Krawitz's Mirror Mirror and In Harm's Way

Jan Krawitz, a filmmaker and Stanford professor in Communications and Art History, presented two of her short films that highlight issues concerning violence, intolerance, self-doubt and objectification on February 27^t, 2011. The first film we screened was Mirror Mirror. This film investigated a variety of women’s opinions on body image and the idealized female body. Sitting in front of a plethora of mannequins, each woman told her story about her own body image while wearing a white mask—with each scene switching back and forth between the women and shots of early twentieth century clips of beauty pageants and ads about the ideal female body.

I’ve watched the first film in section for FEMST 101: Intro to Feminist Studies in the fall of 2010. My initial reaction to the short documentary was unfortunately superficial. But upon rewatching the film, I thought it was very interesting how Krawitz set the two time periods, the interviews of the women in 1990 and the early twentieth century clips, side by side. It was striking to see how the idealized female body changed—from being a figure with perfect curves to being a figure that always needs to be “smaller”—from one time period to the next. Despite these changes, however, the objectivity of the female body never changed. Even one’s own body is subject to be looked at not only by others but also by the individual herself.

The second film, In Harm’s Way, explored the paradoxes Krawitz sees between what individuals are taught as children and the actual experiences adults endure. She bases this film off her own experiences leading up to an event that changed her life forever. Beginning by telling all of the ways her family, the US government, and educational institutions instilled a sense of safety around everything that is American; Krawitz looks back and realizes that the tactics used to teach this sense of safety were invalid. Two interesting examples she used regarded the Cold War and how there was this shared idea that school children and families would be okay should the US fall under nuclear attack and the ideology to avoid from strangers. Later on, she discusses her experience as a victim of random sexual assault and how this one experience changed her life in a drastic way: though she was taught that if you took the necessary precautions and shielded yourself from danger you would be safe. At the end of the screening the first question from the audience asked whether or not Krawitz’s attacker was ever caught and brought to justice. Krawitz answered by saying that she doesn’t like to answer this question because despite the fate of her attacker, her experience will never change; that the impact of being a random victim of sexual assault had on her is more important than whether or not he was ever caught. I wonder if Krawitz would ever analyze her childhood the same way she did in her memoir if she was never attacked. It’s fascinating to me how one event could change your whole outlook on your own life and the world around you. It’s unfortunate, however, that most life-impacting events are as horrifying as Krawitz’s.