The New York Review of Ideas » Profiles | June 2009
Age of Enlightenment
Is Astra Taylor’s examined life worth watching?
By Anna Bak-Kvapil
As the subject of the film, Žižek became one of only a handful of theoreticians to gain popular recognition since Marshall McLuhan appeared in Annie Hall. Žižek! was a small sensation, and it brought Taylor to the attention of the independent film world. She wanted to continue making films about ideas, and when she met Ronn Mann, a Canadian documentary director, he was so enthusiastic about the concept of another philosophical film that he agreed to produce her next project. Examined Life fell into place.
On an early Tuesday morning in March, Taylor meets me at a coffee shop in Little Italy. It’s near the offices of Zeitgeist Films, a boutique independent film distributor that has released both Žižek! and Examined Life; she has to drop by to discuss the DVD edition of the latter. The coffee shop is half empty, with only a few well-dressed hipsters in dimly lit corners sleepily cracking open their laptops. While sipping her Americano, Taylor explains that she is not a morning person, though it would be impossible to guess. She exudes energy, and talks openly, as if to a personal friend whose opinion she respects. But there’s determination discernable beneath the charm, a trait that has obviously helped her to bring her difficult-to-promote projects to fruition. As she explains, “You have to have a degree of hubris and arrogance to think you deserve funding, and that you’re going to execute something worthwhile”.
As a young woman filmmaker, some critics have accused Taylor of being infatuated with her subjects. In his New York Times review of Žižek!, A.O. Scott wrote that she is “clearly thrilled by her proximity to her hero [and] seems incapable of the analytical distance that would provide insight into either his ideas or the cultural phenomenon he represents.” Taylor retorts, “When I see films and there’s a male director who is obviously in awe of their subject, the reviews never sexualize it or obsess over it.” Her intrepid nature makes her an inspiring figure in a filmmaking landscape that includes few women. “I don’t think people expect women, especially young women, to be in positions of intellectual authority,” she says. “And yet, obviously, I am able to do these things.” She cites a statistic that fifty percent of film students are women, but only three percent actually go on to become directors. “Where do these women go? ” she wonders. “They probably take a more supportive role, like being a producer, or a set designer.”
Taylor was born in 1979, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but was raised in Athens, Georgia, a city known for its vibrant music and art scenes. Her mother, a painter, and her father, a musician, decided to home school her and her sister, Sunaura. Taylor and Sunaura lived together in Brooklyn before Sunaura decided to move to San Francisco, and she appears in Examined Life, shopping for vintage clothes with Judith Butler. An accomplished realist painter, Sunaura overcomes a disability caused by neuromuscular disease by painting with a brush held in her teeth. In the film, she is thoughtful and soft spoken, with a dry sense of humor that seems to run in the family.
As part of her non-traditional education, Taylor read philosophy books starting at a young age. She developed into a whip smart teenager, and was accepted to Brown but found the self-congratulatory atmosphere of the Ivy League so noxious that she fled after a year for the independent studies program at the University of Georgia. “When I go to a college campus now, I still feel really ill at ease—it shouldn’t be so onerous financially to get an education.” Despite working with philosophers who are all professors at top ranking universities, Taylor has a complicated relationship with education. In fact, she’s never actually taken a philosophy class. “I don’t think college is necessary for an educated life, especially if you’re going to focus on liberal studies. Being a student is defined as a certain period of your life, when really, why not be a life long learner?”
Her self-education has led her to writing (she’s contributed pieces to Salon and Adbusters), art, and social theory, not film studies— she sees just one movie a month. Because Taylor doesn’t come from the self-cannibalizing world of making movies while studying movies, she approaches film differently than traditionally trained directors do. She sees film as a tool to engage the mind of a viewer, rather than a medium of dazzling diversion, and she believes “there can be a cinema of ideas that can be much richer than what we’ve got.” She firmly wants to avoid making Michael Moore-style “angry, leftist politically driven films.” Taylor explains, “I want to bring a passion for ideas into the public sphere at a time when there are so few magazines and so few programs on television that would let you talk about these issues.” Martha Nussbaum approves of her goal. “Most European nations have a lot more public media attention to philosophy, so it’s high time we had this. Why should it only happen in a classroom? The whole culture needs to become more thoughtful, self-critical, and reflective.”
To celebrate the end of the weeklong run of Examined Life at the IFC Center, Taylor and her production company, Hidden Driver Films, throw a party at Jimmy’s No.43, a wine bar in the East Village. The bash is packed with independent film directors, producers, publicists and bloggers. Scenesters have surrounded the bar, making it impossible to get the bartender’s attention, and The Instruments, the indie folk band who can be heard on much of the Examined Life soundtrack, play on a tiny stage in a cramped back room. It’s difficult to actually see the stage, but a whisper is going around that Taylor’s husband, semi-retired alternative music legend Jeff Magnum of Neutral Milk Hotel, is playing with the group. When they take a break, Taylor, who has been kept on point attending almost every screening of her film, finally buys herself a drink—but not before turning down the offer of an over-eager IFC blogger to buy one for her.
Examined Life is poised to open across the country. Whether Taylor will continue making philosophical films is up in the air. “These films take two years, and a lot of it is raising money. Where am I going to be in two years and what am I going to want then?” Smiling, she continues, “Sometimes I have no idea what I’m doing, and how I’ve gotten this far.” Taylor has some more examining to do— fortunately, it is what she does best. ♦