"The victims' only hope is an indomitable seJf.
Bonnie Sherr Klein's
Not a Love Stoiy
AFilmAbout Pornography
Not a Love Story is a sensitive and sensible survey of pornography. Bonnie Sherr Klein directed the film, with a major contribution by Linda Lee Tracey, for the National Film Board's Studio D, founded in 1974 as a filmmaking forum for women on social issues.
The film is structured on the princi- ple of expanding range. We are eased into the subject, then gradually con- fronted with an increasing sense of its scope and danger. Of our two guides, Ms. Klein is the innocent outsider be- coming introduced to the porno ter-
rain, and Ms. Tracey the more experi- enced explorer, extending her under- standing.
Linda Lee Tracey is the former strip- per who started the Tits for Tots strip- pers' benefit in Montreal. In her old act, as Fonda Peters (!), Ms. Tracey played a comic insouciance against the usual straight-lace of strip. An excerpt of her act establishes the frankness of the film and infroduces the topic on a note of comforting humor.
But there is cold comfort from the en- suing revelations. First we are shocked by the size of the pom business. To wit: there are more hard-core peep shows in North America than there are MacDon- ald's outlets. With an annual gross of $5 billion, the hard-core pom industry out- grosses the sfraight film and music in- dustries combined. Those are compel- ling stats.
The greater shock comes from the kind of things shown in pornography. Klein was careful to select moderate material, within the pale, but she still shows a horrifying pattern of torture, mutilation, and violence against the female form.
Very clearly, pornography cannot be excused as celebrating female beauty and natural, open sexuaUty. As Kate Millett puts it, "We got pornography when what we needed was eroticism." Pornography is opposed to eroticism, not its aid and support. It slavers for the notion of torturing and dominating the female figure. Hence the recurring im- age of women under two kinds of relat- ed suppression : in chains and gagged. The implicit theme of this monstrous machinery is that women are objects of sadistic violation.
Klein's larger point, and the principle on which her material is organized, is that pornography exerts a pervasive in- fluence. Obviously one is affected if one participates in the sexuality business; so Linda Lee Tracey quit. One is^ more grossly affected if one cashes in on the exploitation of others; hence the inter- views with merchants and clients of sleeze.
But Klein's key observation is that pom damages people who never ex- perience the thing itself For even non- indulgers are affected by the recurring images that wash over from hard-core to soft. Worse, we all suffer the insidi- ous habits of thought, associations, re- flexes, that this dominating imagery projects.
In this light, Klein sensibly includes male victims of this pornographic abuse of women. One member (so to speak) of the Men Against Male Violence Group admits that men are victimized by these fantasies, "the male myth of perform-
Holly Dale/Janis Cole's
P4W: Prisonfor Women
The title establishes a process of hu- manizing, of fleshing out a formula. "P4W" is the formula, an adminisfrative convenience, a reduction. The second part reveals the humanity behind the formula: "Prison for Women." The film itself celebrates the humanity of the tx)nvicts in Canada's only federal wo- men's prison, in Kingston, Ontario. By film end we have fulfilled the order of convict Susie's closing song: "Look and see what you have done."
P4W: Prison for Women is an examin- ation of the effects of prison upon fe- male convicts. Co-tUrectors Janis Cole and Holly Dale interview several in- mates who were convicted of major crimes but are extremely engaging chai^ acters. The message is two-fold: the de- humanizing horrors of incarceration and the marvels of the human spirit that still survives.
The film celebrates the women's sur- vival instincts. Forced into uniformity, they sustain their individuality by pe:^ sonalizing their cells. These are plucky gals. But the last image threatens to run out of control. The liveliest of our con- victs sits cockily on a washing machine and spits out a defiant and exfravagant optimism. Her wrists are taped. The quavering voice, the dreary setting, and her slightly mad spirit may lead us to read the tape as a sign of slashed wrists. But no. This gal remains hale and reso- lute. Cole and Dale say the wrists were|
taped for tennis.
Although the directors see their film as being primarily about the inmates' spirit of survival, a firm feminist voice emerges more strongly. We don't see any men in the film, but enough men are bitterly mentioned to make the prison signiiy the oppression and restriction of the patriarchal macrocosm.
So the only rehabilitation the convicts get is training to be a hairdresser. One lady bridles against serving three years in the laundry. Frequent complaint is made agafnst the powerful and un- s)Tnpathetic warden, a Mr. Caron. One
convict is told she upsets him because he can't stand her impression of happi- ness and security. A male judge vetoed a convitit's writing to her children. The convicts complain that when a riot broke out the male guards stood aloof and apart, watching amused as the female guards struggled to curtail the riot. The male aut^iority is not seen but it is felt — cold, commanding, compelling.
More dramatically, all the crimes we hear about are directly related to the women's oppression in a patriarchal so- ciety. One woman was sexually exploi- ted, another habitually beaten by her two men. A third, who was sentenced to 25 years after her robber husband killed himself, seems to have been damned for standing by her man. In sum, the wo- men's prison becomes a powerfiil meta- phor for a society in which men rule and repress women. The victims' only hope is an indomitable self And their bond.
Of course, any honest and thorough film about life in a women's prison must do something about lesbiansim. It will either skirt the issue or address it. Dale and Cole do something else. They trans- cend the issue of sexuality by showing— with an almost unbearable intimacy — two lovers preparirig for their separa- tion when one's time is over. This tender, dramatic episode typifies the delicacy and discretion of the film as a whole. The issues are explored, but with neither coyness nor sensationalism,
From this romantic relationship the film cuts to the convicts' relationships with their children. One recalls recent meetings, after the courts forbade their communication. Another makes a video- tape to send to her little girl. We get a close-up of her singing to her child. But for her telling a Peter Rabbit story we shift to a long-shot of the videotape machine and monitor.
The medium and the message are much improved over what convicts used to be able to do. But the dominant impression remains of a cold, mechani- cal, remote interference with the warmth of human normalcy,
36/Cinema Canada-November 1981
REVIfcWS
Maurice Yacowar
•
P4W ! PRISON FOR WOMEN d./p. Janis Cole, Holly Dale cam. Nesya Shapiro sd. Aerlyn Weissman ed. Janis Cole & Holly Dale asst. ed. John O'Connor original mus. Susie & Kas asst. to p. Beveverly J. Whitney p.c. Spectrum Films running time 81: 23 min. disL Pan-Cana- dian Film Distributors Inc.
ance, goal orientation." In one of the most moving scenes a writer and her l^usband probe — to the point of tears - their battle for a reasonable sexuaUly in a world of subversive excess.
JVot a Love Story is a sober, respon- sible film. It achieves a balance and restraint that seem positively saintly, considering the enemy. And yetfliefilni has aroused a furious opposition.
This attack upon pornography has been censored by the Ontario Censor Board (although one uncut screening was allowed at Toronto's Festival of Festivals). So the film suffers the ir- rational fate of Al Razutis' A Message From Our Sponsor in Ontario. The pom flows on, but a thoughtful analysis of (and warning against) the pom gets censored!
On other fronts, there has been some newspaper editorializing against the NFB spending taxpayers' money on a film about pornography. To this com- plaint there is a simple response: go see the film.
But there is no such simple answerto the irresponsible hatchet job done by , Jay Scott, film reviewer for the Globe and Mail. Scott called the film "boui^ geois, feminist fascism." To Scott it must be feminist to include males discussing their victimization by pornography; fas- cist to complain about continually see- ing one's gender fragmented, exposed,
tortured; and bourgeois to undertake critical analysis of a major social phen- omenon. His real objection to the film seems to be that it omits gay pom. By that principle he would attack a west- em for omitting ships and a pirate fihn for leaving out sagebrush. All in all, Scott's review was his worst job (and of a telling piece) since he used Altman's A Perfect Couple as an opportunity to deride Marta Heflin's rib-cage. Such in- sensitivity to the image and such dis- respect for the predicament of women are astonishing in a film critic who quite often commits responsible film criti- cism.
Even more astonishing was Scotfs closing salvo, a call for the Board to censor this film for its hard-core insets. Scott's shriek validates the film's point about the pervasive attempt to silence completely the voice of victim women. As Susan Griffin remarks, "Pornography is filled with images of silencing wo- men. Our silence is the way in which our status as objects is made real." In this line of thought, women must be obscene and not heard.
Not a Love Story is a search and a report that had to be done. It should have been made long ago and it shouitf be seen and discussed as widely as' possible. We are fortunate that the film was made by such responsible and intelligent artists.
But this film is one of those delicate, afflicted roses that must be defended against the invisible worms that fly in the night, be they defenders of a sick status quo, senseless censor boards, or wrong-headed personality-peddling c^ umnists.
Maurice Yacowar (
NOT A LOVE STORY d.Bonnisj Klein with participation of Linda Lee V assoc. d./ed. Anne Henderson p. Dorothysl H e n a u t a s s o c . p . M i c h e l i n e Le G u i U o u c a m . W Letarte 2nd cam./asst. Susan Trow loc. id.„ Gendron loc. business man. Andr^e "•^'"•J Jackie NevveU asst. picture/sd. ed. MichellT Guillou graphics layout Gayle Thomas ttU tion cam. Baymond Dumas original mu»,/M d. Ginette Bellavance lyrics Tina Home vocW Cathy IVIillermus.rec. Louis Hone eiec. p.K*'''
'• Shannon p.c. A National Film Board of Cfl (Studio Dl production, r u n n i n g time 70 nm^
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