Anti-biopics: Women’s life stories in film and art
I watch a lot of film. That’s what I do. If you made a biopic about me, it would be me, on my sofa, taking notes, squinting, pausing briefly to engage with the cat and at times even my family. I’m a film critic and academic, so the biopic is necessarily framed in my mind as a cinematic phenomenon. The emphasis on genre and gender politics (particularly representations of sexual violence) has largely directed my attention to the way women’s lives are represented on screen, particularly of late through the lens of Tarana Burke’s recently reinvigorated #MeToo movement that went viral after the allegations against now‑convicted sex criminal Harvey Weinstein went public in October 2017.