When Will We?

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She Will is a creepy art house film from a couple years back.  Sometimes cited as a #MeToo film, it was directed and co-written by Charlotte Colbert and it follows an aging child actress recovering from traumatic surgery.  Veronica Ghent has decided to go to Scotland, to a remote retreat, to heal.  She takes her nurse with her and is chagrined to find that the retreat she booked is being shared by an art therapy retreat.  She insists on private accommodations and is put up in an even more remote cabin.  While there, it’s made abundantly clear that this was a place where witches were burnt and their ashes mingled with the soil and the very earth therefore has healing properties.  Veronica gains an ability to exact revenge from her dreams.

The target for Veronica’s revenge is a famous director who seduced her as a child while working on her first starring role.  Famous and powerful, nobody was able to touch him.  With her new-found abilities Veronica is able to exact justice through supernatural means.  Not only that, but when a local man—the retreat’s handyman—tries to rape her nurse, Veronica is able to prevent that too.  This is a moody, sad film that addresses issues that are all too real for many women in a system designed by and intended to profit men.  Either unaware of, or uncaring about women’s experiences as participants in the system, they dismiss their trauma in a way they wouldn’t for other men.  

Although the film doesn’t have tons of action and doesn’t rely on jump startles, it is an effective gothic horror movie.  The Scottish scenery is bleak and evocative and the message is important.  Horror films directed by women are starting to gain some notice.  Those familiar with Suspiria, however, will note the influence of executive producer Dario Argento.  That film also featured the difficulties women can face, and it also concerns witchcraft.  She Will is more mature in these areas, however.  Female directors—and writers—know the unique struggles women have in a society that refuses to give female leadership a chance.  It’s a simplistic world where men are in charge (because the church says so, or, more brutally, because physical strength can be used to get one’s way) and aren’t willing to consider that half the world sees things in a different way.  Movies like this force us to take the perspective of another.  And for that the world is better.

What Lies Ahead

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Things change. You’d think the fact that we all now carry the internet around in our pockets would’ve demonstrated that. What did President Nixon ever tweet? Conservatives, however, want it both ways. They want to pretend nothing has changed, but they still want to keep and reap the benefits of that change. This was shown most clearly by the ouster of Paige Patterson from his presidency of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Seminaries don’t make national news without a good scandal. (And some good scandals are never discovered.) This one involves demeaning statements made about women in Patterson’s long storm track through the Southern Baptist Convention, of which he was past president.

Journalists seem to only now be catching on to the fact that “conservative” is a codeword for misogyny. Thus it has always been. The fact that it would take nearly two millennia before women could take leadership roles in Christianity (and in some very large sects they still can’t) should’ve been a hint. It’s the old frog in the slowly heating kettle thing. Nobody notices until it’s too late. Since conservative Christianity has always downplayed the worth of women, it didn’t come to public notice until the #MeToo moment. Enough women had to speak up before society took notice of the obvious. Many men feel theologically entitled. Entitled to run things, and they live by the lie that things haven’t changed since Jesus strolled out of that garden tomb a couple thousand years ago. Well, apart from the fact that men no longer wear dresses and keep their hair short, in Roman style. But let’s not call it that, let’s say Evangelical style.

You see, the way you say things matters. Said a certain way, a misrepresentation of the truth is called a lie. It’s considered one of the greatest sins possible in the conservative lexicon. In another way, however, the same statement becomes doctrine, and that’s a whole different way of looking at things. Make it the fault of the Big Guy up there and the other big guys down here are off the hook. After all, the Almighty’s a bachelor. Such a theology has no possibility of treating women equally. Theologians say God is sexless. What’s that like? We have trouble imagining it. English has no neuter gender so we use the masculine pronoun and once we do thoughts go back to sexual features. It’s deeply ingrained. That doesn’t mean it’s the truth, however. After all, Mr. Patterson will still be kept on as theologian in residence. The more things change, the more they stay the same.