BORN IN FLAMES (Lizzie Borden, 1983)

In more ways than one, Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames (1983) may be viewed as a cinematic homage to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Both texts are set in a post-society, claiming to be a type of Utopia while nevertheless maintaining a patriarchal structure that oppresses women and other minorities. Of special importance, though, is the technique of “mock-umentary” that Borden employs, at once establishing a complexity of reading the text in the same way that Atwood’s “Historical Notes” does for The Handmaid’s Tale.

Throughout Born in Flames, we find ourselves as viewers listening to the voice-overs of two males, attempting to analyze the Women’s Army, speculating on its leaders, causes, plans, etc. It seems Borden in this sense is referencing the difficulty of composing a film in a feminine discourse, as Doane notes in Femmes Fatales: “Cinematic images of women have been so consistently oppressive and repressive that the very idea of a feminist filmmaking practice seems an impossibility” (165). Atwood’s “Historical Notes” looms over the text of Offred, and by its very existence de-centers that text and calls into question perspective. Only at the end do we realize that what we have just read has been restructured by men, thus limiting the possibility of it being a feminine discourse. With Borden, too, we see this—the constant references to the documentary going on in the background provide a filter in the way we view the movie.

But, perhaps, this is the most accurate approach for beginning to address a feminine discourse. Despite the focus of the movement in Born in Flames, we realize it is a peripheral for the government, one of many problems they’ll deal with in good time. What’s to say if a feminine film were ever made it wouldn’t eventually be “screened” in a way that re-establishes the patriarchy? Here we see Borden’s point. The feminine discourse is still marginal, and in representing it as so she makes no claim that it could easily replace or overtake the patriarchal discourse. Her film, like Atwood’s novel, calls into question what viewers/readers are capable of understanding. What would a film or book entirely in feminine discourse look like? Is the former question even possible? By adding the layer of a patriarchal discourse overshadowing and in any many ways governing the structure of the film, Borden comes close to representing feminine discourse by supplying its absence, suggesting that it is “not this” but something beyond.

Because, ultimately, Borden seems to be referencing another writer as much as Atwood—Audre Lorde, famous black, lesbian, political, etc. and such, poet. Recalling Lorde’s famous quote that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” it appears that Borden is both agreeing and disagreeing, but taking up the subject of Lorde directly. Lorde, in many ways, could almost be a fill-in for Zella (Floyrnce Kennedy). And although the Women’s Army builds on Zella as a foundation, they also build on the foundation of the patriarchy by using guns and calling themselves an “army,” a move that is actually questioned in the movie. And so Borden achieves a strange balance—between using “new tools” such as music and rhyme, and old tools, such as weapons. This same balance is apparent in her direction of the film, as she cuts between a representation of the feminine somewhat outside of the erotic structure and the same representation ultimately bound by patriarchal discourse.

One of Lizzie Borden’s techniques in Born in Flames is to juxtapose and deconstruct the patriarchal discourse on women with a feminist discourse that negates it. While the government agents use video clips and women’s photos to alter their lives, feminist progressive groups show that these visual texts offer a limited and often erroneous perspective. Borden’s two distinctions, patriarchal visual texts (photos, news reports) versus feminist and lesbian activity, reinforce André Bazin’s notions of frame and mask in painting and cinema. Bazin argues that the frame delineates the space between the painting and reality and offers a contemplative area that sends viewers toward the interior of the painting. Conversely, the outer edges of the screen function as a mask “that shows only a portion of reality” (What Is Cinema? 166); what the screen shows us is prolonged outwards “indefinitely into the universe” (Bazin 166). The photos of women represent a static and limited factuality framed by a patriarchal reality whereas their activity on the screen reveals a more encompassing story.

Patriarchal discourse and framed photos first introduce Adelaide Norris, the leader of the Women’s Army. Since Norris became a threat to the government, the agents gain information on her family, education, and sexual orientation to justify their assumptions about her dangerous status. Their superficial conclusions are based on the limited and minimal information the photos with Norris offer. Adelaide’s poor living conditions, her athletic figure, and lesbianism lead the agents to classify her as a terrorist and vigilante. Yet her numerous discussions with various women and her empathy with their problems demonstrate her open-mindedness and peaceful nature. The same inflammatory discourse surrounds Zella, Adelaide’s friend and mentor. After they show a series of photographs of Zella, the agents suggest that “the silly bitch” might use the women for her own interests; again, they misunderstand and distort the photos. Not only does Zella encourage Adelaide’s projects continuously, but she also risks her own life to deliver her TV announcement that illuminates Norris’ death. Furthermore, patriarchy limits and trivializes female desire and eroticism. A shot in black and white that shows Norris kissing her lesbian partner combines elements of what Bazin would call painting and cinema. The women’s passionate moment on the screen is frozen and transformed into a static exhibit the agents use to suggest that Norris has become a real problem. Once more, the frames of this photo channel the message of this visual text toward a patriarchal discourse. Interestingly, the erotic moment freezes when a man’s voice starts to comment on Norris.

The news reports on the women’s activities function as paintings with frames that suggest a patriarchal reality. Constrained by the frame and format of TV news, the male reporters manipulate the information about Women’s Army. When a patronizing anchorman relates the bicycle incident, he condemns and ridicules the women on bicycles who attacked men. The Women’s Army deconstruct this misconstrued report and show in detail how they saved a woman who was attacked by men. Copying the patriarchal format, the women also frame themselves to transmit feminist messages on national television. When they realize that the interruptions of the patriarchal discourse do not solve their problems, the women—who all united their interests under a common goal—silence the voice of patriarchy by blowing up the antennas.

The numerous strands of narrative, character, media (voiceover, video, black and white video, etc.) and plot interweave and create spiraling patterns reminiscent of a Bach fugue. In this process of accretion, as opposed to straightforward or linear representation, Borden’s film Born in Flames bears a strong structural resemblance to the film Scorpio Rising. These two filmmakers and their films are at once the most likely and unlikely of bedfellows. Granted, they both desire to disrupt straight and linear story telling in order to mimic a disruption of the values of straight patriarchal society, yet their styles of interweaving narrative strands and accretion of action and plot are diametrically opposed. Consider how Borden’s film begins at a handful of times in the opening minutes: each “beginning” begins with media (voiceover news announcer, archival “news” footage of events of people being discussed by voiceover). Next a series of cuts create a fading montage from archived footage of the topic and related images or events, to the subject herself in her immediate environment or narrative circumstances. This spiraling effect thus serially takes as a starting point a perspective outside the text (“objective reporting” for instance) and then through an arcing series of cuts arrives at a point inside the story, only to repeat itself, starting over with the voice or image from outside the text. The outsider perspective is sometimes the voice of a newsperson, at other times it is the characters of the two FBI agents; often the two are intercut, creating an ideal government law enforcement / news media persona.

The opening pattern in Born in Flames is both very similar to and very at odds with the opening pattern in Scorpio Rising. While in Anger’s film there’s a strong sense of a series of beginnings, or entry points, into the narrative which are embodied by the series of different gang members all “getting ready,” to go out, primping themselves and their bikes to a medley of bubble gum pop songs, there is no arc in the trajectory of each of these men. Or, rather, the arc in the trajectory of the men only comes when a sufficient number of men have been introduced in this fashion so as to constitute a group. Whereas each member of narrative cluster in Borden’s film constitutes one strand, or melodic line, to follow up on the fugue metaphor, and hence the effect of several overlapping, alternately dominant lines, in Anger’s film there is but one single arcing, spiraling line to follow to the culmination of the accrued narrative, this single gesture composed of many individual threads, or voices.

[Ed. note: Regarding the radical narrative difference of Born In Flames, it is important to note that Borden's work is one of very few narrative films that lacks a distinct and relaitively singular protagonist, or set of protagonist(s). Another interesting example of a "collectivized protagonist" is Fritz Lang's M, yet this parallel example only points up the even more extreme difference of Borden's own narrative; whereas M at least has a distnict and singular antagonist, Born In Flames has neither a discrete protagonist nor a discrete antagonist—simultaneously "collectivizing" both of these rigid narrative structures. —HM]

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