The other thing re: 'Poor Things' is... It's fine for men to make artworks about how they see women and how they relate to them. I really like the novelist Marilynne Robinson and one reason is her perspective on masculinity which is very much not my own as a man. Only a wiener would get offended at that! I don't understand why we're increasingly running our arts sector, which is one of the rare places humans get to be really free, as if it were a particularly bureaucratic local authority.
There is a healthy conversation to be had about the male gaze and the fact that historically men have hoarded subjectivity to themselves, so I would not absolutely dismiss it as a criticism. (The difference in quality between Dickens's women and Eliot's men is... instructive.) But the idea that the end result of that critique should be nobody writing characters that aren't directly representative of themselves is, as you say, wienerish, and it's an approach that reaches its apogee in the #ownvoices reign of terror in YA. And it seems especially egregious to aim that criticism at a work which is explicitly *about* men trying to impose their own restricted version of feminine subjectivity on a woman.
I'd certainly take it seriously as a criticism (and I'll always take Henry James over Dickens for that reason). But I think people are simplifying it to the point of 'male gaze = bad', whereas a work can be male gazey and reductive but also insightful and entertaining. A piece of work can be problematic and good. Sometimes the strength of a work of art is that it's been left precisely in the space between endorsing and critiquing, because that's what life is like too.
As most people who engage seriously with art admit - you can like things that aren't entirely ideologically nutritious and indeed, dislike things with impeccable social politics. If there was a work of art which entirely satisfied every social justice imperative, respected every individual's self-image and historical point of view, that work of art would be incredibly boring, because you'd be able to predict what it was going to do based on ideas you knew going in. - Above all I'm against boring art, which is what our current reduction of art as means to adequately respect social sensitivities seems designed to engineer. Which is I suppose one reason I liked 'Poor Things' so much - it was a wonderfully disrespectful couple of hours. Perhaps the nearest thing I've seen in the cinema to the spirit of Angela Carter at her best.
It's also pretty demeaning to female/otherwise othered artists to tell them that their sole and only purpose is to represent their identity category. A few months ago, I was at a gala screening for a film notable for its female lead which happened to be made by a male-dominated creative team. The producer and scriptwriter talked about their work, and then introduced a female writer, saying that she'd been crucial to getting the female perspective right. And she came up front of the stage, looked awkward, and said (paraphrasing): "Well I wouldn't like to say that's all I did."
When you apply for ACE funding you have to list the protected characteristics of all the people you want to work with. I feel like writing 'I don't want to work with this person because of their sexual identity, it's because they're brilliant at sound design.' Likewise, I'm not comfortable foregrounding my own Jewish heritage just to try and get some money.
It just feels like they should offer a general guideline of 'Make sure work with a diverse range of people' at the top and let us get on with it, rather than forcing us to dwell on the identities of the people we're gathering around us. I don't want to sound naïve, but if you commit to bring in the best people in this day and age you should automatically get diversity anyway.
The other thing re: 'Poor Things' is... It's fine for men to make artworks about how they see women and how they relate to them. I really like the novelist Marilynne Robinson and one reason is her perspective on masculinity which is very much not my own as a man. Only a wiener would get offended at that! I don't understand why we're increasingly running our arts sector, which is one of the rare places humans get to be really free, as if it were a particularly bureaucratic local authority.
There is a healthy conversation to be had about the male gaze and the fact that historically men have hoarded subjectivity to themselves, so I would not absolutely dismiss it as a criticism. (The difference in quality between Dickens's women and Eliot's men is... instructive.) But the idea that the end result of that critique should be nobody writing characters that aren't directly representative of themselves is, as you say, wienerish, and it's an approach that reaches its apogee in the #ownvoices reign of terror in YA. And it seems especially egregious to aim that criticism at a work which is explicitly *about* men trying to impose their own restricted version of feminine subjectivity on a woman.
I'd certainly take it seriously as a criticism (and I'll always take Henry James over Dickens for that reason). But I think people are simplifying it to the point of 'male gaze = bad', whereas a work can be male gazey and reductive but also insightful and entertaining. A piece of work can be problematic and good. Sometimes the strength of a work of art is that it's been left precisely in the space between endorsing and critiquing, because that's what life is like too.
As most people who engage seriously with art admit - you can like things that aren't entirely ideologically nutritious and indeed, dislike things with impeccable social politics. If there was a work of art which entirely satisfied every social justice imperative, respected every individual's self-image and historical point of view, that work of art would be incredibly boring, because you'd be able to predict what it was going to do based on ideas you knew going in. - Above all I'm against boring art, which is what our current reduction of art as means to adequately respect social sensitivities seems designed to engineer. Which is I suppose one reason I liked 'Poor Things' so much - it was a wonderfully disrespectful couple of hours. Perhaps the nearest thing I've seen in the cinema to the spirit of Angela Carter at her best.
It's also pretty demeaning to female/otherwise othered artists to tell them that their sole and only purpose is to represent their identity category. A few months ago, I was at a gala screening for a film notable for its female lead which happened to be made by a male-dominated creative team. The producer and scriptwriter talked about their work, and then introduced a female writer, saying that she'd been crucial to getting the female perspective right. And she came up front of the stage, looked awkward, and said (paraphrasing): "Well I wouldn't like to say that's all I did."
When you apply for ACE funding you have to list the protected characteristics of all the people you want to work with. I feel like writing 'I don't want to work with this person because of their sexual identity, it's because they're brilliant at sound design.' Likewise, I'm not comfortable foregrounding my own Jewish heritage just to try and get some money.
It just feels like they should offer a general guideline of 'Make sure work with a diverse range of people' at the top and let us get on with it, rather than forcing us to dwell on the identities of the people we're gathering around us. I don't want to sound naïve, but if you commit to bring in the best people in this day and age you should automatically get diversity anyway.