Women in Film and TV productions IV – Some thoughts about female characters in ‚Dunkirk‘ (Nolan 2017) and ‚Blade Runner 2049‘ (Villeneuve 2017)
by Kerstin Stutterheim
These days’ discussions about ‘the culture’ in Hollywood and elsewhere are directing the focus towards interaction between male executives and female actresses or team members. The word goes that more women behind the scene would change the way women are treated and represented. Yes, that is step one, long overdue. But will that be the definite solution – or do we think of some further aspects to change this kind of behaviour?
What about productions written and directed or produced by female professionals? Agnieszka Holland, Vera Chytilova, Deepa Mehta, Chantal Ackerman and Agnes Varda are for sure some and they are important role models in this regard, but other female writer-directors are still telling the same old stories. Gertrud Stein once wrote that it takes a hundred years, three generations, to change habits and narratives.[1] Is generation one still in charge?
Media productions, in particular mainstream TV and cinema productions, are in more or less subtle ways influential in priming gender constructions. And they have their freedom to tell stories in grandfather’s style, since neo-liberal thinking forbids criticising successful productions from the Anglo-American World. This is true in particular for productions made in Hollywood or by HBO, which are seen as working opportunities as nearest to heaven as one could imagine. The ‘Bechtel-Test’ is a nice first tool but it does not really indicate the importance of female characters within a narrative. Nor can dialogues meeting the ‘Bechtel-Test’ give these characters a true appreciation, which will make them embodiments of modern independent women who are allowed to live an autonomous life.
Fatherhood, motherhood, and the biological family are core elements of the ‘American Dramaturgy’.[2] And that specific form of designing the narrative, and much more importantly the implicit dramaturgy, mirrors the culture and feeds back into the understanding of gender, hierarchies and more into the Anglo-American film industry, thus the global world as well.
The last decade or two one had to experience an on-going backlash in presenting female characters – in TV as on the big screen.
The unwritten rule of designing a successful movie or series for US-American or British audiences involves the narrative referring to conservative Jewish-Christian beliefs, which are mingled with historical experiences thus priming the Cultural Memory[3] of these nations. And, apparently, one can find here traditions, topics, and themes from the American Novel in film narratives. The American novel is a result of the change from Catholicism (or other religions) towards the father-cantered Protestantism, which was the religion of the mass of that time in the developing US. The novel as medium emerged as the new mass medium.[4]
Other elements of ‘American Dramaturgy’ reflect the influence of ‘the Code’ and its moral stakes for representational spaces towards film productions in Hollywood[5] and elsewhere.
One can understand how influential the priming of conservative Jewish-Christian gender construction is when it is found in the implicit dramaturgy of modern productions, when one looks at most recent productions. Examples could be endless, I am choosing here randomly some out of the highest ranked and most discussed productions of this year 2017, so far. In Dunkirk (Nolan, USA 2017) for example women exist only as ‘extras’ – representing nurses and handing out bread and tea, which does not represent their roles within the historic event. In this movie, all women have to die amongst the wounded and/or terrified soldiers since they are in ships which have been bombarded and are sinking at the shores of Dunkirk. One can find several layers of association given the style the film is made in – the Nazis were brutal and bombarded Red Cross ships, but also: the weak are first victims, always.
Another example is Blade Runner 2049 (Villeneuve, USA 2017), which is opulent and strikingly disappointing. For this sequel, women are reduced to appearing either as an attractive killing machine, or predesigned after the physical appearance of that figure but as most lovingly acting holograms. One other female character is set up as an asexual being focussed on her duty, thus she has to die early. But in total, the movie is dedicated to men and their desires for power and total independence, which allows just as much love as it can to enable them to become part of a real biological family, although this may happen just for a short time, not for life. (Spoiler!: hence in the end father and daughter were united. Implicit, that makes the biological/family relation the most important aspect of the implicit dramaturgy. The ‘moment of catharsis’ is the solution and fulfilment of the whole action – father will meet his daughter after many years not knowing if she made it and survived. The option indicated in an earlier scene, that this young woman is a result of true love and hence not designed, could just by her existence change the life of female characters shown as living underground, is not strong enough to be part of the solution – or a set up to develop another sequel. Those women hoping for change are shown as prostitutes and spies in one, which is an old figure one can always find, for example in Deuteronomy (the Old Testament), as the story about Rahab and the Canaanites.[6]
will be continued – one day, here or elsewhere
[1] (Stein, 1990)
[2] (cf. Frenz, 1962; Stutterheim, 2015)
[3] (cf. A. Assmann, 2010, 2012; J. Assmann, 1992; Gelfert, 2006, 2011)
[4] (Fiedler, 2017 )
[5] (Maras, 2016)
[6] (Raṿeh, 2014)
Assmann, A. (2010). Memory in a global age: discourses, practices and trajectories (1. publ. ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Assmann, A. (2012). Memory and political change (1. publ. ed.). Basingstoke, Hampshire u.a.: Palgrave Macmillan.
Assmann, J. (1992). Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen. München: Beck.
Fiedler, L. A. (2017 ). Love and death in the American novel (3rd printing Dalkey Archive ed.). Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press.
Frenz, H. (Ed.). (1962). Amerikanische Dramaturgie. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag.
Gelfert, H.-D. (2006). Typisch amerikanisch: Wie die Amerikaner wurden, was sie sind (3., aktualisierte und um ein Nachwort Amerika 2006 erg. Aufl., Originalausg. ed.). München: Beck.
Maras, S. E. (2016). Ethics in Screenwriting – New Perspectives. In S. Maras (Ed.), Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting (pp. XXV, 263 p. 219 illus). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Raṿeh, I. (2014). Feminist rereadings of rabbinic literature (K. Fish, Trans.). Waltham, Massachusetts: Brandeis University Press.
Stein, G. (1990). Erzählen (Narration. Four lectures by Gertrude Stein). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Stutterheim, K. (2015). Handbuch angewandter Dramaturgie. Vom Geheimnis des filmischen Erzählens. Frankfurt am Main u.a.: Peter Lang Verlag.
many thanks to Sue Warren