I tossed out a throwaway sputter about “audience” in the conversation debating — or, rather, digressive chatter circling around — Gio’s pointed, repeatedly noted complaint that we seem stuck in a manly-man rut. Gio notes that we boys watch an awful lot of boys’ films, and she wishes there were a little more engagement with women’s films. This usually cues my self-deprecation, a bit of nervous collar-pulling, a fair amount of defensive listing-of-women’s-films-we-love, a lot of “deconstructing” of the premise of genre (and avoiding the issue), etc. I tend to take it the way John did, smartly noting how his tastes do tend with film to veer toward a range of films (and techniques, filmmakers, genres) shaped with male audiences in mind… when his iPod might be far more diverse.
I could say that my iPod and my netflix queue are chockablock full of shoot-’em-ups and cock-rock, and sure tons of great stuff that shouldn’t be simply reduced to gender debates, but very few works coming out of or aimed toward viewers other than people like me. My bookshelf is another story (ahem), and I think John raised a very interesting question — let’s stipulate that our tastes aren’t wholly reducible to our subject positions in cultural categories, but those categories sure as hell inform our tastes. Why in some forms do we find a more catholic or eclectic openness. . . and in other forms less resist than fail to be at all attracted to such alternatives?
Which is not to say we should beat ourselves up about this, nor is that Gio’s point. She’s lamenting, not criticizing, I think. I’m not keen to expand my engagement with crap films to include not just the action shite I already enjoy but also the rom-com crapola that bores me silly. But . . . I wouldn’t on the other hand sidestep the fact that my cinematic tastes are thoroughly enmeshed with/embodied in visions of masculinity. Gio wishes this blog weren’t so man-centric in its reviews and discussions; I’m not sure we get around that completely, nor do I feel we need to–but it would sure be nice to try consciously to do more than have the occasional “women’s-film month” discussions. It’d probably work best if we just simply had more members (not a pun), so that the weight of our collective interests was more widely distributed. Continue reading Meet the new man . . . (same as the old man?)