Popular Culture Review Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1991 | Page 41

Lessons From Hollywood

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ambiguity (even ideological opposition or subversion) of mainstream,
Hollywood films like Taxi Driver, Looking for Mr. Goodbar or
CruisingX 16) This led Wood to the intriguing conclusion that "we can
go back to Hollywood in the seventies as a period when the dominant
ideology almost disintegrated."(17) What is interesting about
Wood's look at the mainstream cinema is that it asserts that some
films offer more complex experiences for the viewer than first meet
the eye. Wood is arguing that although radicalism may be taboo on
the surface of mainstream, Hollywood products, that does not mean
that commercial films cannot acknowledge and house oppositional
interpretations. Such is the "incoherence" of many of the supposedly
mainstream films of the seventies, Wood argues, that it can only be
resolved "through the adoption of a radical attitude."(18) In other
words, an ambiguous, incoherent piece of dominant film can
demonstrate the incapacity of the system, and the dominant
ideology, to resolve the dilemmas such a film raises. Thus, a piece of
Hollywood fare like Taxi Driver "testifies eloquently to the logical
necessity for radicalism."(19) It all depends on one's individual
reading of the film.
It is appropriate to conclude with a clear statement of the
message from feminist film critics that wholesale rejection of the
dominant texts is problematic, as is an examination of the work of
fringe artists (be they in film or theatre) without a consideration of
their impact on an audience. To use Mayne's words: "(the) context for
discussion . . . needs to be opened up a bit."(20)
The same could be said about the relationship of feminism with
the live theatre. We should open up the discussion to include the
mainstream and the commercial sectors of the theatre. For all
theatrical capitalism's sins, any discussion of populism and feminism
within the theatre is otherwise incomplete.
Lucie Arbuthnot has argued that
it is time that feminist film critics move beyond
the analysis of male pleasure, in order to destroy it,
to an exploration of female pleasure, in order to
enhance it. Feminists who make films aimed at
destroying men's pleasure are in fact making films
that men rarely watch. And these films also
perpetuate a male-centered view of art-making in