If you look at Cassie Jaye’s official bios, you might be forgiven for thinking that the director of the upcoming Red Pill documentary had won an impressive “best documentary” prize at Cannes for her first feature-length film.
On her LinkedIn page, Jaye writes that “Daddy I Do,” her film on the abstinence-only movement, “won the Best Documentary Award at the 2010 Cannes Independent Film Festival.” She makes similar statements on YouTube and on her official site, CassieJaye.com.
Press coverage of the young filmmaker has made much of her Cannes award. In a feature on Jaye, the San Rafael Patch reported breathlessly that “Daddy I Do soon garnered immense acclaim, culminating with the Best Documentary Award at the Cannes International Film Festival.” Feminist website Bust declared that the film “has already won Best Documentary awards in several festivals, including the Cannes Film Festival.” A writer at Rumpus.net started off her interview with Jaye by congratulating her for winning “Best Documentary at Cannes.”
But if you go to the official site of the Cannes Film Festival, and look at its list of winners for 2010, you will find no mention of Daddy I Do.
Hell, you won’t find a Best Documentary winner for that year at all, because Cannes didn’t actually have a Best Documentary award.
So what’s going on? Is Jaye lying? Well, not technically.
She did win an award with the word “Cannes” in it. But it didn’t come from the official Cannes festival.
It came instead from a knockoff event, the Cannes INDEPENDENT Film Festival, that many in the film business consider an outright scam, using the Cannes name in order to profit from entry fees, much as the makers of the Spader-Man action figures above hoped to make money from confused or perhaps overly thrifty fans of the real Spiderman.
A site called CannesGuide warns filmmakers not to submit films to the faux festival, declaring that
the Cannes Independent Film Festival (CIFF) is, in our opinion, a scam. It is not connected to the Festival de Cannes, Marche du Film, or any other official festival organisation. It is a coat-tails event, run from the UK, which likely seeks to capitalise on the prestige associated with the city’s name and famous festival.
Although CIFF is a real event, we have questioned its legitimacy in the past and continue to believe that there is little or no value to filmmakers in submitting a film.
Since that was written, the “festival” seems to have vanished entirely from the world. Take a look at what its official web site looks like now. (Seriously, take a look.)
Jaye’s supporters will presumably point out that she’s never technically lied about her award or claimed that it came from the official Cannes festival. Certainly it’s not her fault that reporters make mistakes!
Except that it kind of is. Here’s a screenshot from the trailer for Daddy I Do.
Most people seeing this flash by on the screen, I suspect, will remember the giant CANNES and won’t even notice the word “independent” underneath it. Or, like the reporter for the San Rafael Patch, they’ll change the “independent” to “international” in their minds.
At the very least’s it’s a graphic seemingly designed to capitalize on the confusion between the Cannes Independent Film Festival and the real Festival de Cannes.
No, Jaye isn’t doing anything illegal here. But trumpeting an award from a phony festival as if it were a real award is not only dishonest; it’s kind of pathetic.
Hrm.
I empathize with ‘bodycrimes’ and other posters who feel a bit put off by this article, but Futrelle’s point about journalism is well-founded; timeliness is a central value to news writing: report relevant information as soon as you can.
I wonder if part of the issue here is seeing this blog’s usual snark (snark backed by solid research, but snark nonetheless) being deployed against a much more ambiguously-positioned person? Jaye is, after all, largely an unknown/uncertain figure here. The Elams and Bloomfields/Hardies and Valizadehs and Cernoviches and Yiannopouloses (and so forth) of the world are cruel ideologues, purveyors of harassment, abusers of almost caricature-level villainy; seeing their hypocrisies exposed and mocked publicly feeds a particular hunger for justice. Jaye has no such history. So she is a cipher–every or anyperson–and therefor easier to empathize with or feel sympathy toward. In an inversion of the typical online inability to feel empathy toward the faceless, her lack of known character in comparison to the above rogue’s gallery makes her feel more human. Did she make a mistake? Was she scammed? Is she “playing the game” in a way that, while dishonest, is tacitly accepted in a field with so many creators competing for time and exposure and attention? Who knows…
In any event, the facts as they are known is what we have. And, in a way, it is refreshing to have something more uncertain than the usual manosphereian melodrama on display here.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
>>Hey Felix, need me to fetch you a damp sponge on a stick while you’re busy nailing yourself to that cross?
Let’s forgo extravagant metaphors and the extravagant emotions you project on me, at least for a moment, and concentrate on the words I used, and what the words mean.
>> That’s just my opinion, and if no one chooses to attack me or call me a troll, I’m not going to need to repeat my opinion
I’m telling you exactly how to get me to shut up. I think it’s good advice, if you want me to shut up.
>>You’re not making it easy, Felix.
Yes, I am. I totally am.
I’m new to this story, so I’m prepared to backpedal when necessary, and this story seems more relevant when I see Brietbart talking about “award-winning filmmaker Cassie Jaye”. Still, I really thought “pathetic” was a misstep.
I think this article became a personal attack on Cassie Jaye. Now, i might be wrong about that, it doesn’t matter. What matters to me is that, the idea that personal attacks on Cassie Jaye by internet feminists might become a thing is flat-out terrifying, in my opinion.
I think that Gamergate will be remembered as the victory of a handful of courageous women who managed the daily reality of being scapegoated by thousands with patience and grace. Has anybody ever seen Anita Sarkeesain mad? I don’t care about games, don’t care for her videos, but I think shes a hero. Even when she says “fuck you”, she says it with a smile.
I just hope that feminism doesn’t make the same mistakes. the Gators did. Maybe that’s not what happened here. All I’m saying is that the thought terrifies me, and if I overreact, that’s why.
Sorry, what?
Feminism is over two hundred years old (Wollstonecraft died in 1797) and has had hundreds of extremely important figures and tens of millions of supporters as part of it. Entire generations of women have fought through all manner of oppposition and in many cases have triumphed. There are literally dozens of offshoots of feminism, many of them in open conflict with one another, and an entire field of serious academic study. Over the the course of the movement, members of it have no doubt made every possible conceivable mistake that humans could make. If anything could destroy feminism it would have happened by now.
#GG is a pathetic little temper tantrum by a statistically insignificant group of hateful people who are sad about something that’s irrelevant in the greater scheme of things, which has been hijacked by a second statistically insignificant group of even more hateful people. It died after less than a year and is now remembered only to those who obsess over internet happenings.
What possible lessons do the gators have to teach feminists? Go on, I’m listening. On behalf of all two hundred years of our history and of countless millions, I’m listening. Feminism is here to take on board your recommendations.
Of course you are.
All we have to do is not challenge the assumptions behind your opinion, ignore your history of concern trolling, and look the other way as you make a backhanded “both sides” argument.
So easy. Of course, there’s always an easier way.
Get funny quick Felix.
Shorter Felix: “You’re making me troll you. Why are you making me troll you? It’s your fault.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Felix, you’re fucking creepy.
Comparing us to gators is totally legit! Well, it would be if we harassing and doxxing Jaye, threatening to rape and kill her, obsessing about her sex life, making anti-Semitic memes and transphobic and ableist jokes about her. and then making grand proclamations about how doing those things makes us war hardened revolutionaries.
Oh wait. Nope. Not a legit comparison at all. What do you know?
Of course, in WHTM concern troll land, mildly criticizing the manosphere and those associated with them is the same as threatening to rape and kill feminists. Because reasons? So, I’m not surprised to see the equivalence being drawn.
Another day, another dumb, clickbaiting, scandal-chasing, hate-profiteering, crowdfunding scam. Anyone with a fraction of a brain knows that MRAs are just loosely organized trolls, and unconvincing ones at that, but they are loosely organized trolls that many people have figured out how to make a pretty penny from (not to mention, all the attention that their lonely, messed up psyches crave. *cough cough juicebro*)
I don’t really have it in me to get too riled up over this, not after the Sarkeesian Effect.
Yeah, let’s pretend we’re all one tiny slippery-slope away from becoming a misandric hate mob so Felix will shut up!
Oh wait, I just remembered: I don’t give a shit!
http://ssoptometry.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/logo_EDITED1.jpg
Will you be mansplaining feminism to her, beta?
The regular Cannes film festival is a giant scam technically. I’m glad to see other festivals use their name and give them a taste of their own medicine.
This sort of scam is rampant in academia, where you get invites all the time to conferences nobody ever heard of. Their sole purpose is to rake in registration and publication fees, and participants get to pad their resumes.
@Philip
Muh pseudoscientific wolfu terminology
@Spooky Allen
Are you talking about the Independent Cannes Film Festival? Cause that’s the scammy one.
@Steven Dutch
Nice to meet ya. Not sure why you decided to revive a dead thread but eh whatever.
I just saw the movie ‘the red Pill’. Cassey talks to these guys and than comes to the conclusion that they have a point – more than one point actually. Just to name one: ( male suicide is a problem, could there be a connection with males and suicide divorce rulings? ) She also interviews the other side. The frontwoman of America Now says that domestic violence is ‘wifebashing’ and so tries to define away the fact that woman often do commit domestic violence. This frontwoman closes her eyes to an uncomfortable truth. So I dont get all this hate directed against Cassey. I also notice that the writer of this blogdoes not engage in an honest discussion of the underlying subject matter. One question: if the feministic movement is serious about domestic violence, how come there are 4000 Safe Houses for woman in the USA and not a single one for men? Can anyone explain this?