Suggested questions for classroom discussion?
1.1 How do the videos in the program use appropriation, detournement, and parody of dominant media forms, in both form and content, to deliver their message?
1.a What specific genres can you notice being appropriated or parodied in each of these works?
1.b How do these works simultaneously critique dominant cinematographic forms while also offering a critique of hegemonic social dynamics (e.g. gender roles, patriarchy, sexual norms, colonialization…)?
1.c For example, how might one say that Colonization: The Second Coming queers and decolonizes the science fiction genre?
1.d How does the aesthetics of each of these works (i.e. video) contribute to their critiques?
2. How have humour and laughter historically been tools of feminist resistance? What about today? Do you have any contemporary examples of feminist artists or activists using humour and play in their work?
3. In Big Girl Town and Second Coming how are the artists playing with the concepts of gaze and embodiment?
4. How Super and Domestic Bliss reflect on the ways in which patriarchy renders women (and their struggle) invisible? At the same time, how do they reflect on how patriarchy, and its related privileges, itself has made itself invisible through a process of normalization? How do lesbian identities operate within these dynamics?
5. In Gabey and Mike, what is the effect produced by mobilizing archival footage alongside re-creations? Can nostalgia be an effective feminist tool?
6. The videos were made by artists from Saskatchewan, Montreal, Winnipeg, Halifax, Quebec, and Toronto. Taken together, what do they tell us about feminism in Canada? What kinds of gaps or erasures do they contain? How might videos produced today look different or similar?