Spoon-feeding phoney feminism to the establishment during an extremely cynical period of neolib feminism will, of course, win you an Oscar. Fennell will be heralded a “first” and the Academy will pat itself on the back and say “job done”.

Stuck in a feedback loop where the industry demands films with “relevant messages” and a “politics” that is not a politics at all but a set of soulless but sellable floating signifiers.

The filmmakers able to answer this rallying cry for timely “messaging” are more like marketing people who have no interest in engaging in research or with history, including the rich and vast history of non-didactic but engaged feminist films

This is what happens when we brand our women filmmakers – "old" & new – & turn them into memes & t-shirts; when we stop engaging critically & praise any woman filmmaker who gets funding; when we flatten a rich history & repurpose it for our contemporary neolib feminist purposes

Chantal Akerman in 2011: «L'idolâtrie, c'est devenu de l'idolâtrie, le cinéma…» / "Idolatrous, the cinema has become idolatrous". Quick translation of another particularly pertinent quote: "I thought to myself, this is what cinema is, and the symbolism it provokes.

I thought to myself once again, cinema is dangerous.
Perhaps now more than ever.
In this binary world where it’s always either this or that.
I’d so like it to be, this and that and that."
—Chantal Akerman, writing in 2004.
Here's to more of "this *and* that, *and* that".