Town Bloody Hall

Town Bloody Hall is a 1979 documentary film of a panel debate between feminist advocates and activist Norman Mailer. Filmed on April 30, 1971, in The Town Hall in New York City. Town Bloody Hall features a panel of feminist advocates for the women's liberation movement and Norman Mailer, author of The Prisoner of Sex (1971). Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker produced the film, which stars Jacqueline Ceballos, Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston, Diana Trilling, and Norman Mailer. The footage of the panel was recorded and released as a documentary in 1979. Produced by Shirley Broughton, the event was originally filmed by Pennebaker. The footage was then filed and rendered unusable. Hegedus met Pennebaker a few years later, and the two edited the final version of the film for its release in 1979. Pennebaker described his filming style as one that exists without labels, in order to let the viewer come to a conclusion about the material, which inspired the nature of the Town Bloody Hall documentary. The recording of the debate was intended to ensure the unbiased documentation, allowing it to become a concrete moment in feminist history.

Summary

The film begins making a statement on the issues of class and accessibility within women's liberation, with hecklers outside the building shouting that Germaine Greer "betrays the poor". Inside the theatre, Norman Mailer begins the panel discussion, and introduces his own work "The Prisoner of Sex" in Harper's magazine. He says that the women's liberation movement is against his work which was advertised as "the piece that's gonna have women's lib, ah, picketing the newsstands" yet believes the women's liberation movement is "the most important single intellectual event of the last few years". Jacqueline Caballos, the president of the New York Chapter of the National Organization for Women, believes that Norman Mailer represents the establishment, and therefore her participation has allowed her to work within the system. She admits to her privilege as a middle-class woman and mentions the perception of the National Organization for Women as "square". She then clarifies that the main agenda of the organization is solely women's liberation, and they do not devote time to fighting for the peace movement, civil rights movement, or the changing environment. The organization believes that women's liberation is the center of everything, and only upon that will it be focused. The next speaker featured is Germaine Greer, an Australian feminist writer. She represents women writers in a traditionally male-dominated field, specifically in reference to her juxtaposition with the powerful and privileged Mailer in comparison to herself. She believes men are allowed to be vulnerable to create, but women are not given the same luxury. She believes the feminist revolution will change the way art is distinguished by the shift from inaccessibility and rarity, to the public itself. The town hall includes the debate between the participants, mainly between Trilling and Greer, and Mailer and Greer. Mailer focuses on the role of men, noting that these women fail to address the fact that life is also difficult for men. He also states that there is no one way to approach activism, and that movements need to be taken in a way that addresses norms in order to move against them. Mailer then changes the subject to speak about the academic and historical work of women's oppression to which Greer responds that the work is lengthy and complicated, and will take many years to establish. Mailer questions how women can make assumptions about their oppression without having historical work to back it up. Greer notes that patriarchy has an effect on everyone, including men. Other feminist icons and personalities are featured in the film during the question period, such as Betty Friedan, criticizing Mailer's moderating skills, Susan Sontag, who criticizes Mailer's gendered language, Cynthia Ozick, who criticizes Mailer's chauvinism, and Anatole Broyard, who asks about post-liberation narratives.

Participants

Jacqueline Ceballos

Jacqueline Ceballos focuses primarily on second wave feminism, without any intersectional approach. Women's liberation is the source of all inequalities, and therefore looking at the ways these inequalities interact is an afterthought.

Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer attempts to deconstruct gender roles such as womanhood and femininity. Greer believes that women should strive to free womanhood, not to attempt to become equal to men. It has been critiqued however that Germaine Greer does not advocate for women who do not "rise to her own notion of womanhood". She believes women should have children and tends towards non-interventionism, even when intervention has been asked for by the oppressed. However, she has also been respected as someone who can pitch liberal feminism to traditionally conservative middle classes while still having them agree to it.

The Town Hall Affair

The Town Hall Affair by The Wooster Group is a performance based on Town Bloody Hall. The production performed at the Performing Garage in New York City, in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and it appeared as an Australian exclusive at the Sydney Festival in 2018. Directed by Elizabeth LeCompte, it features Ari Fliakos, Greg Mehrten, Erin Mullin, Scott Shepard and Maura Tierney. The Village Voice boasts about how it "captures the debate's strange theatricality and allows it to throw the sexual politics of our own moment into stark relief".

External links

• Town Bloody Hall at IMDb
• "Town Bloody Hall: On the High Seas", essay by Melissa Anderson, August 18, 2020, at The Criterion Collection