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A review by mcyewfly
Backwards and in Heels: The Past, Present and Future of Women Working in Film by Alicia Malone
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
4.0
You know those pop-feminism books that you get as a gift from an acquaintance/coworker because they know you’re feminist, but not much else about you? And the book’s contents start and stop at the Greatest Hits like Patriarchy 101? This book is that. How fitting—this time last year I read Burnout, a similar experience. It all rhymes.
Also, full disclosure: I was/still am a massive YouTuber baby. I was in the trenches, watching Screen Junkies and Collider and all of their programming religiously since the Honest Trailers for Titanic. I’ve only stopped since everyone’s gone solo or found work elsewhere. Reading Malone’s book just made me feel so warm and proud in a weird-parasocial way; she made it, etc.
The book’s first section does a pretty great job at telling the story of women in Hollywood. The writing style is a bit off in. It’s not directly reporting on events like a journalist, and it’s not really analyzing or developing a central argument, either. It’s just summarizing a collection of primary sources with the occasional quip or aside. It’s one of those situations where I would never have read the Wikipedia articles for all of these people, but I essentially just did that. The book is a net-good because it got me to care more about the individual careers of women in Hollywood and some of the grittier details; yet, if I already knew these names, I don’t think this book earned its existence. There’s not a lot of meat on the bone because it’s 100 years of women, and they each get 2-4 pages.
There’s an interesting gamble this book takes when it starts including present day women as history makers, as the public (and my own personal) perception of people like Ava DuVernay or Patty Jenkins have definitely shifted since 2017. Of course, everyone she’s included are complicated and flawed people, and Malone doesn’t really put anyone up on an impossible pedestal. It was just fascinating to read the present section as a part of the Past section in just 7 years. It’s also really, really funny that she included J.J. Abrams and Paul Feig in their own token-section due to their “exceptional, honorary-woman ally” status.
It definitely belongs on any film lover’s shelf, and her bibliography looks like an awesome next step for what to read.
Also, full disclosure: I was/still am a massive YouTuber baby. I was in the trenches, watching Screen Junkies and Collider and all of their programming religiously since the Honest Trailers for Titanic. I’ve only stopped since everyone’s gone solo or found work elsewhere. Reading Malone’s book just made me feel so warm and proud in a weird-parasocial way; she made it, etc.
The book’s first section does a pretty great job at telling the story of women in Hollywood. The writing style is a bit off in. It’s not directly reporting on events like a journalist, and it’s not really analyzing or developing a central argument, either. It’s just summarizing a collection of primary sources with the occasional quip or aside. It’s one of those situations where I would never have read the Wikipedia articles for all of these people, but I essentially just did that. The book is a net-good because it got me to care more about the individual careers of women in Hollywood and some of the grittier details; yet, if I already knew these names, I don’t think this book earned its existence. There’s not a lot of meat on the bone because it’s 100 years of women, and they each get 2-4 pages.
There’s an interesting gamble this book takes when it starts including present day women as history makers, as the public (and my own personal) perception of people like Ava DuVernay or Patty Jenkins have definitely shifted since 2017. Of course, everyone she’s included are complicated and flawed people, and Malone doesn’t really put anyone up on an impossible pedestal. It was just fascinating to read the present section as a part of the Past section in just 7 years. It’s also really, really funny that she included J.J. Abrams and Paul Feig in their own token-section due to their “exceptional, honorary-woman ally” status.
It definitely belongs on any film lover’s shelf, and her bibliography looks like an awesome next step for what to read.