Lie Back and Enjoy It

Transcript (Download)

Alright I'm gonna turn him off then.

I don't think that you have any way of justifying it.

I really don't.

So there's, I mean there's nothing that I can do.

I don't know, I just...

I know, I mean I...

I'm just investigating things.

You know, I'm trying to...

I'm trying to make art.

You are trying to...

I'm trying to make a film.

You are trying to establish a power relationship.

By filming and taping me.

Yeah, there's a little bit of a power relationship.

Yeah, okay, I have a camera and you don't.

I have a tape recorder and you don't.

So what? Well, you don't work in film.

You don't even think that that matters? I mean, here you're filming a relationship, right? That's what you're doing? Yeah.

And you're saying that it doesn't matter that in this relationship if you're the one with the camera and the tape recorder? It only matters a little bit.

You're saying...

Well, what do you think a relationship is, anyway? What do you mean? Here you are invading my space.

It's our space.

We both live here.

I can't fit this in here all the time.

You're establishing your supremacy over me.

You're establishing your right to make art out of my life.

You're just like all those other male filmmakers.

You know, saying, oh, well, you know, here's this woman, I might as well film her.

Well, yeah, other filmmakers have done this kind of thing.

I mean, I don't know.

I mean, I don't think that there are women objected to it.

I mean, all I'm trying to do is get at the...

I mean, what I'm trying to do in my films is get at the truth.

And it seems to me that what's personal between us is personal.

And what I'm trying to do in my film is to explore my own feelings and to explore the relationships that I'm in.

I think from that I can find out something, I can put that in film.

And that's really meaningful.

That's really important.

And you think that that truth exists here in this kitchen with this tape recorder and you and me, right? Yeah, right now.

Because the truth exists in a vacuum.

Right at this moment, it does.

You don't think that the culture has anything to...

that the fact that this is a man's voice and a woman's voice has anything to do with, you know, how people are going to relate to it.

I'm just making a film about us.

I mean, what does all this other culture stuff have to do with that? I mean, that's why I'm making personal films.

That's what I'm saying, because you are not admitting the kind of power relationships that exist between you and me, between men and women in the culture.

You're just not dealing with any of it at all.

You know what I think? I think that this is one of the problems that you have, is that you don't want to deal with something and so you film it.

And you get a nice distance between yourself and whatever it is that you don't want to deal with.

I think that's what you're doing.

No, I'm just...

Well, I mean, I don't know.

I mean, you bring up all this stuff about sexism.

I mean, can a man make a portrait of a woman that isn't sexist? I mean, you just seem real ass -loot about that.

Can a man make a film about a woman? No.

I don't think so.

What, can a woman? Not in this century.

Even a woman could not make a film of a woman in a non -sexist way.

I mean, there's just no way that we can get away from sexism.

And I wish that these male filmmakers would stop, you know, putting all these women in their films.

I wish they would just give up.

I mean, I don't think most of them are even dealing with sexism in their films to begin with.

But, you know, all these...

What should you make films about then? I mean, what...

I mean, there's no way that you can use a woman without making her into an object and without invading her space.

You want to make a film about every woman you...

I shouldn't have any women in my films, then.

No, you shouldn't.

You should have no women in your films.

Well, alright, I mean, I...

You don't think there's going to be any male fantasies in this film that you plan to make? No, I'm not trying to make a fantasy film.

I'm trying to...

You know, this is more like a documentary.

I'm trying to really record what's really going on.

And you don't think that, as you said, fantasies have anything to do with what goes on? You know, I'm dealing in the everyday world.

I'm not dealing in a fantasy world.

I'm not trying to construct a fantasy.

You're not, huh? No.

You're just making a film.

Of course, you're always changing things.

Right? I mean, art is based on selection.

You can't show everything.

You choose what you show.

And do you have something in mind for what this film is going to be like when you finish it? Yeah, I have a rough idea.

And you're keeping that in mind the whole time, right, while you're making the film.

And you think this is like an accurate...

I think you got me on this one.

You think it's funny, huh? And I think you're just like all these other people.

You're just completely unconscious.

You think you're making something that is so unique to you when actually it's just like everybody else.

And you're doing the same thing.

What can I say? I'm an artist.

I'm trying to find out the truth about things.

I'm trying to get that on film.

I'm trying to make things that I think will make people feel better and learn something about the world and give them more control over things.

I'm trying to enlarge people's experience with my films.

I mean, that's really important to me.

Okay, you're being this real sensitive, perceptive person, right? You're trying to show these things.

But I think it doesn't sound to me like you're being sensitive to what I think is important, you know? To the way that women are presented enough that I would trust you to present me in that way.

You think that it's alright for me to just participate in your life, and I think that I should have a life of my own.

You have nothing to say to that, do you? I'm writing your life.

Are we going to end this movie?

Identifier

F.2011-01-0280

Date Of Production

1982

Abstract

Lie Back and Enjoy It presents optically printed material from a porn film along with intertitles and a soundtrack that consists of an argument between a male Filmmaker and his Girlfriend. He thinks he has the “right” to film their life, and especially her, for his Art; she objects and argues that it is his sexist patriarchal assumptions that lead him to think this. “The film is endowed with remarkable structural and rhetorical lucidity. Everyone who watches movies with women in them ought to see it.” – Claudia Gorbman, Jump Cut no. 29, February 1984.

The audio track was improvised by JoAnn Elam and friend and fellow small gauge filmmaker Chuck Kleinhans. The dialogue was originally recorded for Kleinhans' film Shirley and Bruce, and was then re-cut for Lie Back and Enjoy It.

Description

"[…] An eight-minute dialectical film about the politics of representation. More specifically, it examines the politics of filmic representation of women under patriarchy. Its image track consists of technologically manipulated images of women, and some printed titles. […] This small inventory of shots is progressively more deformed and distorted. Elam does this by looping, flicker effects, reversing the image (L-R), including sprocket holes and frame lines, running the frames by in a blur (as if the film is slipping in the gate), high-contrast reprinting, superimpositions, and underexposure. All these devices render the image more and more difficult to read, and subsequently point up the image's materiality — its status as strips of printed celluloid which run through machines. The point here is that woman's image in commercial film — no matter, or because of, how much we psychically invest in it — is just that: an investment, a product, and a commodity which functions in a certain economy. Especially by using pornography footage, LIE BACK makes these connections most unequivocally: woman's body, on the screen, is something desired, reified, invaded, and paid for." – Claudia Gorbman, Jump Cut no. 29, February 1984.

Run Time

0:08:20

Format

16mm

Extent

300 feet

Color

B&W

Sound

Optical

Reel/Tape Number

1/1

Has Been Digitized?

Yes

Language Of Materials

English

Element

Reversal Positive Print

Genre

Experimental

Form

Short

Subject

Women's rights
Feminism
Sexism
Sexuality and culture
Motion picture production & direction

Related Collections

SERIES III: LIE BACK AND ENJOY IT - Finished Film, Workprints, Elements, and Original Audio

Related Places

North America ➜ United States ➜ Illinois ➜ Chicago

Main Credits

Elam, JoAnn (is filmmaker)

Participants And Performers

Kleinhans, Chuck (is actor)

Elam, JoAnn (is actor)

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