I saw this post by Karina Longworth from Spout about a screening and q&a of Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker which has been making its way around before a full release this summer.  The film is about the Iraq War and has been getting some good buzz.  I’m excited to see it.

What interested me about the conversation is the ongoing debate about women not being able to direct action films or anything outside the typical women’s box.  I still don’t understand how we can be having this conversation. Why is it so hard to fathom that a woman, or many women, are interested in directing films that a) star men; or b) blow things up in them?

Guys have no problem directing films about women.  It happens everyday.  No one said so and so shouldn’t direct for example Confessions of a Shopaholic (directed by PJ Hogan) or He’s Just Not That Into You (directed by Ken Kwapis) because he’s a man?  Why do they say that Kathryn Bigelow is such an anomaly because she likes to blow shit up?

As Karina says:

The argument that Bigelow’s work is somehow subversive just because she has a vagina is not only ludicrous, but unnecessary, being that her films are actually subversive.

That the conversation surrounding Bigelow’s work seems to consistently get stuck in the mud of gender politics is all the more tragic in the case of The Hurt Locker, a film of such complex construction and complicated values that it should be able to sustain much deeper inquiry than what it feels like for a girl. If anything, it’s a film that bears the mark of a painter, full of deceptively beautiful imagery masking multiple layers of meaning.

I have long admired Bigelow’s work.  She is a very interesting director.  But the reason why the gender politics continues to dog her is that there are still too few women doing what she does.  It’s all about the numbers.  If there were 20 women directors making action films the gender conversation would be moot.

THE HURT LOCKER at AFI Dallas, and Kathryn Bigelow’s girl problem (Spout)

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• Women Directors

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