The women starring in Sarah Gregg Millman’s videos look plenty Godardian in their striped shirts and heavy eyeliner, yet as they tell their tales of life and leisure (the monologue being a favorite technique of New Wave directors), their Valley-girl vacancy is revealed as a construct, an ironic criticism of what the press release calls New Wave cinema’s use of women as “empty vessels for the directors’ political ideas.” Millman’s work manifests a wry awareness of the fact that, despite the efforts of Cindy Sherman et al., little has changed in how the camera encourages the stereotyping of women—not only in film but in TV too. The men of television are heroicized for their values and valor, but it’s the look that gets women on the small screen. Nowhere is this more evident than in American news broadcasts, where female anchors are almost always on the right side of 50, heavily made-up, attractive, and, often, blonde. In Millman’s The Headliner, 2003, a flaxen-haired reporter absurdly lip-synchs the ‘60s protest song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” unperturbed by the clamor of falling bombs in the background. She’s an imposter, the emptiest of vessels, crystallizing TV’s propensity to sanitize war with a pretty face.
