Feminist Folkloristics and Women's Cinema: Towards a Methodology.

Koven, Mikel ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2542-3013 (1999) Feminist Folkloristics and Women's Cinema: Towards a Methodology. Literature Film Quarterly, 27 (4). pp. 292-300.

Abstract

Marcia Landy, in referring to David Lean's film version of Nodl Coward's Brief Encounter, notes: "the film does not appear to be talking to or about women .... it seems to be an example of a phenomenon described by Claire Johnston of making it appear that the subject is female when in fact the woman is the 'pseudocenter of the filmic discourse"' (228). Landy goes on to describe how this particular film constructs woman as pseudocenter: "she is another instance of the woman whose words never get public expression except through the male text" (228). For Landy, then, the significant factors of legitimacy for "woman's voice" in public is the gender of both the screenwriter and the director, and the latter is further privileged in film studies debates. Landy misreads Johnston, however: Johnston's "pseudocenter of the filmic discourse" refers to a denial of woman as subject in favor of a "non-male"/other distinction (Johnston 211). Landy takes a radical stand even further than Johnston's: that the text, if controlled by a man, becomes a male text.

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