Lizzie Borden presents a situation where individuals, especially women are still restricted and oppressed despite a "successful" Social Democratic revolution and a "victory" for the War of Liberation. The Social Democratic government does not go far enough in its afro-feminist policies or duties to all women. This futuristic feminism still rings true, especially today in an age post-Trump. The women in Borden's film cannot shed the class and racial ties that keep them in discriminated positions. This discrimination is inherited from the male (predominantly white) structure. The futuristic setting is dialectic for the various groups represented and their interests. The film asks us the central question. Can the oppression of women be eliminated if men are the ones designing solutions?
Two major opposing narratives of social transformation exist in Lizzie Borden's Born in Flames. The characters and groups funnel into one or the other, and some cross over from one to the other into the duration of the film. The first opposing narrative is the Social Democratic state's narrative that the War of Liberation constitutes a radical change in politics. This is done mainly through the news. The second is the Women's Army's standpoint, which emphasizes the ongoing racial and sexual divisions before and after the revolution. The cast of feminist groups and or characters are as follows: Isabel of Radio Ragazza, Honey of radio Pheonix. Honey and Isabel initially have an opposing position on the Women's Army. Honey is supportive, while Isabel is hesitant. By the film's end, though, the two stations have come together as Pheonix-Ragazza radio when the Army mobilizes to attack the state-run media.
Adelaide Norris of the Women's Army. Adelaide is a lesbian and is closely watched by the surveillance team for her work with the Women's Army. She is considered a significant threat. Zelda Wyllie, played by Flo, is an actual feminist activist of the older generation and substantially influences Adelaide Norris. Zelda Wyllie gives a speech in the film to Adelaide where she enforces the right to violence on par with the "right to pee ." The Socialist Review editors, Patty White, Becky Johnson, and Katherine Bigelow. These women speak abstractly about feminism and the movement, and Hillary Hearst of the Women's Army, a member of the Anti-Rape Brigade.
Borden states that her use of music as a central theme throughout Born in Flames was intentional. She says, "I wanted music at all points, so even if people didn't want to listen, this martial beat would grip them." The film is layered, and this is true even for the soundtrack. The collage motif shows a Godardian influence. The difference in voices of the women's movement is echoed through the various songs featured in the film. Music and Radio also frame a critical moment in women's cinema and history. This was an accessible mass media like the camcorder for early feminist filmmakers. This was released in 1983, only one decade into the women's movement, and I think this is a meaningful connection. An important scenic quality is made with referential influences on the music. During a scene showcasing women riding the subway in static shots, we notice a political poster showing a black man with a cake with an American flag. The music is a dog whistle by The Bloods, a feminist punk band playing "Undercover Nation" over the shot.
The documentary footage overlayed with the voiceovers serves to keep the viewer occupied through some scenes. Borden herself said this collage method was primarily born out of necessity. It was used intentionally to create a density of the narrative, which would be impossible to do otherwise in a linear fashion. This is a futuristic "Sci-Fi" film but using this documentary/Cinema Verité style of footage makes what we are viewing topical and urgent. Two essential scenes using this method would be when the women on the block are dancing with the voiceover of Honey's introduction. These images are intercut with political words and again intercut with a woman walking on a separate block and being sequestered and harassed by a group of men. The other scene is of female workers in a chicken factory, followed by images of an infant bottle feeding, a nurse laying out surgical instruments on a table, a hand sliding a condom onto a penis, and a woman packing groceries.
Television is a view that caters to a distracted audience. Borden uses this to her discrete advantage. In Television, commercials are louder than anything else. It is a fragmentary mode of communication that creates a distracted viewer and often is meaningless without a distinct beginning, middle or end. Lizzie Borden wanted her film to have that same texture and structure. She says about her editing process, "I tried to make the editing function as much like commercials as possible, the heterogeneous, yet the unified structure of television corresponds well to the theme of the coalition through difference." This episodic structural narrative layered with documentary fragments also lends itself well to the overlapping of visuals and characters as they intermix the film's plot points. The meeting between Adelaide and Zelda after Adelaide loses work and discussing the possibility and necessity of violence is one way this happens. Another choral element is the collectivity of the bicycle brigade or the four white women who speak and work abstractly together to promote their beliefs and causes.
The film stresses the potential for collective alliances among women over shared impoverished labor conditions and low wages. While distinctly united in a general cause, Borden's rallying cry rings out as loud as her music at 32:30. "Womyn must decide our fate; not by the church, not by state!" It symbolizes this "ungraspable" feminist mythology and how we as a collective find common ground between.
Huber, Christoph. “Whatever Happened to Lizzie Borden?” cinema scope. iss. 74, Spring, 2018.
“Born in Flames.” Heresies16, vol. 4, no. 16, 1983, pp. 12–16.
Jaehne, Karen. “Born in Lames by Lizzie Borden.” Film Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 4, 1984, pp. 22–24.
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