In 1968, New Jersey women protested the Miss America pageant and the sexism it epitomizes, and female documentarians Bev Grant and Karen Mitnick Liptak followed with their cameras. Decades later, these women are still marching, on a small retro television screen in the back of the Loeb.
The short film titled Up Against the Wall Miss America is one of many pieces of female-produced film and journalism currently on display in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center’s “Women’s Work: Organizing New York Independent Film & Video” collection. The exhibit aims to reframe the domestic connotations about invisible labor that the phrase “women’s work” holds and instead use it to describe independent, women-led political media collectives and projects from the 1960s to the 1990s. Artifacts, production documents, and footage from the collectives Third World Newsreel, Paper Tiger Television, and Women Make Movies are displayed around the room on panels, tables, and televisions.
One protester in Up Against the Wall Miss America, which was produced by the Newsreel collective, said that the woman crowned Miss America is supposed to represent men’s idealistic, repressed woman, saying that, “She doesn’t talk back, in fact she doesn’t talk at all.”
The exhibition highlights the women who did talk back, who in fact were probably told they talk too much.
Take, for example, DeeDee Halleck, who began the Paper Tiger Television media collective. The collective produced public television broadcasts centered around intersectional advocacy and political news. Paper Tiger Television videos, like “Renee Tajima Reads Asian Images in American Films: Charlie Chan Go Home,” “Myrna Bain Reads Ebony: Put Your Money Where Your Soul Is” and “Twist Barbie: Lynn Spiel Dreams of a Plastic Feminism,” are all on display in this exhibit.
This collection shows that media and activism are women’s work, too. But furthermore, the effort it takes to get in those male-dominated spaces also seems to be women’s work.
The collection was produced in partnership with the “Women’s Work: Preserving Independent Film & Video Histories, Connecting Media Futures” signature program. The exhibition’s opening reception was held on February 26, and it will be on display in the Loeb until May 24.
Want to make some “women’s work” of your own? Join Her Campus in the Women’s Center at 7:30, every Monday.