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Holding My Own in No Man's Land: Women and Men and Film and Feminists
Molly Haskell, one of America's leading film critics, has been delighting readers for decades with her intelligence and insight. Her landmark book, From Reverence to The Treatment of Women in the Movies , praised for its "wit and style" and called "a valuable contribution to film
scholarship," is still considered among the most stimulating and important books on the subject of women and film. In Holding My Own in No Man's Land , a series of pieces written in the twenty years since the publication of From Reverence to Rape , Haskell once again explores the relationship between
women and men, and between the movies and those who watch them.
Haskell remains a controversial figure in both feminist and film circles, accused of "uncritically celebrating heterosexual romance"--a charge to which Haskell cheerfully pleads guilty. Holding My Own In No Man's Land challenges the conventional feminist wisdom that the classic films of the
Thirties, Forties, and Fifties were made by a male-dominated industry which reduced women to objects of the "male gaze." Instead, she says that women were better served by the notoriously tyrannical studio system than they are in the "newer, freer, hipper Hollywood of the present." A fascinating
interview with Doris Day points out that, despite her current image as a symbol of all that was repressive about the suburban Fifties, she played a series of roles as--and was herself--a successful career woman who worked because she enjoyed it. In another perceptive portrait, Haskell describes the
mesmerizing power the sultry, self-parodying sex symbol Mae West had on screen, and the financial clout she had off screen. And she writes about Howard Hawks's screwball comedies, such as His Girl Friday and Man's Favorite Sport from the Thirties, where assertive women were equal to men, and more
than held their own in the battle of the sexes.
Holding My Own in No Man's Land ranges from interviews with Hollywood legends such as Gloria Swanson and John Wayne, to celebrations of the comic verve of Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett, to ruminations on literary figures such as Truman Capote and his Holly Golightly, and Jane Austen's Emma. We
learn that the cleaning woman of The Carol Burnett Show logo was a reminder of the days when Burnett and her grandmother, "out of spoons and relief money," worked nights as cleaning women in the Warner executive offices. We see Meryl Streep "hiding in the spotlight" in a refreshingly skeptical
analysis of Streep's determination to be an actress rather than a star. Finally, Haskell closes with a wickedly funny section on recent fashion and style, including pieces on "Lipstick Envy" and "Nude With Attitude."
Haskell describes Holding My Own in No Man's Land as "a kind of continuing set of ruminations, encounters, insights, and images of people and characters who have had an influence on our lives." With wit and style she illuminates the hopes and fears we project onto these larger-than-life figures--
the grand dames, the stoic heroes, the dueling couples--and the lessons we learned from them about how to fall in love, how to act as adults, and how to live in this complex world.
scholarship," is still considered among the most stimulating and important books on the subject of women and film. In Holding My Own in No Man's Land , a series of pieces written in the twenty years since the publication of From Reverence to Rape , Haskell once again explores the relationship between
women and men, and between the movies and those who watch them.
Haskell remains a controversial figure in both feminist and film circles, accused of "uncritically celebrating heterosexual romance"--a charge to which Haskell cheerfully pleads guilty. Holding My Own In No Man's Land challenges the conventional feminist wisdom that the classic films of the
Thirties, Forties, and Fifties were made by a male-dominated industry which reduced women to objects of the "male gaze." Instead, she says that women were better served by the notoriously tyrannical studio system than they are in the "newer, freer, hipper Hollywood of the present." A fascinating
interview with Doris Day points out that, despite her current image as a symbol of all that was repressive about the suburban Fifties, she played a series of roles as--and was herself--a successful career woman who worked because she enjoyed it. In another perceptive portrait, Haskell describes the
mesmerizing power the sultry, self-parodying sex symbol Mae West had on screen, and the financial clout she had off screen. And she writes about Howard Hawks's screwball comedies, such as His Girl Friday and Man's Favorite Sport from the Thirties, where assertive women were equal to men, and more
than held their own in the battle of the sexes.
Holding My Own in No Man's Land ranges from interviews with Hollywood legends such as Gloria Swanson and John Wayne, to celebrations of the comic verve of Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett, to ruminations on literary figures such as Truman Capote and his Holly Golightly, and Jane Austen's Emma. We
learn that the cleaning woman of The Carol Burnett Show logo was a reminder of the days when Burnett and her grandmother, "out of spoons and relief money," worked nights as cleaning women in the Warner executive offices. We see Meryl Streep "hiding in the spotlight" in a refreshingly skeptical
analysis of Streep's determination to be an actress rather than a star. Finally, Haskell closes with a wickedly funny section on recent fashion and style, including pieces on "Lipstick Envy" and "Nude With Attitude."
Haskell describes Holding My Own in No Man's Land as "a kind of continuing set of ruminations, encounters, insights, and images of people and characters who have had an influence on our lives." With wit and style she illuminates the hopes and fears we project onto these larger-than-life figures--
the grand dames, the stoic heroes, the dueling couples--and the lessons we learned from them about how to fall in love, how to act as adults, and how to live in this complex world.
216 pages, Hardcover
First published January 30, 1997
About the author
Molly Haskell
17 books38 followersMolly Haskell author and critic, grew up in Richmond, Va., went to Sweet Briar College, the University of London and the Sorbonne before settling in New York. She worked at the French Film Office in the Sixties, writing a newsletter about French films for the New York press and interpreting when directors came to America (this was the height of the Nouvelle Vague) for the opening of their films. She then went to The Village Voice, first as a theatre critic, then as a movie reviewer; and from there to New York Magazine and Vogue.
She has written for many publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian UK, Esquire, The Nation, Town and Country, The New York Observer and The New York Review of Books. She has served as Artistic Director of the Sarasota French Film Festival, on the selection committee of the New York Film Festival, as associate Professor of Film at Barnard and as Adjunct Professor of Film at Columbia University.
She is married to the film critic Andrew Sarris. Her books include From Reverence to Rape: the Treatment of Women in the Movies (1973; revised and reissued in 1989); a memoir, Love and Other Infectious Diseases (1990); and, in 1997, a collection of essays and interviews, Holding My Own in No Man’s Land: Women and Men and Films and Feminists. Her newest book, part of the Yale University Press's American Icon series, is Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited.
She has written for many publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian UK, Esquire, The Nation, Town and Country, The New York Observer and The New York Review of Books. She has served as Artistic Director of the Sarasota French Film Festival, on the selection committee of the New York Film Festival, as associate Professor of Film at Barnard and as Adjunct Professor of Film at Columbia University.
She is married to the film critic Andrew Sarris. Her books include From Reverence to Rape: the Treatment of Women in the Movies (1973; revised and reissued in 1989); a memoir, Love and Other Infectious Diseases (1990); and, in 1997, a collection of essays and interviews, Holding My Own in No Man’s Land: Women and Men and Films and Feminists. Her newest book, part of the Yale University Press's American Icon series, is Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 26, 2024
The essays in this collection are a variable quality, but the best ones hold up after man years. Haskell writes beautifully about movie stars; she is great at pointing out what makes various stars iconic. I also love her reviews of the novels The Bostonians and Emma, my favorite James and Austen novels respectively. I loved her memoir of her transgender sister and, of course, her book From Reverance to Rape. If you want to start reading Haskell, start there.
November 5, 2016
Haskell's introduction sets up a much more interesting book that follows, teasing the idea of exploring the ways in which she "created" her versions of movie stars by the ways in which she responded to and identified with them, and advancing her thoughts on the way in which she has constructed and revised her memories of movies she's seen. The first piece, too, sets a false standard for what the rest of the book will provide; here, she writes an introduction to a previously-published (which all but one of these essays are) piece that contextualizes the piece and comments on it from a distance in an intriguing way, but it turns out to be the only piece to have such an introduction.
Haskell seems to work better at length, which is denied her in most of these pieces. These pieces have a start-and-stop feel to them, much as the entire collection does, fragmented as it is, with the essays only loosely collected into a number of categories. Then too there is the probably of the different house styles of the publications for which these pieces were originally written; typically, collections are produced in such a way that these distinctions are not recognizable, or at least not in a way that overpowers the voice of the writer, but not so here. Part of the problem may be the wide variety of target audiences implied by the number, and nature, of the different outlets, which include Ms., The New York Times, The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Nation, Vogue, New York Review of Books, and Ladies' Home Journal.
Both due to having to fit her voice to a given venue and demographic (sometimes apparently including the common requirement to deliver a piece from a third-person p.o.v.) and having to often fit a specific format (be it a review of a book or a film, an interview, a profile, or a piece of general criticism), Haskell seems to be denied complete authorship of the work she produced. Her writing, especially in the pieces for the glossies, tends toward their characteristic style, piling up needless-but-appealing descriptors at length far beyond what a writer of her caliber needs, her pieces featuring more grabby, flashy, excessive bits rather than pithy insights.
When writing about a person, Haskell seems at her best in the instances where there is some tension present--an ambivalence on her part toward the person, or a contrast between her feelings and the conventional wisdom of the liberal New York media. She is able to suggest her views with a combination of irony and an interviewing technique of giving the subject enough rope to hang themselves if she so desires, letting their words speak for them, but perhaps not in the way they might think. Without the distance and the irony, Haskell seems much less engaged, as was especially apparent in her interview with Liv Ullmann and her appreciation of Jeanne Moreau, a lifeless portrayal of one of the most lively, and fascinating, actresses of all time.
Haskell wastes time by devoting large swathes of her word counts to strict biographical background (perhaps a stipulation of writing to a less precisely targeted audience), and when she finds a point of comparison, reference point, or analog she likes, she sticks to it for longer than is necessary, hammering it home multiple times, until the novelty and inventiveness of it is exhausted. There's no light touch here, the lightness instead, and unfortunately, being that of the ideas and the material. She seems unable to adapt her style effectively to the shorter form, for example by selectively considering a small portion of a career to consider in depth; instead, she tries to take the whole arc of a subject's career into account in the space of a magazine or newspaper article, and thus has little to no space to offer any real new take on the mostly familiar material. The sad thing is, with her ability and her pithiness, it might be possible for her to pull this off under different circumstance, but her copy here mostly reads as simply summative, in the style of a book report, and results in awkward moments like concluding paragraphs that introduce completely new evvidence just so she can close on a snappy kicker.
The final piece was the only one not previously published elsewhere, and I could tell by the end of first paragraph. It was nothing that couldn't have been published elsewhere, in terms of quality, but just felt more relaxed, casual, and assured, as if Haskell didn't have to impress with anything but her argument; that first paragrpah didnt have to be flashy or grabby--it's the last piece in book, so if readers were going to bail, they would have done so already. It's not the best essay in the book, but it's up there. The best would probably be "Rape: The 2,000-Year-Old Misunderstanding," likely at least in part because it's one of the lengthier pieces and was unlinked to any specific person, film, or book; others in the top tier are "Against the Grain of Womanhood" (on Henry James and his novel The Bostonians), "Lipstick Envy," and her defenses of Doris Day and John Wayne. There are scattered highlights, of either prose or thought, to be found in many, though probably not most, of the pieces, but if I were to re-visit this, it would likely be in part, not in full.
Haskell seems to work better at length, which is denied her in most of these pieces. These pieces have a start-and-stop feel to them, much as the entire collection does, fragmented as it is, with the essays only loosely collected into a number of categories. Then too there is the probably of the different house styles of the publications for which these pieces were originally written; typically, collections are produced in such a way that these distinctions are not recognizable, or at least not in a way that overpowers the voice of the writer, but not so here. Part of the problem may be the wide variety of target audiences implied by the number, and nature, of the different outlets, which include Ms., The New York Times, The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Nation, Vogue, New York Review of Books, and Ladies' Home Journal.
Both due to having to fit her voice to a given venue and demographic (sometimes apparently including the common requirement to deliver a piece from a third-person p.o.v.) and having to often fit a specific format (be it a review of a book or a film, an interview, a profile, or a piece of general criticism), Haskell seems to be denied complete authorship of the work she produced. Her writing, especially in the pieces for the glossies, tends toward their characteristic style, piling up needless-but-appealing descriptors at length far beyond what a writer of her caliber needs, her pieces featuring more grabby, flashy, excessive bits rather than pithy insights.
When writing about a person, Haskell seems at her best in the instances where there is some tension present--an ambivalence on her part toward the person, or a contrast between her feelings and the conventional wisdom of the liberal New York media. She is able to suggest her views with a combination of irony and an interviewing technique of giving the subject enough rope to hang themselves if she so desires, letting their words speak for them, but perhaps not in the way they might think. Without the distance and the irony, Haskell seems much less engaged, as was especially apparent in her interview with Liv Ullmann and her appreciation of Jeanne Moreau, a lifeless portrayal of one of the most lively, and fascinating, actresses of all time.
Haskell wastes time by devoting large swathes of her word counts to strict biographical background (perhaps a stipulation of writing to a less precisely targeted audience), and when she finds a point of comparison, reference point, or analog she likes, she sticks to it for longer than is necessary, hammering it home multiple times, until the novelty and inventiveness of it is exhausted. There's no light touch here, the lightness instead, and unfortunately, being that of the ideas and the material. She seems unable to adapt her style effectively to the shorter form, for example by selectively considering a small portion of a career to consider in depth; instead, she tries to take the whole arc of a subject's career into account in the space of a magazine or newspaper article, and thus has little to no space to offer any real new take on the mostly familiar material. The sad thing is, with her ability and her pithiness, it might be possible for her to pull this off under different circumstance, but her copy here mostly reads as simply summative, in the style of a book report, and results in awkward moments like concluding paragraphs that introduce completely new evvidence just so she can close on a snappy kicker.
The final piece was the only one not previously published elsewhere, and I could tell by the end of first paragraph. It was nothing that couldn't have been published elsewhere, in terms of quality, but just felt more relaxed, casual, and assured, as if Haskell didn't have to impress with anything but her argument; that first paragrpah didnt have to be flashy or grabby--it's the last piece in book, so if readers were going to bail, they would have done so already. It's not the best essay in the book, but it's up there. The best would probably be "Rape: The 2,000-Year-Old Misunderstanding," likely at least in part because it's one of the lengthier pieces and was unlinked to any specific person, film, or book; others in the top tier are "Against the Grain of Womanhood" (on Henry James and his novel The Bostonians), "Lipstick Envy," and her defenses of Doris Day and John Wayne. There are scattered highlights, of either prose or thought, to be found in many, though probably not most, of the pieces, but if I were to re-visit this, it would likely be in part, not in full.
September 15, 2008
Articles written at various times. Interesting comments on Doris Day, Dietrich, Streep, Ullmann, Moreau, Mae West, Swanson, Burnett, Ball, Shirley Maclaine, Howard Hawks women. She has a secret thing for John Wayne. Also includes comments on literature, most notably The Bostonians and Emma.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews