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The Marrying Kind
EXPLORING GENDER AND TRADITION IN I AM NO BIRD
www.screeneducation.com.au
Screen Education 95 I © ATOM
38
The Marrying Kind
EXPLORING GENDER AND TRADITION IN I AM NO BIRD
www.screeneducation.com.au
TALKING SOCIETY SS
different countries, faiths and socio-economic settings as they prepare for their wedding days, Em Baker’s documentary is a welcome antidote to culturally dominant representations of women in cinema. While the film seeks to challenge conventional ideas about gender and marriage, it also foregrounds its subjects’ voices without judgement, as AMANDA BARBOUR finds.
OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Dalia and her bride; Benay; Anna (right); Luthanlu ABOVE: Luthanlu’s wedding ceremony
T
he feature-length debut of director Em Baker, I Am No Bird (2019) is an observational documentary about what weddings mean to modern women. Taking its title from a passage in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre – ‘Jane, be still; don’t struggle so, like a wild, frantic bird that is rending its own plumage in its desperation,’ the protagonist’s would-be husband Edward Rochester chastises her, to which Jane retorts: ‘I am no bird; no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will’1 – the film documents four women from four very different backgrounds as they navigate the matrimonial process in their respective communities. At first glance, it may seem odd to reference a quote of this calibre in a film about marriage. Its relevance lies in the fact that Brontë’s and Baker’s respective heroines are navigating institutions that were not designed to benefit them. Their paths to selfdetermination will take different routes – through d iffering cultures, socio-economic situations, faiths and sexualities – but their agency in choosing their paths is their common denominator. In presenting protagonists from such a broad range of milieus, Baker invites audiences to learn from their diverse wisdom and experience. The film follows its subjects as they grapple with and define what marriage means to them. In Izmir, Turkey, we meet Benay: a smiley and outspoken Muslim who comes from a strong line of matriarchs and is the boss of her household. In India’s North Eastern Region, meanwhile, Luthanlu’s wedding is largely practical, with her and her fiancé’s mutual understanding founded on their shared Rongmei Naga heritage. For Mexican lesbian Dalia, her wedding presents an opportunity to reconcile with her conservative Catholic mother. And, for Anna, a Pentecostal Australian, the consummation of her marriage equates to the loss of her virginity and the formation of her own holy trinity between herself, her partner and her God. Along the way, Baker formulates her own mythology of the bride through a mixture of digital video and super 8 film, with animation used to reconstruct the women’s pasts. Indeed, I Am No Bird’s structure is somewhat reminiscent of a Disney film: we meet the characters, follow their respective journeys and conclude with their weddings. But these narratives is interrupted by quotes from the likes of Margaret Atwood and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that question the various messages that women receive around who and how they’re meant to be (both in general and in
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Following four brides from
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ABOVE: Anna and her bridesmaids
Baker sees the typically feminine enthusiasm for weddings as the result of ‘a trick that’s been played on us since childhood, that’s rooted in the history of marriage’.
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relation to marriage). The critical ideas evoked by these excerpts, which act as dividing points between the film’s four chapters, are then juxtaposed with the reality of actually going through that experience, captured in digital and analog film. Those latter sequences are particularly notable: super 8 embalms a moment in time; it elongates the space between its subjects and the audience, and reminds us that we’re watching a film. Further removed from our reality, the bride in this kind of footage assumes a celebrity-like status, becoming an ethereal beauty for a day. In keeping with this approach, we see the brides drawn in a manner akin to actress publicity shots from the Golden Age of Hollywood as the final credits roll. Baker tells me these were all deliberate choices, intended to both pay homage to inherited ideas of what a bride is and expand the idea of what a bride can be.2 The film’s second chapter opens with a quote from Disney’s Cinderella (Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske, 1950): ‘Did you ever see such a beautiful dress? And look, glass slippers! It’s like a dream come true!’ Baker juxtaposes various pre-nuptial rituals of choosing the dress; as Anna and her bridesmaids discuss liquid diets in the dress shop, Benay declares to her dressmaker that she hasn’t lost any weight and is sweaty
from walking around the bazaar all day. Dalia doesn’t care about fashion and would rather be dressed practically, but enlists the help of a friend to take her to Swarovski. Meanwhile, in Assam, shopkeepers stare suspiciously as Luthanlu shops for flowers and a cake. She explains how the Rongmei Naga people are treated as second-class citizens, and how she responds to that treatment. Like the sound of birds chirping away, the tendency to gossip about the big day is about as customary as choosing the dress – particularly in feminine circles. While the gendered discrepancy in interest in the event can be (in part) attributed to patriarchal stereotypes that dictate what is and isn’t permissible for ‘manly’ men to think and talk about, there are some historical factors to take into account. Baker sees the typically feminine enthusiasm for weddings as the result of ‘a trick that’s been played on us since childhood, that’s rooted in the history of marriage’.3 Her reasoning is that women’s participation in the ceremony has historically been limited to being the object of a transaction. Baker suspects that the spectacle of the bride, with her dress and jewels, probably became ingrained in tradition ‘as a sort of consolation prize for [her] to be somehow happy about what was happening to her’.4 While I agree, I would add that gossip creates a safe space in which to listen and be heard. Beneath the superficiality of any
There is no value judgement from Baker in her juxtaposition of her leading ladies’ respective matrimonial processes. Indeed, the project was born from the director’s own initial uncertainty about marriage.
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small talk lies the opportunity to ask, ‘How are you going? How do you feel about this?’ As Dalia has her bridal make-up done, she begins talking with her friends about her exile from home, and the question of whether her mother will attend the ceremony. Christina Scott writes, ‘Gossip gives us a fighting chance to decode the motives and intentions of people who affect the quality of our lives.’5 In this sense, the grapevine can be instrumental in finding safety in a state of emergency, and has the potential to undermine institutionalised power. As Scott goes on to assert, ‘Gossip gets its bad reputation from men who feared it. Feared its strength. Feared their inability to control women who could subvert the official rules of the game through gossip.’6 From this perspective, it seems fitting that Baker’s film – one made with explicitly feminist intent7 – is so full of gossip. Critical and academic opinion regarding what constitutes a feminist film varies widely – but, much as it can be said that ‘feminist film theory uses gender as the axis of analysis’,8 it is generally the case that a feminist film will seek to disrupt gendered hierarchy in some way. Such inequalities are often reflected and reinforced on screen: in 2016, feminist film theorists Hannah Anderson and Matt Daniels presented data from 2000 popular
Hollywood films that indicated substantial disparities in how screenplays allocate screen and speaking time relative to gender (Figure 1).9 Algorithms and artificial intelligence have, likewise, given new weight to the Bechdel test,10 as mass volumes of data can now be codified and quantified at unprecedented speed. But quantified data is useless without a qualitative analysis, as the determinism of figures needs to be considered in conjunction with the complexities of diversity. In Anderson and Daniels’ figures, 22 per cent of the titles analysed have a female lead and 24 per cent have either equitable or greater speaking time for women. While this is far from equal representation, the figures become even more damning when you bring in other facets of identity, such as race, into the conversation. Focusing on Disney productions, Anderson and Daniels report that only two films in the abovementioned study feature a non-white (human) female lead, and in both of those cases men speak 60-plus per cent of the dialogue. While a film about a legendary female warrior may ostensibly be considered feminist, the fact that men occupy 77 per cent of the dialogue in Mulan (Barry Cook & Tony Bancroft, 1998) complicates any attempt to classify it as a feminist work.11 For Baker, the decision to platform a diverse cross-section of brides and let them tell their own stories was crucial in putting together a self-determined and sociologically nuanced film.12 The focal point for each key cast member is identity, not bridezilla-like stereotypes, allowing audiences to establish a vector of cognitive and emotional empathy as we’re shown these women’s lives and how they understand love. Reframing femininity in this way – that is, presenting women as individuals with opinions as opposed to clichés with a predictable trajectory – further develops the idea of what a ‘good bride’ can be. There is no value judgement from Baker in her juxtaposition of her leading ladies’ respective matrimonial processes. Indeed, the project was born from the director’s own initial uncertainty about marriage; despite having a long-term partner, she wasn’t sure what point or purpose the ceremony would serve in their lives. In an increasingly opinionated world, there’s a lot of merit in a filmmaker positioning audiences to observe and explore differences without invoking any holier-than-thou hierarchy. Baker tells me that she wanted people to see these four women as ‘human beings who are all participating in this momentous event in their lives – not as tokens or symbols, but as something deeper and more complex’.13 Benay sets the price of her mahr: a mandatory
FIGURE 1 (image courtesy of The Pudding) 41
THIS SPREAD, CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: Luthanlu; Dalia; Anna; Dalia and her bride; Benay payment in Islamic law that the groom must give to the bride at the wedding to ensure her financial security in case of death or divorce. Likewise, Luthanlu’s family playfully (but seriously) haggle with her groom over her dowry. While Luthanlu’s mother warns her daughter against temptations of the flesh, Anna and her entourage have a scavenger hunt at a sex shop. Both of Dalia’s bride’s parents walk her down the aisle, while Dalia’s father is not invited to the ceremony. Across all four weddings, we see a celebration of family and culture. Baker finished editing I Am No Bird a week before her own wedding. She tells me that, going into the film, she had assumed that she would not wed; but, as the production progressed, she realised she wanted to participate in the marital institution as a way to recognise and respect her and her partner’s familial and cultural backgrounds. The event was a fifty-fifty split between Indian and Anglo-Australian traditions, reflective of their heritages. When asked if she enjoyed the experience of being the subject of the mythology of the bride, Baker tells me:
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Not at all, no […] I don’t like being on camera, or in front of a lot of people. That’s why I make films [and] don’t star in them. There was something karmic, though, about shoving cameras in people’s faces on their wedding day and then experiencing that myself, and being stressed and uncomfortable in front of a lot of people. This chapter of Baker’s life came full circle on her wedding day, when she starred in her own wedding videos. Birds can be free, or they can be caged. When women get married, they’re navigating the trappings of an institution that has patriarchal power embedded at its roots. Baker’s film reveals that, despite this, these women are equipped with the knowledge and the courage to grow from that and walk down the aisle on their own terms, as does the character
Amanda Barbour is an alumnus of the Melbourne International Film Festival’s Critics Campus and works as a film critic, translator (French/ English) and artistic director of intersectional feminist film festival FEM&IST Films. SE Endnotes 1
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Signet Classics, New York, 2008 [1847], pp. 257–8.
Em Baker, FaceTime interview with author, 30 May 2019. ibid. 4 ibid. 5 Christina Scott, ‘In Brief: Gossip’, Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, 1 January 1992, vol. 9, no. 17, p. 5. 6 ibid., p. 7. 7 See Dov Kornits, ‘Em Baker: I Am No Bird’, FilmInk, 27 May 2019, <https://www.filmink.com.au/em-baker-wants-kiss -bride/>, accessed 11 July 2019. 8 Patricia White, ‘Feminism and Film’, in John Hill & Pamela Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998, p. 117. 9 Hannah Anderson & Matt Daniels, ‘Film Dialogue from 2,000 Screenplays, Broken Down by Gender and Age’, The Pudding, April 2016, <https://pudding.cool/2017/03/film-dialogue/>, accessed 11 July 2019. 10 The Bechdel test is a measurement of women’s representation in cinema and television. To pass the test, a film or TV series episode must meet the following requirements: (1) it has to have at least two women in it, who (2) talk to each other about (3) something other than a man. See Holly L Derr, ‘What Really Makes a Film Feminist?’, The Atlantic, 13 November 2013, <https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/ archive/2013/11/what-really-makes-a-film-feminist/281402/>, accessed 11 July 2019. 11 Jeff Guo, ‘Disney’s Princesses: The Number and Content of Their Lines Tell Their Own Stories’, The Independent, 26 January 2016, <https://www.independent.co.uk/arts -entertainment/films/features/disney-s-princesses -the-number-and-content-of-their-lines-tell-their -own-stories-a6835111.html>, accessed 14 July 2019. 12 Baker, op. cit. 13 ibid. 14 Brontë, op. cit., pp. 456–7. 2
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whose quote forms the film’s title. It is Jane’s volition, her capacity to leave and will to return, that makes her eventual marriage beautiful. As Brontë writes, ‘I took that dear hand, held it a moment to my lips, then let it pass round my shoulder […] Reader, I married him.’14
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