What is Your Messaging?

Today I started teaching my virtual classroom of Afghani women through the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, most of whom live near or in Kabul. I read their bios carefully; all had experienced some very dark times under the Taliban. One woman had her father and two brothers taken from her childhood home at gunpoint. Another had been denied entry in a school in Pakistan because she is Afghani. All have big dreams for bright futures and see being a part of this project as an opportunity to learn to express themselves to that end.

The purpose of the program is just that – to help these young women become articulate observers and reflectors of their lives in Afghanistan, to help them introspect about their role in Afghani society and to express themselves and their feelings through essays, poems and short stories.

I figured since I work with movies and story that my contribution should come from that angle. This week, the girls have about four questions to answer in essay form and one of the questions is how they think American movies portray women.

I will be very curious to read through the homework when it’s turned in. Will these burqa wearing girls have a skewed view of how American film portrays women? As wanton hussies who show too much skin? Or will they share the view of many American women, who simply say there aren’t enough roles for women full stop? How has their society shaped their views versus how movies have shaped their views?

I sometimes joke that I know most stuff about life from what I’ve seen in the movies. I have, as every American reading this has, been entrained to be somewhat patriotic even in movies not directly about patriotism, simply because the movies were made with an American point of view. Like many women, I have become accustomed to women in movies being either wanton seductresses or uptight shrews. True of every film? Of course not. But the patterns are regular. Old people are very funny or very wise. Russians are villains. Swedes are uptight. The killer is in the basement.

Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s lil’ film maker, directed the Nazi propaganda film, TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, an overt Aryan homage that was persuasive to those already inclined to believe and enthralling to those with some serious symbolic Aryan-worship issues made more palatable when wrapped in an outer coat of masterful cinematography.

Movies shape views. Of women, of men, of morals and mores and the tides of zeitgeist. While it was sure enough a well done thriller, FATAL ATTRACTION, in my opinion, is a deeply misogynist film. A woman who wants to get laid is a CRAZY MEDUSA SEDUCTRESS liable to boil your bunny, gents! Here’s Marilyn Monroe in SOME LIKE IT HOT: (sucking a lollypop) I always get the fuzzy end of the lollypop. Whoa there, Nelly.

Sounds a lot like shaping views is connected to theme, doesn’t it? Yes, in a roundabout way. But we’re being a bit more specific, yes?

I just wrote a blog entry about the WWYD (what would you do) question at the center of your script. The question that your audience will be asking themselves while they watch an impossible situation play out – what would I do?

Today the observation is a broader and more esoteric one and yet if your movie gets made, make no mistake, it will shape views.

Will some viewers watch your movie and feel that their feeling about Americans was absolutely RIGHT? Or will they watch the film and perhaps learn something new?

What do you want to talk about in your movie? What is your messaging about life? Is it pessimistic, optimistic, progressive, archaic or visionary? How will it shape views around the world?