Fuses by Carolee Schneemann, 18 min, 16mm, 1965.
Carolee Schneemann’s 18 minute-long film Fuses is self-shot on 16mm film Bolex camera, and captures moments between herself and her then partner, James Tenney preforming various sexual acts – while their cat, Kitch, looks on.Â
 Schneemann made Fuses as a reaction to Stan Brakhage’s Window Water Baby Moving, which Schneemann and various film critics saw as being male-centric and domineering. Schneemann was interested in understanding if a woman’s depictions of her own sexual acts were different from pornography and classical art, both of which she frames as being fetishistic and objectifying women.  She says;Â
“…I wanted to see if the experience of what I saw would have any correspondence to what I felt– the intimacy of the lovemaking… And I wanted to put into that materiality of film the energies of the body, so that the film itself dissolves and recombines and is transparent and dense– as one feels during lovemak
Fuses by Carolee Schneemann, 18 min, 16mm, 1965.
Carolee Schneemann's 18 minute-long film Fuses is self-shot on 16mm film Bolex camera, and captures moments between herself and her then partner, James Tenney preforming various sexual acts – while their cat, Kitch, looks on.
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Schneemann made Fuses as a reaction to Stan Brakhage's Window Water Baby Moving, which Schneemann and various film critics saw as being male-centric and domineering. Schneemann was interested in understanding if a woman's depictions of her own sexual acts were different from pornography and classical art, both of which she frames as being fetishistic and objectifying women. She says;
"…I wanted to see if the experience of what I saw would have any correspondence to what I felt– the intimacy of the lovemaking… And I wanted to put into that materiality of film the energies of the body, so that the film itself dissolves and recombines and is transparent and dense– as one feels during lovemaking… It is different from any pornographic work that you've ever seen– that's why people are still looking at it! And there's no objectification or fetishization of the woman." –Carolee Schneemann
Schneemann's work is coming out of a period of time called Second-Wave Feminism, when there was a lot of discourse about the objectification of women in film, and the idea that women in film often fall prey to the "male gaze". These theories have a lot to do with ideas of scopophilia and voyeurism in cinema.
Schneemann is attempting through Fuses to turn this on it's head and take away the female object of "the gaze" and instead make herself an active documentarian. She's the one filming, editing and choosing; she's the one in control. Through doing this, she's saying that she doesn't have to gain power in servitude to the typical patriarchal structure; she can gain power another way.
Schneemann colored, scratched, and cut the actual film strip. She did this to call attention to the physical piece of film, which could also be thought of as the film's body. Then, when the film is played, the physical body of the film is brought to life, bursting with color and movement, just as the woman, when allowed to manifest herself as she would see fit, is full of excitement, power and tenderness.
"The notorious masterpiece…. a silent celebration in color of heterosexual love making. The film unifies erotic energies within a domestic environment through cutting, superimposition and layering of abstract impressions scratched into the celluloid itself… Fuses succeeds perhaps more than any other film in objectifying the sexual streamings of the body's mind." – The Guardian, London
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Feminism in film is still an issue that's readily discussed today. This past March, Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director. Ever. That event drew a lot of attention to these ideas and hopefully, a lot of useful discourse. Issues of identity in art are particularly important these days. If I say that I'm woman writing about a film about women and you have a problem with that, it's not a problem for you, it's a problem for us. For every speaker, there's someone not speaking. But, of course, difference is where meaning comes out of interactions. So there's hope for us yet.
Carolee Schneemann is also the artist who pulled a scroll out of her vagina during a performance piece. Just in case you were wondering. For more on feminsim in film.
