Unknown Speaker 00:02 I want to thank you for the opportunity of being here. And I want also to apologize for my English because terrible English but I think you will be able to understand I want to I'm working since 81, in a feminist movement in Brazil, and our main work is to fight against domestic violence. We have their what we call S O S woman. And we try, we try to help women to overcome the situation of violence and the house. But I don't want to talk today about this, the movement, the movement itself, but I want to try to understand the relationship between this movement and television, the media in general and television, particularly, how, what is the role of television for our movement. To give you a general idea of the feminist movement in Brazil, I have to say that it's a very new movement. It takes its footsteps in 1975 in some Paulo and in Rio, in miniaturised, where I live in another state of Brazil, the movement is still more recent. After the International Woman's CEOs in 75, a number of small women's groups began to appear throughout Brazil in average states by up and a bulk miniaturize, but particularly strong in San Paolo. Although in the case of miniaturize this kind of group did not have at that moment, great influence, neither in the diffusion diffusion of new ideas about woman's role in society, not in the creation of women's organization. It will be only in 1981 that the first feminist movement is created in miniaturize it's very recent movement, the woman's centers right the fence the CDM, the the movement where I work with has been created in response to two murders committed by the husbands against their wives. At that moment, a large number of woman spontaneous took the streets in protest and decided to create a permanent woman's group. The issue I want to discuss to you with to you today it's about the role of the media in the creation and furthermore in the continuing life of the Sadam. In fact, I want to discuss with you two main problems. One, why, during the later years of the 70s Didn't the small feminist groups in miniaturize rich, a larger public and why didn't they turn into a larger movement? Second, why was the issue of violence, the only one able to put together in a few hours 100 Woman's under the same banner? When we consider of course, that if the woman's movement had developed earlier and stronger in San Paolo, than in miniaturize, it is because of the earlier industrial capitalist growth in some Paulo, which has generated both Brazil largest concentration of wage workers and Brazil stronger and better organized popular movements. But these two conditions were not already well established in miniaturize when the women's movements spread its news ideas throughout the state. So it's not only these two conditions for make possible the creation of the feminist movement, and manager rice. I think, indeed, that the media had had here a significant role, very ambiguous, I agree. But nevertheless, crucial. Because of the very nature of the media, and particularly television, the wife's mother were seen as a great sensationalistic event. In the two mineros cases, which had been broadcast through the National Network, the crimes had been committed by very wealthy husbands of very well known local families. Those facts, violence, and the disclosing of the upper class intimacy are as you know, very attractive to broadcast television. This, in spite of the fact that family violence is an old issue in all social classes. It has been the media that turns these already existing problem into a social event. Unknown Speaker 05:00 TV had created such an ambience of ugly any news, it was violence. With the reporting details of this murders, that women's response had been of almost natural consequence. It was as if every woman could recognize herself and her life. In the story reported on the screen. It was the first time that all that private, intimate violence could be recognized as as where everybody's problem. On the other hand, women's spontaneous response was also a good event to be reported on TV. Nothing more attractive and curious than mothers and wives going out the streets, those women who were made to stay at home, nothing more exotic than women reacting against the natural law of man's impunity for killing their wives. However, it is interesting to point out point out that never was our feminist movement considered dangerous or forbidden by the government or other authorities. Whenever we decided to make public manifestations, we always had the police department permission. It hasn't always been the same for some other opposition parties or movements, why the feminist movement is not considered dangerous. Therefore, because we were considered an interesting event for TV, most of the off TV viewers are households, the woman's movement in miniaturize head has been able to reach a wide range of woman with its new ideas. Furthermore, we have been able to create a social movement, in spite of our few numbers, because we had wide access to the media. The media's capacity to turn into reality, everything they print or show on screen, if I can see it, that it exists, it's very impressive. Because we had to exist, and we wanted to have an impact on society, we had been obliged, in a certain sense to create systematically public event events, which could have an appeal on the media. As a result, we had rep rapidly found ourself in the difficult situation of trying to work on events that could interest the media, conference, public debates with politicians, protests, parades, on streets, public facilities, press release, etc. Everything frequently shallow in a way to make the evening news. The positive aspect of this kind of work is obviously that the woman's movement has became rapidly a strong presents in every political moment of the state. But I want to stress now the difficulties of that relationship with the media. First of all, there is a gap between the feminist mobile language and the TV language and the TV language in the case of our struggle against violence, for instance, our position is a result of a new understanding of the traditional family relationship, and a criticism of the subordinate woman's role in this relationship. The wife's mother shows for us in a kind of reverse image, the essential violence that underlines men and women loving relationship. How can we transmit this analysis in a two seconds television close up? Naturally, TV doesn't want to know our ideas about the family. TV's own message about domestic violence can be summed up in three basic ideas. One, strong passion may end in death. Those Those who love deeply make you is one basic idea. To love and death are universal events. In every social class, man and woman are the same. Unknown Speaker 09:45 So we cannot change men and we cannot change women. So third, some group of women, feminist groups, this woman who doesn't know how to love us, are against men. Yes, they want the revenge. So they demand harsh sentences. It is very hard for us to challenge or to change these media assumptions in to in 20 seconds answer. Furthermore, because the kind of question we are supposed to answer on TV, these questions are at the outset distorted. In the case of the murders, they kept asking us how many years we wanted the husband to serve in jail. For us the number of fears was not important. We wanted indeed, to point out the contradiction of the structure of the Modern Family, where love is equated with violence, and death, and to show the contradictory structure of social values where killing family members is defended with the principle of family honor. The media only wanted to find out who is the bad guy and who is the good guy, that is the man who killed who was on the other hand, a good worker and a good father, or the woman who was killed, but who was a neglected mother. And having decided who is right or wrong, they don't ask further. They don't ask why. Another difficulty we with this relationship between the media and the feminist movement has to do with our own conception of political organization. We believe that our movement has to organize itself in a very democratic way without leadership without rashes without spokes spokespersons, but the media's very nature is just the reverse. To them. There are mainly two kinds of speeches, one which belongs to those who command those who are in charge off. So who may speak instead of and another which relates to public opinion, that is the anonymous voice in the streets. Diverse discuss organize itself within this frame. Thus, whenever we had to speak with the media, they always put in their presentation speech. This acts the leader or the president of the feminist movement in miniaturize they created in doing so a concrete leadership for the viewers. It was very difficult for us to fight against that construction because of our own problems to deal with this kind of situation. First of all, we had to learn very quickly how to deal with the media, how to talk in front of the cameras. For us. For some of us, this was an impossible car. So those who were able to overcome quickest this learning, those who talked from the start became for the public, the leaders, more than that TV began to impose its own styles, they began to choose the woman who styles of speaking they like when they wanted us to talk about some issue. This was leading to the creation of a subtle urushi. within the group, an invisible line began to be drawn a line which tended to distinguish between intellectual and practical work. It was clear for us that those who were more used to dealing with language, those who outside the movement had more intellectual jobs, like teachers, for instance, had a natural advantage to lead the movement. We had had to make a conscious for to disseminate this knowledge and to help everyone overcome this initial inequality. Finally, still Lincoln with the problem of our eagerness of creating events to reach my public. This necessity imposed by the logical structure of TV, we had the problem of media's influence upon the movements organizational work. Because we were considered to hold the legitimate woman's opinion, we were asked to give our views about every event going on on the city, which was more or less many times less related to women's problem. Unknown Speaker 14:38 Many times we didn't know anything about the event, and we had to spend some time to learn about what was going on, and to discuss our position about it. After a while it was the media who was deciding for us which were the important subjects to discuss, and which were the priorities of our air Session. They are telling us how when and for whom we must do feminist work, it was virtually impossible to say I don't know anything about this case, or we decided to do nothing about it. We have been living daily under stress, afraid of answering the phone and having to talk with reporters. Because, as you can imagine, every day newspapers and TV report, cases of murder, rapes and cetera, it was impossible for us to give response to every event, and to follow the media agenda. There was this was damaging to our own priorities. In conclusion, I want to say that, clearly, it is very impossible today to make politics without the media, particularly TV. The traditional ways to circulate ideas, oral communication, newspaper, etc. are not as powerful as TV, above all, in a country like Brazil, where every family has a TV set, and where people usually don't read. Besides, to change society, every kind of movement has to control the key spaces where this curse is great. TV is undoubtedly one of this space. The problem is that we are not strong enough to control it. TV has its own capitalist logic and structure. So whether it is important to use TV to spread our ideas, it is also important to be aware that this is a very contradictory relationship. Because we were we are using TV, but TV is using us too. And it is evident that in this relationship, we are the weakest partner. Again, if you want if Unknown Speaker 17:26 you want to help out this, your questions can be recorded in my sources. Unknown Speaker 17:43 There are a number of different sources of funding very early days from Euro moving a large step was self funded. But it soon went past that point. And funds come from city agencies like, for example, state councils for the arts that come from National Endowment for the Arts funds, but basically from what's called the expansion arts program, the minority art program. They come from work programs like summer youth employment and various manpower programs from corporations from, for example, Citibank and Exxon tend to fund murals and from foundations. So one of the big jobs of, you know, putting murals on walls is the whole problem of fundraising and then has all kinds of political and other ramifications. Is, is there any kind of funding for I noticed you said that you mentioned about the deterioration of murals? Is there any kind of funding, you get any kind of funding for maintenance of your murals once they're once they're painted, so that they're not lost, though? Well, there has been some fundraising, particularly by city arts workshop, which 10 years ago began painting the first murals, many of which are now deteriorating, to fix up the murals. But this is a particularly bad problem because of inflation. And that many of those murals when they were painted, it cost a certain amount of money to put them up on the wall. And it costs much more money to repair them than it ever costs to put them up on the wall in the first place. So this has been a real conundrum. And one of the great ironies, I just began with seven other artists, we formed our own neural group, which is called Art makers, and we're getting our first real heavy taste of trying to raise funds ourselves to finance mural projects for this summer. And one of the great ironies of fundraising is that the New York State Council for the Arts has a category and the category under which they have two categories, three categories basically under which you can apply for funds from your Also, one of them is art in public places. And that's for immense city type projects of all 50 to 100 and $1,000. At a shop that is only given once every two years. Well, obviously, that doesn't include mural projects, which budgeted about a large mural project might cost 10,000 $12,000, to put up in current figures, and then they have another category called sponsored projects, which is where artists can compete with each other in a kind of a competitive way for any kind of project they want to do now that they've eliminated individual grants from the CAPS program has been cut back. So this is a new way that individual artists can apply for stuff under real competitive kind of thing called sponsored projects. The third category under which murals can be applied for is called temporary installations. And I bit my tongue every time I had to fill out something under that category. Unknown Speaker 21:07 Yeah, I understand that there are women involved in Unknown Speaker 21:11 painting, can you comment on and the relationship which will give Unknown Speaker 21:16 any relationship between neurology and organize yourself? Unknown Speaker 21:27 Well, I don't know, actually, of women who are involved in the kind of graffiti that you see on the subway cranes, but there has been a lot of development in the last few years in what's called artists graffiti, which involves people, artists of different kinds, going out on the streets and doing stencils, for example, for political things, or putting other kinds of doing billboards. This is a great, fun kind of thing to do, which is, there's a billboard, for example, that says, Your country's at war, it says your country, your art companies, at war, fighting for your business, and you go up there and you change it to say, your country's at war, fighting for murders in El Salvador, this kind of thing. We're billboards are being converted. And this kind of graffiti activity involves men and women artists, I myself have been involved in with a group of other people in putting up stencils against nuclear disarmament, there was a whole group of brigades around the city and we had open workshops in which people came and cut out stencils and then went and put them up in the streets. And there are artists involved in doing stencils against gentrification and all kinds of other subjects and in doing billboard stuff, and that actually began from a feminist basis. The early billboards done out in California and in Connecticut, were all attempts to change sexist billboards and convert them into something that changed the message around entirely. Unknown Speaker 23:10 Paula, if the women that are involved in the feminist groups that you that you know about, are making their own media, films or videotapes, and if there are places on TV or movie theaters, or other ways that they show that maybe? Unknown Speaker 23:27 No, it's very difficult to do that in Brazil, because we have no money to Unknown Speaker 23:33 I felt there was some sort of national funding from Unknown Speaker 23:36 television is a probate, probate and so it's very, we had, we can go to the media center have a feminist program on TV, but it's not our sponsorship, you know, we have people who make photos and who try to make some records in some events, but it's impossible to have our own media it's impossible there. We have we try to make a theater street group with people who work in theatre and drama. It was a very good idea but it's impossible to continue doing so because we were very few people and to to do to do that is to change everything and to begin another kind of work, you know, so it's very difficult to to have our voice with our own medium. Simply it's a problem to depend on the others. Well, Unknown Speaker 24:44 how do you actually do what to me and manipulation, deciding you know, what they believe to be the primary issue versus what you think and what kind of movement women think What are the primary issues that are dealt with which probably will not be the same as not choosing what you feel are Unknown Speaker 25:09 important issues to be presented? So Unknown Speaker 25:10 how do you deal with that manipulation? Do you try to manipulate them back? In 2017? Unknown Speaker 25:16 Yes, we tried to show, we have a little time to speak on TV, it's only two seconds, 20 seconds, one minute. And you have to do it very fast. And so the first thing is to change the question of the reporter, they always do the wrong question. And the question is not a good one. And you have to explain with that, and it's finished. But it's a very difficult situation, because they force us to be present whenever they want. For instance, it was a one day it was the trial of one of those husbands, and we have not enough time to organize ourselves. So we couldn't do nothing. So they go to our center, and they film the door, the closed door, and they say the feminist movement is over in ministry. So you cannot be silent, you have to be there every single one when they want them for what they want. We cannot say no, we don't want the media. It's a very difficult situation. Unknown Speaker 26:24 If I could comment on that briefly, you could turn some of that around, sometimes. I watched soap opera as part of my study of all of this stuff, I won't get into long reasons for it. But several years ago, there was a case on Guiding Light, where a woman was prosecuting her husband, for rape in a state that had just instituted a new law allowing her to do that. And hers was going to be the first case that was prosecuted. And of course, within the framework of that so far, for all of the different reasons why she should not do that were brought forward primarily by her friends and her family, who wanted of the best arguments they felt that they had to bring forward was that you can't do this to your daughter, because how can you do this to your daughter, she'll grow up knowing that her daddy went to jail for raping her mother. But clearly the point that this child was supposed to learn was that her daddy did not go to jail for raping her mother. Now having watched that, and then I was also watching a Stanley Siegel show, one day on which the woman who played the role of this woman was was on. And I had been casting about in my mind saying this gotta be some way that we can use this this is, you know, it's an extraordinary thing that that soap operas that millions of women watch in this country. And I believe that these issues are coming forward on soap operas, not because intellectuals are suddenly finding the value of soap operas. Or that because the soap makers are becoming so progressive it is because again, that telepathic communication that exists out there among women, they cannot soapmakers present programs that are so obsolete, that women are not going to watch them. So they have to, to some extent respond to that to that. The thing that is happening out there. So in a certain sense, the oral tradition, recreates itself in this technology through the technology that belongs to everybody that is the accumulation of all human knowledge. So that the women themselves are like kind of putting that very subtle direction onto what issues are being dealt with on soap operas and how, how those questions are now being resolved. What used to be resolved with somebody acquiescing to it now is resolved in a different way. I mean, a lot of it's phony, we know that. But in any case, the point about this is that I saw this actress on the Stanley Siegel show, and he ended up his show by saying, Oh, isn't it a shame, ladies and gentlemen, this lovely young woman to be raped as if she if she had not been a lovely young woman, it would have been perfectly okay. But I suddenly heard this actress say, oh, no, no, Stanley, she said, it was a good thing that she was raped, what Watts is down when he comes rolling back with all the cameras. And she said the reason not that it was it's good that anybody is raped. She said, but within this storyline, she said everywhere I go now and I go to visit my mother in North Carolina, and I go up to Massachusetts, everywhere I go. She said, Women come up to me on the streets and in the supermarkets and say to me hang in there. We're so glad that you're doing this. And this is incredible. And we're behind you and she said is like was a total absolute total revelation for her because it put her in touch with all of those people out there. And she even said that her mother, her cousin told her that her mother was watching the show one day and she had a line where she says to the husband, who was demanding sex, she says you know you have you have no right to demand that of me. And the mother turns around to the cousin and she says That's right. You know, after X number of years of, you know, sort of so many cases, I say that that aspect of television can be available to us because I called up CBS and I got to talk to a secretary or receptionist and I explained to her that I thought that there's might be some way that we can use this, you know, I can a major way. And she was interested in the idea and she began to mention it to some of the actresses. Well, as it turns out, the head actress called me back, the one who was playing this role one day, and we got into a very lovely conversation. And she, the first thing that she did was to come down and appear with Unknown Speaker 30:40 Betty for Dan, of all people for a Mother's Day presentation that was being sponsored by now. But in any case, I mean, Maureen Garrett was her name. And she was willing to do this. But she was even more interested, she came to me and said, is there some way I can visit a woman's prison, because her character was then going to shoot the guy and self defense of somebody else, and she was gonna go to jail. So she wanted to be able to go into a woman's prison and see what was happening before she got on television with this role. And I, I knew within my own acquaintance, also people who then we're going to take her. We, the whole thing, eventually, Bernadette PAO was in jail at the time, she was just going to be sentenced for shooting her husband and self defense up in Ithaca. And she's a black woman who got 15 years from an all white male jury for this, and her case, of course, still continues. She's in jail now. But anyways, I said to Maureen, how would you like to go up to Ethica for the sentencing of Bernadette Powell, which we did, and she met Bernadette, she went into the jail. Everybody in the jail recognized this woman, they were completely stunned that here was the number one star of the number one soap opera in the country was now in this jail in Africa, to meet and talk to Bernadette Powell and find out what was happening. And there was an article in the local paper and so forth. Now, this was originally I mean, these people were going to and another actress came forward a black actress, they were going to be working on that case. There were other things that took my attention away from that, and I'm not really sure ever what developed from that. But the point is that things can be developed from that she was willing to go out and do interviews with soap digest about things like that she was willing to, to begin to involve herself on that everyday level. And she was an inmate, as I say, a major. So that's just an addition to that television problem. My question Unknown Speaker 32:43 appears to make people aware of humanity of white collar workers in these kinds of jobs. And I was curious what you seen, or what you found to be some of the solutions to this? Unknown Speaker 32:57 Seems like, Well, as I was saying, that was my hardest problem was, we were terrific at presenting the realities. Which is an art in itself, in which that's all I can say to Paul is. All you can do is be realer than them in 20 seconds, say some words that they refuse to talk about their everyday life. But basically, I must tell you that we failed in the 60s, we had great sophistication and much media overwhelming and we failed. To make it clear. You know, if we were saying one thing, and they didn't like it, they could always turn to Jerry Rubin, who would say kill your father. Now, either they would have a real Jerry Rubin and put him on the television in place of us if we were not saying, Look, now we really want to change things so that everybody can have a better life. You take care, your father was the next step of the revolution. Or they would take a feminist movement, which was hard. It was hard for our feminist movement to get these kinds of fake people. So they invented the bra burning. Didn't happen. Do you know that nobody knows no bra burns at Atlantic City? Might have been it's a good idea, but nobody did it. The famous bra burning of you know, America. Well, anyway, the point is, they'll either pick other leaders will say what they want, or, you know, if you can't come up with a slippery one. So the the only answer is to build your own movement independent of it. And to keep trying the way you are as cleverly as possible to say in 20 seconds, what has to be said and remind each other that the person you put up there is not necessarily the real leader. It's hard. It's there's no way around it. It's like Alright, how can I take power without taking power? You know, they're powerful, but no, we are in fact, I just saw that interesting the business of America that's gonna be on next week, which also know I had a difficulty presenting the answers. I haven't got an answer. And I'm enough of a personal artist, not just a political artist to be willing to go ahead and show it even if even if it doesn't look like you and I also by the way, this just a purely personal announcement. I'm Writing about higher and higher levels of white collar automation Now, up to bank vice presidents who put their calendar into their screens every 15 minutes, and the people yet above them can figure out how their time is spent, and so on. So if anybody here is involved in that kind of work, social work or library or anybody who feels that the technology is making these inroads and their work, I wonder if they, you know, sort of talk to me afterwards, I just want to get a sense of where it's all happening. No, I haven't got an answer. And I don't want to put I am. I never thought of myself as you know, an art for art's sake person. But I'm art for art's sake enough or personal enough not to want to put a fake answer on the end of my thing. I just can't think that will do any good. Unknown Speaker 35:51 I was really professional to everybody here. Last year's conference was about technology. And an awful lot and what we've been talking about and controlling, specifically, the computers and the televisions, and mass media technology. And I was wondering if there are any women here who are involved in Episode 70, people were involved in controlling the television cameras, and, you know, being the interviewers, and because I was just thinking the whole time because speaking that, in America, you know, in North America, whether it's like, it's bigger, and there's more money during the summer, besides borders peace camp, we have the same problem with the local media and the national media. And we just turned out to them, because we have the advantage of having the women's news media there, which documented the whole summer for us. Know, everybody, we had media training workshops, where everybody like learned how to speak to, you know, but it's a different place. And so I was wondering whether there are women here who are working on learning those skills and, you know, developing their own channels? Because I feel like that's something really, Unknown Speaker 37:18 I have a question in regard to that. I mean, is that what we should do abandon the major means of communication that reaches millions and millions of people in this country? I mean, this is a big issue, or should we attempt to control it? And then by what means. I mean, I asked that of all the panelists, you're all communicators. Unknown Speaker 37:46 To me, it's a basic key issue. Unknown Speaker 37:52 I don't think there's any way that you can, you know, you don't in a sense, you don't even really want to do that. You don't want to incorporate yourself into a structure that sucks everybody's blood anyway. That the whole idea of building your own media, or your own art, or whatever, I mean, I think was clearly shown today that people can, a go out and do it with other people, but be that it's very important that what you present is very important. And if you start out with the idea that you're not presenting ideologies, you are presenting real people who are dealing with real life situations in real life ways. In radio, and web AI, I mean, we I would make an appeal that I think the WNBA is reaching a whole new phase of energy and excitement. The 60s was very exciting, but it had certain limitations to you know, like the real life situations that people were dealing with, they were primarily dealing with the war. Which of course, was not the only real life situation. Unknown Speaker 38:57 Don't Don't do you're hitting yourself on the head for something that you can't do. You can't replace a movement, we artists can sit around and blame ourselves and say, if I were more talented, if my voice will louder and clearer. It would drown out that horrible static on the television. In the 60s, when there was a big movement, I could distribute MC bird myself, and nobody told me what to put into it. And it worked terrifically. I cannot distribute half a million copies myself right now. Maybe some gay groups can because they come together and they know each other and they can literally hand them to each other. And we would be kidding ourselves and having no political analysis. If we thought we could replace that movement. If we were better if we were clear. She's got 100 people there. If she had half the city, they could speak clearer and more people would hear then if the television wouldn't listen, people would turn the television off and come to their meetings. And they probably could get on television but not rightly but with a half assed the close of version. So so we do have to battle this strategy. I mean, if I get a chance, should I go on there? And if I have 20 seconds, I know I'll sound like, like a vertigo, you know, but are so should I shouldn't I? You can answer that question personally each time. But you can't blame yourself if you can't replace a movement a play is just a play. And, and a painting is a painting and it's not a movement and a movement will give you a platform and and make you heard and and help you distribute and have its own forms of organization. And short of that, will we just struggle along each time make what I what Unknown Speaker 40:37 I just want to add to that, though? I think the movement is no real movement doesn't create the work, the work creates the movement? Well, I think so. No, no. Well, I would disagree with that altogether. Unknown Speaker 40:48 I'm just gonna suggest that. Unknown Speaker 40:52 Okay, I'd like to make one more comment on that question. Because I think it's a crucial question for all of us the question of whether we support an alternative media, or whether we tried to get our voices heard in the mainstream media. And I think it's really equivalent to the question they keep throwing at women, as to whether you want a career, you want to be a mother, I think you have to do both, that we definitely have to support our alternative media, because we've worked really hard to put them in place and we need them, but to ignore the mainstream media and not to analyze and work with those people within that mainstream media. And there are a lot of them, who are willing to listen to you and to work with you and put on those occasional programs that do represent your point of view and reach all those people you can't possibly reach in the alternative media, not to work with them not to analyze and do what you can with it is very foolish. So I really want to congratulate Paul, on the work that they've done. I can could tell from the presentation. It's really good. Right, all right. Any more? Well, we could trust me for my questions.