Every week, Bor Beekman, Robert van Gijssel, Merlijn Kerkhof, Anna van Leeuwen or Herien Wensink take a position in the world of film, music, theater or visual arts.
Tuesday was International Women’s Day. Most people (m/f/x) have missed that – understandable, because it is war. The theme was v/m solidarity (they had forgotten the x) in the emancipation struggle. This means that men also strive for equality between men and women. It’s already happening, of course, but it can always be a little better.
An interesting case study I find female characters in art: in films, books, series and on stage. How women are portrayed (quite often by men) says a lot about how they are perceived, and the rehashing of stupid stereotypes reinforces bad prejudice.
The opposite gives an acute serotonin kick. Yes! That’s another way of doing it! As soon as a female character is more than a clever set piece, I experience nothing less than euphoria. The recognition is important – there is someone who looks like me – but also the recognition: this woman is interesting enough to hang an entire opera/trilogy/Netflix series on. Not to mention the role model: yes, women can be top spy/world leader/US president/superhero too.
The more we see something, the more normal it becomes. The imagination helps the change on the way. Plus: it makes the art more interesting.
In recent years, the representation of women in art has improved. The more women write, produce and direct themselves, the more interesting, layered and versatile the range becomes. Inevitably, women add to the palette because we have simply seen or heard their stories, voices, tone, color less often.
In her delightful memoir, writer Deborah Levy explicitly searches for a new kind of female protagonist. She finds them, and that’s a relief. Levy manages to elevate her protagonist’s little-described feelings and experiences into grand, sparkling literature. She writes, “(…) we don’t have to conform to the way our lives are written for us, especially if it’s written by people with less imagination than we are.”
Loosely translated: female roles are often created by men with little imagination.
Unfortunately I recently saw this confirmed at Eurydice – Die Liebenden, blind at Dutch National Opera. In terms of female image, opera is, of course, thin ice, with its age-old myths, archetypes and libretti carved in stone, full of fossil misogyny. But now composer and librettist Manfred Trojahn made a commendable attempt to provide the character Eurydice (handsome set piece from the Orpheus myth) with more purpose and depth. Eurydice was a ‘real’ woman here, telling her story – I couldn’t wait.
But on the stage stood a weeping child-wife, in a honey-yellow doll dress on shaky red heels, who sighed continuously in the strong arms of Orpheus.
So where does something like this go wrong? It was in the text, in the direction of Pierre Audi, and certainly also in the costumes (DNO should talk to the costume designer Carly Everaert† Repeating a certain image of women for decades apparently blinds you to other options.
Or can Audi and Trojahn simply imagine nothing more than a unstable hysterica in a ‘real’ woman? I fear it. Deborah Levy is right.