BY SARAH BATY

I have seen Dazed and Confused more times than I can count, it just a classic, I love it it is so so so damn good. I am quarantined with friends so I have been making them watch the films with me and when we watched this they were like “wow that was actually a normal movie it was really good.” The term “normal” I found to be really funny as if Suspiria and Valerie were some kind of movies made by aliens and not humans but I understood what they meant. These movies aren’t for everyone and that’s okay! Maybe I should show them Pink Flamingos tho…. I am just scared they’ll never let me pick a movie ever again if i show them that honestly!

Something that wasn’t super discussed was Matthew McConaughey’s role that became iconic with witty one-liners like the epic “alright alright alright” and the well known statement of how he gets older but high school girls stay the same age. The role for McConaughey happened by chance as he met the casting director for the show at a bar. I love McConaughey and if y’all are interested here is an article on him and this role!

https://www.biography.com/news/matthew-mcconaughey-dazed-and-confused

Moving onto the readings for this week I found my reading to be really interesting. The Pleasures and Perils of Exploitation Films by Pam Cook she discusses women in low-budget exploitation films and tries to solve the question of why it is so hard for women to bust out from exploitation films and into mainstream. Another question posed is if exploitation film-making “does in fact operate as a successful ‘training ground’ for women, as it does for male directors.” Some were afraid that they were going to be categorized as exploitation film directors; therefore, never being able to bust out into mainstream. Trying to dive into mainstream doesn’t work in any genre because the problem is visibility. Women work all across the board in a variety of genres and still don’t get the same visibility as their male counterparts. Those women are “singled out for the status of auteur are generally those who are perceived to take risks with form and subject matter, and who are therefore regarded as swashbuckling adventurers in the mould of male auteurs.” She refers to the auteur, whether male or female, is a maverick figure, a hero battling to overcome the monsters of the system. It is asked why many women chose to work outside of the mainstream and it’s because they obtain more control over the film-making process and are “in a better position to forge new images that would depict women as active participants in history and society without using them for erotic display.” By being outside the mainstream women directors are able to rewrite common stereotypes and portray women in more powerful assertive roles. This is what Stephanie Rothman’s work was known for this. Her films could be seen as a prime example of “feminist subversion from within, using the generic formulate of exploitation cinema in the interest of her own agenda as a woman director.” She rewrote women in cinema as powerful and assertive who took charge of their own sexuality. For example in one of her movies there was a graphic abortion sequence, drug induced fantasy sequence, and women having casual sex. Rothman never made it into mainstream production and that’s what circles back to Cook’s question of whether exploitation films are just a training ground for both men and women.