A new batch of films explore the impor­tance of whis­per net­works in pro­tect­ing women

Major awards sea­son movies often can’t inten­tion­al­ly react to the moment in which they end up releas­ing – their con­cep­tion and pro­duc­tion phas­es are sim­ply much too long – but they can find an unex­pect­ed res­o­nance regard­less. At the 2022 Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val, three major awards sea­son hope­fuls and a niche doc­u­men­tary – Phyl­lis Nagy’s Call Jane, Sarah Polley’s Women Talk­ing, Maria Schraeder’s She Said, and Vio­let Du Feng’s Hid­den Let­ters respec­tive­ly – all pro­vid­ed com­pli­men­ta­ry exam­i­na­tions on the con­cept of ​“whis­per net­works;” an infor­mal net­work of pri­vate infor­ma­tion exchanged between women in secre­tive cir­cles for their own protection.

Whilst She Said, Women Talk­ing and Hid­den Let­ters have whis­per net­works relat­ing to abusers, Nagy’s Call Jane cen­tres on the one which helped prop­a­gate a safe under­ground abor­tion net­work in the 1970s. Joy (Eliz­a­beth Banks) is a tra­di­tion­al cen­trist Amer­i­can house­wife who, due to life-threat­en­ing com­pli­ca­tions with her lat­est preg­nan­cy that leave her with no oth­er legal places to turn, falls into the Chica­go Jane col­lec­tive, ini­tial­ly to get her own abor­tion but soon after as a key mem­ber of the team help­ing to bol­ster the organ­i­sa­tion­al side of the group. In doing so, she finds a sense of pur­pose long since for­got­ten thanks to the era’s forced domesticity.

Joy is intro­duced to the group after spot­ting a non-descript fly­er with a tele­phone num­ber attached to a lamp post out­side of a much sketch­i­er back-alley abor­tion site. The fly­er has no spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion regard­ing who ​“Jane” is or what she pro­vides, but with lan­guage cod­ed enough for preg­nant women to recog­nise what the ser­vice is offer­ing. It’s one run by women – even the abor­tions are per­formed by women, in a sort of pro­to-matri­archy, albeit one which active­ly strug­gles at racial and finan­cial inclusivity.

In the process, the Jane net­work also helps to des­tig­ma­tise abor­tion in the minds of those women who require the surgery, pro­vid­ing an edu­ca­tion that the patri­archy of Amer­i­ca of the time refused to. Call Jane fre­quent­ly men­tions the risk that all those involved with this ring are tak­ing and the neces­si­ty of the indis­cre­tion, although Nagy’s film only dra­ma­tizes it for one scene where a detec­tive shows up Joy’s door inquir­ing about the Jane net­work. It turns out he’s ask­ing with plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty for help get­ting his part­ner an abortion.

By con­trast, Polley’s Women Talk­ing has an ever-present dead­line loom­ing over­head. In an iso­lat­ed Men­non­ite com­mune, eight women gath­er in a barn to dis­cuss the rev­e­la­tion that they’ve been drugged and raped for years by the men in their com­mu­ni­ty, attempt­ing to decide their best course of action before the men return in two days’ time. What starts as a cathar­tic release in the acknowl­edg­ment of a shared expe­ri­ence – the men had insist­ed that demons and dev­ils were respon­si­ble – quick­ly gives way to philo­soph­i­cal dis­agree­ments over what the best course of action to take may be, and the indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in how each woman process­es this trau­ma.
Whilst these con­ver­sa­tions between the women get heat­ed, they nev­er become active­ly unciv­il, and the dif­fer­ences of opin­ion help rein­force the impor­tant mes­sage that trau­ma is not a monolith.

Each woman has dif­fer­ing ideas on whether to for­give their abusers, whether to enact right­eous vengeance, whether to run or whether to fight, all informed by their indi­vid­ual beliefs and philo­soph­i­cal world­views. But the abil­i­ty to talk with each oth­er phys­i­cal­ly, to receive reas­sur­ance that their pain is valid, in a safe space free from the imme­di­ate risk of retal­i­a­tion (so long as a course of action is decid­ed before the men return) nonethe­less bonds them. Being able to vent and be heard rather than hav­ing to bot­tle up or process alone (par­tic­u­lar­ly since their colony for­bids them from learn­ing to read or write) is a new expe­ri­ence for the women.

Du Feng’s doc­u­men­tary Hid­den Let­ters shines a light on the long his­to­ry of such a prac­tice. Revolv­ing around the ancient secre­tive Chi­nese lan­guage of Nushu, cre­at­ed to cir­cum­vent the fact that the women of Ancient Chi­na were for­bid­den to read or write, they would com­mune with each oth­er in this long-for­got­ten dialect as a way to express the pain of abu­sive con­stric­tive con­trol they went through every sin­gle day. It’s a sad, lyri­cal lan­guage which is still capa­ble of con­nect­ing with Chi­nese women to this day; the documentary’s sub­jects Hu Xin, a muse­um guide and ambas­sador for Nushu, and Simu, a musi­cian and artist, are each drawn to its cathar­tic expres­sion of deep pain and dis­sat­is­fac­tion as they chafe against their own tra­di­tion­al patri­ar­chal restrictions.

How­ev­er, both women’s efforts to raise aware­ness of the lan­guage in Chi­nese cul­ture have also seen – against their wish­es – this spe­cif­ic and emo­tion­al­ly painful whis­per net­work be grad­u­al­ly per­vert­ed and sold out by that patri­archy. Du Feng’s film fea­tures infu­ri­at­ing scenes of men try­ing to tell women draw­ing the script that it should look pret­ty, the Min­istry of Cul­ture co-opt­ing its aes­thet­ics to sell a faux-pro­gres­sive nar­ra­tive of Chi­nese soci­ety, and even util­is­ing this unique fem­i­nine lan­guage to hawk KFC and pota­toes in spite of the women in such meet­ings’ vehe­ment objec­tions. A safe, unique­ly female form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion which, once exposed to the very men it was sup­posed to hide from, is sub­ject­ed to cul­tur­al van­dal­ism, its mean­ing and rad­i­cal­ism grad­u­al­ly being chipped away.

If Hid­den Let­ters depicts the risks in a whis­per net­work going over­ground, where the lessons and wis­dom they can pro­vide are ignored or bas­tardised by the patri­ar­chal pow­ers that be, Schraeder’s She Said demon­strates why some­times that risk has to be tak­en. A drama­ti­za­tion of The New York Times’ inves­ti­ga­tion into Har­vey Weinstein’s his­to­ry of sex­u­al abuse, head­ed up by jour­nal­ists Jodi Kan­tor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mul­li­gan), the film demon­strates in frus­trat­ing and scary detail just how dom­i­nat­ing the cul­ture of fear that Weinstein’s pow­er cul­ti­vat­ed over his vic­tims. Kan­tor and Twohey have lit­tle trou­ble find­ing women who were abused by Wein­stein – sev­er­al of them even men­tion hav­ing infor­mal­ly passed or been passed down advice and warn­ings regard­ing work­ing with Wein­stein in hopes that they might pro­tect oth­ers from his abuse. But get­ting them to go on the record proves sig­nif­i­cant­ly tougher, near­ly-impos­si­ble at times, due to his then dom­i­neer­ing (and often indus­try-sup­port­ed) con­trol and very real action­able threats of legal ruin.

For all these under­ground attempts to pro­tect oth­er women, Weinstein’s destruc­tion of so many lives con­tin­ued unabat­ed. There is a lim­it to the extent that the vic­tims’ efforts of self-edu­ca­tion and warn­ings could effect change or help oth­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly in an indus­try so inces­tu­ous­ly linked that one wrong word from Wein­stein could end their careers in addi­tion to that trau­ma. In sit­u­a­tions such as these, She Said argues, it’s impor­tant for those in posi­tions of pow­er to aid these women by believ­ing their sto­ries and pro­tect­ing them when they choose to speak up on a pub­lic stage.

Once they do and that pro­tec­tion is in place, as hap­pens with Ash­ley Judd and Lau­ra Mad­den in that ini­tial arti­cle, then the flood­gates open and sig­nif­i­cant­ly more women feel safer speak­ing out against their abusers and tak­ing back con­trol of their nar­ra­tive. The cathar­tic release with which She Said’s film­mak­ing realis­es that moment is a gigan­tic state­ment for the neces­si­ty in such cas­es for under­ground whis­per net­works to cross overground.

Those films were devel­oped and com­mis­sioned as far back as 2017, when the #MeToo move­ment regard­ing the enter­tain­ment industry’s laun­dry list of alleged abusers went main­stream, but now release as the misog­y­nis­tic back­lash to such move­ments hits a dispir­it­ing high. Amber Heard’s char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion. A sim­i­lar cult-like attempt to down­play Angeli­na Jolie’s accu­sa­tions of child abuse against Brad Pitt – who, iron­i­cal­ly or shrewd­ly, is a pro­duc­er on both Women Talk­ing and She Said. Shia LaBeouf’s lat­est attempt to rewrite his image. Arcade Fire’s Win But­ler being out­ed as an alleged ser­i­al preda­tor and many fans sim­ply not car­ing…It real­ly does feel like we’re hit­ting a major regres­sion in the wider pub­lic dis­course regard­ing hold­ing men to account and pro­tect­ing women.

What these four movies demon­strate, in their own com­pli­men­ta­ry ways, is the con­tin­ued depress­ing­ly vital neces­si­ty of whis­per net­works amongst women. All are, in one way or anoth­er, peri­od pieces but all speak to the present cul­tur­al moment. When wider soci­ety fails to believe or help women, they remain forced to help themselves.