Urban Piss-Ups. The collective filmmaking of parodic urban fables to study and contest gender spatial discriminations

Abstract

For Haraway (2016), ‘speculative fabulations’ are an interweaving of facts and fiction that allows imagining alternative futures. In this paper, I recount the experience of collectively writing three speculative fabulations about urban gender discrimination. ‘Urban fables’ refer to the centrality of space in the narration. Together with the participants, 11 white cisgender women, we turned each urban fable into a collective amatorial short film with a fabulist political moral. Firstly, I reflect on the collective process that led to the creation of the three short films; secondly, on the analytical and interpretative qualities of fiction to imagine new spatial realities; and thirdly, on the use of parody as a critical tool to study and represent urban discrimination. Through the short film Urban Piss-Ups, I propose a counter-hegemonic, nonviolent research experience grounded in the collective and playful endeavour of geographical filmmaking and parodic practice. I conclude by discussing how the joint qualities of collective filmmaking, fiction, and parody engender a powerful tool to study spatial discriminations and to enrich research results by helping the dissemination of its content beyond the academy.

Keywords:

• Discrimination
• film
• parody
• urban space
• women

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for the feminist, kind and truly engaged helpful comments; Martina Loi, Maurizio Memoli, Chiara Giubilaro and Gabriella Palermo for the affective care and the precious advices. I would also like to thank the wonderful people who made these short-films with me. Together we were able to put in place a feminist collective and political process of care that taught me so much and for which I am truly grateful.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.