FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Making no apologies for the iron fist of feminism
Lesbian feminist artists aren't shy about announcing their agenda
By Lori Montgomery8th Annual herland Feminist Film and Video Festival
W.R. Castell Library Theatre
Feb. 26 March 1Over the past few years, there seems to be more and more young women rejecting the feminist label. "Yes, I believe in equality, and yes, I believe that women should have all the same rights and responsibilities as men," they say. "But I'm not a feminist." En masse, they thank Gloria Steinem for her efforts, hand her a metaphoric gold watch and relegate her and the feminist struggle to the ranks of history. Performance artist Shawna Dempsey sees the trend.
"Increasingly, feminism is getting a bum rap," she says. "It's the age-old problem of our culture not allowing women to misbehave or offer up dissension. When they do, when they say 'This is bullshit,' they suffer for it.... They get called 'man-haters' and they don't get dates."
She says it's more than just the backlash that keeps younger women from embracing feminism, though. "Also, for many young women, because they have grown up with the language of feminism, they think it's over. They think we're equal now.... They don't have enough experience to realize that we're still making 67 cents for every dollar a man makes, or that 86 per cent of Canadian women over the age of 65 live below the poverty line. Obviously, things are not equal but their life experience hasn't borne that out yet."
Dempsey is clearly not cut from the same cloth. Together with partner Lorri Millan, she has been producing films and performance art outside the mainstream for years and has no trouble defining herself when it comes to her political beliefs.
"I am a feminist performance artist," she says firmly. "But we also are lesbians, and we aren't shy about that... (Feminism) is the philosophy that drives our work and we're very unapologetic about that."
As such, when Dempsey and Millan bring their work to Calgary for the herland Film and Video Festival, there are certain things that audiences can safely expect to see.
"It's all politically-motivated work," Dempsey says. "It all comes out of a feminist drive to address issues of inequality. Our lesbian identity is very present in our work as well, so we do talk about things like homophobia."
The focus of the duo's appearance in Calgary will be the screening of their half-hour film, Good Citizen: Betty Baker.
"It's a comedy," Dempsey explains. "It's a mystery told in five sections, each with a cliffhanger ending, about a housewife who goes on a chase that leads her and everybody she knows to becoming a lesbian."
While in Calgary, however, Maenad Theatre has invited Dempsey and Millan to present three of their live performance pieces at a cabaret on February 28. The first is The Lesbian Love Story of the Lone Ranger and Tonto, which Dempsey and Millan are currently developing into a feature film script. The second, Object / Subject of Desire, is part of a series that uses a dress as the central visual metaphor. The third is a to-be-announced piece that is as yet unfinished. The only sure thing, besides the feminist tone, is the comedy that characterizes their work.
"We like to think that, because we use humor in all of our work, it attracts a bigger audience," Dempsey says. "Once we've seduced them with that humor," she laughs, "we hit them with the iron fist of feminism."
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