I Don’t Exactly Hate Women is a pointed critique of Hollywood’s past and current portrayal of women. The film focusses on the violence and sexualisation of women in both classic and modern cinema. The film has been cleverly edited to alter classic scenes to highlight and satirise the treatment of women in front of the camera, and moves towards reviewing the archaic and contemporary constructions of women onscreen.
Film by Alaine Thompson & Bingbing Sun
Click below for a Q&A with the filmmakers.
WHAT WAS YOUR TOPIC FOR THIS FILM?
For project brief 4, our topic was based around the idea ‘I Don’t Exactly Hate Women’. According to research, in 2014 26.4% of female roles featured some nudity compared to 9.1% of male roles and 27.9% of women were in “sexy attire” compared to 8% of male characters. Most importantly, women often appear in films as ‘eye candy’, which is really upsetting.
So we wanted to create a experimental documentary focussing on female representation through the themes of body, love and money. By using hollywood classical films and films from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, to more recent ones, to address the problem of women still being ridiculously underrepresented in movies nowadays.
To do so, we decided to use found footage of the production process to create a disconnection between the illusion the Hollywood films create, and the one we experience, mainly through showing the way that women are used for emotional value and objectified in film. So we wanted to show our audience that the objectification is a result of the system.
ANY DIFFICULTIES FACED DURING PRODUCTION IN YOUR APPLICATION OF ‘EXPERIMENTATION’ / POETICS ?
By far the most difficult thing you will find with a found footage film is always, where to get the footage, when to stop getting the footage, but probably most importantly – are the connotations of that footage the kind of connotations you want to be in your film? Blair and I worked constantly researching different films we knew contained gender stereotypes and tropes. We heavily relied upon YouTube and quite often we would use one or two scenes from a film or production b-roll we had found, discarding the rest. We became very good at sorting and finding exactly what we needed, but I have to admit, going into the project, I already had a very long list of films that we could and did wind up using for footage, films I sometimes can’t believe I grew up with.
Connotation is everything in a found footage film, especially when the entire premise is to use split screen to play images from different Hollywood films against themselves, in order to critique, not just the Hollywood system itself, but its portrayal of women, that the film points out constantly, hasn’t really changed much in the past half a century or so.
We were constantly aware of what pairing ‘this’ with ‘that’ at ‘this’ height or ‘that’ angle would do to the connotations of the image, what it would say exactly. Blair and I had constant debates over what we saw in certain combinations and whether or not it added or took away from the film’s overall message. I’d say that these discussions saved the film from going too far in any direction and allowed it to stay poignantly on message, with just the right amount of punch.
From the get-go when discussing what film i’d like to make with Blair I remember saying that I wanted to make something with split-screen. Something that would use itself to critique itself. And what better socio-political system to use this critique with than Hollywood? Centring the critique around the portrayal of women really grounded us, and allowed us to experiment more with how we could show the ways in which women are portrayed in film. One of the first things we came up with was the ‘slap compilation’, the very effective and political opening to our documentary.
After a while of researching, we finally found a course that would work perfectly, and set up the entirety of the film – the male gaze. By creating scenes in which the male gaze is exhibited and escalating this idea throughout the film, we bring note to the perverted nature of the act that is so common place, and blatantly objectifies and sexualises women. My personal favourite is the Frankenstein one, the most experimental and poetic of the male gaze mash-ups. That mash-up signifies the point at which we weren’t just trying to show the male-gaze, but the different types of men that stare at and objectify women.
Another political and poetic element of the film is the inclusion of the production side of the films. While this was originally put in place to emphasise the structured illusion that Hollywood has created, it also acted as a way to mask the cuts between very different styles of music that we couldn’t get rid of. While it did mask these cuts it also had a far greater effect with the flow of the piece, it allowed for the viewer to be taken in by a moment (e.g. Frankenstein), the illusion Hollywood has created, only to be taken out of that illusion by the structure of Hollywood itself. It also allowed for greater connotations and connections to be made between the cuts.
HOW DID THIS PROJECT CHANGE YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF POLITICAL AND POETIC DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING?
This film was by far the most ambitious, political and ‘rebellious anti-establishment’ thing I have ever made. For me I felt as though throughout the whole process I was on the border of crossing a line between being too sensational with the material we had and trying to make our point poignantly and effectively. Of course the other side of that line, to me, meant playing it ‘safe’, not punching hard enough at misogyny, not showing people what it’s like to be a woman and be portrayed as a woman is portrayed on a screen. To then be seen as a woman is seen on a screen, except in reality. Realising that this issue crosses lines too, made me want to cross that line. Which is why I’m so glad that Blair was there. She was always there to make sure I didn’t go too far, and didn’t just attack the issue like a bull out of a gate.
If this whole labour of love and passion has taught me anything, it’s that, when you’re working with such heavy concepts you should always have someone there with you who you have to explain your rationale to, because if you can’t explain your reasoning, than you know you’ve gone over the line. And sometimes you need someone to stop you from going too far. But sometimes, you also need to trust yourself, that you know what you’re doing and that you haven’t gone over the line, yet.
Connotation and poetics are everything in experimental documentary. Just bare in mind that not everyone will see it the way you see it, or the way you want them to see it. That’s the beauty of interpretation, everyone sees it a little differently. This isn’t to say you should whack your audience over the head with your idea so they do get it. In fact, I mean the opposite. You need to trust that their knowledge of the subject will be enough to understand what you are saying, and trust that the emotional context will be widely the same and will inform the overall interpretation. You have to trust the audience, because in the end the point, the message, the story of your film won’t be decided by you. It’ll be decided by them.