Dec 11 2009
Happy Endings
There Are No Happy Endings
“THERE”, “ARE”, “NO”, “HAPPY”, “ENDINGS.” These words are shown repetitively in one of the videos in the Brooklyn Museum’s current exhibition, “Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video.” As a representation of feminism, the sentence made little sense to me when I saw it ( and doesn’t make any more sense now), but managed to stay in my mind and be the first images to pop up in my head whenever I hear or think about feminism. Maybe it’s because of the absolute and strong message contained in the short, curt sentence. Maybe on some levels, I do agree with what is said. The feminist movements did bring more freedom to woman in some fields but also created new dilemmas for them in other areas. Women may have become more involved in the workplace, but glass ceilings still exist in many industries. Society have accepted the idea of women going to school and pursuing a career, but they are still often expected to spend the majority of their married life taking care of the house and the children.
In a sense, none of the feminist movements had a happy ending. But I do not believe that there are no happy ending, because I’d rather see the various feminist movements as parts of one continuing process that will gradually make the world a fairer place for woman even though the perfect world with total equality between the sexes do not exist.
Wow Amrita, I didn’t know that’s what the piece was supposed to mean. I was confused when I saw this and thought it had something to do with repetition since the video kept repeating.
To me, I didn’t really understand it at first and why she showed the sentence in many different ways. I thought that she was trying to show no matter what there won’t be any happy endings.
I was confused by this at first too, but on the caption for this film, it says that it was done in response to Hollywood movies. It was aimed at the typical fairy tale endings, that she clearly does not believe in, nor do I blame her, because these “happy endings” are mostly too good to be true.
I agree in the sense that there are no happy endings yet simply because I do not believe feminism is dead. While it does not seem to be a major issue of our time, there is still inequality between men and women. Until this has been eradicated, (if it ever will be), the feminist movement is not dead.