In Prospect online this week, Rebecca Davies, online film editor at the Telegraph, asks why there are so few female film critics in Britain. Many of the first writers to treat cinema as something worth reviewing were women, and the situation is different in the US, for instance, where there are prominent female reviewers. Can women really just have lost interest in the medium, or is it sexism?
Also this week, Stephen Schwartz responds to the surprising result of the Prospect/Foreign Policy global public intellectuals poll, and Ehsan Masood’s article on the winner, Fethullah Gülen. Gülen, argues Schwartz, is not a new type of intellectual at all—and Gülenism is essentially a cult of personality.
Female film critics with a picture of Pauline Kael? She would definitely object. Pauline hated being categorized as anything except as a movie critic. She didn’t avoid being “female” she just didn’t think it really mattered. I remember her addressing a Women in Film luncheon as the honored speaker in which she said “what does it matter if you, as women, get to the top of the dung heap, if it’s still a dung heap.” Her only “cause” if she ever had one, was movies. And as for her influence, as one who worked in the industry, it was greatest on the filmmakers themselves. She may have influenced the more sophisticated moviegoers at the time mostly in her methodology: how to experience a movie. Her “emotional openness” to a film often got her into trouble, passion is unruly, but it is still the only reasonable way to critically view movies. It is not an intellectual medium.It was an exciting time. Once it was over, it seems as if the movies died. She quit the New Yorker because the movies died. I once remarked to her that she had outlived the movies. Who am I? I was Pauline’s second oldest friend in New York (the first was NY Times book editor Charles Simmons) and knew her well. We saw hundreds of film’s together (I was not a Paulette though I was greatly influenced be her; I had been Sarris-itte “auteurist”) and I took an active role in her weekly New Yorker, and previously, New Republic and McCall’s pieces. We were close personal friends (though we rarely talked about anything except movies) though I knew most of them. I am now and was then a Hollywood writer and producer.We had a falling out during her brief stint as a producer, something she was ill-suited to.
Caroline Lejeune and Dilys Powell were important British film critics of times past. Alfred Hitchcock considered Lejeune to be so great a friend and a film critic (even though she bashed several of his films) that he asked her (during the war) if she (and her son) would prefer to live in Los Angeles where he was sure he could secure her a job on one of the newspapers.
I think it is true to say that film criticism like everything else has become masculist, dumbed-down, etc. Few genuinely brilliant film critics of either sex have jobs.
I was embarrassed at the recent BFI tribute to David Lean by the film critic who moderated the event and thought they should have got Kevin Brownlow or Tony Sloman to do it.
I myself find it agonizingly funny that many women in the media e-mail me and (in the nicest possible way) ask if they can `pick my brain`. But this has been going on for years.
Society hasn`t changed. We just may be more aware of what`s going on.
If Westerners free associate upon hearing the word Muslim, the first two thoughts coming to mind will be i>terrorist and murder.
If the public intellectuals poll recently held on this site lead to Gulen heading the long list, then that has to be a cultural improvement of sorts.
Clearly I’m not a Westerner, because ‘terrorist’ and ‘murder’ do not readily spring to mind when I hear the word ‘Muslim,’ despite the fervent attempts of many in the media to achieve this end. However, I tend to free associate with the word ‘onanist’ when I hear the term ‘public intellectual,’ and I’m sure I’m not alone, so maybe it’s a kind of punishment to put people on this arbitrary list in the first place.
That much said, I reluctantly agree with many of the concerns expressed by Stephen Schwartz about Gülen’s legitimate claims as the world’s top ‘public intellectual.’ He’s surely more of a spiritual leader, of a folk movement to boot. Moreover, even by that criterion, he’s nowhere near peer recognition as the world’s top Sufi shaykh, (assuming any self-respecting observant of the Sufic sciences could be bothered to compile such a list) and it’s highly doubtful if the overwhelming majority of non-Gülenite Turks, not to mention Muslims as a whole, care about, or are influenced by, his teachings, laudable and sage as these may be. As I understand it, political Sufism is almost an oxymoron, and is largely confined to Turkey, where the Konya Sufis were and are oppressed and are thus associated/tainted with overtones of revolutionary radicalism.
How many of Gülen’s books have been translated into English/French/ German or Arabic, for that matter, and how many copies have been sold outside his core following? Even by that crude comparison, I bet he comes nowhere near the Dalai Lama, whose vast erudition is beyond dispute and whose worldwide following runs into tens of millions, but who mysteriously didn’t even make the top 100.
Hope he gets his green card, though. The Turkish military clearly consider him a threat. And his followers are highly computer-literate.
Rebecca Davies got most of the reasons right for why there has been a gender disparity in the recent movie-reviewing business (and it is a business – when you run across a reviewer whose business is also his or her pleasure, then you’ve hit the jackpot). The primary reasons seem to be a combination of sociological and, from the producer’s end of it, economic factors. These are factors that have produced thirty or so years of really bad movies – movies that are defined by high technical values used in the service of deplorably lame and unadventurous narratives or the never-ending series (and series of sequels) of stories customized for adolescent male taste, as evidenced on this side of the water by a spate of films based on adaptations of comic books and video games. The level and graphic nature of violence in the standard macho movie is risible when defended by the argument that it constitutes a species of “realism”, since nothing could be farther from a true depiction of violence. Put succinctly, as works of popular art most of these movies stink. The influence of academic “Cultural Studies” programs, which take the high road of being non-judgmental when it comes to subject matter, gives male reviewers a sanction for trolling through this flotsam. Maybe women just have too much common sense to fall for this.
Here in the U.S. Pauline Kael had a wide readership who valued her opinions, although members of that group might find her judgments about a particular film erratic or questionable. Her assets were a sharp tongue – or typewriter – and a broad and deep knowledge of the medium. Even when some of her rave reviews got overly frothy readers stuck with her because it was obvious that the good and the bad in her writing stemmed from a genuine love of movies (seldom, if ever, “films” in her lexicon), and her enthusiasm was contagious. I can’t remember reading a dull or cursory review by Kael, although I read a few that irritated me. My lament in the previous paragraph is not a solitary one — Richard Albarino notes the deteriorating quality of movies as a reason for Kael’s retirement from reviewing. Being a movie reviewer is obviously a tough assignment these days, for men and women, since reviewers must literally scour the world’s immense output each year in order to find a real gem or even a dozen or two worthwhile movies.
I’m sure I’m not the first responder to point out that your editors did Ms. Davies a disservice by their misspelling of “criticism” in the leader over the article.
Dear Sir:
I remain just a tad surprised if not even bemused by the tenor of the article on the dearth of female film critics. When I was a film critic on a London newspaper I frequently received invites to pre-release showings of movies in Soho Square and there was always a bevvie of pretty female film critics around sharing in the champagne and canapes. All very intelligent and very pretty, so maybe it is where one hangs out as a film reviewer that is the issue.
John Fleischmann
Stephen Schwartz`s article on Fethullah Gulen,
I mostly agree with mr Stephen Schwartz F.Gulen. Gulen`s movement is hardcore neoliberal islamism in the core. That is why some westerners are in love with his movement. Because they embrace money and capital more than anyone else. Calling their movement a sufi movement or even a sufi cult is a fars.
Mr Gulen controls some 25 billion dollars in assets and cash. These include companies and schools around the world. Most of his followers in the Turkish goverment see no problem bringing foreign capital (mainly european and american) to Turkey. They have no problem with giving tax discounts to foreign companies while increasing taxation in Turkey. So far Gulen`s arms inside the Turkish goverment has done
things that are opposite of what they preach publicly.
I personally think that they would like be the calvinists of Islam even thou they wont call these ideas loudly. Do not fool yourself thou they are not really trying to reform Islam. Because the book says it very clearly that the book and the religion cannot be changed or added. Any form of reform of this religion could be sacrilegious. And I am sure they are aware of that. They like to be the calvinist because that is the shortest path to having fat wallets.
Small point for Terrence O’Keeffe — Pauline Kael couldn’t type. All those hundreds of thousands of words: handwritten.
I stand corrected, and amazed. Did she do this based on some esoteric principle, or were the reasons more prosaic (e.g., did she never learn to type)?