Town Bloody Hall
Town Bloody Hall is a 1979 American documentary film of a panel debate between feminist advocates and activist Norman Mailer.
Filmed on April 30, 1971, in The Town Hall in New York City. Town Bloody Hall features a panel of feminist advocates for the women's liberation movement and Norman Mailer, author of The Prisoner of Sex. Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker produced the film, which stars Jacqueline Ceballos, Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston, Diana Trilling and Norman Mailer. The footage of the panel was recorded and released as a documentary in 1979.
Produced by Shirley Broughton, the event was originally filmed by Pennebaker. The footage was then filed and rendered unusable. Hegedus met Pennebaker a few years later, and the two edited the final version of the film for its release in 1979. Pennebaker described his filming style as one that exists without labels, in order to let the viewer come to a conclusion about the material, which inspired the nature of the Town Bloody Hall documentary. The recording of the debate was intended to ensure the unbiased documentation, allowing it to become a concrete moment in feminist history.
Summary
The film begins making a statement on the issues of class and accessibility within women's liberation, with hecklers outside the building shouting that Germaine Greer "betrays the poor". Inside the theatre, Norman Mailer begins the panel discussion, and introduces his own work The Prisoner of Sex in Harper's magazine. He says that the women's liberation movement is against his work which was advertised as "the piece that's gonna have women's lib, ah, picketing the newsstands" yet believes the women's liberation movement is "the most important single intellectual event of the last few years".Jacqueline Caballos, the president of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women, believes that Norman Mailer represents the establishment, and therefore her participation has allowed her to work within the system. She admits to her privilege as a middle-class woman and mentions the perception of the National Organization for Women as "square". She then clarifies that the main agenda of the organization is solely women's liberation, and they do not devote time to fighting for the peace movement, civil rights movement, or the changing environment. The organization believes that women's liberation is the center of everything, and only upon that will it be focused.
The next speaker featured is Germaine Greer, an Australian feminist writer. She represents women writers in a traditionally male-dominated field, specifically in reference to her juxtaposition with the powerful and privileged Mailer in comparison to herself. She believes men are allowed to be vulnerable to create, but women are not given the same luxury. She believes the feminist revolution will change the way art is distinguished by the shift from inaccessibility and rarity, to the public itself.
Jill Johnston introduces lesbian feminism, in which she argues all women are lesbians. She argues the need for all women to accept themselves as lesbians in order to create substantive political change. She reiterates that lesbianism is used as an insult when women are feminists when in reality they are just learning to love themselves in order to be equal to men. At this point in the film, two women come to the stage and begin kissing and rolling on the floor, much to the dismay of Mailer. Eventually, they walk off the stage and do not return.
Diana Trilling closes the speeches with her take of sexual liberation. She states that the sexual repression of homosexuals continues onto the sexualities of women, with a cultural belief that there is no such thing as the female orgasm. She diversifies what it means to be a sexually active person, as she believes there is no single definition of sexual desire. Trilling believes Mailer "fails to imagine... the full humanity of women as it would never fail in its imagination of the full humanity of men".
The town hall includes the debate between the participants, mainly between Trilling and Greer, and Mailer and Greer. Mailer focuses on the role of men, noting that these women fail to address the fact that life is also difficult for men. He also states that there is no one way to approach activism, and that movements need to be taken in a way that addresses norms in order to move against them. Mailer then changes the subject to speak about the academic and historical work of women's oppression to which Greer responds that the work is lengthy and complicated, and will take many years to establish. Mailer questions how women can make assumptions about their oppression without having historical work to back it up. Greer notes that patriarchy has an effect on everyone, including men.
Other feminist icons and personalities are featured in the film during the question period, such as Betty Friedan, criticizing Mailer's moderating skills, Susan Sontag, who criticizes Mailer's gendered language, Cynthia Ozick, who criticizes Mailer's chauvinism and Anatole Broyard, who asks about post-liberation narratives.