Kathryn Bigelow: 'Transvestite of Directors'

Kathryn Bigelow may be a female director, Martha P. Nochimson writes, but her success comes from “masquerading as the baddest boy on the block.” Yup, the Hurt Locker auteur is not the “Queen of Directors,” as Quentin Tarantino described her, but the “Transvestite of Directors.” All “to win the respect of an industry still so hobbled by gender-specific tunnel vision that it has trouble admiring anything but filmmaking soaked in a reduced notion of masculinity.”

Of course, the real problem for Nochimson is the film, which obviously celebrates a military hero more macho than even John Wayne. And then, Nochimson writes on Salon, people have the wacky idea that the flick “strikes a blow for peace.” What? Bigelow’s gender-bending has ingratiated her with a “Hollywood machine” that “doggedly preserves the hierarchy of men above women, and the military landscape over the domestic landscape.” There’s no room for Nora Ephron or Nancy Meyers there, though there should be. “No cheers for Miss Kathy for breaking the glass ceiling by fabricating my worst cinematic nightmare.” (More Kathryn Bigelow stories.)