Reel Grrls
Fri June 8 at 911 Media Arts Center, 8 pm.

Entering a room full of teenage girls is almost always an overwhelming experience, and my recent trip to visit the Reel Grrls program participants at 911 Media Arts Center was no exception. Almost 20 girls ranging in age from 14 ("almost 14 and a half," clarifies one of the more precocious enrollees) to 18 have less than a week to finish editing their final projects. Their short films are the culmination of six months of intensive study of visual media production including storyboarding, scriptwriting, animation, original audio composition, and nonlinear video editing. They're also learning how to encode the media for future web-based broadcasting and eventual submission to youth-driven Internet film festivals. The girls are all crouched anxiously around their Macintosh computers and editing screens, each accompanied by an older female mentor to assist them with those critical finishing details: dissolves, graphic overlays, jump cuts, and of course, music.

"Hey, everybody watch this and see if you think of any music that would go with this. I can't decide," requests Emily Vissette, the exuberant not-quite-15-year-old who is eagerly trying to wrap up her spoof of Baywatch, a short introductory sequence that will open the 30-minute screening of their collective works. She looks expectantly at me, hoping for a suggestion, and frankly, all I can think of is the Go-Go's, simply because the vignette of sassy girls mocking the vapid tits and ass-o-rama is appropriately set on the beach. However, a more logical choice would probably be the neo-feminist sounds of Le Tigre, as this program is clearly all about the subversive power of teaching girls to embrace technology, from both creative and political vantage points.

"Technology is the great equalizer," says Program Director Malory Graham. "We're hoping that these girls do more than just confront and analyze the 20,000 TV commercials they see each year. I want to see them turn the tables and create their own media and their own standards of what is real."

Of course, setting their own standards leads to a somewhat predictable subject matter--body image consciousness-raising, dissecting the negative imagery of fashion rags, and the ever-popular tearing down of Barbie's deceptive measurements. Still, these topics are unfortunately enduring in their relevance for adolescent females, and such explorations are a necessary starting point for tackling more complex obstacles. For example, Vissette's other project is another spoof, this time of horror films. She reverses the classic scenario of the helpless, sexualized female victim cowering in terror by placing a young man in the role of doomed baby-sitter. Even more impressive, the short isn't merely gender vengeance--she wants her audience to feel the humiliation of being painted as passively helpless: The male character turns to the camera at the end of the sequence and knowingly whispers, "See how it feels?"

The genesis for Reel Grrls arose from dialogue with participants in last year's program, "Breaking the Stereo," a similarly constructed afterschool workshop that addressed media stereotypes of teens in the aftermath of Columbine. It became clear that the young women had some femme-centric issues to confront, and Graham recognized the need for an auxiliary exploration. She quickly enlisted the support of Seattle's YMCA and local public television station KCTS, and secured supplemental funding from the Women's Funding Alliance and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Graham is clearly proud of the results of her program, which also will include the unveiling of Maiden USA, a five-channel video installation created by Reel Grrls in collaboration with visiting New York media artist Kathleen Sweeney. The installation speaks to the bewildering maze girls wander through in their search for identity, and utilizes the lenses of pop culture, social taboos, fairy tales, and a perspective many are afraid to acknowledge about young girls, that of fantasy and desire. Such willingness to engage girls in edgier areas of their development may give the future versions of the program the potential to go beyond Feminism 101, an ambition Graham sees as essential.

"I think we've just started to scratch the surface this year," she says. "I don't want this to be just about the cliché of 'Let's give the girls a video workshop so they can talk about body image and feel good about themselves.' I want them to get angry and push things further."