Summary Of Claire Johnson's Essay Women Cinema As Counter Cinema

Claire Johnson’s essay, Women Cinema as Counter Cinema, explores the ways in which female stereotypes in films came to be and how feminist filmmakers can go about subverting the damage that decades of problematic portrayals of women have caused. Johnson spends a great deal of time talking about the idea of the woman as an “icon”—merely a symbol meant to represent a separate idea or ideal. This type of iconography has turned women in films into rough caricatures that audience members are able to categorize through specific visual and aural cues such as the way the character dresses, speaks, or the way the camera fixates on her. This concept is particularly interesting when considering the 1970 film Wanda. When reading the synopsis for this film
directed by Barbara Loden, one might find the premise to be extremely regressive and anti-feminist. The titular character is exceptionally passive, she gets the things she wants by sleeping with men, and she is generally mistreated throughout the entire run-time. She generally displays many of the characteristics of the stereotypical female figure in film, and the characteristics she actively goes against (i.e. rejecting her job as a mother) she is seemingly punished for. The difference with this film, however, is that Wanda never feels like a rough sketch of a person. She is a fully fleshed-out character with her own motives and emotions that the audience can sympathize and identify with. Although she is a very meek character, Wanda is still the main heroin of the film, and experiencing her depressing plight feels less like a rumination on the passivity of women and more like a condemnation of the patriarchal views of society.
Although Wanda uses her sexuality often throughout the narrative, she is not portrayed as a seductress; rather she is just written as a desperate woman doing what she needs to do in order to survive. Loden takes this thing that men take pleasure in viewing on screen—female sexuality—and subverts it into something painful and emotionally draining to watch. Similarly, the stereotype of the woman as the maternal, nurturing figure is challenged right at the beginning of the film. Of course, abandoning one’s children (as a woman) in order to benefit one’s own happiness is an extremely taboo notion in a society that views the mother as the home keeper and the care-giver. Throughout the movie, it seems as though the world is punishing Wanda for deciding to leave the children she never asked for and didn't particularly want with her ex-husband. Even though she didn't love her family and she only set out to regain her autonomy, she is continuously beaten down for abandoning the identity that society had already selected for
her. Wanda is not portrayed as an icon or in a mythic way to the viewer, but it is clear that the men in the film do view her in that way. They easily take advantage of her misfortune without any remorse and just abandon her (or try to) once they tire of her. So, while on the surface Wanda seems to play into the problematic stereotypes that plague women in cinema and in reality, the film really feels like a contemplation on the way women actually get trapped and sabotaged by theses stereotypes in a patriarchy-driven world.