A brilliant new film traces the persecution of… | Little White Lies

Women In Film

A bril­liant new film traces the per­se­cu­tion of female runners

14 Sep 2016

Words by Fred Wagner

Several runners wearing numbered bibs racing on a dirt path, surrounded by spectators.
Several runners wearing numbered bibs racing on a dirt path, surrounded by spectators.
Free to Run reveals how marathon run­ners like Kathrine Switzer set the pace for gen­der equality.

To think about sports and social jus­tice is, above all, to think of Tom­mie Smith and John Car­los, the Amer­i­can sprint­ing duo who gave the Black Pow­er salute on the podi­um at the 1968 Olympics in Mex­i­co City. Yet you may not be aware that at the same time women weren’t even allowed to com­pete in long dis­tance run­ning com­pe­ti­tions, as detailed in a new doc­u­men­tary Free to Run. Amaz­ing­ly, it wasn’t until 1984 that the women’s marathon was made an Olympic sport.

Direct­ed by Pierre Morath, Free to Run charts the uphill strug­gle women run­ners chan­nelling the spir­it of Emi­ly Pankhurst faced in win­ning the right to com­pete. At the Boston Marathon in 1967, jog­ging enthu­si­ast Kathrine Switzer had attempt­ed to run incog­ni­to by sign­ing up as K Switzer, but halfway around the course an event organ­is­er was snapped try­ing to drag her out of the race, teeth bared and arms outstretched.

The line from run­ning asso­ci­a­tions and med­ical pro­fes­sion­als at the time was that women couldn’t cope with run­ning – they were sup­pos­ed­ly car­ry­ing too much fat, were too emo­tion­al and there were even con­cerns, as one nurse explains with ret­ro­spec­tive aston­ish­ment, that their uterus­es might fall out in the process. Such were the lengths some went to to pre­serve the male­ness of marathon run­ning. Instead women were encour­aged to pur­sue oth­er, more grace­ful sports; gym­nas­tics, say, or fig­ure skat­ing. In one inter­view Switzer express­es her baf­fle­ment at this idea because to her run­ning had always seemed grace­ful enough.

As Free to Run shows, run­ning is not only eye-catch­ing but also a sport that involves a bat­tle of the will. It makes sense, then, that films about run­ning have tend­ed to be about over­com­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion. In Char­i­ots of Fire, per­haps the most famous film about run­ning, hot­shot sprint­er Harold Abra­hams is moti­vat­ed by the suf­fo­cat­ing anti­semitism sur­round­ing him, while in Michael Mann’s The Jeri­cho Mile, Lar­ry Mur­phy – who is serv­ing a life sen­tence – is egged on to com­pete by the prison war­den, who believes Murphy’s suc­cess will inspire oth­er con­victs to accom­plish sim­i­lar feats. In both films, run­ning is seen as a way of shed­ding a badge of stig­ma: in the for­mer, that of being Jew­ish in an anti­se­mit­ic envi­ron­ment and in the lat­ter, that of being a convict.

One of the rea­sons run­ning works as a nar­ra­tive device for these kinds of sto­ries is that races usu­al­ly take place in broad day­light so the ath­letes com­pet­ing in them get seen and acknowl­edged by the rest of soci­ety. In Free to Run, not only were female com­peti­tors revers­ing the man as hunter-gath­er­er, woman as home-mak­er expec­ta­tions of the time by com­pet­ing in a phys­i­cal event out­side of the home, the fact that they were doing so in pub­lic meant they were help­ing to change pub­lic per­cep­tion of what was nor­mal’ and social­ly acceptable.

Large crowd of runners participating in a race, with the road lined by spectators.

You might think that a bet­ter way to show female empow­er­ment in the movies would be dri­ving. Still off-lim­its to women in Sau­di Ara­bia, what bet­ter sym­bol could there be for being able to go where you please and escape domes­tic­i­ty? Thel­ma & Louise isn’t just the fem­i­nist film par excel­lence, it’s also a thrilling road trip. How­ev­er, in the lore of Hol­ly­wood cin­e­ma at least, dri­ving is more escapist than inspi­ra­tional and films about it tend not to have mes­sages about social change dri­ving them.

In Nico­las Wind­ing Refn’s Dri­ve, Ryan Gosling’s Dri­ver is a mod­ern-day cow­boy: cool, alone, and in con­trol of his stead – he acts out of a sense of chival­rous instinct rather than any pre­ex­ist­ing social ideals. That char­ac­ters who dri­ve are usu­al­ly out for them­selves rather than the com­mon good makes sense, because while tech­ni­cal­ly you’re out in pub­lic when you dri­ve, to some extent you remain cut off from the world out­side your car-shaped bubble.

While Thel­ma and Louise appears lib­er­at­ing, its mes­sage is actu­al­ly a some­what pes­simistic one. From the out­set Louise (Susan Saran­don) takes a fatal­is­tic atti­tude about try­ing to change the misog­y­nis­tic soci­ety they live in. Who’s going to believe that? We just don’t live in that kind of world”, she says to Thel­ma (Geena Davis) after she is sex­u­al­ly assault­ed out­side a bar. It comes as no real sur­prise that after a cathar­tic sojourn through the coun­try, when the author­i­ties final­ly catch up to them they choose to dri­ve off a cliff instead of fight­ing for their dig­ni­ty and free­dom through the courts.

Its explo­sive end­ing prob­a­bly played a part in Thel­ma and Louise’s com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal suc­cess back in 1992, but would a direc­tor include that scene if the film were remade today? You sense that in the age of the Bechdel test, when the demand for strong, pow­er­ful female char­ac­ters is greater than ever, audi­ences might not be so will­ing to except such a fatal­is­tic finale. Per­haps in an updat­ed, more for­ward-think­ing ver­sion of the movie, Thel­ma and Louise would be cast as long-dis­tance run­ners instead.

Free to Run is released 16 September.

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