Jamie Babbit

In Maggie Humm's Author/Auteur piece, she expresses how much being a female auteur of their own work is significant to vocalizing the unheard thoughts of women to their community and its supporters. Jamie Babbit is a director, a writer, a producer, a radical feminist, an activist, a lesbian... Jamie Babbit is also very much an auteur. Babbit has directed several films, including short films and also has written scripts for TV shows such as The L Word, Gilmore Girls and Nip/Tuck. All of the works that she auteurs has the presence of a female, either an identified lesbian or one with an unidentified sexuality, in the foreground.

Gynocentrism, as demonstrated in Humm's piece as well, is a system used to try make feminist culture more prevalent; to bring out the female voice as the primary voice in a work of out to relate to the female on-lookers. Babbit's distinctly tries to bring out two voices: the female voice and the lesbian voice. She works with a film production company called POWER UP! which tries to 'challenge the perception' of women and the LGBTQ community through film and her dedication to the organization can easily be seen in her works, which commonly have a female lead, usually a defined lesbian or one who has an ambiguous sexuality, silenced or filed into a gender role and the movie visualizes how the lead woman finds her voice.

'But I'm A Cheerleader', Babbit's perhaps most popular and first major film, depicts a girl who is pressured into the social role of being a cheerleader and gets silenced by her own family and friends after suspicions are raised about her sexuality, thus she is sent to a camp that would not only silence her, but silence her true desires. In the end, her inner-voice strengthens rebelling against the camp and vocalizing, even illustrating, her desires more. Another film of hers 'Itty Bitty Titty Committee', which was produced through POWER UP!, is about a female who doesn't express her sexuality because of her traditional upbringing and is taken under the wing by a feminist friend who not only brings her a new culture to identify with, but brings out the desires that laid inside of her.

Babbit has expressed that the reason her films center around lesbianism and feminism is because she wants to represent a community that she believes is unheard yet scrutinized, which is also her reasoning in partnering up with POWER UP! Her work is mostly humourous because she feels that not only does it create an accessibility, but that it can show the humanity and progression of a community when they can depict themselves in a comical fashion. Her films generally appeal to younger audiences, as older audiences tend to be more offended at her works, in which she believes because she's poking fun at issues that were more taboo in older times and she finds the younger appeal more favourable, because the younger audiences will soon be the prevalent voices and can bring the issues more attention, so she now tries to specifically target the younger demographic with her films.

Not only does Babbit put her touch on the scripts, but she likes to create awareness through her soundtracks. Soundtracks to her movie have included bands like Dressy Bessy, Le Tigre and Cat Power, all musical projects with a strong female voice heard in the audio and lyrics. To get the attention of the fans of these artists is significant, because the awareness is spoken in the lyrics and the music and with a visualization like a film, it's likely to create a response, which is a tactic of an auteur.

Babbit is an auteur representing two communities, the feminist community and the LGBTQ community. Her works always feature a powerful female character who is facing sexual ambiguity or androgyny and their resistance to social norms and gender roles. Being an auteur is about trying to get your message into all shots of a frame, all dialogue of a scene, and the output of an audio speaker, which is something Babbit intentionally seeks out to do, by spotlighting female characters in her films or soundtracking her works with feminist bands, she's certainly created a voice.



http://www.afterellen.com/archive/ellen/People/interviews/62004/jamiebabbit.html (Interview with Jamie Babbit)
http://www.afterellen.com/movies/2007/5/ittybitty (Movie review of Itty Bitty Titty Committee)
http://www.powerupfilms.org/ (Film organization for Women and the LGBT community)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Babbit (Naturally...)