She's a Rebel

[kiki_eng]

cosmic_llin is taking suggestions for vids about revolution, and is especially interested in less known or non-Western stories.

I went looking through my bookmarks, and 12/14 of the vids I came up with on my first run-through featured women. Since my fannish roots are actually m/m slash I feel this is a pretty significant percentage. I didn't really notice, actually, what a large number of them were about women, but I watched a chunk of them in quick succession and one of them is a baseball vid I recced earlier this month by trelkez - it's called Revolution and is about a women's baseball team, on the surface at least.

One Girl Revolution by arefadedaway and She's a Rebel by kaydeefalls are multifandom vids. [thingswithwings wrote some interesting meta, ladies (en masse) are awesome, about that particular genre in 2011.] ...and then there's kuwdora's SG-1 vid about Vala Mal Doran vid, Just a Girl.

SG-1, so, evil empire: check ...and Vala's generally a shit-disturber, so it made the list of vids to check out, and then I watched it. The No Doubt lyrics are pretty intense: "this world is forcing me to hold your hand, because I'm just a girl, little ol' me, well don't let me out of your sight" and "don't let me have any rights, oh, I've had it up to here." The vid ends with a shot of Vala about to burn at the stake, a shot of her in a kitchen, followed by a clip of her finishing up a fight and punching a man's lights out. (It reminds me of kuwdora's Hook Shot, which is a multifandom vid with a lot of punching, and ends with a girl shooting the camera out.)

Watching all of those female-centric vids about revolution have made me wonder. Is the act of being female an act of revolution? Does existing, as a woman, mean that whatever you do, you're going to occupy space that someone thinks isn't yours? Do we have a vidding canon that supports something along those lines?

There's a lot of speculative fiction on the fandom list for those 14 vids, but I'm becoming increasingly convinced that reality is by far the scariest source material out there, because, look, there's a reason we have all these vids about women fighting oppressive regimes.

Comments

[cosmic_llin]

This is so interesting, and such a good point! And yes, something that comes up so much in vidding - I think because vidding is such a good way to upend and reframe narratives, so it's a great way to bring women's stories forward.

[kiki_eng]

something that comes up so much in vidding
Sorry, what comes up?