Summary Juhasz, Alexandra. 1999. “They Said We Were Trying to Show Reality – All I
Want to Show is My Video: The Politics of the Realist Feminist Documentary.”
Elena van Hattum
Claire Johnston (1973): any revolutionary strategy must challenge the depiction of reality, it
is not enough to discuss the oppression of women within the text of film; the language of the
cinema and the depiction of reality must be also interrogated, so that a break between
ideology and text is effected.
The women’s movement of the early 1970s was enmeshed in a politics of representation,
which inspired feminist films, the majority of which were documentaries. In this there were
the feminist realist debates, the foundation of Feminist Film Theory. Realism and
re not sophisticated, legitimate formal strategies. Feminist documentaries that
identification a
use such strategies are bad: realism as a style is unable to change consciousness because
it does not depart from the forms that embody the old consciousness. By the aesthetic of
realism those relationships already coded within the dominant ideology enter into the film.
Kaplan concludes that feminists need to make and view films that do 4 things: 1. focus on
the cinematic apparatus as a signifying practice, 2. refuse to construct a fixed spectator, 3.
deny pleasure, 4. mix the codes of documentary and fiction.
→ Juhasz criticises the legacy of a large and important body of feminist film work that has
been inadequately theorized and undertheorized, and the canonization and
institutionalization of films that represent only one side of the ‘feminist realist debates’ with
the loss of may documentaries. It is critical for feminist educators in film and other fields to
see and show realist accounts of how women approached similar political work less than a
generation ago. Without these films to guide us, women are continuing to produce films and
videos surprisingly similar in form, tone, and content to those realist documentaries of the
women’s movement of the early 1970s. She is frustrated with the feminist theoretical
indoctrination that is dedicated to the critique of realism and the endorsement of formalism.
She is struck with 2 things: 1. how often political producers are drawn to realist strategies. 2.
how often such work is evaluated by academics in an overtly critical and simplified manner.
Many critics see “naive realism”, but Juhasz sees a variety of ‘realist’ techniques with a
variety of effects. She argues that feminism utilized relatively direct translations of Marxist
concerns about ‘realism’ and ‘bourgeois ideology’ and psychoanalytic concerns about
‘identification’ and the ‘individual’ to analyze a body of political work without paying attention
to how these terms are themselves dependent upon a variety of conditions, as intentionality,
viewing context, economics, power and politics. They have largely overgeneralized ways the
term realism is used in feminist film criticism. Although this work is important, it often
obscured the distinctions allowed by the always unique extratextual conditions that define
the production, reception and form of non-industrial film and video, especially political.
Feminist film theory was founded upon a misreading of 2 integral features of feminist
realist documentary: that there are usually multiple f ilm styles and theoretical
assumptions in any ‘realist’ film and that realism and identification are used as viable
theoretical strategies towards political ends within these films.
Want to Show is My Video: The Politics of the Realist Feminist Documentary.”
Elena van Hattum
Claire Johnston (1973): any revolutionary strategy must challenge the depiction of reality, it
is not enough to discuss the oppression of women within the text of film; the language of the
cinema and the depiction of reality must be also interrogated, so that a break between
ideology and text is effected.
The women’s movement of the early 1970s was enmeshed in a politics of representation,
which inspired feminist films, the majority of which were documentaries. In this there were
the feminist realist debates, the foundation of Feminist Film Theory. Realism and
re not sophisticated, legitimate formal strategies. Feminist documentaries that
identification a
use such strategies are bad: realism as a style is unable to change consciousness because
it does not depart from the forms that embody the old consciousness. By the aesthetic of
realism those relationships already coded within the dominant ideology enter into the film.
Kaplan concludes that feminists need to make and view films that do 4 things: 1. focus on
the cinematic apparatus as a signifying practice, 2. refuse to construct a fixed spectator, 3.
deny pleasure, 4. mix the codes of documentary and fiction.
→ Juhasz criticises the legacy of a large and important body of feminist film work that has
been inadequately theorized and undertheorized, and the canonization and
institutionalization of films that represent only one side of the ‘feminist realist debates’ with
the loss of may documentaries. It is critical for feminist educators in film and other fields to
see and show realist accounts of how women approached similar political work less than a
generation ago. Without these films to guide us, women are continuing to produce films and
videos surprisingly similar in form, tone, and content to those realist documentaries of the
women’s movement of the early 1970s. She is frustrated with the feminist theoretical
indoctrination that is dedicated to the critique of realism and the endorsement of formalism.
She is struck with 2 things: 1. how often political producers are drawn to realist strategies. 2.
how often such work is evaluated by academics in an overtly critical and simplified manner.
Many critics see “naive realism”, but Juhasz sees a variety of ‘realist’ techniques with a
variety of effects. She argues that feminism utilized relatively direct translations of Marxist
concerns about ‘realism’ and ‘bourgeois ideology’ and psychoanalytic concerns about
‘identification’ and the ‘individual’ to analyze a body of political work without paying attention
to how these terms are themselves dependent upon a variety of conditions, as intentionality,
viewing context, economics, power and politics. They have largely overgeneralized ways the
term realism is used in feminist film criticism. Although this work is important, it often
obscured the distinctions allowed by the always unique extratextual conditions that define
the production, reception and form of non-industrial film and video, especially political.
Feminist film theory was founded upon a misreading of 2 integral features of feminist
realist documentary: that there are usually multiple f ilm styles and theoretical
assumptions in any ‘realist’ film and that realism and identification are used as viable
theoretical strategies towards political ends within these films.
