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Rainer:
I don't think it's that obvious. But
then,
there's a reverse shot of Jenny looking down, suggesting a racial thing, the threat of the white woman coming between the black women. It's a dream within a dream.
MacDonald:
The title "Privilege" was used by Peter Watkins in a 1967 film about rock musicians receiving privilege as a means of siphoning off the political energy of young people into the rock concert phenomenon.
Rainer:
I don't remember that film.
MacDonald:
How did you decide to use, that title?
Rainer:
It had to do with Jenny's status in the flashback event. She had privilege and didn't know it, and was also lacking privilege and didn't know it. To her neighbors the Jenny character represents a white norm and a privileged life-style. The aging process has put her in a different relationship to privilege.
Every character in the film can be seen as either having or not having privilege, depending on race, sex, class, age. If they didn't have it, I gave it
to
them. I privileged Digna to be the commentator, to be more omniscient than Jenny, and to be able to follow Jenny around without being seen. "Privilege" is a crucial term in the film, a kind of prism through which all these issuesand techniquescan be observed.
MacDonald:
At the end, you do an interesting thing with the credits, particularly given the line we see during the credits: "UTOPIA: the more impossible it seems, the more necessary it becomes." You intercut between the textual credits and what I assume is the wrap party for the film (you also include additional interview information). Do you see the party as a kind of momentary Utopia?
Rainer:
Yeah.
MacDonald:
Is the process of making a film your attempt to model Utopian interaction?
Rainer:
Originally, the ending was going to be a dozen postmenopausal women in bright red lipstick and black leather jackets, pouring out of a bar, trying to zip up their jackets [laughter]. It was going to be some climactic moment attacking stereotypes: these raunchy, spunky women. And then I kind of abandoned that and thought, "Oh, well maybe there'll be a dance." I thought I'd show all these women dancing to "Sounds of Soweto" or something, and then that seemed too corny. And finally, I decided, why not document what was already going to happen. I invited all the interviewees to the party. Only a few could come. Actually, Shirley Triest, the tall thin woman, flew from California: it was the first time in her life she's been out of California. I was very touched by that.
MacDonald:
At the end of the film, just before we see the wrap party, Yvonne asks Jenny, "So, did you ever make it with Brenda?" and Jenny says, "Hell, no! I was terrified of women." That, the two women in bed in the one dream, and a textual statement (it's quoted in one of the stills