Jill soloway's work includes the feature film Afternoon Delight theatrical experiences such as the Miss vagina pageant Hollywood Hell House and sit and spin and of course she's the creator of the multiple Golden Globe and Emmy award-winning Amazon series transparent which is premiering episodes from season three here today at Tiff in the prime time program please join me in welcoming one of the most provocative contemporary and fearless voices in film and TV she's here to incite a revolution Jill Solway thanks guys thank you for being here at 9 30. everybody was partying late last night never never too early for the revolution I like to say I want to thank Tiff for being such warm and welcoming hosts for transparent season three which hopefully you guys will come and check out in a few hours um okay so I am here to talk about or maybe investigate this notion of the female gaze and I hope you read the title up there and you know that it's g-a-z-e and not g-a-y-s um I've gotten into trouble when I talk about the male gays and and gay men think I'm talking about them and I have nothing against male g-a-y-s um I mean I I don't like white parties so that is one thing I have against them but um I don't like being told what to wear to events and if I am being told what to wear I hate when I'm told to wear white so um okay so let's talk about what the male gaze is the g-a-z-e it is a term that was coined by Laura Mulvey in 1975 in her essay narrative Cinema and visual pleasure click now I don't have any slides but I want them so badly um doesn't it feel like I would just but um I'm gonna make slides I think this is going to turn into a slide thing one day okay so I did some extensive research for one minute on Wikipedia and found that the male gaze is the way in which Visual Arts and literature depict the world and women from a masculine point of view presenting women as objects of male pleasure and so moving names three parts of this gaze she says this gaze is concocted by the person behind the camera the characters in the film and The Spectator that was like when I did this one minute of research and I realized that the male gaze was a triangle I was just like oh coming out from the center of a triangle ugh I just thought it was a gaze but it's like it's like an energy shooting out from three points and I was like no wonder I hate it it's a lot um and here's what is also crazy about the male gaze it was 40 years ago that Laura Mulvey coined that term and nobody has taken the female gaze yet so I'm just taking it now I'm gonna like movie Male gaze Solway female gays done yes it's mine I've got the female gays it's mine okay what is the male gaze guys it's pretty much everything everything you've ever seen it's most TV shows it's it's all movies it's superhero and action movies it's it's of course horror movies and it's torture movies it's movies that are intentionally objectifying women like James Bond movies and Wolf of Wall Street and it's also well-intentioned movies like her or ex machina machina makina these men who dream of women who ooze ether it's the Revenant it's There Will Be Blood it's Ocean's 11 for the way they ignore women it's Entourage it's Two and a Half Men did I say it's everything it's pretty much everything we're in church just wait this is the setup I'm going there I end with a poem there's a poem at the end of this okay my favorite male gaze staple just if you're trying to find evidence of it was like I grew up watching The Love Boat so male Gay's shot is like tits Bikini Bar pina colada pina colada it's the waitress's tits she walks walks walks walks to the table she sets down the pina coladas and scene begins um that was I grew up on that guys start with the tits then the Pina Coladas now the same um okay I know what you guys are thinking are you're thinking Jill is the female gaze simply the opposite of the male gaze great question if it were the opposite of the male gaze if taken literally it would mean I'm just going to redo that sentence that Laura mulby said Visual Arts and literature depicting the world and men from a feminine point of view presenting men as objects of female pleasure that would be as if like Magic Mike was written by Stephanie Soderberg I remember that when they tried to sell us this like as female gays like hey guys Playgirl women were supposed to go to the store and get get Playgirl right and just like open it up and look at the guy and he's laying there all hairy in the center just like hey I'm Harry I got a soft penis here's your here's your female gaze we were like no we don't want it guys and then they were like hey female gazers go to Chippendales and so then groups of women were going to Chippendales and they were like hooting and giggling and laughing and hooting at the men and then it wasn't until I set foot and a CIS hetero strip club that I realized when men go to strip clubs they do not hoot they sit there sternly alone or they show up in somewhat Stern groups um if they do hoot they are hooting at their friend who is a bachelor party at a bachelor party but they don't who did the women um so yeah that was like a version of the female gays we were offered like ladies here's your fireman calendar are you happy now no we are not happy now I do not want my fireman calendar okay another way that some people interpret the female gaze is to reverse the gender of the male protagonist the placing of women into male roles in your typical dude movies so like hey the hero in this movie is Angelina Jolie and she's wearing tight clothes female gays no that is not the female gays like Sigourney Weaver she has a very large gun uh no but she has a very large gun we don't care I don't like action movies I don't want to watch an action movie it's still the male gaze it's action movies are almost always somehow a product of male projection and fantasy um they're usually made by CIS men and so uh you know you guys know what CIS means it says man everybody is everybody here know what a CIS male is okay great I'm going to Define it okay before I Define CIS men I wanted to find one more word that we're talking about a lot this week and the word is intersectionality does everybody know what intersectionality means no okay guys this is exciting this is an exciting time in this room and also for the live stream um I don't need to take credit for intersectionality that was somebody else but it's a word that describes how multiple forms of Oppression are linked women people of color queer people trans people disabled people have all suffered under the being authorized by these CIS male gays there's a big debate right now in intersectionality around privilege and white privilege and white feminism and there's some confusion as to whether um intersectionality is asking white women to say I'm speaking for all women including women of color or I can't speak for all women including women of color so I'm going to be mostly focusing on gender which I feel that I can speak about and I'm not going to be speaking about intersectionality because I still feel like I have a lot to learn in terms of what it is my place to say as a as a white person so um as you hear this talk you're going to say this is true for people of color also much of it is some of it isn't and I think as we begin to debate what intersectionality really means it's my next speech guys intersectionality I will have a you guys will see the next one and I'm going to take care of that okay South by Southwest guys I'm coming I'm coming for you I really am okay so cyst people don't know what the word CIS man means uh CIS just means that uh you identify as the same gender you were assigned at Birth it's the opposite of trans trans people do not identify with the gender they were assigned at Birth the doctor pulls the baby out and goes it's a girl trans people are like not so fast um and since people are like yes indeed so that's that's what CIS means um and truth be told we do throw around the phrase CIS males all the time I hate having to otherwise but if anybody's getting other eyes right now in my world it is CIS males we use that to differentiate them from trans males um and yeah we talk about CIS males dominating the ranks of the DGA or CIS males making up the entire voting bodies of your various Awards granting organizations oh we go on and on about the CIS males when there are none in the room we have some CIS males in the audience identify yourselves as males I see you thank you I know it's a dangerous room okay so I don't think any of you guys were at my speech at Northwestern around 2014 where I actually attempted to call out the CIS males in the audience it did not go well do not try it if you are if you find yourself in this situation before that speech I had my therapist who I called the Great Ellen Silverstein she had talked to me about this idea she had that like 5 000 years ago cavemen saw women getting their periods and bleeding and they bled in time with the moon and they didn't die when they bled and so prehistoric man thought that women were magic and they got scared and so they created language to just [ __ ] with us there's this guy named Dr Leonard schlane who wrote a book called The Alphabet versus the goddess and he really talks about the written word language the written word as an invention of a technology that was meant to be specifically problematic to goddess culture the the the the alphabet the words the sentence structure Engage The Left Brain prioritizing male thinking and actually actually attempted to destroy goddess thinking and matriarchal culture um okay that's five thousand years guys so that's a lot and uh we're a film festival so why don't we just talk about you know filmmaking okay a hundred years whether it's 5 000 years or a hundred years I started doing the math in my head and started feeling like if we're actually going to really get to gender parity not parody parity um Not only would women have to really just be making [ __ ] all the time and get their stuff funded all the time but also CIS males would have to stop and that's what I said at Northwestern it didn't go over well I was like CIS man where are you are you guys filmmakers okay can you do me a favor can you just stop making things please just step off step the [ __ ] back with your protagonism for I don't know a hundred years give us a [ __ ] break I have laughter here thank you there are some females in the audience it did not go well with these young sis males who had just gotten to Northwestern and we're so excited to make their first films here came Jill Solway saying please don't actually um and and another problem with this asking CIS males to stop you know then you have to come up with what are they going to do and I know that if they were like fine we'll just go sunbathe in Central Park and if I like went to Central Park and saw all the CIS males sunbathing I'd be like that is not fair this did not turn out right for us so that's going to take some thinking also what we want the CIS males to do while we're asking them to stop I have one small tiny thing that makes calling out CIS males better if you put it together and you think about it sort of like in Italian you can pronounce it chis males cheese males Rams with tamales and it's cute it's funny we're laughing it's like hey cheese malaise stop making things it's funnier it sounds like something you'd find in like a Portuguese wedding soup like now with more cheese males um so you could try that calling the CIS males chismales you delicious sweet cheese malice I have nothing against you except for your gaze your your male gaze okay why would these cheese malays want to hold such a tight grip on the gays okay art is propaganda for the self transparent has been for me a way of making the world safe for my mappa it has a map of like human at the center it has unlikable Jewish people who become likable when I surround them with good lighting and some funny lines and some deep music nobody's doing it on purpose the cheese malaise don't do it on purpose I'm not doing it on purpose we're just making art it's unconscious if somebody if I receive like a pilot in the mail right to read and I open it up and it's about a I don't know lanky redhead with Melancholy eyes and she grew up in a home where her mother ran a daycare what do you think the chances are that was written by a black man what do you think that the chances are zero what do you think are the chances that when I finally meet the writer of the pilot about the lanky redhead with Melancholy eyes who grew up in a home where her mother ran a daycare that she actually is also a lanky redhead with Melancholy eyes who grew up in a home where her mother ran a daycare the chances are believe it or not 100 percent 100 percent everybody's writing propaganda for themselves all TV all female filmmaking all culture making is people going I'm okay and people who are similar to me are okay please watch my half hour television show and then be more on my side in case of Armageddon or zika or Trump or Hitler we're making friends we're making friends and stand with me protagonism is propaganda protagonism is propaganda for privilege protagonism is propaganda that protects and perpetuates privilege you would think I'm getting paid by the peas you would think that Tiff called and said Jill can you do a master class please use a lot of peas and I said yes protagonism is propaganda that protects and perpetuates privilege we will call those the five P's from now on so I want to offer those five P's to women today I'm I'm here to inspire women to grab hold of the gays I know what you're thinking Jill [ __ ] say it already what is the female gaze okay I'm going to in three parts just like movies I'm gonna shoot something out of the center of my triangle by the time I'm done here you just watch okay number one I think the female gays might be a way of feeling seeing okay so it could be thought of as a subjective camera one that attempts to get inside the protagonist particularly when but not always but particularly when the protagonist is not a chi smiley assist mail it uses the frame to share and evoke a feeling of being in feeling rather than looking at the characters so I take the camera and I use it to say to my audience I'm not just showing you this thing I really want you to feel it with me and I have my particular methods our cinematographer Jim frona when he's holding the camera his body isn't feeling he's not capturing but he's actually playing an action like the actors and whispering in his ear while he's shooting between takes he's playing the action of melting or oozing or allowing he's feeling something in his body that we have chosen together while he's holding the camera and so you may notice when you see this kind of film filmmaking that you feel more or as the Millennials would say you get the feels that's the way they talk guys your show really gave me the feels thank you okay so some some examples of what this feeling seeing would be might be transparent or I love dick my new television program as I call them and take take a little sip here please stand by got a little Toronto sore throat the part the partying guys film festivals so um this first female gaze might be something that you watch where you say I can tell a woman directed this because I feel held by something that is invested in my feeling in my body that my emotions are being prioritized over the actions and as a director I help this also by trying to stay in my body when I'm shooting I stand on the set and my intention is to be in my body I've watched some male directors who stand at the Monitor and they and they stand there like they're watching a sports game and when and when the line is said right they go yeah they just like punch the air did it so we tried we try to just be in our bodies on the set so that we can use our bodies use our bodies as tools prioritize our bodies over equipment over the schedule over time over money over the lights just prioritize our feeling bodies um and to that end I read this written by Hannah Wilkie and she wrote this in 1976 about her art making but I felt like this really described this feeling seeing she said I am concerned with the creation of a formal imagery that is specifically female a language that fuses mind and body into erotic objects that are namable and at the same time quite abstract the content is always related to my own body and my feelings reflecting pleasure as well as pain the ambiguity and complexity of emotions human gestures multi-layered metaphysical symbols below the gut level translated into an art close to laughter the female gays part one reclaiming the body using it as a tool on the set with the intention to communicate a feeling seeing part two I also think the female gaze uses the camera to take on the very nuanced and occasionally impossible task of showing us how it feels to be the object of the Gaze so the camera then talks out at you from its position as the receiver of the Gaze it is actually wrapping the gazed gaze it says this is how it feels to be seen I think Andrew Arnold's fish tank did that yes Eliza hitman's yeah Eliza hitman's It Felt Like Love felt that she was being seen I even actually think Kenny lanigan's Margaret was this um again the female gays can be made by anyone these films use a kind of heroine's Journey structure a looping around inside of the body so it's not just about a feeling but it's also a story shape where we reveal an Ever more intense awareness of The protagonist's Growing Power and I actually noticed a king of comedy is a heroine's journey where the gazes you know um Jerry Lewis Rupert Popkin is engaged in his ever more awareness of of how it feels to be engaging The Gaze but in these other three cases I talked about Andrew Arnold and and Margaret and Eliza Hitman were specifically giving these coming-of-age tales for women who talk about how they become what men see it's about what I'm doing to the world my effect when I am seen it is the gazed gaze I think of it as part two so part three is what I like to call returning the gays and uh this is a very daring thing returning the gays and daring to say I see you seeing me not just I feel see not just uh this is how it feels to be seen but now I see you seeing me and it's about how it feels to stand here in this world having been seen our entire lives or a line I heard yesterday in a web video we don't write culture we're written by it it says we see you seeing us and it says I don't want to be the object any longer I would like to be the subject and with that subjectivity I can actually name you as the object it's not like a sexy calendar it's not a gender reversal it's the third leg of the triangle and it's like entirely barely not even done yet it's less about a filmic language although it could easily employ either of the techniques I just mentioned the feeling camera the heroine's journey story but rather this part of the female gaze is a socio-political Justice demanding way of art making Roger Ebert said film is an empathy machine and this is true of television and all story Keynotes and speeches and this this is not an empathy machine some people will hate me after this uh some might like me probably not that many people are going to see it Keynotes are not empathy machines but story and film and television these are empathy machines and I actually prefer to hide behind the stories of my characters this is so nerve-wracking for me to be thinking about saying these things to this room even though probably not a lot of people are going to see it I'm always thinking that I'm sort of too much um and then I have to put it in perspective right I think about transparent which is a queer TV show and and and yeah um I often feel like it's too much I'm too much and and then I think about Giancarlo Stanton anybody know who he is he's a Miami Marlin I don't even know there I thought they were Florida Marlins did this change he recently got a 325 million dollar contract for like three years so all of transparent that we've shot the three years of all of transparent and maybe everything that transparent would ever be could exist inside of this one Miami Marlins salary one Marlin all of this I'm way too much I'm changing the world really like one Marlin like the foot of one baseball player um and there are 30 baseball teams and at least 25 guys on each team so just take these salaries and expand them exponentially you know men watching men do things that men like to watch men do baseball basketball football golf [Laughter] [Music] and there's a whole section about it in the newspaper every day every day and men are so lucky that they get to watch the thing they like to do which is watching other men do things I wish I could watch the thing I love every weekend I love feminist arguing I do I want to watch feminist arguing about intersectionality in my underwear in my living room and all my family has to watch it with me kids come in what are we doing mom's watching feminist arguing it's happening in a stadium on TV and there's thousands of people in the stadium and millions of people watching Lena Dunham and Roxanne gay like go at each other about intersectionality and feminism guys this would be a Sunday for me I would [ __ ] love that and then you know what else men do with sports I'm just gonna quickly besides watching sports all weekend long do you know that for most men if you go up to their computer at work behind their work they're also involved in a Excel Google doc where they're playing fantasy football can you imagine like fantasy feminists arguing that was what I'm doing but also while I'm working I'm also betting on whether or not Roxanne gay is gonna explode in Twitter next week or you know I would love this actually I would love to just be placing bets on on people getting in trouble on the in on the internet okay so it was so fun right like fantasy teams like I'm gonna make a team of the juices and here's Emily Nussbaum and Gloria Allred and you make your fantasy team whatever guys again another Keynote I'm gonna make some of those cards some baseball cards for trading um okay that would be great right we could sell those um so the female gaze is not a camera trick it is a privileged generator it's storytelling to get you on somebody's side it says you will be on my side my camera my script my words and what I wanted what I want people to see is the female gays is a conscious effort to create empathy as a political tool it is a resting away maybe even a rest laying away of the point of view of changing the way the world feels for women when they move their bodies through the world we're back to the body feeling themselves as the as the subject women ladies girls gender non-conforming people and sometimes the first gasp of this awareness when you realize how much you haven't been able to be in your body because you have been the object of the Gaze your whole life is a sort of paralysis it's like this kind of Silent rage when you realize how much what an overwhelming amount of CIS male artists have been telling their stories that work like propaganda to teach us how to behave we have to behave to have access to their attention and their money and their privilege and and that behavior stops us from Gathering our own attention to ourselves I I wish I could put into feeling what it felt like to be 11 years old or 10 years old and to be sitting in a room and looking at all the presidents right being like he was the first he was a president he was man man man man man man man all of them men and to be sort of coming into my own female body and have this feeling of oh I want to be president and then to walk home singing along to Rod Stewart who was my favorite at the time and just kind of like not knowing why but singing along the words to tonight's the night you know like don't say a word my Virgin child just let you guys know those words the inhibitions around wild the secret is about to unfold upstairs before the nights to all tonight what was he doing what was I doing singing along was I Rod Stewart was I the Virgin child it didn't matter it just it was like it's it's here was like a pedophile grooming a culture to encourage underage girls to go upstairs before the night's too old and nobody said anything and my Presidential Power dreams got lost throughout all of my adolescents I had to do these extreme high jumps over songs like that I mean I was being it was like being suggested that I think of myself as Sister Golden Hair sublime or or sugar magnolia or or or that I should be the lady in red you know or that My Body Is a Wonderland and I said you look wonderful tonight [Music] I can't even listen to the radio guys I listen to songs from like the 70s and 80s which are just kind of men grooming us to want to be the person who looks wonderful tonight I just I can't even it's it's it's it's it's a political platform the female gays it's it's it's it's wanting to call out how awful it has been to be offered access for succeeding at being seen thank you yes it's awful and the female gaze also wants to call out how the male gaze divides us so there's this thing I call the divided feminine and once you start to notice it you see it everywhere men divide us for their story lines they divide us so they can tell tell stories about us to other men so they call us the Madonna and the [ __ ] they say the one I want to marry and the one I want to [ __ ] and the divided feminine does more than that it doesn't just tell stories it actually activates male lives so the male subject holds this one object the beautiful girl that you look wonderful tonight girl she's up here and she glows right and she gets songs written about her and I'd get to think if I'm a beautiful girl I might get this song or this ring I might get proposed to the beautiful girls they become honored mothers and wives or if they share blood with a male protagonist they are honored daughters and sisters so being held up here on this pedestal means we can earn safety if we are good enough we earn access to privilege if we are good enough in men's eyes these men will say I love women they'll say I put them on a pedestal that's meant to be a compliment you look wonderful tonight and these good women also get privacy if a man has proposed to this woman if she's wearing that big rock she's off limits his buddies can't talk about her if she is sexual she is only sexual in private with him she shares his privilege held Aloft safe The Divided feminine and if you're not up here you're over here you're on this side and on this side these are the slots and the hookers and the strangers walking down the street where he elbows his buddy and goes we can talk [ __ ] about her she's nobody's she's ours she wants it she wants it so this male gaze I'm talking about shames our desire it names which desire is okay with them as different from a desire that is not they divide us because they use us as objects to call them into this this this girl here this [ __ ] she calls men into Congress with other men they use her for conversations and locations where they are with other men they are meant for sharing what is porn if not an excuse for men to watch other men come right the [ __ ] she invites men into a dark room where now they all know something that is kept from the good women we're back at the binary the good girls get proposed to the bad girls die they get into accidents they get killed and the drunk ones get what's coming to them or the female gaze is a cultural critic and we can use it to call out these [ __ ] story lines and those procedurals that are meant to work as public service meant to educate us about rape but are actually just more rape thanks guys we get it you can stop making stories about rape we get it thank you as Bell hook said the other night at the new school she said I would like to go my entire life without ever having to see another rape scene in a movie as long as I live yes never CIS males we will take care of the rape scenes if we want to write them we will write them you can stop portraying our rapes for each other male protagonism privilege protection extends into the courtrooms into the way the law understands our bodies transparent as a TV show invested in trans protagonism and the culture shifted and the laws changed what if only women were allowed to craft our own storylines about our bodies about consent for the next hundred years could we change laws with our gaze as we write and direct and produce our own truths about the violence on our bodies yes it's back to our bodies again creating from inside of our own bodies and generating our own gaze we can start to ask the important questions we can say the things that the dominant narratives have tried to distract us from right we are divided by this male gaze but we want our subjectivity back and we use our subjectivity to knit it back together with wholeness and we make it uncomfortable to use us as objects we don't want to be turned into slices that push men towards their own plot climaxes their own rescues their own revenges we are not the Madonna or the [ __ ] the Betty and Veronica the ginger the Marianne sometimes we have to slice ourselves even smaller choose from three pick one are you Carrie are you Charlotte are you Miranda are you Samantha they give us names they call us Angelica Eliza okay what's wrong with Peggy what'd she do wrong [Laughter] in fact Peggy's like Miranda Angelica the one I married Eliza the one I want to [ __ ] it's like three of us the female gaze inspires a collective Roar we fill with power as we corroborate one another we collaborate we blatantly ask the obvious questions about the divided feminine we call out from our muted and blindfolded objectized Humanity we take our blindfolds off and we say what we see how your CIS male narratives obscure reality like your news stories like the way the way you tell your news stories so it says right here in the newspaper that this guy called up his friend to come over and [ __ ] his passed out girlfriend and so as the audience we're all supposed to be focused on passed out right so we're all going she was passed out but she really passed out how passed out is passed out and so we're focused on this passed out part and we never stop and ask this other question which is he called up his friend a guy who wants to have sex with his friend in the room is probably gay right what we're not supposed to be asking that question right what who wanting your buddy there to have sex with your girlfriend while you're having sex with her it's pretty gay thing to do right come on over let's both get our dicks out I mean what's gang rape game gang rape is men wanting to have sex in the same room using this degraded half of the divided feminine so they don't have to name their own desire for each other projecting that onto her the [ __ ] drunken girl we are being used we are being used so they don't have to name their divide it's her fault Peggy she's an invitation to call your friends we're not supposed to say what we see we're supposed to stay divided we're supposed to say weak in our dividedness I'm supposed to be keeping busy without half of me that is arching towards approval that diamond that diamond that light-filled life preserver that will conference on me but I don't have privilege I've been reaching for that that life preserver since I was a little girl to be that wonderful tonight girl the female gaze is political protagonism and it is not afraid to ask what is toxic masculinity and when are we going to be done with it the female gaze is more than a camera or a shooting style it is an empathy generator that says I was there in that room the female gazes that letter that Brock Turner's victim wrote that case became famous because she was a beautiful writer female gay says I was there and this is my shame and this is my life and this is my humor I will take all of it and I will put it into my protagonist and I will light it and I will add music and we will side with her so this is that Jazzy poem part I was telling you about the female gaze is a baby she is blind and one day old the female gays got so mad that Toronto believed me when I said my topic was the female gaze there really is no such thing yet the female gaze seeks out and gathers evidence buried gems we find a movie one movie one person one poem and we say oh yeah that's it the female gaze is the green stuff in the brain of a lobster it is the organ meat and the liver and the pancreas or that row inside it's the chains of red eggs knit together when you open up your Lobster and everybody goes ew because it has a million generations of Lobster in it and so it's so scary it is bonobos who protect each other even the ones they aren't related to it is also the female gays g-a-y-s I have found from personal experience thank you [Laughter] female gaze is an absurdist a bed bug a ladybug a specked a speck against five thousand years and 100 years my female gaze was terrified to speak today she wakes up in the middle of night and she says you're too much and at the same instant she's also saying it's not enough simultaneously the voice of the patriarchy borrows her voice so she can yell at me saying Stop stop making things the female gay seeks to destroy all gays as she is other gays queer gays trans gays intersectional gays she is the non-gaze emanating out from the center of not a triangle but a circle undivided the feel with me gaze the being seen gaze I see you gaze truth gaze she is the internet because now we can all talk to each other all at once collaborate corroborate and so we'll take the invention of this new technology and we'll call it problematic for the patriarchy the female gaze is an invitation to the intersectionally aligned it says please leave my body whole do not divide me if on only this we can align maybe the revolution can still happen maybe it can happen in our lifetimes thank you okay thank you so much Jill that was so inspiring thank you thank you thank you I I know that we have a lot of filmmakers and creators in the audience and I know that they're probably ready to join you in this yeah Revolution so I I'd like to open it up and and hear from our delegates do you have any questions for Jill right in the front please do hold your question we have volunteers who have microphones and we want to make sure everyone hears what you have to say hi first of all thank you I'm your this is exactly what I'm just it's just brilliant and this is a subject very close to my heart I'm making a documentary called a female gays and I'm speaking with women filmmakers about about this subject I very much would like to talk to you but um my question wait so you want that you Moby you want female gays you can have it I feel bad let's let's collaborate Robert we can both I don't need it well you know I mean it's just you're speaking on so so many levels about um about what happens when a woman is behind the camera and telling the story and so I guess my question is uh one thing that has come up when I've spoken with a couple of other women filmmakers is can a man have a female gaze someone like ingmore Bergman for example and also a female gays versus a feminist gays yeah female gaze is problematic as as a word and I think we only use it because male gaze has been said but I think yeah it shouldn't be female it can be other gays queer gays trans gays feminine gays feminist gays and I think you know what the most important thing I probably learned working on transparent is about essentialism that we can't really say that there's anything that a male body confers or a female body confers but we can talk about the feminine and the masculine and The Feminine allows for a certain something and the masculine also works in a different way and again I find the I think in a few years the binary will be a incredibly problematic concept so um the female gays may even be you know no gays no binary no C and C or but something that's more holistic that holds holds everything at once thank you right over here in the aisle can you pass that microphone back thank you thank you so much for your walk and for this fantastic inspiring talk thank you thank you um so many people claimed we are in the kind of golden age of LGBT television and I was wondering first do you agree with that um argument and second I was thinking that transplant is not exactly LGBT but I would call it quill yeah kiwi because um I think you're so focused on the fluidity of gender and gender as a spectrum so I wonder if you can say something about this difference between making LGBT television orc wheel television where do you see your walk yeah I think uh well I I think they're probably pretty close think um LGBT LGBT television might be a show that has gay characters on it so it could be created by a says mail and it could say here's the funny gay neighbor or hears the wacky lesbian sister and so it still is objectifying and dividing and slicing these people into others again for the CIS male storyline so that could be the difference that that's what LGBT TV is it encompasses people and shows that have gay characters but that potentially queer television would be something that comes from queer filmmakers and queer queer auteurs and um there is no golden age of that yet again like that needs to happen for a hundred years and then it needs to be 50 50 and then we can start talking about something being at a peak you know or or being like too much or a lot it's still just like it's like this much it's like it's there I'm there is a golden age and that people are starting to work and I look around at women that I want to hire and they're working so that's really exciting you know as recently as five years ago I would go on Pitch meetings and I would be told you need to have a rootable white you know handsome man at the center of this story and he needs to feel good we need to feel good about him otherwise we can't put this on television that was five years ago and then Amazon and Jeff Bezos who completely you know upends and reinvents everything and I just want to call out beautiful Joe Lewis a cheese Molly a delightful cheese Malay from Amazon who bought transparent um thank you and I think you understand the female gays in a bodily way and Gina Kwan works at Amazon as well and they are yeah the agent aquan and you know Gina Quan I first met at Sundance and Chad Hope who is doing movies I met at Sundance and here are people that you know we're using the word TV but it couldn't be more different from CBS and NBC and ABC these are people who come from the world of connecting with and recognizing and inspiring and being inspired by artists and finding a really amazing way to distribute that quickly and effectively so um TV I don't know if that's even the right word we have a question from this side yes right over here in the aisle please just wait for a microphone Joe first of all thank you so much um my body right now is feeling uh shaken and inspired by everything that you said thank you um yeah I'm too I'm just like it's so emotional these things I wanted to say and I was so afraid to say so it's amazing to thank you for the opportunity thank you so I just want to ask you I might be misunderstanding but my what I think I hear you saying the definition of assist mail is those of us born with a penis who identify as male yes um I'm wondering whether how you would feel about differentiating those of us who get it and those of us who are I know yes it's so necessary and I think the word allies isn't quite strong enough it's you know sometimes you might be called a woke CIS male um but these words like these words woke sis mail or Allies um you know the more I the more I experience The Divided feminine and talk to men I realize that you know they experience The Divided masculine meaning that you can't be a man and be for peace so if you're a man and you say I actually think nobody should kill anybody there should be no war ever your manhood is called into question so this divide is placed on men too in the most Grievous of ways and I think their pain in that divide and being told what a man does is part of what has them project this stuff onto us because men can't just be gay men can't just be attracted to other men and I always look at porn I'm like we don't even watch the women come we only watch the men come how come nobody says that porn is what is men watching Men come it's like everybody's probably a little bit bi and that's okay and and I think straight men are so afraid of that notion that that that that you can't be both that you can't be a man and strong and also not be willing to kill people in a war and uh and you can't you know we're all being divided by this so I do think there's a revolutionary intersectional forward moving feel-good brand about CIS men CIS women queer people allies and it has to do with love and peace and I think we're going to get there you know it's not quite time yet because people are still saying um you know my I need my own my own otherness to be recognized and I get that but to me there would it would be great to have a word that everybody could say this is me thank you we have a question on this side here thank you Jill like I got a lot out of your talk and thanks being in the business a long time I speak to women uniting with other women because I feel there's been such a divide I've been an independent film and I do feel the unity of women working together and certainly people at Amazon working together but I find working in other areas women don't help women you know I hear this women don't help other women I don't really buy it I think some people don't help some people and people love the idea of women who are attacking each other look if this is where the power is being a CIS man and the way to have this power is to be adored by CIS men everybody is competing for access to this pedestal not just women but people of color and queer people and so the things that you will argue about you know you're not a woman can't stand next to a woman and say let's collaborate let's corroborate because one is going to have more access to this this power one is going to be closer to the decision makers so when you look at the boards of most you know companies they're all men and so everybody who is not a powerful white CIS male corporate boss is performing for these people the chairman of Viacom you know people are performing in multiple ways emanating out to just our day-to-day what do I wear what do I look like who do I agree with at the meeting what shows do I pick up performing for for you know for money which is owned by men so yeah our women look quickly divide um in story and that's the divided feminine you know you watch you watch Real Housewives which is one of my favorite shows and every storyline is the divided fam and it's like we're the good girls and we're having a bracelet party and uh she's a [ __ ] and she's not invited um and here she comes the [ __ ] coming anyway she's not invited and now we're gonna have a fight and this is the reason that they're having this fight is because it's a bracelet bracelet party you know they're trying to make some money and so they divide as a way to express their feelings of of lack of access to the money um and the males and and so yeah women do this too they go I'm a good girl I'm a mom you know and she's a you know so the divided feminine it affects everyone um and I just think the more people start to realize that the less people will do it thank you I know we have so many questions left in so little time I'll see you guys at South by Southwest we'll do it again uh we can do one thing with slides we're gonna have slides next time I do this one final question do we have a microphone over here thank you um so we still live in this world where you know a few weeks ago um I heard from a producer that they're still hearing feedback that you know it's hard to sell a female protagonist-driven story yeah because uh women will watch men doing stuff but men don't want to watch which is total BS of course um so it still feels like an uphill battle so what's your advice to us filmmakers who want to change that who are like hungry for the kind of story you're talking about um so I believe that actually there is a lot of Precedence that there is economic possibility in giving voice to otherized people I'm so excited about Donald Glover's show Atlanta I'm so excited about it's a race shows I think that when people are speaking from this place of having been otherwise their whole life they're like exploding with protagonism and I think the stories are better and I think if you are a director or a producer you're actually a politician and I've found that I have to speak um leadership not once a year I have to do it every [ __ ] day I have to do it every hour I always think oh I'm done people get it now they don't people just the way if it's been 5 000 years things are going to return to oh we like having a strong masculine at the center of this and like we just really want Daddy to come home and tell us we're going to be okay and I think this is part of why Trump is rising is because you know it's just bombastic daddy makes everybody feel safe like well we don't have to think because bombastic Daddy has has got this so um it's sort of about knowing what the product is which is revolutionary which is actually you know a financial Boon to people and being able to speak it and you know never ever blaming people when you can't make it happen I mean I got this from what cassavetes said I was reading this cassave Eddie's book where he said and he was just talking about being an artist he said the job of the artist is to inspire the people with money to pay for the art the people with the money never want to pay for the art they're they are only there to make the money there are very few artists and so half the job or most of the job is making the art and the other half of it is being a politician for your art and coming up with believable positive forward-thinking money making story around why your story matters so I offer that to you that's amazing thank you yeah so I just want to say thank you uh you you took us to church today it was amazing thank you so much thank you