Seminar 2: Response to "Kathryn Bigelow: Feminist Pioneer or Tough Guy in Drag?"

In the article title, Martha Nochimson wonders if Kathryn Bigelow is a “feminist pioneer or tough guy in drag”, but it soon becomes clear that Nochimson feels it is neither. From her perspective, Bigelow is essentially a suck-up of a woman whom Nochimson is ashamed to share a gender with. In spite of Bigelow’s claims at the BAFTA that she made an “anti-war film”, Nochimson finds nothing in the film to show that it could actually be taken as an ironic commentary on the needless travails of war, instead of a soulless piece glorifying male-centric battlefield machismo.

Nochimson, while seemingly drawing an unnecessary dichotomy between ‘male’ and ‘female’ films in her comparison of Bigelow’s film to that of lesser-praised directors Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers, is simply working with existing stereotypes to assess how individuals such as Bigelow respond to them. Nochimson’s disappointment in Bigelow is not just about the fact that she made a war movie with no soul, where ‘manly’, overly macho and even masochistic traits are celebrated, it is that she actually managed to get an award for it, by the approving, predominantly male industry. Most of all, Nochimson rejects the film awards system which she feels continually preserves and reaffirms the superiority of men over women.

Going off on a tangent, a very interesting point to note is that Hollywood is well-known for celebrating family values. It is therefore extremely peculiar that “Hurt Locker”, whose main character seems to shatter all notions of family, would win Bigelow so many awards, in the US and the UK. How did this film, which aside from the macho aspects seems to read so much like an anti-Hollywood film, gain such approval? Is Hollywood itself letting its value system slide? Or is it the less likely possibility that the men are making concessions to welcome a woman into the fold?