#now belatedly wondering if living with a slovakian for 4 years primed me to better appreciate humor in czechoslovakian film (1966 remember)

[amrv-5]

dashing off blog post on break between readings, not sure if coherent or even making a point so much as expressing a vague but recurrent disappointment as a late night looks like it's going to become an early morning... cw for pejorative mention of food/eating habits in relation to film portrayal, and a discussion of film portrayal of sexual violence post the cut:

Watched Sedmikrásky (Daisies) (1966) for a class today and personally found it funny, really wonderful, playful, confrontational and brilliant... had an incredible time watching it, deeply moved, found a greater appreciation for the experimental techniques it used... we've not had many female directors in this course series, and the few New Wave women we're getting have been such a personal revelation for me as a film watcher. Got excited to talk about the movie post-screening with my (male. all male) program friends (basically no female graduate students in the optional portion of the history series) but of course the first things these guys do immediately post-screening is trash the film, and not on formal grounds... Just complained about how "disgusting" and "offputting" the movie was, how it made one guy "not want to eat for the rest of the day" and "feel nauseated" and "wish he could have slept through more of it."

And what's so disgusting that a group of cis dudes who regularly watch sexploitation films and other grindhouse fare couldn't bear to watch it? Fucking. Movie where 2 conventionally attractive women: eat frequently and with a focus on enjoying food without performing delicateness for men (one woman boldly states 'I love food! I love eating!' and laughs at the disgust of the older man she and her friend are scamming for free dinner), including having a food fight; laugh and lean into physicality / bodily play (moving in funny ways for their own amusement, dancing, overapplying makeup, making unflattering faces, remapping their bodies in an extended joke sequence w/scissors; satirize stereotypes of women and expectations of behavior in patriarchal society. Etc.

Man! Point of all this being how frustrating it is to continually run up against unexamined misogyny again and again even in spaces that are supposed to be self-critical of these things. Literally what was so unbearably disgusting and threatening about watching a pretty lady on the movie screen say "I like eating cake" and then eating cake and having a food fight. How are you as a film academic more disgusted by playful feminist challenges (FROM NINETEEN FUCKING SIXTY SIX) to expectations of women's behavior than watching Bad Girls Go to Hell. Not saying that to be like There Is A Genre Of Film Which Is Morally Bad I've found thinking about some grindhouse stuff interesting/generative/whatever just it feels fucking nuts to me that a person would be comfortable sitting through scenes of explicit portrayed sexual violence against women and then go "ewww icky they had a lot of scenes where they were eating" and not see that you have a fundamental problem with misogyny in your worldview.

WAUGH! But the real problem now being is that these men are my friends, people I spend a lot of time with and thought very well of and do genuinely believe to be really decent, and even these guys who I trust and like had such a fundamentally awful response to the bare minimum of disrupting the idea that Maybe Women Aren't Just For You To Enjoy Looking At...?

I cannot overemphasize how fucking completely tame the "disgusting" parts of this movie are. This is the 'worst' scene in the whole film by these guys' criteria, and it's literally just 2 women eating cake and throwing it at each other and laughing and then doing a dance on a table.

Well anyway. IDK ! Not sure how to or if I even should try to bring it up again. I don't want to be responsible for being the Feminist to grown male colleagues who should know better but at the same time I was so offput by their reactions to the movie I almost feel like I can't let it go without at least gently asking at a later date if the dudes can elaborate on their "disgust" -- they made it explicitly clear it was about the eating, though, already, which seems like a lost cause. It's just women eating. Grow up. You'll live.