No 28 Alternative Cinema in the 80s JUMPQijf A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY CINEMA $2.00 US$2.50 ABROAD TOOTSIE POLTERGEIST • Counter Cinema and Godard OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN • THE VERDICT Radical Film in Peru and Mozambique • REDS The example of Picasso is not only relevant to artists. It is because he is an artist that we can observe his experience more easily. His ex¬ perience proves that success and honour, as offer¬ ed by bourgeois society, should no longer tempt anyone. It is no longer a question of refusing on principle, but of refusing for the sake of self-preservation. The time when the bourgeoisie could offer true privileges has passed. What they offer now is not worth having. —John Berger A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY CINEMA TOOTSIE Mixed messages Deborah H. Holdstein First, the good news. TOOTSIE is a wildly successful film at the box office. And it ap¬ pears that the film represents the consummate group effort: three directors, approximately twenty script rewrites (with such notables as Elaine May and the Barry Levinson/Valerie Curtin team), and Writers' Guild arbitration over who should get screen credit. TOOTSIE'S dialogue seems unrelentingly witty, snappy, and downright hilarious, with filmgoers and critics alike thrilled at Hollywood's "new feminism," its raised consciousness, its preoccupation with important social issues. And that makes the news less good. Filmgoers love TOOTSIE. Mainstream critics love TOOTSIE. Inexplicably, however, these same critics gloss over or reject the film's implicit sexism and the mixed "feminist" message that undercuts it¬ self in deference to the system that produced the picture. It depicts women as weak, power¬ less, banal emotional blobs, saved only by a man's inspiring assertiveness in the guise of a soap-opera actress-heroine in designer blouses. Dustin Hoffman plays two roles in TOOTSIE— Michael Dorsey, unemployed, temperamental actor, and the woman he "becomes" in order to land a job, Dorothy Michaels. He succeeds, getting the role of Emily Kimberly, hospital administrator on a successful soap. He begins to ignore girl¬ friend Sandy (Teri Garr) as the "Michael" that's really "behind Dorothy" begins to fall in love with his co-star, Julie (Jessica Lange). The inevitable complications ensue. Critical response unintentionally illustrates both the film's misleading "virtues" and its implicating, patriarchal structure. Even the diction in the reviews themselves reveals conde¬ scension toward women vanquished only temporar¬ ily because "Tootsie" is really a man whose words are taken seriously: Michael dresses up as a hopeful actress named Dorothy Michaels, who is a shy Southern belle until she opens her mouth. Out of that mouth comes the most assertive and appealing kind of feminism imaginable [emphasis added]. . . . Simply stated, the TOOTSIE thesis is you are what you wear. Simply by putting on a dress, Michael Dor¬ sey becomes more polite, less contentious, and more likely to defer to his superiors . . . women are so often trapped into sub¬ servience because, well, a dress is not a suit.l being a woman or a man. It celebrates the in¬ herently "wonderful sensitivity" of Michael's "feminist" inclinations and the implication that it's the “woman inside the man" that has brought him around to egalitarian insight. Not really. The film itself continually undercuts any pseudo¬ feminist "statements" it tries to make through characterization, point of view, and the overall structure of the film. TOOTSIE'S message is loud and clear: only because of a man can a woman achieve any modicum of greatness or rise from the mire of self-doubt and psychological trauma. Only through a man will a mass-audience "feminist" message be taken seriously. Michael/Dorothy's role as the sole voice for women's issues is further aggravated by the film's other women. As his suicidal -maniacal girlfriend Sandy, Teri Garr becomes, in Kael's sincere words, "the funniest neurotic dizzy on the screen. "5 Fine. Yet Sandy is unable to get an acting job; in fact, Michael beats her out for the Kimberly soap opera role. Michael runs lines with her before the audition and Sandy tells him that he does a woman better than she can! She can't even "get her rage back" for the audition unless he goes with her and "keeps her angry." Worse, Michael treats Sandy poorly, thoughtlessly victimizing hei — and even stealing her job! notion that it takes a man in woman's clothing to articulate the needs of the women around him? That it takes a maij--perhaps radiating the strong assertiveness only he can "do so natural¬ ly"— to politicize and inspire the almost stere¬ otypical ly weak women around him to stand on their own two feet? And, most alarmingly, that it takes a man-as-wornan, speaking sincerely about "feminist" issues, to convince the sexists in the audience, as well? The insult permeates the structure and content of the film, especially when one considers the initial information which types Hoffman's char¬ acter. Michael Dorsey is thirty-nine, only in¬ termittently employed as an actor but the finest of professionals. Dedicated to his acting stu¬ dents but picky and hellish for establishment theater folk to work with, Dorsey's characteri¬ zation as a man devoted to people and his craft unfolds during the opening credit-montage. As the center of a circle of students, he's looked upon as a respected mentor, a victim of the the¬ ater establishment, a wise veteran of acting "wars." And because he's difficult to work with, his agent calls him a "cult failure." No one will hire Michael Dorsey. Therein lies the crucial economic reason just¬ ifying his audition in woman's clothing for the role of hospital administrator Emily Kimberly on the daytime drama, "Southwestern Hospital." Af¬ ter all, only dire straits will justify a cloth¬ ing sex change: Jule Andrews was starving to death in VICTOR/VICTORIA; Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis witnessed the St. Valentine's Day Mas¬ sacre before they resorted to an all -girl band in SOME LIKE IT HOT, gangsters in pursuit. But lest we further dare to question Dorsey's heter¬ osexuality, the scene of his surprise birthday gathering has him trying to pick up every woman at the party. The lines? "Oh, yeah, you were in Dames at Sea — you've got a great voice. You know, I felt like there was an aura between us in the theater." This allegedly feminist film, then, must go to great lengths to assure its audience that the protagonist is "legitimate"— straight. Dorsey seems as much of a voyeur sex¬ ist as the men he'll rail about as Dorothy. Critical commentary such as this underscores the essentially patriarchal structure of TOOTSIE (not to mention the attitudes of the critics reviewing it). Michael Dorsey is not really more polite when he becomes Dorothy— if any¬ thing, it's the "manliness" of this woman that many people admire while paradoxically condemn¬ ing her for her rather homely appearance. When Michael/Dorothy goes to audition for the soap opera, s/he teaches the blatantly sexist director, Ron, a "feminist lesson": he wants a "broad caricature of a woman," he tells her, as "power is masculine and makes a woman ugly." First, Ron's caricature as "male chauvinist pig supreme" is so broadly drawn as to be uncon- structive in teaching us anything about how peo¬ ple shouldn't act— no one could ever see himself in Ron, a cartoon figure who defeats any preten¬ sions the film might have had to him as a "fem¬ inist bad example." Second, when Michael/Doro¬ thy calls Ron a "macho shithead" and yells "Shame on you!" for his stereotyped images of power, the patriarchy surfaces. Dorothy is "un¬ attractive." Dorothy is really a man. Obvious¬ ly, then, the so-called "feminist message" dis¬ solves into visual images that tell us the oppo¬ site: Dorothy is powerful in telling off Ron-- Dorothy is homely. And the other women in the film are beautiful, powerless, and weak-willed. Thus, TOOTSIE perpetuates these unfortunate sex¬ ist stereotypes, as well as the antiquated as¬ sumptions about any connection between a woman's physical appearance and her intelligence. Fi¬ nally, it must be remembered that the only per¬ son to successfully "call" Ron on his sexism is really a man. And, I fear, it's the only way many people in a representative audience would take such a "feminist" message seriously. One critic acknowledges that "the movie also manages to make some lighthearted but well -aimed observations about sexism, "2 while Carrie Rickey of the Village Voice names it to her list of the top ten films of 1982.3 Pauline Kael celebrates the fact that "Michael is thinking out Dorothy while he's playing her— he's thinking out what a woman would do. "4 Is there no insult to the Jessica Lange's Julie, the woman with whom Michael falls in love while pretending to be Dorothy, is also weak and unassertive. The com¬ plication, inevitably, occurs when Julie becomes "Dorothy's" best friend; the film seems to tell us that Julie's never had such a wonderful friendship with a "woman" before, as if being close, woman-to-woman, were unnatural. Manipu¬ lated by her director/boyfriend, Ron, Julie drinks too much. Only Dorothy's advice and sup¬ port and her improvised dialogue as ultrafemin¬ ist Emily Kimberly redeem Julie. And yet Lange's Julie is evidently supposed to be a "liberated" woman in the positive sense, but here again whatever liberation there is is thor¬ oughly undercut. A single mother in "real life," Julie plays, in her words, "the hospital slut" of the soap. Surely audience response connects the damning term "slut," given Julie's emotional insescurity and weakness, to her dis¬ organized existence, as the film subtly but un¬ mistakably implies a parallel between her TV role and her life. When Julie believes that Michael/Dorothy is a lesbian, she acknowledges her "stirring feelings," but we remind ourselves that Dorothy's "really a man"— Julie's "feel¬ ings," therefore, must be heterosixual and "nat- Further, Michael justifies his role as a woman by creating a parallel between the plight of unemployed artists and women— "I've got a lot I can say to women." The film would have us be¬ lieve that it really doesn't take much to be a woman at all, that women lack enough individual¬ ity or identity as a group that a man can "do" her very well, without anyone noticing or ques¬ tioning. In spite of this, TOOTSIE'S allegedly feminist intent appears to illustrate the problems of Continued on page 32 2 JUMP CUT NO. 28 ^UMPcUL No. 28 Films TOOTSIE (Sydney Pollack, 1982) Deborah H. Holdstein 1 DINER (Barry Levinson, 1982) Deborah H. Holdstein 3 POLTERGEIST (Steven Speilberg, 1982) Douglas Kellner 5 REDS (Warren Beatty, 1981) John Hess Chuck Kleinhans 6 THE VERDICT (Sydney Lumet, 1982) Phyllis Deutsch 11 VICTOR/VICTORIA (Blake Edwards, 1982) Mark Bernstein 11 E.T. (Steven Speilberg, 1982) Phyllis Deutsch 12 AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN (Taylor Hackford, 1982) Jon Lewis 13 CHARIOTS OF FIRE (Hugh Hudson, 1981) Ed Carter 14 BIRGITT HAAS MUST BE KILLED (Laurent Heynemann, 1982) Hal Peat 17 WHITE ZOMBIE (Victor Halperin, 1932) Tony Williams 18 COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER (Michael Apted, 1980), HONEY SUCKLE ROSE (Jerry Schatzberg, 1981), and THE NIGHT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA (Ron Maxwell, 1981) Mary Bufwack 21 Articles The Mammy in Hollywood Film Sybil DelGaudio 23 Saturday Afternoons Marty Gliserman 25 Radical Film in Peru Today: An Interview with Pancho Adrienzen Buzz Alexander 27 Film Reborn in Mozambique: An Interview with Pedro Pimente Clyde Taylor 31 Liberation ... In Reverse Lary Moten 32 Special Section: Alternative Cinema in the 80s Introduction Chuck Kleinhans 33 Independent Features at the Crossroads Lynn Garafola 35 "We don't have films you can eat": Talking to the D.E.C. Films Collective Margaret Cooper 37 WE ARE THE GUINEA PIGS (Joan Harvey, 1981) Doug Eisenstark 40 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ROSIE THE RIVETER (Connie Field, 1982) Sue Davenport 42 SUSANA (Susana Blaustein, 1980) Claudia Gorbman 43 The Films of Sharon Couzin Gina Marchetti Carol Slingo 44 New U.S. Black Cinema Clyde Taylor 46 Theory Epic Cinema and Counter Cinema Alan Lovell 49 Godard and Gorin's Left Politics, 1967-72 Julia Lesage 51 Counter Cinema— A Bibliography from JUMP CUT Julia Lesage 53 Critical Dialogue Sexual Politics Cathy Schwichtenberg 58 Tap Dancing John Fell 58 In Print The Celluloid Closet y by Vito Russo Martha Fleming 59 The Hollywood Social Problem Filmy by Peter Roffman and Jim Purdy Jeremy Butler 62 Covering Islamy by Edward Said Michael Selig 63 Reports Government Censors Pick Best Short Janine Verbinski 64 Puerto Rico's Super 8 Festival Maria Christina Rodrigez Rodriguez 64 Latinos in Public Broadcasting: The 2% Formula Jesus Salvador Trevino 65 Racism, History, and Mass Media Mark I. Pinsky 66 Photography Jean Seberg and Information Control Margia Kramer 68 The Last Word Terry Santana The Editors 72 1 SUBSCRIPTIONS Payment Must Be In US Dollars I B USA CANADA AND ABROAD JUMP CUT 1 1 Individuals 4 issues $6.00 Individuals 4 issues $8 00 PO BOX 865 1 1 Institutions 4 issues $9 00 Institutions 4 issues $1100 BERKELEY CA. 94701 1 1 _ ... _ _ ■ ■ 1 -J NEWS AND NOTES The Cinema Guild (a division of Document Associates) is now distributing the films made by the Pacific Street Films people, Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher. They have been producing socially conscious documentaries since 1969 For further information on the Pacific Street Films library contact Cinema Guild, 1697 Broadway, Room #802, New York, NY, 10019. (212) 246-5522. The Oral History of the American Left (OHAL) at Tamiment Library, New York University, has received funding from the NEH to create an archive of inter¬ views made by independent filmmakers. For more information contact Jon Bloom or Dan Georgakas, OHAL, Tamiment Library, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY, 10012. (212) 598-7754. Media Network and the Reproductive Rights National Network are looking for information on films, videotapes, and slideshows on reproductive rights and related topics. The two organizations are compiling a Guide to Media on Reproductive Rights for use in educational work and organizing. Those who know of media that should be included in the book, or who want more infor¬ mation, should contact Abigail Norman or Aimee Frank at Media Network, 208 West 13th Street, New York, NY, 10011. (212) 620-0878. Resources for Feminist Research in Canada is bringing out a special lesbian issue in May. It will include discussion articles, research, guides to lesbian organizations and international periodicals, book reviews, film, video, and slide show listings, and annotated bibliographies. This issue will be devoted to an examination of the lesbian experience in Canada and explores areas which have previously received little attention from researchers. Copies are $5.00 and can be ordered from RFR/DRF, Dept, of Sociology, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 252 Bloor Street W, Toronto, Ontario, MSS 1V6, Canada. The new 1983 editions of the Progressive Periodicals Director published, providing people with up-to-date information on some 500 progres¬ sive periodicals from across the USA. For more information contact Progressive Education, Box 120574, Nashville, TN, 37212. "Alternatives to Hollywood" will be explored by the 1983 Ohio University Film Conference from October 19 to 22. The avant-garde, the New German Cinema, television and video will be examined as possible alternatives to Hollywood. For further information contact Annette Preuss, Conference co¬ ordinator, P.O. Box 388, Athens, OH, 45701. CONTRIBUTORS BUZZ ALEXANDER teaches courses on Vietnam and Latin American cinema at the University of Michigan. He recently wrote Film on the Left (Prince¬ ton, 1981)... MARK BERNSTEIN is a Yellow Springs, OH film critic. . .While teaching at Colgate, MARY BUFWACK is completing a book on the history of women in country music. . .JEREMY BUTLER teaches film at the University of Alabama. ..ED CARTER is a film critic living in New York. . .MARGARET COOPER has worked in film distribution and exhibition in the USA and Canada... Co-director of THE CHICAGO MATERNITY CENTER STORY, SUE DAVENPORT teaches history and women's studies at Northern Illinois University. . .SYBIL DEL- GAUDIO teaches film at the New School and at Brooklyn College. . .PHYLLIS DEUTSCH is a New York area film critic. . .JUMP CUT editor DOUG EISENSTARK teaches video at Global Village in New York... JOHN FELL teaches at San Francisco State and has written extensively on early film. . .MARTHA FLEMING lives and works in Montreal, writing for Aftcrimagey Parachutey and Fi