30 minutes, color
$195/$125
Too many educational programs about sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual violence focus solely and intensely on the perceptions and experiences of the targets of these individual and institutional forms of discrimination. In doing so they fail to address or spotlight the actual roots of sexism: male privilege and men's abuse of the resulting power they are afforded—abuse intended to maintain their privilege, power, and control over women. The lack of a critical examination of the motivations, actions, and intentions of male predators leads in many cases to a societal problemization of women: “She shouldn't have worn that short skirt”; “Why did she go to his apartment”; “She shouldn't have gotten drunk”; and the ultimate denial of male responsibility, “She brought it on herself!” War Zone, a film by Maggie Hadleigh-West, literally turns this approach to understanding sexism, harassment, and violence on its head. The filmmaker shines the spotlight, and her video camera, on men whose actions and attitudes perpetuate a social context in which women are at best objectified and at worst abused, raped, or killed by men, often with little or no consequence.
The context for War Zone is powerful in its simplicity. Hadleigh-West, equipped with a video camera, walks through four major cities (New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and New Orleans) to record the day-to-day abuse—sexualized comments, objectifying stares, uninvited physical contact, and other forms of harassment and sexism—women experience that rob them of the basic right to walk safely and comfortably in their own neighborhoods (or anywhere else). She challenges the continued institutional denial of sexism and its implications by documenting what may be its most pervasive and effective element—that even in the most public spaces, women must operate and function in a war zone.
But instead of interviewing street harassment scholars or centering her own reactions to and perspectives on her abuse, Hadleigh-West turns the camera, and the heat of the spotlight, on her abusers. The film documents her confrontations with those abusers, but focuses tightly on their reactions to the turning of the tables. Every time she experiences harassment (which runs the gamut from objectifying stares to being followed) she directly turns the camera on the perpetrator. As a result, her abusers as well as (or including) male War Zone viewers, are forced to think and reflect more critically about the ways men maintain dominance and control. More specifically, the film illustrates how men continuously cycle sexism through what many men have traditionally argued to be harmless or natural interactions.
Among all of the films related to sexism, harassment, and violence I have reviewed, War Zone, in both its form and content, stands out as the most unique, powerful, and important contribution to anti-sexist education. It elicits emotional responses from both women and men precisely because it is real, unstaged, honest and raw. It disallows the overwhelming comfort of denial by men. Meanwhile, the film demands a new urgency to establish space and validation for women to confront sexism in its most pervasive individual form, putting the onus of responsibility for change on those who benefit from its institutional form.
This film can provide an especially powerful educational experience for high school and college students, but is appropriate for anybody in their teenage years or older. Every American Studies, Women's Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociology, and Psychology program should have a copy of War Zone in its library. It will also be an invaluable resource for activists or trainers who conduct workshops on sexual harassment, sexism, sexual violence, street harassment, masculinity, male identity, male privilege, and related topics.
A longer version of the film (76 minutes) is available through the filmmaker who can be reached at her Web site: http://www.filmfatale.net/.
Like all films about sexism or related oppressions, War Zone should be debriefed or processed by a trained facilitator.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]