The idea of a Women’s+ Canon is pretty much entirely foreign to me, I must admit. Granted, I don’t have a great handle on film canon in general, due to the restrictive media environment that I grew up in. I do have a wide cultural awareness of many films and notable directors that permeate conventional film canon, just from casual exposure over the years. Give me the name of a movie or a director, and I’ll generally be able to tell you quite a bit about the subject. But ask me if I’ve actually seen that movie or seen many films by that director, and the answer will likely be “no”.

Media, of all forms, was heavily censored in my house growing up. Oh, I’m sure my parents would never have used the word “censorship” when discussing our family’s media policy. “Appropriate”, or “pre-approved”, or “filtered” might have been the more gentle way of talking about the same thing. Due to a plethora of cultural and religious influences, my parents and our wider church family and neighborhood families were generally very wary of pop culture media, whether that was TV or movies or video games or music or books or magazines or radio or anything, really.

The net result of that was that my siblings and I, as well as our friends from our church and in our neighborhood, grew up very sheltered from most media, past and present. With the exception of religious media (music, TV, movies, etc.) and media that my parents had grown up with, we simply weren’t allowed to watch/read/see/hear anything that wasn’t on the pre-approved list. In practice, that looked like only being allowed to watch PBS TV shows, and even then, only a subset of them. There were very few exceptions to the PBS-only rule, including Jeopardy! of all things, as well as occasional ABC AfterSchool Specials. But that was about it. Video games and systems weren’t allowed. Any movies we saw were ones that had been vetted either by a Christian magazine’s media column or by other church families, and they leaned heavily on slapstick comedy such as the Herbie movies or various comedies starring Don Knotts.

Occasionally I’d catch a glimpse of “forbidden fruit” – a video game at a friend’s house, or a magazine at the public library. Finding a rerun episode of the 1960s Batman series was especially exhilarating, as I was immediately captivated by Catwoman. A rerun episode of Star Trek (TOS) was similarly exciting, because of my fascination with Lieutenant Uhuru. It wasn’t anything particular about these characters that captured my attention, except that they were women. I had nothing in my frame of reference that made sense of an adult woman in a position of authority and respect, whether that of a villain or a colleague.

One might think, that after growing up in such a restrictive media environment, that I would dive in and gorge on everything that had once been forbidden the minute I escaped. Except, that’s not what happened. I had so internalized the various rules and restrictions that even when 350 miles away at college, or 2,000 miles in the opposite direction for graduate school, I held myself to basically the same rules that my parents and church had once imposed on me. I had grown so used to the restrictive cage in which I had been raised that I no longer saw the bars that surrounded me.

It took until I was in my mid/late 30s that I started to intentionally explore my cultural and media black hole – everything from classics from before I was born, to popular media from my school years, to the latest blockbusters, and everything in between. Forging solid relationships and friendships with people outside my extended family and church family circles helped me connect with film lovers who didn’t mind being my personal guide to movies and music and television. That most of those early connections were with cis men (and primarily Gen-X cis straight men) meant that my introduction to media was heavily affected by their particular preferences, opinions, and attitudes. I found myself initially copying, almost parroting, their opinions on films and directors I hadn’t yet seen, because these men were the first to actually tell me more about the things than what I had passively gleaned from just existing in American culture during those decades.

Reading Gillianren’s 2018 Solute article “The Women’s Canon”, and reading through every comment made on the article, I realized just how few Women’s Films I’ve actually seen, in spite of nearly 4 years of a fairly intensive crash course on movies, music, and general pop culture and media. In fact, of all the movies listed in her article and its comments, I’ve seen three in their entirety: Dirty Dancing, The Princess Bride, and A League of Their Own. I’ve seen bits and pieces over the years of When Harry Met Sally, enough to know the story line and the prominent scenes (such as the diner “I’ll have what she’s having” scene), but I’ve never seen the whole movie, start to finish. The rest of the films, I know enough about them to generally recognize them as film titles, and maybe know if it’s live-action or animated, and maybe a genre, and maybe an image in my head of either a major scene or an image from a trailer or commercial, such as the ending scene of Thelma and Louise, or to know that Pleasantville has some weird transition from black and white to color. But not enough to know what that B&W-to-color transition is all about, or to have realized or known that there is an original The Stepford Wives (implying that there’s a remake?), or much of anything about the rest of the films named there, or in similar discussions in our partner Facebook group, “Ladies Who Dissolve”.

Thinking about the concept of a Women’s+ Canon which may or may not have overlap with general film canon, and about the predominant (cis) (straight) male gaze in filmmaking (and in comics, art, etc.), and about feminism and misogyny and related gender issues in film in general, I’ve started to re-examine my early introductions to film canon with my male friends, circa 2013-2016. There were clear instances where my reaction to a film differed greatly from theirs, or from the prevailing consensus, but these new film friends were quick to dissuade me of my “female opinion” because I just simply didn’t have the broad exposure and understanding of some genre or film series or director that they did, and so my uninformed female opinion had no weight, relative to their knowledge.

A huge turning point for me was the experience of watching Wonder Woman with various male film friends, with one or more female friends, and even by myself. I remember clearly walking out of the theater the first time I saw it, and thinking that I had never really considered the default depictions of Wonder Woman in comics and animated shows as being from a male gaze perspective, until I saw Patty Jenkins’ masterful film, and really saw for the first time a non-male-gaze presentation of Wonder Woman. It wasn’t until I saw a non-male-gaze version of Wonder Woman, that I could then retroactively see male gaze everywhere in previous depictions of the character.

Seeing Wonder Woman repeatedly really did embolden me, and really bring home the point that representation matters. I was, and am, absolutely convinced that though I had radically different reactions to it than most of my male friends, that my reactions and opinions weren’t less valid than theirs. I stood up to those male friends, defending my opinion on a film for perhaps the first time. I began to more openly criticize male gaze in movies, comics, etc., and to complain about open misogyny in various media. It’s made me hungry to see more Women’s+ Canon films. (And yes, I know that Wonder Woman is several decades too new to qualify as canon. Yet.) It’s made me eager to explore non-white, non-male, non-cis, and/or not-straight film critics and their opinions on canonical films and on non-canonical films that perhaps should be canon.

During this Women’s History Month, I’m embarking on a Woman’s+ Canon viewing project, to watch for my very first time as many Women’s+ Canon films as I can, and to report back here at the end of the month on this experience. I have no idea what will happen. What will I feel? What will I be exposed to for the first time? What films will give me the same kind of empowering viewing experience as Wonder Woman did? I’m still taking viewing suggestions – I’d love ideas from non-male-identifying Soluters and Dissolvers on what are my must-sees as I begin to explore this idea of Women’s+ Canon. I’m especially interested in films and filmmakers that are intersectional – films by and about those who are Women of Color, or LGBTQIA+, or non-American (non-USA-American), or not Christian (or any variety thereof, including Catholic/Protestant/etc.).