Alan in Belfast: Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power – an illustrated lecture that will change your viewing experience (Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 18 May)

Director Nina Menkes delivers an illustrated lecture on sex and power, the visual language of cinema, in the documentary Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power. The word ‘lecture’ may not immediately appeal to your lust for nipping out to the cinema. But rest assured, Menkes knows what she’s talking about, and after 20 minutes you’ll be sizing up the on-screen clips ahead of her commentary to detect whether the woman in the shot is the subject or (more likely) the object; recognising closeups of fragmented female body parts; spotting the slomo action; noticing that men are sexy when they’re moving but women are depicted still; tell-tale panning shots that scan across a woman’s body, undressing her with the camera; gendered lighting; hearing the orchestra crank into action to soften scenes of men once again ignoring their total lack of consent.

And when I say the lecture is ‘illustrated’, let’s be clear that there are a lot of bums, many boobs and even a few balls projected onto the silver screen. More than this reviewer has ever stumbled across at a 10 o’clock in the morning preview screening before. Yet not a single moment is titillating. In their original context, using the techniques that Menkes is deconstructing, the scenes will have dialled up the eroticism of these big-name movies. Yet the level of control in Brainwashed is such that neither tittering nor nudge nudge wink wink moments can be remotely entertained. You’ll soon be cognisant that the more glamourous a scene is, the more powerless the ‘object’ of that scene.

Much of what Menkes shares is obvious, and you’ll already be aware of some of it. What makes her pitch devastating is how when she strings the different elements together it becomes clear that a vastly male cohort of directors, working with mostly male heads of departments (who hire mostly male staff) on a film, in the hands of mostly male distributors, have created an ABC of filmmaking and patriarchy that is designed to deliver for male audiences by disempowering women on and off screen. This male gaze is very recognisable yet mostly ignored by audiences and not worthy of note by reviewers. Menkes and her contributors point out that it’s a double whammy of who and how films tend to be made. And even when a film is ostensibly feminist, about women, or directed by a woman, that’s no guarantee that the popular tropes won’t still permeate the final product.

Menkes doesn’t set out to become the sex police. The techniques she highlights are perfectly valid and effective cinematic tools of the trade. It’s just they’re used somewhat consistently and monotonously at the expense of women. In later parts of her discourse, Menkes demonstrates some alternatives and it’s plainly obvious that a variety of approaches and a more fulsome visual dictionary would be welcome. It’s all about choice, and changing the choices that are routinely made.

What she’s talking about isn’t constrained to the world of film. Sitting in the QFT’s Screen One watching Brainwashed I recalled the opening night of General Assembly, an annual ceremony that sees the outgoing Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland finish his year (and yes, it’s always been a man) and hand over the mantle of the office to the incoming Moderator. (Seriously, my scribbled notes from Brainwashed have two pages of scrawl about PCI!) Despite the business of the General Assembly being conducted by members who are nearly evenly split between ministers and elders, and there being a variety of sex and age across those members who have equal right to stand up and debate vote during the days of business, the opening night stage is stuffed full of men, the majority of whom are older, and they’re nearly all ministers. It’s a tableau of clericalism despite the denomination normally believing that’s not how they should be defined or organised.

It’s a choice. The liturgy of the evening isn’t so fixed that it hasn’t been adapted quite a bit over the years. Even without a new injection of creative thinking, there are already opportunities for readings and prayers to be given to those who would otherwise remain invisible. It’s a yearly choice to continue to visually and aurally portray that the power and authority rests with older male clerics and isn’t equally spread out across the membership of the General Assembly. That disempowers all kinds of people at the event, participating throughout the week, and belonging to congregations and perhaps watching online or hearing about it afterwards. Maybe not always a conscious choice but definitely a set of decisions that seem to be ratified without a second thought.

(My own sideways experience of this – as a man! – was turning up at two opening night’s in a row some 18 or 19 years ago as the husband of one of the incoming, then outgoing, moderator’s chaplains. Seats had been reserved for the wives of the two male chaplains at the front of the balcony. But it seemed to be so unexpected that there would be a female moderator’s chaplain on the main stage who might have brought a husband with her that both times I was told by the steward showing guests to their seats that there was no seat allocated for me (despite the ride down to the event in the big car with the other wives) and told that I should try and find one myself! The system expects things to be a certain way because other possibilities don’t usually need to be imagined. But enough of a bloke whinging about the second-hand discomfort of patriarchal thinking ...)

The parallels with Nina Menkes’ lecture are strong. A ceremony organised by a subset of people, showcasing the participation of a similar subset of people, is no more likely to change by accident than the world of cinema will stop objectifying women when those who happen to be and remain in power see no need to change. Now away from moderators and back to the world of movies.

Menkes issues a clarion call for fresh imagination, novel imagery, and more critical thinking in her industry of cinema. Her lecture is an eye-opening induction, and without trying, I found myself assessing the shot choices for Eurovision song routines and questioning what each country’s delegation was trying to achieve and who they were trying to attract to vote for them! And Menkes’ timely reminder will no doubt seep through into other avenues of life beyond cinema and church.

Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power is being screened at the Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 18 May.