Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers by Paszkiewicz Katarzyna;

Author:Paszkiewicz, Katarzyna;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Figure 4.1 The gendered organisation of space: men withdraw to deliberate the course, while women look on from a distance.

The aural perspective also places us in their frustrating position. The women are forced to spy on the men from a distance, straining to eavesdrop on their low, barely audible dialogue; silences and elliptical speech prevail throughout the film.

The events seem to be communicated, thus, from the perspective of the women: in one of the first images, the film shows one of the wives, Millie, wading through the water, waist deep, cautiously transporting a caged canary on her head, which might be taken to symbolise the position of the protagonists; the film culminates with Emily’s (another protagonist’s) face, framed by the tree branches – a shot that undermines the importance of her gaze. Not only do these images bring to light the prescribed power relations in the group of migrants (women’s suspended agency and muted observation, as they are literally deprived of face and voice), but they also signify the female contingent’s inquisitive and incriminating gaze, which calls into question some of the most enduring Wild West mythologies. Very often we are offered shots of Emily observing the men: they seem pompously secretive, which only intensifies her scepticism. The pioneers are lost from the outset, a fact made clear with the first distinguishable word to emerge at the beginning of the film, carved on the dried carcass of a fallen tree. Their guide seems increasingly incompetent. ‘I don’t blame him for not knowing. I blame him for saying he did’, Emily clarifies at one point. The focus of her probing look is the self-appointed Western hero, in particular his boastfulness and racism – for example, when he brags about his courage, telling stories of the Indians’ savagery in order to convince his followers that they are surrounded by cruel enemies from whom only he can protect them. Meek epitomises the sort of masculinity that Hollywood movies have long celebrated: a male identity premised on violence which protects a community.

The hero’s doubtful status – in particular, in relation to violence – is not new in the genre: ‘The Westerner at his best exhibits a moral ambiguity which darkens his image […]; this ambiguity arises from the fact that, whatever his justifications, he is a killer of men’ (Warshow 1964: 95). However, what Reichardt also exposes here is the Western’s co-implication with particular concepts of racial identity and the fear of racial miscegenation that underscores the typical representations of Indians in many Westerns – for example, in John Ford’s much discussed The Searchers (1956). The latter centres upon the white settler’s family, which is shattered by the intrusion of a hostile Other when the protagonist Ethan’s young nieces are taken by a Comanche war band. The protagonist’s acid towards, and deep hatred of, Indians – he swears that he would kill his niece if it turned out that she had been ‘defiled’ by the savages – evokes the racist hatred that Meek displays on many occasions.

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