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 I was fortunate enough to attend Sherry Ortner's talk "On Independent Film Makers." I believe it's easy to put "Indie Films" in a certain category of "artsy," "low budget," or just "non-hollywood" without really looking into the process and people behind them. Being an independent movie producer takes so much more than an idea and a camera. Indie producers need to have good taste, agency to get things done, and personality to maintain relationships. To be honest, I was surprised by the content of the talk because there were no overtly "gender and sexuality" themes. As I thought more about what she said, I started to see her interest in this field of study.

An intersecting theme was when she discussed the backgrounds of independent film producers. These indie producers overwhelmingly came from the middle class and attended prestigious educational institutions, which made me think of her essay "Reading America: Preliminary Notes on Class and Culture. Sure it's a stretch, but Ortner discusses how "much of middle-class adolescent culture is drawn both from "real" working-class culture ... and from marketing fantasies of what working- or lower-class culture looks like." This cultural assessment is interesting and somewhat telling of independent films. For indie producers, exploring worlds and cultures different from their own (ie. middle-class) gives their movies a depth normal hollywood productions don't have.

Sherry Ortner has clearly had an extensive and important career and she's continuing on with that. I have great respect for someone who chooses to take on new work, maybe even leaving her comfort zone into a completely different topic than she had ever explored. I like to think that's what we're trying to do in this class too: leaving our academic comfort zones to learn something new in ways we never thought we'd be able to.