Bad Feminist Film Club

Kelly and Sarah host Bad Feminist Film Club, a conversation about films they enjoy and the gender politics that enjoyment need not excuse. Rather than require a politically flawless object before anyone may take pleasure in cinema, the programme opens questions about who acts, who is watched and whose choices move a story forward. The programme directory describes a fortnightly film discussion.

Beginning with a franchise they loved

In a host interview, Kelly recalls Sarah proposing that they record their existing conversations about feminism and Fast & Furious. The starting point matters. Popular entertainment is a place where viewers encounter models of embodiment, risk, gender and belonging. Enjoying a chase need not prevent questions about who drives, who becomes spectacle and who gets to determine the outcome.

This approach works best when criticism moves beyond certifying a film as feminist. A character may look powerful yet have little control over the narrative. Counting women cannot by itself explain how a scene distributes attention or authority. Equally, admitting that a favourite is problematic should begin an argument rather than exempt it from scrutiny.

Three concrete listening routes

Episode 96, The Matrix Resurrections, addresses the earlier trilogy’s legacy, revising our own stories, and love as a route out of the matrix. It invites questions about the authority to rewrite the past: does a sequel reopen an inherited narrative, or rely on familiar relationships to organize its characters’ futures?

Episode 97, The Batman, includes nightclub fights, cinematography and the film’s relationship to the wider DC universe. These topics offer a route into form as well as politics. How does a camera manufacture heroic appeal, and which experiences become visible through action and urban space? The presence of a female character alone cannot answer those questions.

Episode 95, Phantom of the Opera, revisits the 2004 adaptation through performance and adaptation choices. Set alongside the other episodes, it offers a comparison of how genres organize desire, authority and audience sympathy, without deciding beforehand that one genre must be more emancipatory.

Conversation still needs an argument

A friendly format can bring criticism into ordinary life, but agreement between hosts cannot stand in for every viewer’s experience. Listen for the movement between a specific scene and a general judgment. Does an interpretation rest on narrative evidence, or turn personal taste into a universal measure? Do expectations for women characters become another demand that women be independent, correct and likeable? The programme provides an opening for such disagreements rather than a definitive list of approved films.