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Haus Loves: Katherine Bigelow

Each year, March 8th is marked by a global celebration of all women and their achievements, be they political, economic or social. This year, March 8th was the day the world woke up to its first ever Oscar-winning female director, as Kathryn Bigelow snatched the Academy’s hottest prize for Hurt Locker. For decades, women have been lauded at the Oscars for their performance skills and their glamorous red carpet appearances, but their male counterparts continued to be the ones accredited with creative and artistic cinematic talents.

Only three women before Bigelow had even been nominated for Best Director: Lena Wurtmuller in 1976 for Seven Beauties, Jane Campion for The Piano in 1993, and Sofia Coppola’s 2003 box office hit, Lost in Translation. Each of these films is distinctly more feminine or feminist than Hurt Locker, notable for its subject matter, which represents hyper-masculinity in its purest form. But it is Bigelow who will go down in women’s history as the first Academy-acknowledged “great” female director, and my interest lies in the motives behind presenting her with this award. Did she win because it is 2010 and the patriarchal Hollywood industry finally felt pressured into voting for a female director? Was it their way of sticking two fingers up at the Box Office and James Cameron (coincidentally – or not – Kathryn Bigelow’s ex-husband)? Or was her gender a secondary consideration to the Academy voters, and she won the award purely because of the film itself? In either instance, how much of a breakthrough is this for women in the movie business?

To Bigelow’s credit, she tried very hard not to make her victory about her gender – her acceptance speech made no mention of the glass ceiling she had just broken through. When hounded on the issue backstage she simply said, “I hope I am the first of many” and admitted that she looks forward to the day when a woman’s work can be appreciated without a qualifier. Since that day is not yet here, and she has reached a milestone women have been grabbing at for 82 years, her gender deserves a mention. However, Hurt Locker is not a film recognizable for boasting a female director. There are no female characters, which is unusual in Hollywood, where most films at least have a token woman if only just as a romantic subplot for a male protagonist. On top of this, the male characters are overly masculine, in the most stereotypical ways – some critics have called this a fault of Bigelow’s, claiming she exaggerated their personalities because of her naivety about a man’s mind. This is not an unusual trait for Bigelow, who is known for making “boys’ films”, such as K-19: The Widowmaker, about Soviet submarine warfare, which also fails to feature women. Kathryn Bigelow appears to be a female director without any feminine touch. So if there is nothing typically feminine about her films, there are two criticisms to make: one is that Bigelow tailored her talents to play a “boys’ game in a boys’ world”, hence her success in the patriarchal industry; the second is that her Oscar victory was a gratuitous attempt at social reform through cinema by the increasingly political Academy voters. While I think it very possible that both these statements are correct, I think that overall, Bigelow’s gender was set aside so the Academy could consider the film’s other merits, of which there are plenty.

Hurt Locker was the lowest-grossing Best Picture of all time when the award was given, and it was screened at no more than 535 cinemas – a statistic particularly striking given that it beat the highest-grossing movie ever, Avatar, to the top prizes. Considering the highly technical editing, sound mixing and special effects required for Hurt Locker, it is an achievement in itself that Bigelow could make it Oscar-worthy on an $11million budget, compared with Cameron’s $230million spending spree with Avatar. While I do not believe the film itself to be a breakthrough of any kind for women in the industry, the message that her landmark award sends can only be perceived as a positive one. Whether Bigelow wants to be congratulated for it or not, she is now a part of history in both the film industry and the women’s movement. In the words of Barbara Streisand as she announced the Best Director of 2010, “the time has come”, but unless female filmmakers follow Bigelow’s lead in capturing the attentions of the Box Office and the awards circuits, it will simply be a blip on the timeline of the Hollywood boys’ club.

Text: Hannah Burke