Celluloid Ceiling

Women Film Directors Breaking Through

Gabrielle Kelly, Cheryl Robson

• Publisher: Aurora Metro Books
• eBook ISBN: 9780956632951
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

An extensive overview of female film directors worldwide, showing how they are breaking through the 'Celluloid Ceiling', and succeeding in a still very male-dominated industry. The book contains exclusive interviews with women film directors, explores the impact of digital technology, and reaches some surprising conclusions.
Now that Kathryn Bigelow has made history as the first woman to win an Oscar for directing, we ask whether this is a new era for women filmmakers. This unique international overview highlights emerging women directors and groundbreaking pioneers, and provides a one-stop guide to the leading film directors of the 21st century, and the people who inspired them.
From the blockbusters of the Hollywood studios to emerging voices from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Laos, we learn of women making films in traditionally male-dominated areas such as action, fantasy and horror. There are contributions from countries with film industries in every state from nascent to mature, and this book demonstrates how economic and technological change is creating new opportunities for women film directors everywhere.

3. The Home, the Body and Otherness:

Canadian Representations of Identity and Feminism in Mary Harron’s American Psycho, Sarah Polley’s Away From Her and the Soska Sisters’ American Mary

Karen Oughton

This chapter will explore the work of Canadian film directors Jen and Sylvia Soska, Mary Harron and Sarah Polley; and it will discuss how their nationalities and gender are reflected within their work. As all four directors’ features focus on otherness and all have been associated with the horror genre, examination of them will be placed within that theoretical framework. Beginning with a brief history of the role of women within the horror film industry, the chapter will suggest that these filmmakers have constructed alternative depictions of gender roles within their genres. With this in mind, the critique will initially focus on the Soska Sisters’ American Mary with reference to Carol Clover’s theories of the final girl and Laura Mulvey’s theorisation of the cinematic male gaze. It will then examine Mary Harron’s adaptation of American Psycho and Sarah Polley’s adaptation of Away From Her, focusing on their investigations of otherness and empathy.¹

Firstly, in order to contextualise the impact the Soska Sisters have had on the film industry, it is necessary to consider women’s historical role within horror cinema. From the early days of film, heroines included Nosferatu’s Ellen who sacrifices herself to kill Graf Orlok. They exist alongside later victims such as Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and have been theorised as subject to what Laura Mulvey has called ‘the male gaze’ and are discussed in her seminal essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ as an ‘erotic object for the characters within the screen story and as erotic object for spectator within the auditorium’ (p. 11) within the traditional, male-managed Hollywood cinema. Women appeared on screen foremost as the objects of men’s fantasies. However, female character representations began to change with US-produced ‘slasher’ horror film cycle of the late 1970s and 1980s. This is generally credited to characters such as Laurie Strode, nemesis of Michael Myers in the Halloween (1978) series and the last victim left standing. Strode became a blueprint for Carol Clover’s influential theories on the role of horror’s ‘final girl’ as developed in her book, On Men, Women and Chainsaws (1992). Clover’s theory contends that the voyeurism of women within horror cinema is ambivalent, with the final girl enabling the audience’s affiliation to switch from the monster to the often tomboyish female who becomes the hero by the end of the film.

The Soska Sisters

However, as the Soska Sisters recognised, women’s representation is still largely mediated by men. This often lends women a passive or largely sexualised quality. As Jen Soska has stated, while Halloween’s Laurie Strode attacks the villainous Myers, she does so ‘for self-preservation rather than to be assertive’.² Therefore, the film can still be considered as somewhat lacking from a feminist perspective. The Soska Sisters have said they want to change this by challenging ideas of normality through cinema as a result of their understanding of ‘unusual’ identities that is a result of their identical twinship and in line with their life-long love of horror. As stated by Sylvia Soska:

‘Jen and I being twins, were almost born into being somewhat of a spectacle. Try as we might, we never could fit in.

Then came horror – we would watch the way people treated one another, how different things invoked fear and others to be embraced. I suppose it was because we were so used to being watched and asked questions. Horror made us feel strong.’³

Their initial attempts to become actors did not meet with the results they had hoped, so they enrolled on a stunt persons’ course at film school. Their course closed but they converted their final student project into the micro-budget grindhouse feature, Dead Hooker in a Trunk (2009).⁴ Somewhat predictably (the humorous point of the ostensibly exploitative title), the story focuses on friends who find a murdered sex worker and attempt to dispose of her body.

The film enabled them to demonstrate their devotion to genre and, by writing, directing and doing their own stunts, endeared them to many genre fans as a result. Moreover, via pre-recorded videos at initial screenings at the Abertoir festival and others they spoke about this film incorporating violence and rape so enthusiastically they seemed ultimately non-threatening, their judicious cursing actually appearing rather sweet.⁵ No matter the violence they show, the Soska Sisters can appear as likeable ‘girls next door’.⁶

Theirs were personae and indeed fledgling roles akin to, though not yet as developed as, the traditional horror hostess and this impacted greatly on their career ascent. The horror host is a tradition within the genre. It is a combination of filmmaker, journalist, presenter and figurehead for the community.

Horror hosts, such as the television character Vampira, traditionally introduce film and television attractions to audiences in home entertainment and local movie theatres. They dress in costume or other themed clothing, often have a definitive stage persona and often have a somewhat comic delivery. Their presence and branding represent the cultural recognition and indeed legitimisation of the horror communities’ tastes and in the context of their popularity they are consumed as representations of its core values. However, these horror community core values, as David Sanjek quotes David Chute as stating, represent:

‘[a] deadly serious undertaking [whose] seriousness can never be openly acknowledged. The gross-out aficionado savors his sense of complicity when the values of a smug social stratum, from which he feels himself excluded, are systematically trashed and ridiculed.’⁷

This seriousness, as Chute suggests, must remain playful so as not to be co-opted by the mainstream. As a result, horror hosts subvert traditional standards and also comment on the films.⁸ The emphasis is firmly on the ethos of the host character as an icon of horror convention, often with a short section of very light comedy film criticism thrown in.

However, of great importance to the branding and perception of the Soska Sisters is the notion that this overly camp and performance-based presentation began to change with the advent of increased focus on industry figures as opposed to the roles they played in the industry. This can be seen through the career of Emily Booth in the 1990s. Booth was one of a number of women who evolved the female horror personality. She acts in cult films, has written for magazines including Bizarre, is known for her presenting role at Sky’s The Horror Channel (denoting that she has genre knowledge), is a glamour model and, importantly, frequently references her own love of the genre. She reflects girl-geek culture, embodying the supposedly tomboyish trait of enjoying violence while looking conventionally sexually attractive. This is emphasised by her being photographed in revealing clothing whilst covered in gore. She is the male audience’s best friend with breasts who will encourage their interests and desires. The Soska Sisters’ work (intentionally or not) mirrors this template of the on and off-screen filmmaker fan. While the Soska Sisters’ use of the role does not reduce their filmic achievements and indeed accolades in any way, it informs their rise within the industry owing to the role’s historical but changing remit.

The initial film festival screening period of Dead Hooker in a Trunk marked the time when the Soska Sisters appear to have consciously stepped into the horror persona role to publicise their work.⁹ Shortly afterwards they began to work with Hannah Gorman (also known as Hannah Neurotica), founder of the gender and horror-focused zine, Ax-Wound, and the then-fledgling Women in Horror Recognition Month campaign. The campaign aims to highlight women’s contributions to the genre. Gorman at the time was a fan whose emphasis on the manual creation of the zine made it appear more authentic than the output of some corporate publishers. Association with the Women in Horror Recognition Month campaign could be seen as a marker of authenticity and indeed the Soska Sisters frequently extol the virtues of the Do-It-Yourself approach. The Soska Sisters joined the Board of Women in Horror month and became its ambassadors. They write articles on women’s contribution to horror and promote charitable activities such as Massive Blood Drive, a campaign to increase blood donors by – you’ve guessed it – appealing to gorehounds via blood-soaked short films featuring themselves in sexy business attire casually maiming each other. They blend being seen to pay homage to work lauded within the genre while simultaneously showcasing their own work as writers, entrepreneurs and directors. However, they remained somewhat niche and known mainly to horror connoisseurs rather than the casual filmgoers.¹⁰

American Mary, the Soska Sisters’ second self-directed film, changed this. The plot concerns Mary Mason, a medical student in debt. After a botched job interview at a strip club finds her carrying out emergency surgery on one of its associates, she specialises in underground body modification while mutilating and murdering her enemies until being killed by a patient’s partner. According to the Soska Sisters, Mary represents the evolution of Clover’s theorised ‘final girl’ as she is both the film’s heroic victim and its aggressor. The sisters have also stated that Mary is intended to be an outsider, being of Hungarian heritage and yet fighting to live the American Dream, as symbolised by the Stars and Stripes outlined in her blood on the floor where she dies.¹¹ The film’s preview at Frightfest was highly anticipated, particularly as the Soska Sisters were in attendance and a number of audience members were familiar with their work with the Women in Horror Recognition Month campaign.¹² After the screening the sisters set the pattern for future appearances by arriving on stage to discuss the empowerment of producing the feature. They were dressed in revealing clothing modelled on Mary’s sexy surgical costumes and were insistent on extended meet-and-greet sessions with fans. They were adored, displaying a seemingly genuine, innocent (and deafening) excitement that their work was being admired.

The Soska Sisters came to be seen by a significant proportion of the genre scene in particular as feminist icons who had created in Mary Mason a new breed of feminist character without sacrificing either her or (importantly) their sex appeal, a proposition they repeatedly stated in interviews that they saw as being ‘sexist’, considering their appearance as a form of ‘armour’ to deflect from any inner uncertainty.¹³ That their appearance and espousal of feminist ideals gained the attention of the genre press may have been facilitated by increased academic interest in horror not only from within the academy but also within the film industry, as demonstrated by the profusion of academic bonus features from specialist home distributors such as Arrow Films. This cultural shift allowed the recognition and admiration the Soska Sisters have expressed for older tropes of sexy and secretly business-brained but branded-pop-intellectual female horror hosts such as Elvira. That this trope has been recognised may, they believe, enable them to move beyond that representation.¹⁴ They now discuss academic cinema theory and increase their genre kudos without making themselves appear distant. They also practised what they preached, with their character Mary beginning and ending the film in glamorous costumes that suggest sexuality without actually revealing her body even during the film’s rape scene. Mary is a depiction of female empowerment devoid of the titillation associated with other so-called rape-revenge films including I Spit on Your Grave.

Indeed, I assert that the Soska Sisters can themselves be perceived as an attempt to embody Clover’s concept of the ‘final girl’. Sylvia Soska has commented that American Mary is their response to the ‘monsters’ in the film industry who tried to subject them to sexually improper behaviour.¹⁵ By delivering an acclaimed film and being so visible to the horror public both in terms of discussing their past trauma and using it to advance themselves, they created a new model for the female horror persona. The model they promote is that of an intelligent business woman unashamed of publicly placing herself on a cultural par traditionally associated with men by planning rather than adopting the conventional image that they are fans making films for the love of it alone.¹⁶

American Mary won a host of awards and enabled the Soska Sisters to develop their brand. They took on additional local screening presenting voluntary work, briefly ran a radio programme, wrote for a time for a number of alternative interest publications but importantly also invested time in cultivating their internet fan base by establishing brand alignment by endorsing others’ horror culturally-important produc...

Table of contents

• Celluloid Ceiling: Women Film Directors Breaking Through
• Editors
• Copyright
• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Africa
• The Americas
• Asia
• Australia and New Zealand
• Europe
• Middle East
• Pictures
• Summary