Screen OffenseLast week I watched a film noir classic at the Film Center in Tisbury: He Walked By Night. It was almost a full house, and the audience clapped at the end.

But this beautifully photographed film was horrible.

What was horrible, in particular, was how the film depicted women. To the nominal extent that there were women, their portrayal could not have been more demeaning. The largest role was for a suburban woman who came on to the milkman in the most obsequious way. Shocking. Ahh, you might say. but that is the way that all women were depicted in the post WWII films. Not true.

Rosie the Riveter was produced a few years before, and reflected the heroism of women in American factories during the war where the number of working American women, black and white, increased from 12 million to 20 million. As Wikipedia quotes: “What unified the experiences of these women was that they proved to themselves (and the country) that they could do a “man’s job” and could do it well.”

Films do not need to be medieval.

Harvey Weinstein, a one-time Martha’s Vineyard visitor, did not come out of thin air. He came out of a culture where a degrading attitude towards women was never challenged.

A few days later I went to the Strand Theatre in Oak Bluffs to see Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning. I can tell you, you won’t see misogyny in a Tom Cruise film.

Then I beached up at The Lookout for a bite to eat. I asked one of the two women next to me why she had allowed some relative stranger to chat her up, and put his arm around her shoulder. She told me that American men have no respect for women.

What is my point? It does not do to clap when a reactionary film is technically excellent. It is a no go. It is not acceptable for men in pubs to take liberties with women. There is a culture of which we are all a part. It is right in front of us. We can change that culture but not by being passive. Men need to intervene; to put a stop to this obnoxious behaviour.

David Douglas

Tisbury