Jasad,

The documentary begins with Haddad explaining why she was motivated to create Jasad and continues with street interviews about perceptions of the magazine. Reactions are predictably polarized, ranging from religious denunciations to endorsements of the work by young men and women hoping to spread awareness and acceptance of sexuality.

The most interesting part of the film comes when various Jasad readers explain the importance of having such a publication in the Arab world.  It is explained that it is common for Arab men and women to use French or English words for genitalia and sex acts, because the most common equivalent words in Arabic are either offensive or nonexistent. Jasad is portrayed as bringing back ownership of not only the body but the language surrounding the body to Arabic speakers.  The narrative of Jasad can be written as one of decolonization and reclamation.

Although unconditionally supportive of Haddad and Jasad, the film does allow alternative opinions to be expressed through interviews. One in particular offered a valid and interesting critique of the magazine. Two Muslim feminists – one veiled and one not – argue that Jasad is pushing a certain kind of liberation on society. The women explain that there should be no shame in wearing a veil, and that they are “not represented in this ‘revolutionary magazine.'”

Related readings:
I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of an Angry Arab Woman, by Jumanah Sallum Haddad, creator of Jasad

Gut Renovation

Filmmaker: Su Friedrich

Year: 2013

Country of Origin: USA

Running Time: 1hr 21min

gut_renovation

Gut Renovation, an Audience Award winner at the 2012 Brooklyn Film Festival, had a week-long theatrical release at Manhattan’s Film Forum. The film documents the recent story of Williamsburg. In 2005, city council passed a rezoning of the neighborhood, which opened the door to rapid gentrification. Developers flooded in, setting off a frantic real estate boom that pushed out locals. Su Friedrich’s film is a personal essay, antagonistic and cranky. She has reason to be upset – after living for nearly 20 years in a multi-ethnic, working-class neighborhood and artists’ enclave, she became one of many facing displacement. In Gut Renovation, we see her turn her camera to the changes happening around her.

Friedrich unfortunately gives only the briefest of head nods to actual community pushback (one scene shows a neighborhood meeting). The rest of the film, she resigns herself to a mapping project. A blown-up map of an area 6 blocks wide and 17 blocks long shows us the impact of the rezoning in detail; Friedrich marks off new developments under construction with a red marker. She counts them off one-by-one; by the end of year five the number hits 173. These periodic stop-motion shots are set to the relentless staccato of a drill breaking ground, and reveal the pace of the changes. In-between, Friedrich rants and complains. She yells out her window at men in suits, points her camera at yuppie newcomers with shopping bags and expensive dogs, skeptically cross-examines brokers, and swipes a bottle of wine from the opening party of an expensive loft party.

In one of the stronger devices of the film, extreme close-up stills of attractive young people having fun zoom out and reveal themselves to be branded representations of the neighborhood. Friedrich is right to point her camera at the aggressive ad campaigns, the face of real estate interests, and glossy counterpart to the noise and chaos of demolition and construction. Shaky handheld footage gives us a peek into luxury condo showrooms, where promotional videos announce “Panoramic city views, only one step from Manhattan!” and “18 floors up, a place you’ll love to live, above it all.” Meanwhile, below it all, mom-and-pops facing eviction are forced to pack up shop. In a few remorseful interviews, local butchers and bus mechanics lament their situation; they’ve either been priced out of the neighborhood or asked to leave by landlords making the switch from commercial to residential. Friedrich composes a sing-songy abecedarium of local industries pushed out, a sad ode to the neighborhood that once was.

Su Friedrich’s prior films have won many awards, ranging from Outstanding Documentary Award at Outfest and Best Narrative Film at the Athens International Film Festival to Grand Prix at the Melbourne Film Festival.

 

Anjali Cadambi 2013

 

Gut Renovation Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9RLXUb8gn8

Film’s IMDb Page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2368897/

Film’s Page on Outcast Films: http://www.outcast-films.com/films/gut/

Director’s Website: http://www.sufriedrich.com/

Director’s IMDb Page: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0295453/?ref_=tt_ov_dr


Reviews

[1] For Good or Bad, Watching Williamsburg’s Transformation – NYTimes.com

[2] Gut Renovation – Movies – Film Forum

[3] ‘Gut Renovation,’ Su Friedrich’s Look at Gentrification – NYTimes.com

[4] Gut Renovation Whines at Williamsburg’s Newer Residents – Movies – New York – Village Voice

[5] ‘Gut Renovation’ movie review – NYPOST.com

[6] Su Friedrich on Gut Renovation | Filmmaker Magazine

[7] Gut Renovation – Pop Life | The Irish Times

Kinda Sutra, The

Filmmaker:
Year:
Country of Origin:
Format:
Running Time: 8 min
The Kinda Sutra (2009)

An unnamed girl speaks to the camera
© The Kinda Sutra 2009

Jessica Yu (In the Realms of the Unreal, Ping Pong Playa) turns her attentions to explore a universal yet simple question of childhood: Where do babies come from? Produced by Nonfiction Unlimited, The Kinda Sutra became an official selection of both the 2010 LunaFestival as well as 2009 Sundance Film Festival. And while the premise may be simple, Yu’s documentary touches on the complex social structures that continue to shape the social discourse on this scientific phenomenon. Through a series of interviews with people of various ages and races, Yu set out to document the countless stories that misrepresent the process of reproduction. Yu makes clear that regardless of social background, adults have created intricate stories, albeit age-appropriate, on this process. Ranging from the story of the stork to a simplified model of preformism, many stories have little to do with the actual event. In some cases, an explanation is not given at all, leaving kids and their endless imagination to piece it together. Coupled with all of this, Yu uses vibrant animations (by Stardust Studios) to illustrate the tales of misguided youths.

Most interestingly, the film ends with a handful of interviews with various children all that have been told the scientific explanation of the sperm and the egg. While surely more accurate, the grammar used across the board reproduces the underlying cultural assumptions about the event of the reproduction. It remains clear that the medical culture has pervaded the popular culture, in seeing the metaphor of the female reproductive system as a machine designed to produce. Quite literally, one interview relates the womb as a mechanized oven. Moreover, extending the metaphor of birthing as labor, such interpretation maintains unnecessary rhetoric of positivity in discussing the maturation and role of the sperm. One interview says that after the “connection” is made, the man “makes the baby.” Undoubtedly, through Yu’s various interviews, we are able to hear the consequences of the current lexicon. As a whole, The Kinda Sutra can act as a vehicle to highlight how people often do not notice the obviousness of everything that is said around them.

Further Readings:

Martin, Emily. “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles.” Signs 16.3 (1991): 485-501. JSTOR. Web. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174586>.

Martin, Emily. The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon, 1992. Print.

 

Martin Mathay ’15

Sermons of Sister Jane: Believing the Unbelievable, The (2007)

Filmmakers: Allie Light, Irving Saraf, and Carol Monpere
Year: 2007
Country of Origin: United States
Running Time: 53 min
View in Tripod
Visit the Official Site

Sister Jane receiving the Eucharist
Sister Jane receiving the Eucharist
© Women Make Movies 2007

The Sermons of Sister Jane: Believing the Unbelievable presents the story of one nun’s struggle against the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Her activism begins with her attempts to stop sexual abuse and corruption within her local diocese. The film chronicles her quest in battling the abuses rampant in her church, as she first contacts the bishop, who ignores the evidence she presents, and later a representative of the Vatican, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI). When her attempts to deal with Church officials fail, she contacts the press, stirring controversy. Her struggle with the Church hierarchy is not limited to the lack of recognition of the sexual abuse occurring in her parish, but it also includes disagreement with the Church’s teachings on issues such as birth control, homosexuality, the ordination of women, and even the Virgin Birth.

Through its presentation of the story of a single woman, The Sermons of Sister Jane demonstrates the conflicts of faith the wider Catholic Church is experiencing. The documentary juxtaposes images of lay Catholics practicing their faith with interviews with Sister Jane, connecting her discontent with the Catholic leadership and the unmet needs of the people of the Church. With a membership that is more supportive of same-sex marriage than the general population and whose women overwhelmingly utilize contraception, the Church suffers from a large disconnect between the beliefs and practices of the laity of the Church and the official teachings of the Church. Sister Jane is part of a larger movement of Catholics hoping to move away from condemning sexuality and to shift focus to helping the most marginalized populations in society. The Sermons of Sister Jane shows her courage to speak against the Church hierarchy and support social justice through her work with the community dining room at Plowshares, presenting a narrative of Catholic faith that is a much-needed break from the usual coverage of conservative Catholic leaders spouting words of condemnation.

Sister Jane states that “Jesus walked among the poor, the outcasts, the lepers, not the high priests,” spurring her audience to reject the Church hierarchy and instead pay attention to those in need. The format of structuring the documentary around interviews with Sister Jane gives her authority and shifts from the patriarchal Church’s exclusion of women to an alternative model in which women are leading and given a voice. The Sermons of Sister Jane is a powerful documentary exploring the potential for progressive activism in faith communities, women in the Catholic Church, feminist theology, and gender studies in religion.

Ashley Vogel 2013.

Further Reading:

[1] Feminism and Theology, Ed. Janet Soskice & Diana Lipton, 2003

[2] “Pope Francis and the American Sisters,” Mary E. Hunt, Religion Dispatches

[3] “What Should The Vatican Say to the (Last Generation of) Nuns?” Peter Manseau, Religion Dispatches

[4] Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American Catholic Feminist Movement, Mary J. Henold, 2008

Healthcaring: From Our End of the Speculum (1976)

Year:
Country of Origin:
Format: ,
Running Time: 32 min

Lolly Hirsch and her daughter Jean discuss self-examinations
Lolly Hirsch and her daughter Jean discuss self-examinations.

Healthcaring is a short documentary that focuses on the historical and contemporary abuses women have suffered at the hands of mostly male practitioners, and depicts solutions women find to lack of access to comprehensive health care in the 1970s.

The film includes many talking heads of women relating their stories of mishaps with mainstream gynecologists and obstetricians, including victim-blaming following a rape, mistreatment during labor, and general misinformation and disrespect. The women’s anecdotes are often short and intense with no interference from an interviewer. This gives the viewer a sense of the popular attitude of women towards mainstream healthcare, especially because there is a wide range of women speaking to the issue in terms of race and age. Interestingly, there is no discussion of abortion rights in the film at all, which may be due to the politics or morals of the filmmakers, or the fact that the Roe v. Wade decision had recently been made by the Supreme Court and there was uncertainty about the effects of the decision in favor of the child-bearer’s right to terminate their pregnancy.

There is also historical context for the systemic mistreatment of women by practitioners that is shown through archival images and acted narration. There is distinct romanticization of eras past when women would care for each other and there was little interference from men in natural female processes such as menstruation and birth. There is little mention of the benefits that modern medicine provided many patients will including antibiotics and effective birth control. But this ties into the main critique of the film that women have been denied genuine access to knowledge about how their bodies work and how to take care of themselves.

The crux of the film’s message rests in the spaces that women have created to nurture self-knowledge concerning preventative care. Though the women who speak about the clinics that they have created with fondness, they directly express their belief that the health care they had to seek out ought to be provided free of charge to every woman in the United States. There is a great sense of the value in maintaining a space for women that includes lively discussion about relevant health issues, promotion of preventative care procedures, and outreach to the communities that the clinics exist.

Ultimately, this film is very frustrating to watch in the beginning of the 21st century because so many of the problems discussed are still endemic in society today. There is still ineffective education about sexual health throughout the United States and shame surrounding feminine sexuality and the bodies of those with vaginas. There are still political attacks on organizations such as Planned Parenthood that provide much needed educational resources, as well as prenatal and STI medical care. It brings to mind the fact that there needs to be more visibility for women’s health clinics, staffed by community members or medical practitioners, as well as the continuing struggle for comprehensively available healthcare overall, with special attention to the needs of women.

 “Women and Mental Health: A Feminist Review”

“Rejecting the Center: Radical Grassroots Politics in the 1970s — Second-Wave Feminism as a Case Study”

 

Girl Power: All Dolled Up (Dir: Sarah Blout Rosenberg)

Year:
Country of Origin:
Format: ,
Running Time: 24 min

Girl Power: All Dolled Up traces the inception and development of the phenomenon that birthed the songs of Riot Grrl and the Spice Girls and fueled the writers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: What is “girl power” and who defines it? Setting the candid responses of multiple young girls (aged 4-16) against the responses of women in academia, Sarah Blout Rosenberg makes visible the crushing effects of popular media and entertainment on the development of a female identity.

We are first introduced to the girls sharing what they believe “girl power” is. For Jasmine, 16, “girl power” is about equality: “Females can be powerful and they can do everything males can do.” Karen, 14, takes this a step further, asserting, “girls can do anything guys can do, sometimes they can do it better. And girls can do it differently.” The younger girls also chime in, seeing “girl power” as standing up for those being bullied or as Taina, 12 sees it “feeling good about themselves.” Sharon Lamb, EdD, Professor at the University of Massachusetts, then situates the phrase in a historical context, describing it as emerging in the 70s, a product of second wave feminism that sought to establish that girls could do whatever boys could do. For Carrie Preston, Assistant Professor at Boston University, the continued relevance of “girl power” is reflective of “the desire not to identify as the victim.”

Rosenberg is skeptical, however, of whether this modern-day politics of girl power is even empowering. We see Uma Thurman in a battle scene in Kill Bill, Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, Ke$ha on a red carpet, Miley Cyrus gyrating in a music video, Katara waterbending in Avatar: The Last Airbender the series, Beyonce shakin it in “Single Ladies,” Superwoman, and finally Lady Gaga scantily clad in “Bad Romance.” Interweaving images of women that seem contradictory- Lara Croft and Ke$ha?- the film scrutinizes the very notion of what female empowerment is in popular media and the extent to which this new meaning of “girl power” has been co-opted.

Refreshingly, the voices of the young girls, speaking unabashedly about how they interact with media images of themselves, create the narrative. The younger girls giggle and share their desire to look beautiful all the time, how they relish shopping, and how they want to be princesses. The older girls, however, offer the most poignant critique: while they understand the “business” of it all, they admit they are still attracted to these products and stereotypes. As the level-headed Karen, 14, lamented: “Every girl wants to find Prince Charming. Every girl wants to have pretty stuff. Every girl wants everyone to love them.” Granted, this response is, as many others in the film are, a bit hetero-normative and generalizing. This is Rosenberg’s intention. By layering the voices of an ethnically diverse and wide-ranging group of young girls in terms of age, Rosenberg shows that no girl is exempt from these images and that each girl internalizes them.

While Rosenberg touches on the most widely critiqued and established offenders, Mattel (manufacturer of Barbie) and Disney (creator and disseminator of fairy tale stories of Princesses and Prince Charmings), Rosenberg contexualizes her analysis in the current moment, considering the impact MGA Entertainment (the manufacturer of Bratz), television programs, entertainment magazines, interactive online games, and musical lyrics have on young girl’s self-perception. In the business of making money, even Dora the Explorer falls prey to gendered commodification. When first aired, Dora was the best role model in toys and television for young girls, as she wore “shorts and not skirts” and was adventurous, inquisitive and determined. She has since then been co-opted; girls can buy Dora in the “kitchen, Princess Dora, Dora shopping kits, Dora makeup kits,” all items that “undermine” what she originally symbolized, Professor Lamb laments.

Arguably, it is Rosenberg’s cutting and fusing of seemingly endless multi-media examples that makes her critique powerful: visually, the viewer is so bombarded by commercials and magazine covers showing lip gloss, flowing hair and high heels, that he/she undeniably feels the omnipresence and power of these images. In these moments, the viewer departs from being a spectator to inhabiting the gaze of a young girl consuming the glitter and glam.

It becomes clear that these brands, only concerned with selling their products, teach girls a very problematic sense of “girl power”, one based on beauty, popularity, and approval by men. Girls seeking this sort of disabling empowerment learn another irreversible message: consumption of the right products can grant them happiness. As a scholar in the film puts it, this new sense of “girl power,” namely equating “girl power” with beauty, is oxymoronic. Having nothing to do with “behavior,” “action,” or “enacting change,” this new conceptualization sadly only offers girls a very hollow and temporary means of empowerment.

The documentary ends as it began: revisiting the notion of “girl power” and reinvigorating it. Highlighting female politicians like Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, Rosenberg offers an alternative role model to sex vixens like Kim Kardashian and Nicki Minaj. On a somewhat clichéd note, the girls then share their aspirations, and how they will use their best asset, their intellect, to become: a lawyer, veterinarian, engineer, graphic designer, midwife, teacher, and an artist. Rosenberg gives the last word to a scholar, who, resisting a polarizing classification of what it means to be an empowered woman, provocatively claims–, “the issue is not that you wear pink or are a cheerleader but that the world acknowledge you are more complex than just that.

The faults of Girl Power: All Dolled Up are undeniable– its subject matter is too overdone, the use of heart wrenching and candid responses of young girls is so cliché, its message is very one-sided, and it doesn’t delve very deeply into any of the themes it brings up. Where are the Spice Girls and their role in the resurgence of “girl power”? Where are the representatives from Mattel or MGA Entertainment to offer their side of the story? Why does she not incorporate more historical footage, counter-narratives, really any additional material that would make her argument more complex? In a review for the Buffalo Library, Kathleen Spring, a Librarian at Linfield College in Oregon,  recommends the film but acknowledges it:

“is not significantly distinct from Susan Macmillan’s Girls: Moving Beyond Myth (2004), and the short documentary What a Girl Wants (2001) is a more compelling film of comparable length. Maria Finitzo’s 5 Girls (2001) and Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s Miss Representation (2011) provide fuller, feature-length treatment of the same subject matter; as such, libraries with these films in their collections may opt to pass on Girl Power.”

Paradoxically, while all of these arguments are leveled at the film’s relative simplicity, the film arguably addresses a mature audience. Making interviews with professors and multi-layered media the central devices of criticism, Rosenberg inadvertently ostracizes the young girls who inspired her work. Very young female spectators would maybe understand and identify with the young girls’ stories, but would lose the narration of the scholars and not be able to interpret the connection among the images Rosenberg fuses.

While all that may be valid, I cried throughout the entire short film. The young girl participants answer so candidly that it is impossible to not think back on one’s own childhood;  wanting to be Princesses, loving shopping, going through puberty, and crushing on boys, their story was my story in undeniable ways. Rosenberg’s montage of blatantly sexist commercials really made the targeted nature of them visible and forced me to question whether I internalize and even find pleasure in the images of “femininity” the commercials espouse. Despite being about young girls, this short film should be watched by all girls older than 16 because in its limited and yet vivid exploration of the relationship girls have to popular media, it inspires internal retrospection and the mending and cultivation of one’s own, real girl power!

For more information please visit: