She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry

Mary Dore’s documentary She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry is the sort of film that will annoy — even incense — some people. And that’s a good thing. But those it will most anger will never actually see it, of course. The film is about the rise of the women’s movement (roughly 1966-71), and we all “know” that “women’s movement” really means it’s about feminists, a term that the right wing tele-pundits have pretty successfully demonized — even to the point of coining a word to link its adherents to the Third Reich. (Always a popular approach.) Then too, the women at the center of this movement are, of course, Baby Boomers — a (loosely defined) generation often derided for failing to completely transform the world, mindless of any changes they helped bring about. Toss in the tendency to minimize radicals of any sort and you have a built-in non-audience from several sides. As Susan Brownmiller aptly notes,”We live in a country that doesn’t like to credit any of its radical movements. They don’t like to admit in the United States that change happens because radicals force it.” This is also exactly why the film is important.

It is also why the film is somewhat uncomfortable — it shows us things we’d perhaps prefer to forget. In my case, some of these are things I never knew. Yes, I’m technically of the Boomer generation, but I was still in high school at the point where the historical timeline in the film ends. Also, I lived in a town of about 6,000 — and I went to a school (the only one in town) that was scandalized when some girl from “up north” enrolled and claimed to be a member of the SDS. (For her penance she was sentenced to a stint in the library where she had to read Readers’ Digest articles on Americanism.) To say that I lived a pretty sheltered existence would be an understatement. Add to this that the nightly news was not a staple in our house and the fact that the 11 p.m. news was (for me) this annoyance you had to wait out to get to the late show, and you have a recipe for socio-political ignorance of an almost supernatural level.

I was a younger member of this generation, but only dimly aware of what was going on. As a result, I was shocked when watching She’s Beautiful to see the resistance of young male radicals to the very thought of a women’s movement. Resistance is too soft a term actually. News footage of leftist activists hooting down the women, making catcalls, and threatening them with sexual violence showed that this was more than resistance. I expected to see the new media do its damndest to minimize or even make fun of the women’s movement (and they did), but I never expected anything like this — coming from people you’d think would be in sympathy with them. The women didn’t expect it either, but any notions they had about being a part of the “New Left” were quickly dashed. They would soon find sharp divisions within their own ranks — resistance to black women, resistance to lesbians. And then there was the resistance of black male activists who considered birth control an attempt at genocide. The whole image of the disenfranchised wanting to disenfranchise others is deeply disturbing.

Don’t get the idea, however, that the film is a downer. It disturbs — and it disturbs in part because of how much of what actually was accomplished is being undone today — but it’s a film that’s more than that. The women — especially in the new footage — are lively and upbeat, and the message of more hopeful than not. I doubt this film — which is only playing at 1:00 and 7:00 — we’ll be here for more than the one week, so if you’re interested, catch it quick. Not Rated but contains adult themes and language.