Pink-Slipped: What Happened to Women in the Silent Film Industries?

This intellectually rich and sometimes challenging treatise from Gaines, a feminist film scholar, casts new light on the history of women in early cinema. She examines an assertion commonly made by film scholars—that women enjoyed higher status in early Hollywood than in American filmmaking today—and seeks to complicate and contexualize it. To this end, she explores not only the careers of pioneers, such as directors Alice Guy-Blaché and Lois Weber, but also those of lower-level female film workers. Gaines critiques a narrow focus on how “top women” were phased out of creative filmmaking roles, observing that many women continued to find employment behind the camera, often in clerical jobs or in the editing room. She also delves into critical theory, such as the writings of Reinhart Koselleck, in order to unpack the expectations historians bring to their subjects. Gaines argues against readings of early female filmmaking as primarily a story of failure, defined in terms of subsequent male dominance in Hollywood. Observing “how unanswerable historical ‘what happened’ questions really are,” she prefers to see this past era as a cause for optimism and a source of inspiration to women today. Her work should not be missed by those interested in the intersection of critical theory, feminism, and film. (Feb.)