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July 1994

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Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
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Mon, 18 Jul 1994 18:53:42 EDT
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One possible explanation would be to look at Cameron's extratexual life.
He was married for a longtime to producer Gale Anne Hurd who has been
viewed as responsible for some of the feminist politics of his earlier
films, such as ALIENS, THE TERMINATOR MOVIES, and THE ABYSIS. As I understand
 it, the ABYSIS was shot at the time they were breaking up and thus, the
need the two characters have for each other even in the face of
maritial estrangement was a factor on the set as well as off. Subsequently,
Cameron was involved with Kathleen Bigelow, another feminist working within
the action film genre. I don't read PEOPLE so I don't know the current
state of their relationship. I also haven't seen TRUE LIES yet, though I
am a long time Cameron fan but I remain skeptical that the misogynistic
reading of the film is all that there is. My experience has been that
most of Cameron's films have had some criticisms by some feminist
critics and have been embraced by others. We have to understand the
gender politics of the films within the context of their particular
blend of feminist intervention and the genre conventions of the action
film. I certainly would claim that many of his previous films have strongly
questioned conventional assumptions about gender and reworked the genre
to accomodate strong female protagonists, even if there were moments that
felt more reactionary and contradicted those dominant tendencies in the
films. We make a mistake when we read Hollywood ideology in an all-or-nothing
fashion.
--Henry Jenkins

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