Caste, Origin, Patriarchy
How the far right wants the world to be
On the plane to LA today, I finally got a chance to see Ava DuVernay’s film Origin. Last year I read the book on which it’s based, Caste by Isabelle Wilkerson, and loved it so I knew a film version by DuVernay would be good.
It was. Go see it. I love this movie!
It’s a beautiful sort of merging (to my mind) of documentary and fiction, theory and story. I’m not going to try to explain her theory on class and race and caste (not that I could), you’ll have to read the book or watch the film. But what I came away with was a burning desire to write about the patriarchy and try to grasp it as a subset or version of caste. Caste is a system of putting people into heirarchical groupings to be subservient: the low caste is subservient to the upper caste, the system makes lower caste to be less-than-human. Wilkerson writes about the Holocaust, slavery and Indian society in terms of caste— it’s fascinating in how she makes the connnection between all three. DuVernay brings the story of her discovery to life and dramatizes Wilkerson’s theory. The film inspired me to think more on how society creates “roles” for women, often dehumanizes us, and how the patriarchy dictates dress and behavior to keep them (us) in place as subservient. It’s often subtle, but it’s there, it’s a system supported by the advertising industry and Hollywood’s continued depiction of women.
Ava DuVernay found the funding for Origin outside of Hollywood, raising $38 million to make the movie with private funding and grants. She did so in part because she wanted to make this movie this year, before the Presidential election. It’s a movie that speaks to what’s going on with the far right extreme GOP right now (and all the racism, classism and misogyny). The film opens with an emotional scene re-enacting the murder of Trevon Martin.
I may revisit this topic in a later newsletter.
Anyway, I did this drawing below right before boarding the plane today. I don’t think airline workers get enough attention!
Happy Sunday, see you tomorrow from LA!
Let’s use this to get every woman (and their allies) to the voting booth. Incredible how blatantly the push is to peel away hard fought for rights. Well guess what GOP?? NO!!!
I love your connection of patriarchy and caste. I don't recall anyone having made that connection so baldly and boldly before. It was a man (lord Acton) in a strongly patriarchal society (though during Queen Victoria's reign) who said that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. If anyone believes that patriarchy corrupts men, I'm with you. Does power corrupt women in matriarchal societies the way it corrupts men in patriarchal societies? I don't know, but I suspect it's not as much.