I was pleased to be invited on to the Victoria Derbyshire Show on wednesday morning, to discuss Lars Von Trier’s film ‘The House that Jack Built’ and the walkout of a portion of the audience at it’s gala presentation at Cannes on the 14th of May, and subsequent calls for censorship for the films’ alleged violence and misogyny, a discussed this alongside critic Jessica Kiang who was at the Cannes screening, and Chris Nials of the Horror Society.
The film and its depictions of violence against women and children have provoked a series of well worn arguments about these tired tropes around the effects such films have, this time tied in to our current and valid concerns around #TimesUp, #MeToo and gender equality. Ultimately these questions are questions of taste – whether violence and depictions of misogyny are treated glibly or seriously, whether they represent or titillate, whether they are worth our time as art or as entertainment; questions of taste not effects or morality.
The real question of effects comes where we ask how come these hackneyed films of violence against women keep being made and rolled out both in Hollywood and in global and art cinema. That all films build on their generic forebears is surely part of this, but the question of whether the male dominance of the film industry globally – from the technicians of the studio floor to writers, directors and producers, and beyond to studio heads, distributors, financiers making and commissioning these films, from their own perspectives, their own judgements and their own experience. It is then interesting that a family backlash against a male director in an established genre, garnered far more attention and debate – because its a familiar debate that it’s easy to rehash – when the more novel story of lots of top women in film took part in a red carpet demonstration and protest, demanding gender equality and recognition in the industry.
The programme is available in full and in higher quality (but in one minute segments), and with a transcript here:
https://www.tu-harburg.de.wstub.archive.org/details/BBCNEWS_20180516_080000_Victoria_Derbyshire/start/2700/end/2760
Here's looking at you. 