Women Film Critics and the Lack Thereof …
The great Pauline Kael
A piece in today’s Alternet confirms what we’ve suspected for a long time: there are not enough women film critics getting published! Locally, I have missed Susanna Sonnenberg since she retired from the craft (we were lucky to have her doing that job for so long). A review by Annie Wagner (The Stranger‘s film editor) showed up in the Indy a while back, and I got excited about that, but she has not since returned that I’m aware of.
Here is the source for the Alternet piece.
The arts writing at the Indy has seemed very dude heavy for quite a while, has it not? I hope that, with Erika Fredrickson editing the arts section, we will see a better balance.
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27 August, 2008 at 10:20 am
New West has an interview with one of my best friends, artist Molly Murphy, this week.
27 August, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Dude . . . heavy . . . yeah, I match both those descriptions.
I would recommend any woman who have hankering to do some arts writing to definitely contact Erika. She’s more than open to working with good freelancers.
27 August, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Chris, no one expects you to be a music writer, Missoula’s finest rock bass player, and a female film critic all at once. Something had to give.
27 August, 2008 at 4:08 pm
It’s a dude heavy world. I, too, feel strongly that there’s a dearth of female writers in art criticism, especially film and music. That said, I’m going to defend the Indy, at least as far as music goes, in employing me as a rock writer (punk, garage, metal–all of which are often critiqued by dudes) for three years, as well as Caroline Keys and various female interns (and I know Skylar was happy to support that) Often, she and I were the main writers for that section, so I think in that sense we’re unusual compared to the norm. Film–yeah, we do have two main male writers who are local (which is important), but they’re good ones! And I would love to get a good female writer in there so if anyone’s interested (you can’t just be female, you gotta be a good writer) I’d love it. I like to think, though, that when we do get a piece from a non-local writer we utilize people like Annie Wagner. Anyway, I’m glad you brought this up. I hope we continue to get solid female writers in the arts section as much as possible, without losing solid gold dudes like La Tray, Andy and Nick.
27 August, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Thanks, Erika. And I must stand corrected to the extent that I implied anything about any biases at the Indy in the previous arts editorship — or even in the current editorship. I guess I wanted only to express the hope for change in this area, nationally and locally. Let’s hope it comes.
28 August, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Oh yes, absolutely. I know what you mean… Thanks for the good conversation! And for the great blog, in general. I’m a big fan.