Feminist Filmmaking Peaked with Women-In-Prison Exploitation Films
If you ask me, feminist filmmaking peaked with women-in-prison flicks. Sleazy spectacles as they may seem, few movie genres dared be as brutally revolutionary on the silver screen. Beginning as early as in the 1930s with ‘cautionary tales’, they blossomed into explicit exploitation pictures with the release of “Caged!” (1950). Although dismissed by Bette Davis as “a dyke movie”, the film’s raw depiction of a sweet pregnant girl who turns into a hard convict through her traumatic experiences in jail maintains relevance to this day. From then on, the genre’s entertainment value became a major selling point: sadistic wardens, criminal ladies and epic riots of every sort in B-budget productions too amusing to disappoint. These days, though, “WIP” films remain largely obscure; likely due to some of its more famous titles appearing so misogynistic at first look (e.g.”Women in Cages” or “Barbed Wire Dolls”).
Either way, under the basis that these films are fundamentally feminist in the politics they holds, I want to dissect the genre as a whole - how its views were unusually radical and pro-women at distinctive times plus, frankly, why its movies simply rock!
In “Girls In Prison” (1956), a newcomer who robbed a bank as an arguably socially noble act (to stop depending on the ever-changing qualifications for welfare checks) rejects the flirtatious advances of another incarcerated girl. When she asks what her job before the penitentiary was, another inmate replies to not “look for calluses on her hands”, suggesting prostitution for a character that is unmistakably gay. Characters like this weren’t typical for the 50’s day-to-day or even in 50’s cinema, but in WIP films, minorities were the norm.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Revolutionaries, lesbians, sex workers, addicts, disabled folks and outcasts of all sorts were given full behavioral scope in both secondary and starring roles. Most importantly, by depicting prisoners as exhibiting such agencies of their own, these movies offered a much more progressive take than most feminist filmmaking of nowadays. Without the tendency to write-on-eggshells and baby or victimise any woman or queer person from a marginalized class (as a lot of filmmakers do now to avoid accusations of “offensive” representations), characters received developed and interesting character arcs. Pam Grier, for example, could play a Black, lesbian sex-worker-turned-spy in “The Big Doll House” (1971) and act manipulative and bully-like, and unabashedly come across as unlikable to some. What emerged from utterly unconventional characters taking center stage was a brand of diversity remarkably unafraid of complex stories, back when diversity wasn’t a mere quota to be checked off a “wokeness” list, but a rare statement on the silver screen.
By favouring the side of marginalised classes through depicting institutional abuse of every kind, WIPs designed extraordinarily enjoyable movie-watching experiences for female and queer audiences alike. You could tell from the beginning of these films that inmates would inevitably organise riots or try to escape, and as a spectator, you couldn’t help but remain engaged with the story anyway. Perhaps the most notable example of this took place in “Women’s Prison” (1955). In it, Ida Lupino of old Hollywood fame plays a sadistic superintendent who beats up a young pregnant inmate to death. As the picture unfolds, your frustration as a viewer just seems to boil up- Lupino’s performance may be so over-the-top there’s an element of camp to it (again, cinematic spectacle for the gays and the chicks!) but the perversion with which she lives is undeniably disturbing to see.
Ultimately, she’s punished for her sins as this was a staple of WIP films. There was a radical twist to it, though, as punishment solely applied to oppressors, the prisoners were free to end the picture as unreformed as in the start. By employing sensationalistic devices like this, the WIP genre repackaged radical societal critique into riotously entertaining flicks. Documenting the struggles and hopes of the outcast class never meant the viewer’s amusement (who perhaps didn’t have the most artsy background) had to be sacrificed, and to me, that’s the approach that legitimately egalitarian movies have.
“Cathartic cinema peaked with the genre of WIP. It isn’t solely the political implications of movies like the ones listed above that inspires me, but how none of these films held anything back.”
Unlike other feminist films that tackle shared forms of social bondage like Agnes Varda’s musical on abortion “One Sings, The Other Doesn’t” (1977) which (in the words of film critic Pauline Kael) used a sunniness that resembled “Disney” and “feminine hygiene ads” in its presentation of difficult topics, WIPs left no room for sugarcoating. Female prisoners expressed raw, unglamorous emotions from anger and depression to sabotage and frustration in all of their unfiltered range, and to us viewers who can’t relate to the softness of say, “The Virgin Suicides” (1999), this genre offered relatability of a different kind.
Moreover, though characters collectively suffered from the oppression of the authorities of the jail, friendships and alliances between them were never faked. Without sticking to a modern agenda of “women supporting women'', WIPs came across as infinitely more realistic — and way less moralistic — than other pictures of the pro-women type, and I’d argue this is the quality that granted characters so much freedom to act beyond their archetypes.
In “The Big Bird Cage” (1972), a Black inmate harasses a white prisoner non-stop with lesbophobic remarks till she’s physically assaulted. The following day tragedy occurs as a warden forces the two to perform a dangerous stunt in which, accidentally, the Black woman is killed on the spot. We then watch the white prisoner rebel and agonise til she’s ultimately shot for trying to defend her ex-enemy’s rights. Now, a notably less powerful scene would’ve played out had the dynamic and racial tension between the two been watered down, but that’s the beauty of WIP films — they’re as crude as real life can be, and in the heightened emotional moments, viewers ache for the inmates to break free.
Cathartic cinema peaked with the genre of WIP. It isn’t solely the political implications of movies like the ones listed above that inspires me, but how none of these films held anything back. As early as in 1938, lesbianism could be coded within the French melodrama “Prison Without Bars” and stir God-knows-how-many-emotions to misunderstood audiences alike. Ultimately not everyone’s going to agree that cheap, exploitation flicks packed with drugs, violence and nudity are as transgressive as I state here, and that is fine. As long as the world continues to make me mad, though, and feminist cinema doesn’t dare be as provocative as it could be, I’ll unceasingly revisit and indulge in the pleasures of the most epic genre to me: women-in-prison films.
Words: Nicole Stunwyck
