Women on the Fringe: A Film Series

WOMEN ON THE FRINGE: A FILM SERIES By Leslie Fishbein Leslie Fishbein teaches in the American Studies Department at Douglas College of Rutgers University. This paper was originallypresented at the American Studies Association convention in Boston in October 1977. When Women's Studies courses first invaded the university, their creators confronted Mission Impossible: ensuring academic responsibility to the administrators to whom they were accountable and performing feats of consciousness raising among the students. Now that Women's Studies courses have proliferated and gained acceptance, no matter how grudging, from the academy, the mission that we face is far more difficult. Instead of elucidating a simple dynamic of feminine oppression and occasional resistance, we are confronted with the task of analyzing women's roles in a socioeconomic context that differs from culture to culture. Bereft of easy generalization, we have, instead, the opportunity to bring new discipline and sophistication to our understanding of women's place. My course, Women as Social and Sex Role Deviants in American History, given at Simmons College in Boston in 1977, represents an attempt to refine the methodology used in Women's Studies. Using primary sources, historical narrative, literature, and film, the course seeks to explore the extent to which female deviancy has represented defiance of the feminine role prescription and the extent to which it has flaunted social mores applicable to men as well as women. Beginning with such episodes in the history of female deviancy as the Antinomian Crisis of 1636 and the Salem Witch Trials of 1 692-1 693, the course examines Southern belle deviancy as exemplified by the Grimke sisters of South Carolina, nineteenth century nervous diseases and twentieth century madness, female criminality, rape, prostitution, political radicalism, and lesbianism. Its approach eschews sweeping generalizations in favor of a careful assessment of the balance between sex role and social deviance in each case. In addition to classroom lecture and participation, the course required the viewing of five films in the evening, followed by discussion. This Woman on the Fringe film series, co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Simmons Counseling Center, consisted of Jezebel (1938). Gaslight (1944). The Snake Pit (1948). I Want to Live! (1953), and Salt of the Earth (1954). Unfortunately, within so highly focused a course, it was not possible to train the students in film analysis. In order to facilitate intelligent viewing, I previewed all ofthe films and provided the students in advance with a list of twenty or more questions on each film. The questions were intended to develop film literacy in the students, to alert them to cinematic manipulations and to the underlying values they convey. The use of film holds definite perils, which, I believe, are offset by far greater rewards. It is essential that the students be trained to distinguish the period the film purports to represent and its period of creation, to be aware of the way in which filmmakers recreate history in their own image. It is also vital that they be alert to the film's own claims on reality: Jezebel is a fictionalized evocation of the Old South in the 33 style of Gone With the Wind: Gaslight is the cinematic version of the stage drama Angel Street: The Snake Pit uses one woman's bout with mental illness to provide a dramatic expose of state mental institutions; I Want to Live! uses the actual case of B-girl Barbara Graham, condemned to death in the gas chamber for a murder for which there is substantial evidence ofher innocence, to argue the case against capital punishment; while Salt of the Earth uses actual participants with a handful ofprofessional actors to recreate the 1 951 strike of Mexican-American zinc miners in New Mexico in a paean to working class militancy. Each film's concern with female deviancy has been subordinated to a greater purpose: Jezebel's romantic farewell to the Old South, Gaslight's Gothic terror, The Snake Pit's disclosure of the dehumanizing treatment of mental illness, I Want to Livel's crusade against capital punishment, and Salt of the Earth's call for class solidarity. Hence the viewer faces the difficult task of dissecting a living...