Introduction I: Talking About Hearing

Guys, I'm the worst. All I wanted to do in preparation for my 28th birthday was start a moderately-to-severely kickass blog about female directors. Between now and the end of 2016, I watch (at least) 150 movies directed by women and then blog my reactions to them. No reviews or film scholar pretense, minimal "did you know's!?", just feelings and thoughts and an experiential account of what it meant for me to hear a woman's voice from behind the camera.

I wanted to write again because I love writing. I wanted to write about movies because I love movies. I wanted to write about movies by women because I think that it matters. I think that sharing and experiencing female subjectivities is the best tool against patriarchy, and that film shaped by the feminine can be the warmest, bravest, most welcoming, most honest, and most liberating to engage. That's the simple math of all of this.

But everything we do is complicated because we are complicated. And today's web I'm spinning is a tangle of self-doubt, humility, fears of failure, good intentions, and a sort of allyship whose merit is yet to be determined.

I'm scared to write because everything might be terrible. I used to believe so much in my writing, in my own voice, that I would stay up past midnight in high school, turning simple class assignments into a 15-year-old's magnum opus. My justification was that I was a writer, and we writers just had to write because it was in our blood and on our tongues. I loved sharing what I could do with words back then; I loved showing people how I saw the world and how I talked about how I saw the world. But something has died since then or at least crawled into its sickbed. I'm weak of words, even though I still believe I have them, somewhere. I'm afraid to speak, even though there's some part of me who believes I am worth hearing. I want this blog to be a chance to start speaking again, and for me to grow stronger in my own voice; it's a lot to ask of a Blogger account, and somehow, a lot to ask of me. There's an irrational fear that if I can't discover through this blog how to talk about the world I see, that it will just confirm that I can't write anymore. That writing can't be something I identify with, or that I'm proud of, or that might help build a future for me. The stakes are high (even though they're not).

And then there's the part of me that feels some moral trepidation about the whole setup. What does it mean that I (a man) intend to dedicate a blog to how I experience the voice of female artists? Women creating art is a revolutionary act. Men talking about art is not. Women's narratives deconstruct and can slowly de-struct male authority simply by asserting the stupidly radical notion that women are people, are subjects in the world, and not something less. What can I do to make sure my own narrative contributes to that, rather than acting as its own unwelcome authority, speaking on a topic for women that no woman ever asked me to speak for? The point of female filmmaking, besides the fact that some women just have the desire to tell stories and make movies, is to challenge the male gaze and the male monopoly on protagonism. A narrative of my perspective, in which I am my own hero in my film-watching experience, feels like a slap in the face to everything female directors seek to accomplish.

But, as someone who overthinks, it's safe to assume I'm overthinking this. Despite all the amazing possibilities of female filmmaking, the intention of most artists (male, female, otherwise) is to tell a story that makes you think or feel something. Sharing what I think or feel might be a bit elementary, but it's not necessarily some problematic contribution to male privilege. I can't deny the systems in which the audience, the story, and the storyteller are embedded, but I also can and should celebrate my reactions to the story; that's what art is about.

What I think I need are some ground rules:

1) Listen to the movie
2) Be honest; and let yourself feel something
3) As always, try to be the best person you can be.

*Breathes*-- Now things feel simpler again.