librarypunk - 086 - The Watermelon Woman (1996)

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Movie night! We’re watching The Watermelon Woman. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it first!  https://litwinbooks.com/books/ephemeral-material/ https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/C/Conflict-Is-Not-Abuse 

Yeah, we got to save all Camille Paglia stuff for when the mic is hot. Yeah, I figured that's going to be a whole section. I lost my fucking mind. I was like, oh, my God, I forgot Camille Paglio is in this. I, like, immediately opened up her Wikipedia page to be like, what is the deal on this? She's a fucking trip. That whole scene, like, triggered my second hand embarrassment so bad that I was like not, I couldn't like look at my computer screen.

I kept like glancing away. It was like worse than British humor. Oh, God. Yeah, there's a lot of secondhand embarrassment in this movie. It's just not something I like watching, but... Oh, the acting is so bad. It's so 90s indie movie acting. Yeah, everything was funny.

I feel like the acting was inconsistent. Like sometimes I feel like I got what they were trying to do with the characters. And then like the dinner scene, I just got confused. And I was like, I don't, I think I understand what's happening. Then the follow up scene is like, I don't understand how Tamara is acting towards me. I'm like, yeah, I think I don't either. Maybe something about being like, you have to create your own history and she's like kind of stuck in the past by focusing like all of her like time and research and energy on this like past thing and not kind of paying attention to the people in her present and future. That makes sense.

But I might be reading into it. This is also, yeah. Yeah. I cannot believe that it took me this long to recommend that we watch this for the podcast, considering I love this movie and I've been a fan of it since grad school. And it has a library scene and an archive scene. Yeah, like, yeah, I learned about it because there's this book through Litwin books called Ephemeral Material Queering the Archive, author Alana Coombier. And there's a whole chapter about this film and it specifically talking about like the scene in the library. with the reference librarian.

And libraries as like gatekeeping history and like whiteness and libraries as well as talking about clit, which is the lesbian her story archives, which I actually one time got accepted to intern with them over the summer, but could not find housing in New York City that I could afford to do it back when I was a dyke person. But yeah, because the lesbian her story archives is like a real ass thing. But clit unfortunately is not. The cinder for lesbian information information and technology, yeah. Yeah.

Why don't we all have good names like that? I honest to God was like, is this a real place? Yeah, it's a lesbian her story archives. Yeah. No, I was like, I was like, but is there actually an archive that has the acronym clit? Because I could totally see it. 90s lesbians are that corny that I would not doubt it.

Yeah, no. But once I was like, oh, okay, it's not. real, but this is still, like, hilarious. Like, so much of the more of this movie makes sense when you realize how corny lesbians are. And you just remember like, oh, right, lesbians are corny and cringe in the best way. And then this movie just makes so much more sense. I'm allowed to say that. I used to be a lesbian.

Have we actually stayed at the name of the movie since we've been recording? No. It's the Watermelon Woman. It was just incredible Cheryl Dunye. Danyi. Everyone should go watch it. It's incredible. I was really happy that Criterion picked it up a couple of years ago.

But there's also discourses about criteria and picking it up, right? But yeah, incredible film. All people in libraries and archives should see this film, I think. Like, as much as I love party girl, fuck party girl. You should be required to watch this before you, like, become a librarian instead of party girl or desk set. Like, I think the watermelon woman talks about more important things about what libraries and archives actually do instead of just Parker Posey, which we stand. But, you know, like, I don't know why that's the one that we, I mean, Maybe it's because this one has some like real hot fucking in it.

And I don't want to show that in grad school. First the kiss, then the come. Come, come, come, come. What the fuck was that, Dustin? Where did you even get that? TikTok. Of course. Of course.

Which might be banned because China is bad. I saw that. Yeah. The Biden administration says that the Chinese owners. have to sell their shares or they're just going to ban the whole app, which I don't know what that means, except that you would, I guess, sanction the company so that Apple can't do business with them or something, and then that would effectively ban it because if it's not in the I store or the app store, then I guess it's banned.

I don't know. Yeah, it seems silly because, like, why TikTok can not, like, QQ or any of the other, like, social media stuff that we could still access? I guess because they're not popular, but. Well, the legislation will probably hit those ones, too. It's just targeting TikTok in, like, particular. I don't even like TikTok, but, like, TikTok doesn't deserve this. I mean, it does, but you can't do that.

In my soul, it deserves it. But that doesn't mean you should just get rid of it. Yeah. Yeah, we need to bring back, what was the thing we were talking about with Luther? Stumble upon. Yes. Yeah. Bring it back.

Oh, yeah. That, like, yeah, took a minute. to go through my head and I was like, I had like a flashback to like ninth grade and I was like, oh, right. Stumble upon. I remember. I really liked that site. We're going to be over to Verne podcast, but about Stumble Upon.

Yeah, but I completely forgot it existed and it was like one of the most popular like social media outlinking sites. It was great. Yeah, you could have stumble inside, which would be. I think people put that in there. I think it closed in 2018, but you could put it like inside your MySpace and you would like randomly go to random MySpaces. I think that was how I used it the most. I think it actually, it's going to happen now. What was the other one that was like a massive tagger where you could like save things?

Oh. Dick it? Yeah, something like that. Oh, shut down 2018. Then what did I find online? Sorry. Yeah, there's a site for Stumble upon, but it might be like an old aggregator or something. I think it partnered with college humor and then I think it died when those sites died.

It's sad. Yeah, I remember that site. It was good. Bring it back. It was like a good version of the I'm Feeling Lucky button. Yeah. Because it would take you to popular sites, it would take you to like the Sistine Chapel 3D scan. I remember that was like its default page or something. It was like, oh, check this out. It's the 3D scan of the Sistine Chapel. Before that was like a Pistine Chapel. Before that was like a popular thing. It was cool.

I learned, like, that's how I first learned about, like, you know, like the, like, artists that, like, busts and use, like, foil and newspaper and, like, pots and pans and spray paint to paint, like, galaxies and stuff. Based on, like, you can, like, pull the magazine, like, they'll use, like, magazine paper. And then, like, they put in, like, the pot down, they spray around it and then they peel that up. And, like, by peeling away things and spray painting and just, like, the texture of the magazine paper. you can make like galaxies and stuff. It was like a really cool that I see all the time now walking around like Harvard Square. Like I was like, oh shit, I remember that from like 10th grade.

See that stuff looks fine. So we watched The Watermelon Woman. Should we do our theme song? You want to? Just throw it in later. Like at the end. The episodes that are just us are always like the most chaotic. All right.

Well, it'll throw us off if I don't. I'm Justin, I'm a Skullcom library, and my pronouns are he and him. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library. My pronouns are they them. And I'm Jay. I'm a music library director and my pronouns are he, him. Welcome to the come zone. Justin. We need to make this as offensive to Camille Paglia as possible, by the way. This is our goal. Double jointed pussy.

Camille, we know you're listening. I lost my shit when she showed up. Anyway. If you haven't seen this movie, we're going to, like, spoil it and break it down. It's probably more fun to just experience it. So this is your spoiler warning, I guess. Like, the only time that we'll do that. Yeah.

It's not because we're going to spoil the plot. It's an experience kind of movie. And also, like, the sort of one-two punch that it throws at you, like, right at the end, that's, like, the point of the film is really, it hits a lot harder when you're not expecting it. Even having read about this movie, I still didn't understand what it was about really until after watching it anyway. Yeah. Because the Wikipedia page doesn't do a good job explaining what's going on. No. But it's very similar to what's the Orson Welles documentary?

Effer fake. It's black lesbian effer fake. Yeah. It's similar to effer fake. It uses the language of cinema to frame, okay, this is fiction. It looks like a 90s indie movie. This is found footage and it's shot on like Super 8 or it's shot on VCR. This is a student film.

It's shot on VCR. And then also staged archival photos and archival footage. I believe the footage was also recreated. Yeah, yeah. You can see at the end there's credits of like all of the stuff that contains the watermelon woman in it, including like the photographs and stuff. They say like who was the person, not just the actress that was the Miller woman, but who made all of those.

Yeah. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. So it's a movie about doing research on black women in 20s and 30s Hollywood films. And it creates, it switches between a fiction movie and a documentary. And you're not quite sure where, like, the lines are drawn, like Cheryl Dunnier's actual mother is in the movie as her mother. Mm-hmm. Just named her mother. And it's like, was this a real interview?

It's like, no, they're talking about the Watermanell-Womenel woman who was entirely fictional. So it was staged, but we're going to get to Camille Paglia, which I don't know if she was acting or not. No, she was not. And like, because she taught, she still teaches, taught still teaches at, oh, God, it's in Philly. University of, like, Philadelphia or something like that is the university where Camel Paglia is at. And if I don't know if that's where Cheryl Duny went, I could love. get up right now, but I'm not going to type and pop all over my keyboard. It's her microphone is. Yeah, so she's in Philly. So easy access. She's kind of notorious anti-feminist feminist,

very critical of French feminism weirdly. And she's really weird about gender and climate change and is bat shit. Yeah, just tack that on last. Bad shit. Just leave with that maybe next time. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't, what did I write? I said, is this white lady on about? My notes I typed as I was watching the movie. Whereas I just fully had a meltdown. I had no idea who she was and was just like pretty much the same as you, Justin. I was just like, what is this white lady on about? And why does she think that she, like, who does she think she is? She gets to say this shit. It was so bizarre. She's kind of fashy because she's like, oh, twinks and femme boys, the homosexuals and the trans, that means

the degenerate society is, fall of society is happening. I'm like, uh-huh. Okay, Camille. She, she's, I think she's a proponent of the social contagion transness thing. Oh, yeah. Or she's like skirts around it, at least. She weirdly calls herself trans. Yeah.

But in a way where she's like, yes, I have dysphoria and I've never felt like I was a girl, but I'm also not going to transition or anything, and trans people suck. And I'm like, oh, fuck you, Camille. Yeah. Yeah. I think Rowling says something similar. Oh, God, so many of them do. Rolling doesn't go out and call herself trans. Yeah. But Camille does. Like, Camille says that she identifies as, like, trans, but is not transitioning and still goes by she, her and all that, but she just says, like, yes, I have all this dysphoria and I don't feel like a woman, but kind of stuff. So, yeah.

Interesting. Anywho, skipping ahead. Yeah, that's kind of in the middle of the movie, but this was made in 96. It was preserved and remastered by UCLA 20 years later, I believe. So it was remastered, and it was, I believe, it got kind of like a tour with Cheryl Donnier going around talking about what's changed in 20 years, what hasn't changed. Like, what is she still angry about in filmmaking and her desire to make cinema, not just films? So really interesting, but it kind of jumps between, like, this lesbian romance of working in a video store while having a side gig is like a videographer for weddings and poetry readings and stuff. And this documentary project where she's trying to find out about this woman she's obsessed with the watermelon woman.

Right, who played like, quote, Mammy types in, like, 30s, cinema and other, like, race films of the time. Yeah, I feel like this is a really funny movie if you were a lesbian in the 90s, but there's a ton of things I think went over my head. It's same here. I was like, when I was skimming the Wikipedia article or the Wikipedia later, it was like, oh, yeah, the film's moments of comedy. And I'm like, where were those besides the archive? I'll see the archive scene. I knew jokes were happening. I just didn't.

I knew I wasn't getting them. Like the karaoke was so funny. Oh, my God. Everyone's bad at karaoke. It's so funny. No one can sing. Everyone in this movie is kind of not cool. Everyone's kind of nerdy.

Yeah, because they're all tight. Well, also the guy who's the film collector. Oh, that queen. I loved him. He's like going off. He's like, what is? He had like a neon sign that he was showing. Drama.

Because the drama happens here. She's serving the drama. I was like, oh, honey. I do love that this film sort of makes that explicit point that early film history, at least early Hollywood, has always been black and has always been queer. I feel like the director, Martha, whatever, the white woman director of the films that the watermelon woman was in and that they were alleged lovers. And this is supposed to be Dorothy Arsner, who was a very popular studio director at the time. Lucille Ball was in one of

her films. And she was a huge dyke. And so I feel like that's probably like supposed to be like a Dorothy Arsner type character. And so this film's sort of showing that like film has always been black, has always been queer. But that history of it has either been not recorded. destroyed or forgotten, like archival. I was thinking about like the archival silent stuff through this, through this whole thing. And so I love that like, especially with like that collector, like the only reason they know about that collector is because they mention the watermelon woman, like Cheryl mentions the watermelon woman to her co-worker and friend, Tamara, like her mom or grandma or something.

And she's like, oh yeah, there's this family friend and brings out a business card that says like race films on it. and he's a collector and sort of this like soft skill word of mouth type of researching outside of any sort of formal institution type of research and searching that this sort of history can only be found through because it's been destroyed or not collected elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah. And also the kind of problems of like cataloging and things comes up several times.

Like she goes to the library to get as much. many books as she can on black women in Hollywood and women directors. And she goes to the reference desk and the reference guy's like, well, it's not, Watermelon Woman's not coming up in the system. Did you check the reference section? And then she goes, well, he says, oh, you could look in the black reference section. Did you look in the black reference section? She's like, no, I'm trying to find a book on this woman who's not well known. And then she tries to get the director. And then he says, well, you got to go to the reserve desk by. Yeah, like that's on the third floor.

That scene is what so much of that chapter and ephemeral material is about, is about that scene because of like the way that this like a white male librarian, which you don't often see in movies. Like he's like a younger white guy as the librarian as this sort of gatekeeping institutional figure who's fucking clueless, very bad at doing the reference interview. But like that sort of like librarian as gatekeeper. librarian is like, oh, that's over in the black section, right? Like, and in a way, it sort of like it sort of like, it sort of like double-edged sword of when we, and I believe like Sandy Berman talks about this a lot, too, with subject headings is there's like directors and then there's women directors or directors and black directors, right?

Where you have special sections dedicated to things that both brings attention to them in like a good way. It's like, yes, we need to be bringing attention to this, but also quote, like get a while. stuff as well. So if there's not also like other like if there's just directors and then black directors and it's obviously setting up white as the default. Right. And so I felt like that scene really demonstrates the whole like, oh, there's reference, but then there's black reference, right? Go over there. I have no idea. Yeah. But she doesn't want reference. You look. Right. She doesn't want reference. She wants books about something. And then when he's like, well, have you looked over here, which is actually a valid question to ask, well, how do you check?

this. He just doesn't do it right because Tamara, her friend, takes that as a very patronizing question. Like, obviously, we've looked there. Why do you think we're here asking you now? Like, which is why when you do the reference interview, you'd be really careful not to sound patronizing when you ask people, well, have you already tried this? So I should have a conversation. Yeah, exactly. But it happens again when they go to the Clit Archive, before they even go there, because they have a white co-worker who's like a goth. Yeah. Like, Alt Lady, who tomorrow, like, hates and keeps making fun of, which is pretty funny.

She keeps making fun of her dog collar. It's a really big dog collar for such a little girl. Yeah. It's like the episode of Revolutionary Girl Utana, where she gets a cowbell and wears it around her neck. Yes. It turns into a cow. She turns into a cow because she has a Dior cowbell. But she has, yes, on the dog collar had something on it, and that's what I thought of was the Dior. or cowbell.

But she was like, oh. I mean, that's lesbians too. Yeah. Oh, they're working like an exclusively gay video store. Like everyone in this movie is clearly gay. Like all the actors. Well, it's because all their friends are gay. And it's just the friends that are in this, obviously.

So it seems like they work in like an exclusively gay video store. Which the little like, like, in one of the very first scenes of the video store. And I didn't like rewind to double check this. And I didn't have my subtitles on. But like there's like like some sort of like black teen who comes to. the desk and I'm assuming it was a like a guy I couldn't tell from like the back but um

has like some like a you know like a like one of the tapes and I think he asks for the do you have the three tenors which like it's like Pavarotti and Domingo and who's the other third guy like their opera tenors and they were like a fucking super

group because they were the three tenors right and they had a couple film performances so like of course this fucking little opera queen covening in here asking for the three-tenders, what you couldn't ask for something with callus in it. I thought that was funny. Someone asking for opera in this movie. Yeah.

So the, or she even goes to the, the clit archives, she's like, well, what is this like a white queer archives? Like, no,

they've got a black collection, a black lesbian collection. And then they actually go and, like, they just, like, completely make fun of community archives. that it's like, she gets the box of, she's like, oh, yeah, here's a new collection.

She keeps repeating herself being like, it's all volunteers, everything's a mess. But, you know, once we get it going, it'll be really good. And then she dumps the archival box on the table. It was so good. And then it goes to do it with another one. And she's like, no, no, no, no, no. But just like, like, the blatant, like, disrespect of the materials, but also being like, we're all volunteers.

you know, we don't, like, do they have training, which I would need to look at, I'm pretty sure the people at the lesbian, her story archives have more training than that. I don't know if they necessarily require MLS's to work there, but I know they have their own whole, like, subject vocabulary or something. Like, they know what they're doing at the lesbian horror story archives. This film does them dirty. Clit is not representative of the lesbian, her story archives. But that was, yeah. It was pretty funny. And it was also making fun of,

like leftist groups. So like, well, we have to all vote on whether or not we can contact the donor for you. And we meet every other month. So we'll have to do it then. Which that seemed like brought up interesting questions about like confidentiality. About like the materials and stuff. Like why were those materials confidential? And also if they were like the archive was seen as in the wrong for trying to protect that confidentiality. Whereas Cheryl was trying to sneak, like, filming the photo is because it's very important for her research. It's like, this is like, this is information that's not out there and people need to know this. But for whatever reason, that collection was confidential.

And we're not told why. I think maybe just Cheryl that he doesn't understand the whole role of confidentiality and archives and libraries and was just like, oh, it's all confidential. You can't take pictures of things. It's like, no, you can. But, you know, that's sort of, like questioning of like the professional ethics of confidentiality. And it's like who gets to decide what's confidential and and when is it worth breaking that? And yet, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And she kind of had that whole like, oh, you can't film this particular thing sprung on her too.

Like yeah. She came in there with camera equipment with like her co-worker filming. So like just be like, oh no, you can't film these ones in particular kind of deal. So, yeah. Yeah, I couldn't tell if that was, like, intending that, like, it wasn't actually confidential, and the volunteer just didn't know what they were talking about was kind of the confusing part. Yeah. Because, yeah, there's no reason given as to why it's confidential.

Yeah, like, this film does not paint libraries or archives in a very good light. Whereas home personal, quote, archiving, her mother is kind of a hoarder or June, who was the lover of Bay Richards. the watermelon woman, they have these sort of collections that they've held on to over years and years and years that are disorganized and not labeled and all of this stuff.

Whereas like personal, intimate home archiving and in the case of her mother, like hoarding almost. And also like the collector, like that's his own personal thing. He's not part of an institution. That's all framed in a very positive flight

because those are all black people and black queer people except in the case of her mother, collecting and archiving this history outside of any sort of official white institutions, which are rightfully shown to be hostile to this project. And I think it's probably a reflection of her research, because it was both, they were trying to do research at the Library of Congress. And I want to say at the Hirstory Archive, but licensing wouldn't cover the materials they

wanted to use, plus the research costs, I think, of going through and getting materials pulled and copied. Yeah. So it was probably based on, but it's, it's, it's, it blurs the line of like reality and fiction. It's all fiction. But I was just like, I think some of this comes from actual research that she did in the early 90s. Yeah, I think so. And so I was like, did she actually hook up with someone while she was doing research?

And that became the, the love interest who was played by the lady who wrote the script for American Psycho. What? That's her? Yeah. What? Gwynnevere Turner. Because, like, I knew she was an actress and, um, oh, fuck, she's from Boston. Fuck, she did write American Psycho.

And the notorious Betty Page. Yeah. I love American Psycho. That's a great movie. Like, she, we're talking with the movie here, not the book, which is Bracston Ellis, which I have not read. And I hear maybe don't read. I mean, whatever, but, um, the film is incredible.

Good for her. She's great in this. Like, that is another interesting aspect of this is, um, because obviously this, this film is about, like, the intersections of, like, raise. and sexuality and history and history and memory and all that. And one of the things that the Watermelon Woman is that, like, again, the director that she worked with was a white woman, and they were shown to be, like, lovers. And then Cheryl, who is a black lesbian, has a relationship with a white woman in this for a time and gets, like, kind of made fun of by Tamara for being with a white woman. As in, like, it's sort of a hinted that this is not the first time that she's been with, like, a white woman.

And so there's like a lot of interesting stuff about like sort of crossing into realms you're maybe quote not supposed to go into like mixed race relationships. But also again, this sort of like what role, what place do black queer people have in the history, institutionalized, formalized history of film. They don't. And that's like a boundary and a mixing of where like they're supposed to be and not be and stuff. but also that actress is really hot. I think that also kind of leads into the Camille Paglia scene because she's interviewed in the VHS film format. So it's for the documentary. And she's saying that actually the Memi figure is like a symbol of fertility.

And she looks just like my Italian grandma who make it a sauce. And, you know, my Italian grandma never left the kitchen. and I don't know what the point she was making there. Watermelon is not racist because my Italian grandma, she made it a sauce, and they love the watermelon. And it's the colors of the Italian flag. Yeah, Italian flag. And that a young black boy smiling over an open watermelon,

that should be a good thing, a sign of joy and pleasure, and that it's not the history of why that's bad, that's bad. It's black critics reading that is bad. That is bad, is her. She's like, oh, it's black people who are reading. into this, I'm making it bad. It's like, oh, okay, Camille Paglia. Uh-huh.

Yeah, there's a difference, there's a difference between the reasons why your grandmother was always in her kitchen and never left, and the reason why a mammy figure is always in the kitchen and doesn't leave, like. And also the betrayal, yeah, portrayal in film. Yeah, exactly. And then also, yeah, Diane's aunt or whatever is the sister of the, the, yeah. Yeah. Director.

Very like Carrie Grant's family being like, oh, that was his friend. He wasn't a homosexual. How dare you insinuate that? Yeah, that's what Carrie Grant's living family does to him now. Is they're like, no, that was just his male friend he lived with. What do you talk about? How dare you insinuate that he was queer? Yeah.

Yeah, but she also has a black housekeeper. Oh, I miss that. Yeah. Who comes in after Cheryl starts yelling at her and being like, come on, everyone knows your sister was gay. Like, everyone knows it. And then, yeah, her girlfriend's like trying to console her aunt or whatever. But then, yeah, like a black cook comes in.

She's like, are you all right? I missed that because I was typing. Yeah, I thought that that scene was really. She was in chasing A and the L word. She really did the dyke round there. I found that scene like really interesting just because like Cheryl's voiceover, of like how she's describing the scene and how like it the interview went is like very different from the body language that's being portrayed in the scene because Cheryl's like it went pretty well and

you know that's when I think Diana who's the the girlfriend like was really starting to get it but Diana's like sitting on the edge of the couch with like her hands clenched and her like knees clenched and I'm like no that's that's a white woman who doesn't know how to control the scene anymore who's freaking out because her black girlfriend is, you know, implying something about the white, older, rich lady's sister that is not going to go over well. And Cheryl's just like, yeah, I went okay. I was like, girl, I had to tell her what was what, you know. Yeah, like, I had to tell her what was what. And I was like, oh, God. Yeah. And I think they have one more scene together before they break up where she's talking about having black boyfriends in high school. And

And then she also makes like an, yeah, and Cheryl makes like an offhand comment because I guess what Tamara was saying was sticking in her head and then her girlfriend doesn't know how to take it. It was another one of those scenes where I think there was something acting like couldn't convey or something in the script or something. But it's kind of explained later anyway. So you kind of like get scenes like two scenes later when they go like and then we broke up. Like, oh, right. Yeah, that's why that happened. I mean, they're lesbians. You know, world-win dramatic relationship is kind of the name of the game in, like, lesbian cinema of the time.

Yeah. She's also very rich. Yeah. She moves to Philly. Doesn't work. Has a big apartment, like a big industrial conversion thing. Lived all over the world. Yeah.

Was born in Jamaica. Yeah. Decided that she just didn't know what to do at school anymore. So left after getting like two degrees or something like that. Like, I'm not sure this. is for me anymore. And it's like, yeah, I guess not. Like, you're lucky to get it in the first place, though. Yeah, that scene and the dinner scene, I was like, I feel like I'm not quite getting something here. Like, I don't know if it's not being given or if I'm just like not, not 90s,

not black, not dyke enough, you know, for to get it. But yeah, those, those were the two scenes that afterwards, I was like, what was going on there that I was missing? Because yeah, like, the the conversation in the dinner scene, I'm like, I'm not really seeing why Tamara's throwing a hissy fit. Or like, was it Stacey Tamara's girlfriend? Like, one of them was like getting real weird. And I was like, I'm not really sure. I'm not really seeing why that's happening. Yeah.

And like the next scene, Cheryl explains that they're growing apart. And I was like, yeah, I get that. I get kind of like the class difference and everything shows up in that scene. But it was kind of like why I surfaced. friendship falling apart. I was a little confused. Yeah, but like from the beginning of the film, it showed that they were like kind of not meshing well as friends even. Yeah. Oh, do you want to talk about the films that Tamera keeps getting, oh God, ordering films on other customers' accounts so that they can order them?

Yeah, she gets black porn. Yeah. What were they called? They had some great titles. Black balding ball busters. Yeah. Or black bald ball busters, which I, yeah, which I'm not sure. I think that was like, yeah, I think it was all like dyke porn too. What cracked me up was she was like, she was like, Tamara, why that? And she's like, I just was curious what it looked like without hair. Yeah, that was a great line.

Risking your job. Yeah. Yeah, that shit was funny. But to be fair, Diane or whatever name took it like a champ. Yeah, yeah, that whole scene too was great. Yeah, all the things in the video store are really fun. It's very 90s indie movie time. It's very clerks.

You've got to have a video scene store, like a video rental scene. This film changed how the National Endowment for the Arts gives funding to films. Because gas, but there was sex. Yeah. sex in this too. Yeah, I guess. Well, it's like, so that's the thing about portraying like, quote, like sex and like, because it's like when does something cross the line from being into simulated versus

unsimulated sex? Normally it's just when genitals touch, right? But there's fully like licking and sucking on nipples in this film. So I've always wondered like why that didn't count as like part of actual like fucking why that's not simulated as. well. It's like, no, they actually had to like lick each other's nipples for this. So there's nipple licking, if that is your thing in this film. It's pretty good. I remember the first, like, because I watched this back in grad school when I was still a dyke.

And I was like, dear Lord, like, when I was watching this, like, this is fucking hot. So, remember when movies had fucking in them, like, for no reason, just to just have it in there. Yeah. They were just like, well, what are we going to do now? And then a sex scene. It goes on actually quite a lot longer than I thought it was going to. Yeah, it's good. But you can tell like Dykes did it too because it's all the focus is on hands. I was going to say there's a lot of hand holding touching. Yeah. Closeups of shoulders. But yeah, Representative Peter Hoxstra, who's Republican, I don't remember when he, so he was, oh, he was ambassador in the Netherlands at some point. So he was in Congress until

2011. And he wrote a letter to any chairwoman Jane Alexander saying that the Waterman woman is one of several gay and lesbian-themed works cited by Michigan Republican as evidence of the serious possibility taxpayer money is being used to fund the production distribution of patently offensive and possibly pornographic movie. And then it's not that it's gay, it's that it's sex. Which, to be fair, there is sex in this.

It's the, I'm not a homophobe, I'm just a hater defense, which, did you see that tweet? No. It was a, it was like a New York City's best city in the world. Some guy told me and my girlfriend to stop making out, and he said, I'm not a homophot. I'm just a eater. Yeah, I like the fact that it was a spokesperson for this Republican who was like, oh, no, he doesn't have a problem with the gay con, the gay stuff. It's the explicit sex stuff. But it's like, in his letter or whatever he explicitly says, like several gay and lesbian themes were themed works that he was like, you know, against as being patently offensive.

Yeah, because we used to put fucking in our movies before we all turn into fucking 17-year-old prudes. And when I read that, I was just like, Republicans is the same from the 90s until now. Like they have not like changed their tune at all. Like you just take out the watermelon woman sex scene for. whatever book is currently pissing off the Christian fundies like this week. And it's like the same exact lines. And for some reason, like, it's still working. So the N.EA changed from funding groups to funding specific projects because of this. So that's why the grant structure has changed. But I just seem, it seems like you should just give a film group money. I also have the DVD of this.

So on the DVD, it's just like no introduction commercials. So, like, You put the DVD in it, it just starts playing commercials for this film company. And they're all, like, completely different tonally. But they just matched them all together. And they were like an animated claymation movie that's like really gross looking like Sarah Squirm kind of stuff. And then like a movie in like in Hebrew and then like a movie and like another animated movie. You get the criteria in addition, right? Do I?

I don't have the case with me. Have you joined the Criterion Club? No. I can't attend a lot of meetings. They meet every other month. But it also has some short films that Cheryl Dunier did as bonus material. I didn't get around to watching them because I didn't want to start confusing them with the movie. Because I started them and there were little short films about like dating.

And I was like, I don't want to mix up the plots of these movies. They look kind of similar except that she's got a different haircut. I am still kind of confused by the end of this. I mean, it makes a whole lot more sense to me when you realize, like, the film pieces are all meant to convey a certain style. Like, this is found footage. This is fiction. This is documentary footage, shot, countershot stuff. It kind of made me think, because the point of this movie was, like, creating history by doing fiction.

Yeah, because her whole thing is that, like, she couldn't find a lot. of, in real life, like a lot of history and information about the history of black lesbians in early cinema, early Hollywood. And so she decided because it's like she knows that that history is there, but for whatever reason, we don't have it. And so she's creating it herself. Yeah, it's correcting the falseness of history with, it's kind of like the definition of mythology.

It's like a story that is designed to tell a truth, but it's not history. It's a story that you use to explain things about the world. So it's modern mythology. But people don't like the word mythology because they think that just means a not true story. But mythology means reinterpretation of things that we assume to be true. Yeah, like the film ends with her putting up a quote from herself on the screen that says sometimes you have to create your own history. Yeah. And it says the Watermelon Woman is fiction or the whole thing is fiction.

And then if you're if you're like doing some research on the web, it's like, is the watermelon woman real? Is this real life? Which it's very much like you can tell the movies part drama. But it is confusing. Like when she interviews her mother, I'm like, is this a real interview that she's stitching in? Is she doing part fiction and part documentary? But no, it's all acting except for I think Camille Paglia, who didn't know she was in a movie. She just showed up. Oh, and that was why I jumped to her at that point was she also said, oh, I didn't know that the director was gay. And she was like, oh, well, and interracial. That was so hard back then because, you know, look who's coming to dinner in the 50s. I mean, that was still like a big deal. It was very funny that she referenced like, look who's coming to dinner as like her historical

proof that interracial relationships were tough. Yeah, it's like, oh, this, there were. wasn't a representation of this, so obviously didn't happen, right? It was very, it was such an academic thing to do. Yeah. Camille fucking Paglia. She talks as someone who talks very quickly. She talks so quickly to the point where I worry about her. If that was, if that was scripted, it was very, very funny.

But I just like to imagine that she just was told to start talking. Yeah, because it's like Sarah Schulman, you can tell is in on the fucking joke. Yeah. I mean, it's Sarah Shulman. Poor one out. Like, she's a real one. I love Sarah. Everyone go read conflict is not abuse right now. Go do it. And also go hate rent in her honor, too. I have no idea why they showed Camille Pagley in this. Maybe to show like, you know, because she does talk to she's trying to get interviews from people. And like, she's trying to show that like the, any like formalized red and white, like, routes of information in this film go nowhere, right, and are often hostile or oblivious or just aren't meshing for whatever reason. Because, like, clit has the information. They just kind of dump it everywhere and then are trying to deny access to it for whatever reason. And we're shown to see that those reasons are false, that it's bad, that there's confidentiality. Again, we don't know why. But, yeah. There was also Safe Space.

Oh, yeah, this is a safe space. Well, wasn't Camille, how do you say? Paglia. She's the only, like, actual academic in the entire film. And like a real, real person, real academic, too. Like a real person, real academic. So it's like all of the information that Cheryl was getting that was actually useful. Yeah, it was from, like, friends of the family or her own, like, coworkers being like,

oh, yeah, there's this disorganized archives kind of shit. And then it's like this a random, like the kind of interview I would have expected in a documentary with like an academic who's supposed to be. Oh, it's like a totally talking head style. Yeah, exactly. And it's like the only thing like that in the entire like film. And she just goes off the rails. And it's like barely relevant. Yeah.

It was it was fucking nuts. And then it just goes back to being like the friends and family interview like found footage, you know, sort of research search. And yeah. And like so. I feel like when I've seen this movie discussed both by like film critics as well as again in that book, which has been since this film talks about is like about like archival silence like we talked about like things not being recorded, information being destroyed and not like collected in archives and libraries either on purpose or by accident and normally have like oppressed groups, right? that the white institution of librarianship and archives is hostile or antithetical to black histories, right? Which this film is very good at showing that. But this time around when I was watching it, and I think this is spurred on by a, so last week

before, I was at the Music Library Association Conference, right? And I was in a session on instruction pedagogy techniques and like critical instruction pedagogies and stuff. And I'm often quite critical of library pedagogy because often it's cringy and students don't care and maybe I'm cynical. But I was actually quite impressed with a lot of what I saw. And one of the people, like someone asked a question about like, well, I'm at like a conservatory, which I am too. So I was like, yes. It's like, I met a conservatory. My students aren't doing musicology, like research papers and stuff. How do I get them to care about info lit and stuff when their performance majors and stuff.

Like, why, how do I get them to care? What is even relevant to them? You know, all that kind of stuff. And the one of the people leading the session brought up an amazing point, which is something that I've been trying to articulate in my conservatory in place of work as well, in that like information literacy, especially if we look at the ACL frames and are very literal about them, right? It's like, you know, scholarship is a conversation, right?

Or authorities constructed and contextual, like all of these things. Like, those don't just apply to writing research papers and going through databases and stuff. Like, she brought up the point that a student talking with their professor, who is probably someone also a performer in the field that they're trying to be in and will be asking not just like, hi, I need lessons and whatnot, but asking information about the field and careers and stuff like that. That is also like information seeking. That is also something you need information literacy for. So focusing on like, what is the role of these soft skills in, libraries and archives and how we teach those and how crucial those are in areas like this film where the history of like black lesbian cinema is not something that like is easy to navigate

through traditional formal white avenues but more so through talking with people and like oh a family friend who is a collector um you know all of these kinds of soft avenues And what role libraries play in teaching those sort of more soft research skills as well as like, here's how you search the official materials? What do you think, Arthur? Yeah. I mean, those are the ACL information literacy stuff is pretty, it's pretty like broad and I think applies pretty well. They're pretty good compared to like a lot of other standards that I look at back when I was really into this. Back when I was like teaching more and I would usually talk about like right wing extremism to explain information literature.

That was the main way I taught it because it grabbed students' attention. But yeah, it definitely shows that, like, classification has a bias. She gets stonewalled by the librarian, more or less, who just is not paying attention. And the academic is, Camille Paglia, is just useless at giving information. So there's no path through there. We haven't really talked about the ending, though, where she meets Bay, the Watermelon Woman's longtime partner who then, like, rebukes her going, like, why are you talking about her relationship with this white director?

And her mammy films. Yeah. Why are you talking about these films? What's wrong with you? And then so the character, Cheryl, has, like, a reflection on, like, well, I get to choose what I talk about. I've only seen this movie once, so I can't, I quote it from memory, like, when I did The Man from Earth.

But, like, she's like, I get to choose what I talk about. This is my project. I, she means something to me. She meant something to you as your partner. She means something to me as a black lesbian filmmaker. Right. So I can only do what I can with that. So it's,

I think that's why I'm thinking in the Man From Earth. It's very much obsessed with history and knowing the self and exploring history through fiction, which is like what we talked about. We talked about it from Man from Earth. Like, why aren't historians writing movies like this? Because like, yeah, you should. Why aren't librarians writing movies like this?

Because like, yeah. Right. because that whole scene that made me think of, like, you know, discussions that we often have about indigenous collections broadly, but then also related to this, like community collections of like, who gets to say what is shared and what isn't. And in this film, like,

Juna said, like, you know, she wouldn't have wanted to be remembered through the Mammy films, right? Like, that's not what she would have wanted, right? and Cheryl is like, okay, and then goes and does it anyway. And then that sort of reflects earlier in the, in Clit, where it's like, this is confidential, and she takes that information anyway. And so, like, really complicates these questions that we have about, like, who gets to decide when something is, I don't want to say gate kept, because sometimes that sounds hostile and oppressive when sometimes. it's more like just no, like restricted. There's no one consensus answer to,

how to deal with sensitive material. Right. And so I, that's another, just like, only two scenes in this film that deal with that. But I, I feel like the film is maybe very much on the side of like, no, this is important information that needs to be out there and has been hidden away for long enough and needs to be shared. But yeah, I was just, that was just, in those two scenes that was. something that really struck me about who gets to make those decisions and how the film is

treating, framing people wanting certain information to be closed off. And I think probably an interpersonal theme of the movie is like it's okay to be an individual and different and standoffish. So like choosing to go your own way with research is totally in keeping with the other parts of the movie of like who you date, if you wear a Dior Calbell around your neck, like, what you do with your life. So I think, and reading some, some of the interviews that Cheryl Dunya did when this, the 20th anniversary edition came out, I think that kind of sticks out about her personality as being an individual and doing things your own way. Right. Like, again, that whole thing of her going, like, you know, as, you know, she mattered to me

as well. In some ways, like, this is very much a, um, this film is pointing to a systemic structural problem and is, I don't want to like frame this as like, oh, but it's individualistic because then that makes it, that frames it in a very liberal thing, but it is very, um, it's talking about the macro, but it zooms very far in into the micro to the individual, that sometimes it's like, I don't know if the film was trying to make a point about, like, we should all be doing this, or this is just telling, like, her telling this history and story as an individual. That probably didn't make any sense. No, I think I got it.

I think the movie's not too focused on answering that question. That's probably why it doesn't. Yeah. But, yeah, I don't know why it took so long for me to remember that this movie exists and that we should do an episode. There should have been, like, one of the first fucking movie episode. episodes we ever did. It's so good. We had to sort through them all.

Yeah, everyone go read the book, ephemeral materials. It's through Litwin books. It's real good. There's a chapter about this. There might be two chapters, because I think there's one on that whole little reference scene, and there's one on clit in it,

because it's talking about the lesbian, her story archives and mentions, like, clit. So I think there's at least one, but maybe two chapters about this film in there, and then that's how I, That's how I heard about it. And was like, this sounds like exactly my kind of movie because I was a lesbian person at the time.

And I wasn't yet in library school yet. I was still a senior in college. And I read that book. Yeah. So more librarians and archivists. If you haven't seen this film, you should. It got a little bit of attention recently just because of it's like criterion release. But yeah, everyone, like, fucking go watch this.

It's great. If you like Party Girl, you're going to like. like this. All of you party girlers out there. Seriously, stop. We should do this film instead of party girl in library school now. That's going to be my rule. Let's wrap up.

We did an hour. Play another one of your horrible drops, Justin. We know you want to. Good night.