{"id":21464,"date":"2020-12-28T07:14:12","date_gmt":"2020-12-28T15:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=blog&p=21464"},"modified":"2023-09-29T11:07:10","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T18:07:10","slug":"battling-a-male-dominated-world-for-recognition-and-a-raise","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/battling-a-male-dominated-world-for-recognition-and-a-raise\/","title":{"rendered":"Battling a Male-Dominated World for Recognition and a Raise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Filmmaker Yu Gu was born in Chongqing, China, raised in Vancouver, Canada, and found her way to the University of Southern California film program. Her films, like the feature documentary that she co-directed Who is Arthur Chu?<\/em>, which won two festival grand jury awards and was broadcast on WORLD Channel in 2018, explore intersections between different cultural worlds and people on the margins. Her documentary A Woman\u2019s Work: The NFL\u2019s Cheerleader Problem<\/em><\/a> sheds light on women at the margins and on the sidelines, exploring the continued fight to end the gender pay gap prevalent throughout the National Football League. Through the stories of two women in particular the film paints a vivid picture of gender inequality at the heart of America\u2019s favorite pastime.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

“The central question raised by A Woman’s Work,” <\/em>wrote Nick Schager in Variety<\/em>, “is articulated, simply, by [cheerleader Maria] Pinzone: ‘Why would a billion-dollar industry do this?’ The callous answer, per Yu’s persuasive film: because it can.”<\/p>\n

Yu spoke to us about how she bonded with the women featured in the film, how they are doing this year given the challenges of trying to work through the pandemic, and how she first came to view American sports as an “outsider.”<\/p>\n

How did you get the woman at the center of your film to trust you? Since this story is so intimate and at times painful for them.<\/b><\/p>\n

I met Lacy, Maria and the other women in the film at a time when they were marginalized by the only community they\u2019d known. As an Asian American woman, I\u2019ve always felt like an outsider, so that mode of existence was very familiar to me. This created a kind of common humanity between us, but deepening that trust would take much more time. I first started filming with Maria in the spring of 2015. A year later, her mom Carol was experiencing a recurrence of breast cancer that would eventually take her life a month before Maria\u2019s wedding.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t quite know how to handle the filmmaker-participant relationship at that moment. I knew Maria was devastated, they were very close and often the only source of support for one another. On the one hand, there was a pressure to document this loss, to allow viewers a closer bond, but I also felt as a human being, I needed to give her privacy and space to grieve. After talking it over with Elizabeth, I asked Maria if I could film her wedding. Joan Churchill said something about filming verit\u00e9 as a \u201cfriend in the room\u201d and that\u2019s how I approached it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The emotional and physical labor of planning and executing a wedding, of grappling with loss while needing to be present, that became the creative lens around this part of her journey. I think that difficult experience became something we shared and it was a turning point in our relationship.<\/span><\/p>\n

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in making <\/b>A Woman’s Work<\/i><\/b>?<\/b><\/p>\n

One of the biggest obstacles we had to navigate was something powerful yet intangible\u2014people\u2019s preconceptions and biases toward our film participants and the story. Our approach of making a film at the intersection of football, labor rights and gender from the perspective of former cheerleaders, was difficult for the industry to grasp.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At one pitch session, a potential industry partner asked us point-blank, why does it matter if these women are not paid when they can just go pose for Sports Illustrated or Playboy? Some felt it was too commercial by the fact that the main participants were sexy, glamorous cheerleaders, some felt like we should be focusing on the cheerleaders\u2019 attorneys instead who were doing the \u201creal\u201d work. <\/span><\/p>\n

In 2014 when we started this film, former LA Clippers\u2019 owner Donald Sterling\u2019s racist remarks had just been revealed and yet many people still felt that sports and social issues or social justice should not mix\u2013that it should be a pure consumerist space of no-strings-attached escapism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We were confronted with dismissive attitudes, victim-blaming, many people questioned if my producing partner Elizabeth and I – both Asian American women – had the skills to \u201ctackle\u201d this story. Did we know <\/span>anything<\/span><\/i> about football? Between my frustration and anger, I secretly cherished making people uncomfortable and triggering their fear response. Eventually, we made it part of the work, to build connections between seemingly disparate people, ideas, and histories.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We dove into research on women and the labor movement, the various waves of feminism in the United States, the structures of the NFL, and the genesis of professional cheerleading. My editor Victoria Chalk and I talked extensively about placing the stories of these women within a larger context and a lineage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Too often people dismiss abusive and dehumanizing behavior against women by minimizing it to one space, oh that\u2019s just locker room talk. We wanted to deny people\u2019s ability to do that by showing that we\u2019re all complicit. With the help of our archival researchers, we amassed a large collection of visual materials which included home videos from our film participants as young dancers, historical footage of women\u2019s movements, and footage generated by the massive NFL media empire.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The challenge was to uncover and repurpose the mechanics of harmful dominant narratives, and to weave that with the intimate perspectives of our main characters. In the early days, we pitched the film as a David and Goliath battle. But as we continued to edit, we realized this wasn\u2019t about one individual versus one villain, it was about taking on a system of institutionalized misogyny.<\/span><\/p>\n

What would you have liked to include in your film that didn\u2019t make the cut?<\/b><\/p>\n

We followed a third character, Krystal Cruz, who cheered for the New York Jets and filed a lawsuit for wage theft right after Lacy. Krystal brought a passion for dance as a form of artistic expression. Unfortunately, we couldn\u2019t include her full story in the film.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We also filmed with Alyssa Ursin, Maria\u2019s co-plaintiff in the [Buffalo] Jills case, but wasn\u2019t able to include as much as we\u2019d hoped. There were so many women who bravely spoke up and all of their stories are part of this movement for change, but we could only do so much in a limited amount of screen time. In the end, we structured the film around two main characters, one woman who was the first and another who continued the work. The idea was to show this one segment of a relay effort, that there were others before them and others who would take up the mantle.<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you have a scene in your film that is especially a favorite or made the most impact on you?<\/b><\/p>\n

“Too often people dismiss abusive and dehumanizing behavior against women by minimizing it to one space, oh that\u2019s just locker room talk.”<\/pullquote>One of my favorite scenes is what my editor and I affectionately titled \u201cThe Look.” It starts with home video footage from Maria\u2019s childhood and slowly incorporates NFL-produced footage of cheerleaders as she recalls her earliest memories of meeting the Jills cheerleaders in her local mall. It\u2019s one of the dream-like scenes of the film and composer Allyson Newman did a great job with the score. You start by seeing this little girl, hamming it up for the camera, then you see her playing with friends and stuffing water balloons in the front of her bathing suit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe you\u2019ve filmed your daughter doing these same things. Then you\u2019re bombarded with sexy images of fully grown women dancing in sequins wielding dazzling pom poms. The scene ends with Maria reading misogynistic internet backlash against her and other women who\u2019ve filed lawsuits for wage theft.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When is it okay to objectify this girl? When does she change from human to object? When does the desire to embody a socially-promoted beauty standard get twisted into slut-shaming and a way to devalue women?<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you have any updates on the women featured in A Woman’s Work<\/em>? I’m sure our audience would love to know. <\/b>Including how they’re able to get by during this pandemic year without crowds and without many work opportunities?<\/b><\/p>\n

Lacy has been homeschooling her three kids and taking care of her grandma who needs help. She had to stop teaching dance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Maria is a tax accountant who has been able to keep working and she gave birth to a daughter last year. They both have not pursued trying out for other teams after they filed a lawsuit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In general, in this 2020 [NFL] season, most of the teams with cheerleaders have selected squads, some are now performing in the stadium again, but not on the sidelines. With so many outbreaks of COVID-19 among the players and staff, it\u2019s uncertain whether or not the cheerleaders are working in a safe environment, and they\u2019re treated differently by different teams so there\u2019s no consistency across the league.<\/span><\/p>\n

Your prior film <\/b>Who Is Arthur Chu<\/i><\/b> is a fascinating look at a different sort of celebrity using his platform to bring social change. What did you learn from your experience on that film that you brought to this one and how do you see those two films connecting to each other?<\/b><\/p>\n

In 2014, I began filming <\/span>A Woman\u2019s Work<\/span><\/i> a few months before co-directing \u201cWho Is Arthur Chu?\u201d but finished it first in 2017. I think my interest in both stories came out of the same fascination of people misbehaving, people at the margins trying to take on the mainstream. Both films also deal with hypermasculinity and misogyny but from opposite ends of a spectrum. Arthur Chu, a controversial Jeopardy! champion turned writer, penned an article \u201c<\/span>Your Princess is in Another Castle<\/span>\u201d where he uses his own life experience as a bitter male nerd angry at women to examine misogyny.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n