Independence at What Cost?

In his 2005 book American Independent Cinema, Geoff King remarks on the connections between independent filmmaking as a mode of production that is often implicitly, if not explicitly, resistant to the standard Hollywood approach, and cites women’s role in such an arena:

To eschew plot-centric forms in the cinema is, in many cases, to choose or suffer operation on the limited resources available in the independent sphere, to be relegated to what some would consider a secondary position akin to that generally offered to women in society. The corollary should be that women are more likely to be at home in the indie sector, which may be true in some respects as far as a sensibility is concerned but is clearly not the case in terms of equal availability of opportunities or resources. ¹

While King may overstate his point by conflating independent filmmakers’ deviation from traditional plot-centric conventions and women’s position within society, he points to some compelling intersections between women filmmakers, the economic context in which they work, narrative structure, and ideology. The dominance of what King calls “plot-centric” narrative forms is particularly salient when looking at contemporary Hollywood-produced women’s films or, as they are often derisively called, “chick flicks,” which almost universally employ a narrative structure in which a single woman is depicted as being successful at everything but love and, after a few fruitless pratfall-driven attempts, finally finds the right man and is safely within the confines of a heterosexual partnership at the end of the film. Contemporary big-budget Hollywood productions, such as The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel, 2006), the filmic adaptation of Sex and the City (Michael Patrick King, 2008), Confessions of a Shopaholic (P.J. Hogan, 2009), and Bride Wars (Gary Winick, 2009), among many others, present a woman’s identity as not only inextricably linked, but inseparable from, the goods, services, and experience of consumption (made possible by Hollywood’s substantial production budgets). This trend is in keeping with what Diane Negra has labeled “the hyper-aestheticization of everyday life” ² in which “identification with a level of luxury consumption far out of proportion to one’s actual financial circumstances is emerging as a hallmark of contemporary existence.” ³