Performance Arts: Film, Music, and Theatre: 1970-1990

[This is the third part of a bibliography in five parts on feminist aesthetics. The bibliography is number 65 in the series “Wisconsin Bibliographies in Women’s Studies” published by the University of Wisconsin System Women’s Studies Librarian’s Office, 430 Memorial Library, 728 State Street, Madison, WI 53706.]

PERFORMANCE ARTS: FILM, MUSIC, AND THEATER
Alexander, Jae, et al. “Feminist Film Criticism.” Special issue of FILM READER 5 (1982).

The essays, from a 1980 feminist film conference, range from interpretations of mainstream and feminist experimental films to discussions of issues, such as lesbian filmmaking as self-birthing and representations of Native American women in Westerns.

Armatage, Kay. “Feminist Film-making: Theory and Practice.” CANADIAN WOMEN’S STUDIES 1.3 (1979): 49-50.
Armatage argues that feminist filmmaking is a matter of process, and thus she tries new approaches in fictional filmmaking to avoid objectification and the manipulation of the subject and the viewer. She gives the actors freer range, she presents scenes unedited, and she foregrounds the voyeurism of the camera, thus exposing the filmmaker’s power in manipulating the image.

Austin, Gayle, ed. “The `Woman’ Playwright Issue.” PERFORMING ARTS JOURNAL 21 7.3 (1983): 87-102.
A group of women playwrights and critics respond to an article by Mel Gussow in the NEW YORK TIMES that applauds women’s recent “success” in the theater. The respondents reject the implied standard of success, and, while they generally reject a women’s aesthetic, they suggest that the women’s theater that offers the greatest challenge to aesthetics is ignored by the mainstream theater and its critics.

Bergstrom, Janet. “Rereading the Work of Claire Johnston.” CAMERA OBSCURA 3-4 (1979): 21-31.
While acknowledging the powerful insights of Johnston’s film theories, Bergstrom argues that the concept of “rupture,” in which feminine discourse and desire break up the classical film text, is highly dependent on the spectator’s reception, an issue that needs revision in Johnston’s work. Bergstrom concludes by asserting the importance of filmic enunciation as a means of reconstituting feminine discourse and desire.

Bettendorf, M. Virginia B. “Rachel Rosenthal: Performance Artist in Search of Transformation.” WAJ 8.2 (1987/88): 33-38.
Rachel Rosenthal’s experimental theater and performance art breaks down the separations between her life and her art, between the artist and the audience, between various media, and between the senses affected, suggesting the potent feminist potential for performance art to break down traditional divisions.

Bobo, Jacqueline. “THE COLOR PURPLE: Black Women as Cultural Readers.” Pribram 90-109.
Bobo analyzes Black women’s responses to the film THE COLOR PURPLE to theorize how a specific audience creates meaning from a mainstream text and uses it to empower themselves and their social group.

Bowers, Jane, and Judith Tick, eds. WOMEN MAKING MUSIC: THE WESTERN ART TRADITION, 1150-1950. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.
Women have long been absent from the field of musicology because of an inattention to the sociology of music, a focus on individual, innovative works, and studies arising from institutional musical structures that historically exclude women. In Bowers and Tick’s collection the contributors transform musicology using a variety of strategies–compensation for exclusion, analysis of the effects of minority status in music, and the creation of alternative musical institutions–to explore women’s roles in Western music making.

Briscoe, James R. “Integrating Music by Women into the Music History Sequence.” COLLEGE MUSIC SYMPOSIUM 25 (1985): 21-25.
It is important to include musical works by women, Briscoe argues, because of their inherent value in complementing men’s works, and as role models for women composers.

Brown, Janet. FEMINIST DRAMA: DEFINITION AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1979.
Brown uses a Burkean methodology to derive her definition of feminist drama: “If the agent is a woman, her purpose autonomy, and the scene an unjust socio-sexual hierarchy, the play is a feminist drama.” After applying this definition to five contemporary plays and to feminist theater groups, Brown acknowledges the limitations of this definition, which excludes formal analysis and assumes a narrow definition of feminism.

Brunsdon, Charlotte, ed. FILMS FOR WOMEN. London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1986.
The essays in this anthology focus on “representations of women that women have made.” Brunsdon’s selections of interpretations in the four sections–documentary, fiction, Hollywood, and exhibition and distribution–enact central debates in feminist film theory.

Byars, Jackie. “Gazes/Voices/Power: Expanding Psychoanalysis for Feminist Film and Television Theory.” Ed. Pribram 110-131.
Byars revises psychoanalytic film theories with the theories of Nancy Chodorow and Carol Gilligan to do “recuperative” readings of certain film and television narratives, describing elements of resistance in gender definitions.

Campbell, Loretta. “Reinventing Our Image: Eleven Black Women Filmmakers.” HERESIES 16 (1983): 59-62.
When the African-American women filmmakers interviewed by Campbell are asked if there exists a Black aesthetic, some (Jean G. Facey, Allie Sharon Larkin, Fronza Woods) wish to reject clear black/white and male/female distinctions, while others (Melvonna Bellenger, Kathleen Collins, Cynthia Ealey, Lyn Blum) see an aesthetic emerging from common experiences of Black women, from common styles, and from a developing tradition.

Case, Sue-Ellen, and Jeanie Forte. “From Formalism to Feminism.” THEATER JOURNAL 16.2 (1985): 62-65.
Although the radicalism of the 60’s made the streets the theater and the politicizing of theater destroyed its formalist structures, Case and Forte detect a “new formalism” in theater that once again favors formalist principles over political impact. Feminist theater, on the other hand, offers radical disruptions of the cultural construction of gender and sexuality, of colonization and history.

Case, Sue-Ellen. “The Personal Is Not the Political.” ART & CINEMA 1.3 (1987).
Case argues that radical feminism, the dominant feminism in the U.S., severs the personal from the political by representing women–in the work of women such as Marsha Norman, Beth Henley, Mary Daly, and Susan Griffin–as transcendent “woman” outside of economic and political contexts.

—. FEMINISM AND THEATRE. New York: Methuen, 1988.
Citing theater’s particular characteristics as a literary art that employs the human body, Case argues that theater is central in the reevaluation of the cultural representation of “Woman” as sign and object. She combines textual analysis with considerations of historical performance features, such as cross-gender traditions (“classical drag”), and she makes connections between women’s historical practices, from the earliest Greek mimes to salons to performance art. Case begins by deconstructing classical drama and its theory, based in Aristotle’s POETICS, and she concludes by proposing a new poetics of the theater in which radical feminism and materialist feminism can be deployed dialectically to create a “guerilla action” that combines theory and practice.

—. “Toward a Butch-Femme Aesthetic.” Hart 282-299.
The butch-femme pairing, in Case’s argument, is the model for an active, feminist subject position because it oscillates among roles, none of which are defined against a male opposite. To develop the butch-femme aesthetic, Case proposes a reconsideration of role-playing in lesbian culture, as neither illness nor reinscription of “natural” sex roles, but as a conscious masquerade. With “camp” as a discourse and seduction as a performance mode, the butch-femme aesthetic obliterates the realism that naturalizes sex roles.

Chinoy, Helen Krich, and Linda Walsh Jenkins, eds. WOMEN IN AMERICAN THEATRE: CAREERS, IMAGES, MOVEMENTS. New York: Crown Publishers Inc., 1981.
Chinoy and Jenkins collect essays that focus on historical analysis and historical figures to ascertain a women’s tradition in theatre, based on theatre as a nurturing art rather than as a competitive business. The essays are grouped in six sections that consider: the relationship of women’s theatre to ritual, women’s roles in theatre–from actress and playwright to director and critic, images of women in theatre, and feminist theatre, concluding with extensive source material.

Citron, Michelle. “Women’s Film Production: Going Mainstream.” Pribram 45-63.
Citron notes the increasing entry of feminist filmmakers into mainstream Hollywood film production, and she suggests that the cultural power of narrative film makes this a risky but important venture.

Cowie, Elizabeth. “Woman as Sign.” M/F 1 (1978): 49-63.
In analyzing contradictions in Levi-Strauss’ theory of woman as a sign of exchange, Cowie argues that woman’s value and definition are produced by, and not inherent in, social structures. She concludes that “what must be grasped in addressing `women and film’ is the double problem of the production of woman as a category and of film as a signifying system.”

Creed, Barbara. “From Here to Modernity: Feminism and Postmodernism.” SCREEN 28.2 (1987): 47-67.
In negotiating a relationship between feminism and postmodernism, Creed uses Alice Jardine’s concept of “gynesis”–a theoretical valorization of the feminine in postmodern writing which is not necessarily concerned with women or feminism–to read against certain postmodern strategies that ignore or subsume feminism and to argue against any “master narrative.” Creed reads nostalgia films as nostalgic for the loss of a paternal signifier and sci-fi horror films as a postmodern version of a fascination with and horror of the female reproductive body.

de Lauretis, Teresa, and Stephen Heath, eds. THE CINEMATIC APPARATUS. London: Macmillan, 1980.
While a number of articles and discussions in this collection pertain indirectly, two essays–by Jacqueline Rose and de Lauretis–deal directly with the relation of feminism to the cinematic apparatus. The former seeks a means of representing, feminine desire, and the latter, in a consideration of the cinema as a social technology, proposes a role for feminist criticism in achieving social change.

de Lauretis, Teresa. ALICE DOESN’T: FEMINISM, SEMIOTICS, CINEMA. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984.
Since the representation of woman as spectacle pervades our culture, de Lauretis argues, cinema is a particularly apt medium for analysis. Drawing from Marxist, psychoanalytic, and semiotic theories, she engages both theoretical and cinematic texts, to discuss the construction of subjectivity and the orientation of desire, which at once objectify, exclude, and imprison women and make women complicit in these processes.

—. TECHNOLOGIES OF GENDER: ESSAYS ON THEORY, FILM, AND FICTION. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987.
In this collection of her essays, de Lauretis investigates film and fiction as social technologies, with feminism providing radical rewritings and rereadings of the dominant Western culture. In her last essay, “Rethinking Women’s Cinema: Aesthetics and Feminist Theory,” she argues that feminist film has created a new social subject by addressing the spectator as a woman and as heterogeneous rather than as Woman. De Lauretis concludes by proposing a feminist deaesthetic, that shifts the focus from the aesthetics of the text to the aesthetics of reception, and addresses a deconstruction, deaestheticization, desexualization, and deoedipalization of cinema.

Diamond, Elin. “Refusing the Romanticism of Identity: Narrative Interventions in Churchill, Benmussa, Duras.” THEATRE JOURNAL 37 (1985): 273-286.
Diamond argues that by disconnecting two temporalities–the story narrative and the historical narrative–these playwrights forefront the historical construction of gender identity while working toward the dissolution of these identities, thus creating a provisional representation of the female subject at odds with patriarchal history.

—. “Brechtian Theory/Feminist Theory: Toward a Gestic Feminist Criticism.” DRAMA REVIEW 32.1 (1988).
Diamond proposes a radical mergence of feminist and Brechtian theory, both of which endeavor to demystify representation. Expanding on the central elements of Brechtian theory–defamiliarization and alienation, the inclusion of difference, historicization, and the GESTUS–Diamond asserts that a gestic feminist criticism would connect and make visible the sex-gender system, theater politics, and social history.

Doane, Mary Ann. “The Woman’s Stake: Filming the Female Body.” OCTOBER 17 (1981): 23-36.
Doane argues that to denaturalize the sexualized body of woman and to pose “a complex relation between the body and psychic/signifying processes” feminism must move beyond the opposition between essentialism and anti-essentialism, taking the risk of constructing a feminine specificity. For examples, Doane describes feminist approaches to filming women’s bodies as the construction of another syntax that reformulates the specular imaging of woman.

—. “Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female Spectator.” SCREEN 23 (1982): 74-87.
Doane conceives of the position of the female spectator as an oscillation between transvestism–woman seeing as man–and masquerade–woman seeing as woman. Male spectatorship is generally based on theories of voyeurism, while female spectators are described in narcissistic terms–woman IS the image. Doane proposes that an excess of femininity foregrounds the feminine as a masquerade. This counters women’s proximity to the film image of woman, enabling women to view and read the film from a specifically female position.

Doane, Mary Ann, Patricia Mellencamp, and Linda Williams, eds. RE-VISION: ESSAYS IN FEMINIST FILM CRITICISM. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1984.
These essays use analytical tools from the theories of Foucault, Lacan, and Althusser to investigate cinematic discourse and the means of producing meaning with the cinematic apparatus. The relation of power and the gaze, the viability of realistic film, and feminist readings of the “woman’s film” and a 1931 German lesbian film, lead to ideas as to the creation and criticism of film from feminist positions.

Dolan, Jill. “Women’s Theatre Program ATA: Creating a Feminist Forum.” WOMEN & PERFORMANCE 1.2 (1984): 5-13.
In her critique of the WTP’s 1984 conference, Dolan illustrates the necessity for articulations of political differences, instead of allowing the umbrella of “women’s” theatre to erase feminist and lesbian positions and to thwart the construction of a new performance aesthetic.

—. “Gender Impersonation Onstage: Destroying or Maintaining the Mirror of Gender Roles?” WOMEN & PERFORMANCE 2.2 (1985): 5-11.
Dolan discusses theatrical gender impersonations by men and women, gay men and lesbians, to examine the greater investment women have in disrupting the social construction of gender. She concludes that instead of a mirror of reality, theatre can be a laboratory to experiment with non-gendered identities.

—. “The Dynamics of Desire: Sexuality and Gender in Pornography and Performance.” THEATRE JOURNAL 39.2 (1987): 156-74.
Dolan argues that in the cultural feminist condemnation of pornography, male power dominance is considered inherent in sexual desire and fantasy. Dolan counters that position, describing lesbian pornography as a representation of sexual desire outside of heterosexual constructs and lesbian sadomasochism as a literalization and exploration of the relationships of power and sexuality.

—. “Is the Postmodern Aesthetic Feminist?” ART & CINEMA 1.3 (Fall 1987).
The postmodern performance practice uses deconstruction and formal inventions to subvert aesthetic values of text and authority, but they do not challenge political values and gender divisions. On the other hand, Dolan argues, lesbian performance artists unite postmodern elements and political content to challenge representational norms and sexual categories, without mistaking formal innovation for political change.

—. THE FEMINIST SPECTATOR AS CRITIC. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988.
Dolan considers the quest for a feminist or feminine aesthetic problematic because it suggests normative criteria that reinforce canon formation and prescriptive feminisms. Dividing feminism into the categories liberal, cultural/radical, and materialist, she cites the cultural feminists as the expounders of a feminine aesthetic, derived from essentialist assumptions about Woman that elide differences of race, class, and sexuality. Dolan prefers materialist feminism, with its strategies for deconstructing the male subject position constructed in the traditional theatre apparatus and for positing a lesbian subject as a disruption to signification systems, not retrievable within heterosexual or gendered role assumptions.

Ellenberger, Harriet. “The Dream Is the Bridge: In Search of Lesbian Theatre.” TRIVIA 5 (1984): 17-59.
Ellenberger parallels lesbian lives to experimental theatre, since lesbians–moving between two polarized gender roles–must make up their lives as they go. She describes lesbian theatre in three parts: 1) enacting–making up representations of lesbians lives; 2) freeing–telling secrets to liberate from taboos, directing plays through “indirection” (rather than directorial manipulation), freeing oneself from the constraints of gender definitions; and 3) shaping–discovering new structures and plots that change the way people think.

Erens, Patricia, ed. SEXUAL STRATEGEMS: THE WORLD OF WOMEN IN FILM. New York: Horizon Press, 1979.
This collection begins with critiques of male-directed cinema, moving to analyses of “women’s cinema,” discussions of women directors and their films. For theoretical essays, see Johnston, Lesage, and Erens.

—. “Towards a Feminist Aesthetic: Reflection-Revolution-Ritual.” Ed. Erens, SEXUAL STRATEGEMS. 156-167.
Defining aesthetics as an artist’s perspective on the relation between art and life, Erens describes three stages in the aesthetic choices of women directors. The reflective aesthetic corresponds to consciousness raising, focusing on women’s individual and internal processes. The revolutionary aesthetic challenges the status quo, focusing on strong women characters and didactic messages. Erens concludes, “Ideally feminist creations should strive towards a ritualistic aesthetic, an art which is truly androgynous . . . ” In this last stage, aesthetic distance is maintained and artistic concerns are held above passions and political causes.

Fehervary, Helen, and Nancy Vedder-Shults, ed. “Women and Film: A Discussion of Feminist Aesthetics.” NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE 13 (1978): 83-107.
Fehervary and Vedder-Shults lead a discussion with Michelle Citron, Julia Lesage, Judith Mayne, B. Ruby Rich, and Anna Marie Taylor about feminist aesthetics in cinema. In this lively interchange the women discuss the accessibility of film over other media, the role of teaching and criticism in culture, the usefulness and problems of Freudian and Marxist methodologies, lesbian representations and critiques, and the exposure of ideology in making and criticizing cinema.

“Feminism and Film: Critical Approaches.” Editorial, CAMERA OBSCURA 1 (Fall 1976): 3-10.
The editors select the camera obscura as a metaphor for the convergence of ideology and representation in film. The metaphor, originally a representation of an androcentric view, was used by Freud and Marx to describe processes of consciousness. This points to the semiological and psychoanalytic perspectives of the journal, in which the film text, the aesthetic object, is read as a conjunction of social, political, economic, and cultural codes.

Feral, Josette. “Writing and Displacement: Women in Theatre.” Trans. Barbara Kerslake. MODERN DRAMA 27.4 (1984): 549-63.
Feral uses Luce Irigaray’s theories to analyze five plays by women, locating features of feminine discourse in the absence of linear plot development, the mobility and incompleteness of the text, and the diversity and simultaneity of voices.

Fischer, Lucy. SHOT/COUNTERSHOT: FILM TRADITION AND WOMEN’S CINEMA. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.
Shot/countershot–when the camera is aligned with one character’s point of view and then the other’s–is a metaphor for Fischer’s intertextual approach, in which she creates dialogues in each chapter between patriarchal/ dominant films and the feminist “counter-cinema.”

Forte, Jeanie. “Rachel Rosenthal: Feminism and Performance Art.” WOMEN & PERFORMANCE 2.2 (1985): 27-37.
Forte describes Rosenthal’s performance art as a paradigm for feminist art practice, a theatrical terrorizing and radical unnaming that deconstructs and exposes representational prohibitions.

Gaines, Jane. “White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory.” SCREEN 29.4 (1988): 12-26.
Gaines argues that the universalism of psychoanalytic theory and its applications in feminist film theory exclude the historical dimension necessary to understand the different relations of power and subjectivity for black women and black men within the white “racial patriarchy.”

Gardner, Kay. “Women’s Music. What’s That?” PAID MY DUES: JOURNAL OF WOMEN AND MUSIC 6 (1976): 3-6.
Gardner describes music as religion and healing, and women’s music as an expression of peace and joy and womanliness.

Giordano, Teresa, et al, eds. WOMEN AND MUSIC. Special issue of HERESIES 10 (1980).
This issue includes articles on the contributions of Black women to jazz, blues, and gospel music. See Giordano et al.

Giordano, Teresa, et al. “Is There a Feminist Aesthetic in Music?” HERESIES 10 (1980): 20-24.
Of the seven women responding to this question, three felt a female or feminine aesthetic was a useful concept: Giordano argues that “men create culture and women experience it,” thus male and female experience and aesthetics differ; Anna Rubin believes women’s work conveys a greater intensity of feeling or “dramatic-expressionism”; and Valerie Samson describes women musicians as more concerned with life and connections with people. The four others are more cautious about the concept: Jeannie Pool describes a female aesthetic as prescriptive; Elizabeth Sacre insists such an aesthetic would have to be dynamic, self-critical, and ambiguous; Carol Sudhalter prefers to discuss social changes as they affect women’s creativity and confidence; and Judith Tick concludes by delineating the historical use of sexual aesthetics to sanction male dominance in music.

Gledhill, Christine. “Recent Developments in Feminist Criticism.” QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM STUDIES 3 (1978): 457-493.
Gledhill argues that anti-realism among feminist theorists contributes to the understanding of the cinematic creation of meaning but goes too far in conflating language and signifying practices with social processes and relations. She critiques theories based on Barthes, Althusser, and Lacan for not theorizing differences of reception among social subjects or the complex network of codes used to read realistic texts. She concludes that a neo-Marxist aesthetic can provide a realist epistemology and an aesthetic of subversion.

—. “Pleasurable Negotiations.” Pribram 64-89.
Interested in the “negotiations” between institutions, texts, and audiences that produce meaning, Gledhill posits “negotiation” as a method by which “the textual critic analyzes the CONDITIONS AND POSSIBILITIES OF READING.”

Hart, Lynda, ed. MAKING A SPECTACLE: FEMINIST ESSAYS ON CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S THEATRE. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989.
In her introduction to this anthology, Hart notes that “Alone among all literary productions, the theatre’s medium is the physical body,” and “By seizing the body and subverting its customary representations” women playwrights are transforming theatrical discourse. Covering a broad range of issues, texts, and performances, the essayists consider contemporary women’s theater as it creates new aesthetic positions, such as a butch-femme aesthetic (see Case), the inclusion of other cultural traditions in theater by women of color, and in the revisions of theoretical and canonical traditions.

Haskell, Molly. FROM REVERENCE TO RAPE: THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN IN THE MOVIES. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Haskell discusses stereotypes of women in film as reflections of widespread social attitudes in this updated version of her 1974 book. Proceeding chronologically from the twenties to the present, Haskell argues that film representations of women shift from idealization to violation due to changing social relations.

Jenkins, Linda Walsh. “Locating the Language of Gender Experience.” WOMEN & PERFORMANCE 2.1 (1984).
Jenkins describes theater as an apt form in which to delineate distinctly male and female sign systems, or “biogrammars.” Evolving from their different social spheres, female language and female plays tend to be domestic, relational, and circular, while male language and male plays tend to be public, confrontational, and often misogynist.

Johnston, Claire. “Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema.” NOTES ON WOMEN’S CINEMA. Ed. Claire Johnston. London: SEFT, 1974. (Reprinted in Erens, SEXUAL STRATEGEMS. 133-143.)
Johnston rejects the sociological analysis of images of women in film and challenges the idea of Hollywood as a monolithic cultural oppressor, using auteur theory and Barthes’ concept of “myth” in which woman becomes a signifier of ideology in society. Johnston argues that a truly revolutionary counter-cinema must disrupt the fabric of male bourgeois cinema and challenge cinematic depictions of reality, while joining politics and entertainment.

—. “Feminist Politics and Film History.” SCREEN 16.3 (Aut. 1975): 115-24.
Johnston argues that feminist criticism must “disengage and place” ideologies and not expect films to “reflect” reality, and it must attend to textual production and the domain of form within which meaning is produced and limited.

—. “The Subject of Feminist Film Theory/Practice.” SCREEN 21.2 (1980): 27-34.
For Johnston, theory and practice are inseparable since “one of the projects of the [women’s] movement is to construct knowledge of the nature and causes of women’s oppression in order to devise strategies for social transformation.” Semiotics and psychoanalysis are useful to “theoretical work on the relationship between text and subject and the historical conjuncture,” which puts feminist film criticism at “the conjuncture of discursive, economic and political practices which produce subjects in history.”

Kaplan, E. Ann. “Avant-garde Feminist Cinema: Mulvey and Wollen’s RIDDLES OF THE SPHINX.” QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM STUDIES 4 (1979): 135-144.
In her analysis of Mulvey and Wollen’s film, Kaplan concludes that avant-garde films may be valuable for a critique of ideology, but there is still a need for an accessible, non-propagandistic feminist counter-cinema.

—. “Integrating Marxist and Psychoanalytical Approaches in Feminist Film Criticism.” MILLENIUM FILM JOURNAL 6 (1980): 8-17.
Rejecting the simple sociological analysis of Marxist critics and the ahistoricism and anti-realism of psychoanalytic critics, Kaplan argues that the combination–psychoanalytic insights set within social, historical, and political contexts–will bring about the most useful understanding of the way social structures shape our fantasies.

—. “Theories and Strategies of the Feminist Documentary.” MILLENIUM FILM JOURNAL 12 (1982-83): 44-67.
Kaplan argues that criticisms of realist film overgeneralize the effects of form and the relationship between political change and film structures and disregard differences of reception between fictional and documentary films. She suggests that among other things we must reconsider the rejection of pleasure in feminist filmmaking.

—. WOMEN AND FILM: BOTH SIDES OF THE CAMERA. London: Methuen, 1983.
Moving from Hollywood films to independent feminist films, Kaplan analyzes the domination of the male gaze and the countercinemas that work to construct a “feminine” subjectivity outside of patriarchal definitions. She suggests that the Mother, as the repressed or the gap in patriarchal culture, can be a useful place to reformulate our position as women.

—. “Whose Imaginary? The Televisual Apparatus, The Female Body and Textual Strategies in Select Rock Videos on MTV.” Pribram 132-156.
Kaplan works from Beaudrillard to describe television, in opposition to cinema, as an apparatus of alienation, deferred plenitude, and inconsistency of gaze that mirrors a split subjectivity rather than an Imaginary wholeness. In her analysis of MTV, Kaplan poses television as a postmodern apparatus with the potential to eliminate gender as a significant category, and she considers an examination of the impact this may have on women.

Kay, Karyn, and Gerald Peary, eds. WOMEN AND THE CINEMA: A CRITICAL ANTHOLOGY. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977.
This anthology brings together diverse voices–from Colette, Greta Garbo, and Yoko Ono to Susan Sontag, Claire Johnston, and Laura Mulvey–creating a unique combination of film criticism and social documentation.

Keyssar, Helene. FEMINIST THEATRE: AN INTRODUCTION TO PLAYS OF CONTEMPORARY BRITISH AND AMERICAN WOMEN. New York: Grove Press, 1985.
Keyssar states that feminist dramas “assert a new aesthetic based on the transformation rather than a recognition of persons.” She calls recognition, with its inference of a true self or essence, conservative, while individual transformation on the stage suggests the possibility of social transformation. Analyzing the political impact of script, form, and staging, she favors Brechtian and social realist forms over bourgeois realism, because she maintains that the former forces the audience out of a voyeuristic role and into the position of responsible witnesses.

Koskoff, Ellen, ed. WOMEN AND MUSIC IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987.
Koskoff collects essays that develop anthropological feminist perspectives, “to construct a model that incorporates cultural concepts of power, gender, music, and value.” The essays address relationships between gender ideology and music around the world.

Kuhn, Annette. WOMEN’S PICTURES: FEMINISM AND CINEMA. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.
Kuhn begins by proposing that culture is part of ideology, and thus interventions in culture have the potential to transform sex/gender systems. Working through a variety of textual and feminist theories, Kuhn defines “feminist” criticism and films as those whose meanings oppose the dominant culture, whereas “feminine” criticism and films present challenges to dominant modes of representation and the processes of creating meaning. She explores relations of reception, the production of women’s sexuality in pornography, and varieties of countercinema, while elaborating on historical and economic contexts and the production of meaning in cinema.

—. “Women’s Genres.” SCREEN 25.1 (1984): 18-28.
In her discussion of melodrama and soap opera, Kuhn insists on the importance of distinguishing between a female audience–an a priori sociological category of femaleness as social gender–and a feminine spectatorship–the subject position constructed in relations between spectator and text. Kuhn feels these positions may be analyzed as interacting discursive formations of the social, cultural, and textual.

—. THE POWER OF THE IMAGE: ESSAYS ON REPRESENTATION AND SEXUALITY. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.
Kuhn argues that theory is a necessary part of feminism because the transformation of knowledge is a political transformation. Proposing that a triangular relationship between representation, spectators, and social formations generates meanings from images, Kuhn analyzes a variety of film images in various films such as VD propaganda films, films that use sexual disguise, and pornography.

Lacy, Suzanne, and Lucy R. Lippard. “Political Performance: A Discussion.” HERESIES 17 (1984): 22-27.
Lacy and Lippard discuss the immediate, communal, and spiritual aspects of performance art, and they seek a dynamic interchange between the aesthetics and politics of activist and culturally educational performances.

Larkin, Alile Sharon. “Black Women Film-makers Defining Ourselves: Feminism in Our Own Voice.” Pribram 157-173.
Larkin argues that feminism is racist when it pits Black women against Black men, when it generalizes about “female culture,” and when it treats sexism as separable from racism. From Sedeka and Alhamisi Wadinasi, Larkin describes four stages of Black identity: pre-encounter (world as white), encounter (develop Black perspective), immersion (all must be relevant to Blackness), and internalization (secure self-concept, work for Black community control and identity with all oppressed people). She represents Black identity as central to Black women in her films.

Leavitt, Dinah Luise. FEMINIST THEATRE GROUPS. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1980.
Leavitt explores the new wellspring of feminist theatre groups, assessing their power to mirror woman’s experience and provide new roles and new myths to create positive social change.

Lesage, Julia. “Feminist Film Criticism: Theory and Practice.” WOMEN & FILM 5/6 (1974): 12-14. Reprinted in Erens, SEXUAL STRATEGEMS 144-155.
Lesage argues that we need to expand feminist film criticism beyond analysis of the text to encompass six elements: the prefilmic milieu, the filmmaker(s), the film text, the audience, the audience’s milieu, and the production/distribution system.

—. “The Political Aesthetics of the Feminist Documentary Film.” QUARTERLY REVIEW OF FILM STUDIES 3.4 (1978): 507-23.
Lesage argues that feminist documentary filmmakers shift the aesthetics of cinema verite to a political aesthetic through a close identification with their subjects, a participation in the women’s movement, and a sense of the film’s intended effect. With a narrative structure based on consciousness-raising groups, the films politicize personal stories and develop women’s conversation as a form of subcultural resistance.

Lowe, Bia. “Theater as Community Ritual: An Interview with Terry Wolverton.” HERESIES 17 (1984): 48-49.
Wolverton expounds a communal ritual structure of lesbian and feminist theater practices as a means of expressing individual experiences and binding the actors and audience in a group process of transformation, rather than in a representation of transformation.

Lyon, Elisabeth. “Discourse and Difference.” CAMERA OBSCURA 3-4 (1979): 14-20.
To argue against the essentialism of “feminist writing” and its application in film criticism, Lyon cites the work of Michele Montrelay, who positions women’s subjectivity in a historically specific phallocentric discourse. Lyon derives from this a feminist psychoanalytic theory of film and discourse that includes the possibility of transformation.

Malpede, Karen, ed. WOMEN AND THEATRE: COMPASSION AND HOPE. New York: Drama Book Publishers, 1983.
This is a collection of short pieces–from interviews, program notes, essays, and letters–by women playwrights, actors, dancers, directors, and musicians, about the theatre. Malpede stresses the spiritual, mythic, and healing power of women in drama, as they transform a masculine artistic impulse for dominance to one of caring and true intimacy.

Mayne, Judith. “The Woman at the Keyhole: Women’s Cinema and Feminist Criticism.” NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE 23 (1981): 27-43.
Mayne posits the critic’s role as a metaphoric equivalent to the projector, coming between camera and screen, filmmaker and spectator. The feminist critic thus attempts to expose the celluloid fragments, opening up a space in the narrative and voyeuristic structures that circumscribe women viewers and filmmakers.

—. “Feminist Film Theory and Criticism.” SIGNS 11 (1985): 81-100.
In her review article, Mayne notes various debates in feminist film theory and criticism, discussing psychoanalytic theories, different approaches to classical and alternative films, and the difference between “images of women” criticism and the consideration of women as subjects. She highlights contradiction as a tool for analysis of classical cinema, and as a source of creative tension in approaches to alternative women’s cinema and to feminist theory in general.

Mellen, Joan. WOMEN AND THEIR SEXUALITY IN THE NEW FILM. New York: Horizon Press, 1973.
Mellen argues for a connection between “capitalism in moral decline” and the presentation of women as dangerous and subordinate. Although she lacks an analysis of the relationship between ideology and representation, her readings–concentrating on the representations of bourgeois women, female sexuality, and lesbianism–are wide-ranging and provocative.

Minh-ha, Trinh T., ed. “She, The Inappropriated Other.” Special issue of DISCOURSE 8 (1986-87).
Minh-ha describes this special issue as a consideration of “the place/s of post-colonial woman as writing and written subject.” Through analyses of representations of the “Other” in a variety of cultural forms–film, painting, poetry, etc.–a “critical difference” challenges the hegemony of Western cultures and their identities as unified (First World) cultures.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” SCREEN 16.3 (1975). Reprinted in Mulvey, VISUAL AND OTHER PLEASURES, 14-26.
In this signal essay on the construction of the look in cinema, Mulvey adopts a “political use of psychoanalysis” to argue that in conventional film narrative the cinematic apparatus is used to manipulate the look, and at the same time to mask its construction, to satisfy male fetishistic desires. She concludes that feminists need a film practice that frees the look of the camera and of the audience by rejecting voyeuristic pleasures.

—. “Feminism, Film and the Avant-Garde.” WOMEN WRITING AND WRITING ABOUT WOMEN. Ed. Jacobus. 177-195. (Reprinted in Mulvey, VISUAL AND OTHER PLEASURES, 111-126.)
Mulvey asserts that feminists have used avant-garde film concepts to create a radical aesthetic that–in league with theories of ideology, semiotics, and psychoanalysis–challenges traditional representations and highlights the production of meaning.

—. VISUAL AND OTHER PLEASURES. Bloomington, IN: Bloomington University Press, 1989.
This collection of Mulvey’s essays includes a discussion of public/private, “high” art/popular art distinctions, and she argues that feminist aesthetics should embrace women’s sphere of historical experience for analysis, not celebration. For many years interested in an avant-garde feminist aesthetic, Mulvey cautions in a later essay that negative or counter aesthetics risk locking one into a dialogue with an adversary. A feminist perspective, she avers in her essay “Changes,” should insist on the possibility of change without closure.

Penley, Constance. “The Avant-Garde and Its Imaginary.” CAMERA OBSCURA 2 (1978): 3-33.
In theorizing the relation of avant-garde strategies in cinema to a feminist film-making practice, Penley considers a number of metapsychological approaches to film. She concludes that avant-garde experiments with non-signifying film often fetishize abstract rules and create an aesthetic of transgression that reinforce paternal power. A political film practice, that emphasizes transformation rather than transgression, needs language to complicate the image’s power of identification and a non-narrative form to rework subject-object relations.

Phelan, Peggy. “Feminist Theory, Poststructuralism, and Performance.” TDR 32.1 (1988): 107-127.
Phelan adapts poststructural theories of woman’s absence in “a reexamination of the economy of exchange between the performer and the spectator in performance.” In her analysis of three very different performances, she proposes ways in which representations of women can interfere with the structure of male desire that defines woman by her absence.

Pollock, Griselda. “What’s Wrong with Images of Women.” SCREEN EDUCATION 24 (Summer 1977): 25-34.
Pollock contends that analyses of “images of women” stamp particular images as “good” or “bad” rather than addressing woman as a signifier in an ideological discourse and theorizing the way in which meaning is constructed.

Pool, Jeannie G. “A Critical Approach to the History of Women in Music.” HERESIES 10 (1980): 2-5.
Referring to Linda Nochlin’s work in art history, Pool argues that recognition of the historic roles and exclusions of women in music history must transform music history as a whole, from the “great man” (or woman) paradigm to a consideration of the networks of social and institutional relations that generated musical creations.

Pribram, Diedre, ed. FEMALE SPECTATORS: LOOKING AT FILM AND TELEVISION. London: Verso, 1988.
Pribram argues that psychoanalytic theories must be put in social contexts so that gender is considered alongside other variables such as race and class, as part of subject formation and social division. She selects essays that consider the female spectator in three ways: as shaped by psychic and social processes in subject formation, as historically and socially constituted groups, and as participants in a broad popular base. See Bobo, Byars, Citron, Gledhill, Kaplan, Larkin, and Williams.

Rea, Charlotte. “Women’s Theatre Groups.” THE DRAMA REVIEW: TDR 16.2 (1972): 79-89.
Rea reviews the variety of women’s theater collectives and performance groups, highlighting decisions such as whether or not to have a leader/director, whether to put personal expression over political clarity, and how to strike a balance between aesthetic and political considerations.

Rich, B. Ruby. “In the Name of Feminist Film Criticism.” HERESIES 9 (1980): 74-81.
Decrying mis-naming as a strategy of patriarchy, Rich shows how various critics–feminist and non-feminist–miss the feminist potential of feminist cinema, through distorting terminology. Rich suggests new terms for feminist film criticism, but she cautions against setting aesthetic norms of feminist film rather than recognizing different dynamic interactions between form and content.

Rosen, Judith and Grace Rubin-Rabson. “Why Haven’t Women Become Great Composers?” HIGH FIDELITY/MUSICAL AMERICA 23.2 (1973): 46-52.
In a clearly anti-feminist format, “amateur musicologist” Rosen is pitted against Dr. Rubin-Rabson, prominent psychologist–woman against woman. Rosen considers “patronage”–in its broadest sense–and social forces in the exclusion of women from composition and from recognition. Rubin-Rabson suggests that sustained creativity may be an innately male characteristic.

Rosen, Marjorie. POPCORN VENUS: WOMEN, MOVIES AND THE AMERICAN DREAM. New York: Coward, McGann & Geoghegan, 1973.
Despite the lack of theoretical sophistication, Rosen creates an interesting document on the relationship of the shifting roles and images of women in Hollywood films to American history.

Roth, Martha. “Notes Toward a Feminist Performance Aesthetic.” WOMEN & PERFORMANCE 1.1 (1983): 5-14.
Roth concludes her notes with a desire for new images of women derived from “female imaginings” in which playwrights and performers retain an “absolute authenticity to their experience as women.” Without an articulated concept of culture and cultural transmission, her critique (especially of “Oriental dance”) is problematic.

Roth, Moira. THE AMAZING DECADE: WOMEN AND PERFORMANCE ART IN AMERICA 1970-1980. Los Angeles: Astro Artz, 1983.
This book on women’s performance art combines brief review essays of artists’ work with historical contexts and theoretical questions. In Roth’s title essay, she discusses the evolution of performance art in conjunction with the feminist movement, in which expressions of the personal as political and rituals that elaborate mythic conceptions of women make way for more historical and poetic expressions of feminism that also articulate the artist’s role as cultural and political mediator.

Running-Johnson, Cynthia. “Feminine Writing and Its Theatrical `Other’.” THEMES IN DRAMA 11 (1989): 177-184.
Based on Cixous’ articulation of ecriture feminine, Running-Johnson suggests that aspects of theatrical experience contain “feminine” characteristics of multiplicity, acceptance, and transformation, and thus theater, “as the staging of possibility,” offers hope for change.

Sisley, Emily L. “Notes on Lesbian Theatre.” THE DRAMA REVIEW: TDR 25.1 (1981): 47-56.
To avoid reductive definitions of lesbian theatre, Sisley adapts William Hoffman’s definition of gay theatre to argue that lesbian theatre “implicitly or explicitly acknowledges that there are [lesbians] on both sides of the footlights.”

Van de Vate, Nancy. “Every Good Boy (Composer) Does Fine.” SYMPHONY NEWS 24.6 (1973-74): 11-12.
Van de Vate notes discouraging social forces and a lack of recognition as conditions working against women as composers.

Wandor, Michelene. CARRY ON, UNDERSTUDIES: THEATRE AND SEXUAL POLITICS. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986.
In this revised edition, Wandor discusses sexual politics and alternative theatre in the 70s and early 80s from a socialist-feminist position, with an historical analysis of theatre, class, and gender in feminist and gay theatre.

Williams, Linda. “Feminist Film Theory: MILDRED PIERCE and the Second World War.” Pribram 12-30.
Williams deems inadequate both the psychoanalytic and semiotic feminist approaches, that focus on textual enunciation and on an analysis of repression, and the sociological and historical approaches that focus on historical dynamics and on an analysis of the text as a reflection of historical and cultural “reality.” Williams combines the two approaches and, following Frederic Jameson, she analyzes the repression of historical contradictions.

Wood, Elizabeth. “Review Essay: Women in Music.” SIGNS 6 (1980): 283-297.
In Wood’s review she underlines the need for feminist music studies to take advantage of feminist analyses in other realms of culture: to examine the construction of value attribution, the ways in which music culture functions, and how elite and mass, acquired and indigenous musical and non-musical arts interact.

Yarbro-Bejarano, Yvonne. “Chicanas’ Experience in Collective Theatre.” WOMEN AND PERFORMANCE 2.2 (1985): 45-58.
Yarbro-Bejarano argues that economic and social factors specific to Chicanas make collective theater more accessible and more politically and artistically satisfying for them than commercial theater. Despite the development of broader creative and organizational skills in collective theater, Chicanas must still deal with racism and sexism in various theater companies. Yarbro-Bejarano discusses various political, Chicano, and Chicana theater collectives, and she concludes by describing the different theatrical forms–teatropoesia, actos, and popular forms–that have been developed in Chicano theater collectives.

Zeig, Sande. “The Actor as Activator: Deconstructing Gender Through Gesture.” WOMEN AND PERFORMANCE 2.2 (1985): 12-17.
Zeig identifies gestures as “a concrete means of producing meaning” and “as a particular aspect of the oppression of women.” As a lesbian, and as a stage and a social actor, Zeig argues that one can learn other gestures and deconstruct the sex class gender system by “reappropriating the gestures that do not carry the stamp of oppression.”