Voices in Climbing
Hi Steph,
First off, I’m a huge fan, both of your climbing and your blog (I particularly loved your Sprinter Van articles, the one you wrote about financial planning, and your vegan recipes).My question is about the movie Free Solo, and more specifically what you thought about the movie as a woman and free soloist. When I came out of the movie theater, I was really stressed and angry. At first I thought it was just from watching the near-death parts, and thinking about friends of mine who’ve had close-calls in the mountains. After more introspection and reading a few articles online, though, I realized that the fear aspects were only part of it, and that on another level, I was upset with the filmmakers for the story they chose to tell. The only female people shown in the movie are girlfriends, wives, or children of famous male climbers. The only black person in the movie is a kid who gets laughed at for his question.
Is free soloing really such a white, male sport? I was really impressed when I heard you’d free soloed The Diamond, and couldn’t understand why you weren’t mentioned in the movie. If you had been in the movie, what perspectives would you have brought that weren’t presented, if any?
Free soloing for me has always been very very personal, and I wouldn’t want to be public about it in that way, but I don’t think that has much to do with my woman-ness.
All in all, I can’t say I disliked the movie. It’s pretty impressive when a piece of media can make you have really strong feelings. I just can’t help but feel confused about the hyper-masculinity in the movie, given how many women I see free soloing, and that at least one of those women is famous (I mean you).
Thank you for reading, and I would be very very honored to receive a response.
All the best,
-Elena
Hi Elena,
Thanks very much for writing to me! I have been really behind in answering people’s questions on this blog (I blame it on Instagram but mostly on myself!), and your email came the same day I resolved to work harder at doing a better job here, so thanks for your great timing as well.
I haven’t yet seen Free Solo: I’m not a big movie watcher, because I am more of a reader, so I usually see only a few movies a year, and they always make a big impression on me because I’m not really used to the pace or the content: for example, I can’t watch anything remotely violent or involving any kind of cruelty (physical or psychological), because it’s way too disturbing. More recently, I don’t do well with movies where a spouse or a lover dies. And generally watching any type of movie involves a lot of crying for me–I’m just not very desensitized to movie images. So it’s always a bit of a thing for me to decide to watch a movie, and I haven’t yet seen this one. That being said, I definitely would like to see it, and have heard great things about it. I think the most important thing to remember about any type of experience based story–written or film–is that the story is really just the story of one person’s experience, and that’s it. I don’t think Free Solo can really be asked to be anything but the story of Alex’s experience with his climb (and peripherally, the ripple effects of his experience on people around him). As someone who is a reader and a writer, having worked on more video projects in the last several years, I’m always amazed at just how little can be told in a movie. From my point of view, script writing is unbelievably simplistic and abbreviated, and that’s just part of the medium–not very much can actually be done.
But I totally agree with you, that when we hear or experience a story that is really impactful, it often serves as a springboard to think about bigger questions or ideas, and I could certainly see how you’d leave the theater with a lot of thoughts in your mind after seeing this film–which seems to have made an equally big impression on everyone who’s seen it.
So springing away from Free Solo….you’re definitely not the only person who feels like there’s often something missing in climbing media from a gender or multi-cultural perspective, and I do see a lot of people who are inspired to change that. My friend Krystle Wright made a short film called Where the Wild Things Play last year–interestingly enough, she also received a few comments complaining about the ethnicity, age, size, shape, etc of the athletes. She was driven to make a film celebrating female adventurers because she felt like that was missing from the landscape, and so she went out and shot with people she knew or who were willing to let her film them. She didn’t have a lot of support initially, but she felt it was an important project to do, and she found it confusing (and a little hurtful) to hear some feedback that these women were the wrong sort of women in some way…. The complaints were minor, but they did hurt her feelings a bit, and I was disappointed to see that. It’s a great film, it got an extremely positive reception, and as a result, Krystle got support from Outdoor Research to make a sequel this year.
Garmin Outdoor has also been really supportive of women’s initiatives for several years now: I worked on a project for their Women of Adventure series last year.
And most recently, I’m excited to be a part of Kitty Calhoun’s new film 20/20 which will premier at the Ouray Ice Festival this January 25, highlighting 7 female adventurers (and some of us will be there on a panel together as well), as well as climbing and skiing achievements of women over the centuries, and looking into the future to encourage a new generation of women adventurers.
There are a lot of voices in the world, and most every story has some value or can help us see things a different way. Definitely keep asking for the things you are interested in, and keep supporting the 1.0 and 2.0 versions as they come! I think there’s a lot of vulnerability in telling one’s own story, and feeling like it mattered to someone is really important–so when you see something that resonates with you, don’t hesitate to reach out and give a thumbs up to the person who made it! It’s amazing how much positive or negative feedback can encourage or discourage people, especially people who are just starting out and gaining the courage to bring some diverse voices into the mix.
Steph
