The Red Pill

The Red Pill
Promotional release poster
Directed by	Cassie Jaye
Produced by	Evan Davies Cassie Jaye Nena Jaye Anna Laclergue
Music by	Douglas Edward
Cinematography	Evan Davies
Production company	Jaye Bird Productions
Distributed by	Gravitas Ventures (DVD)
Release date	October 7, 2016 (2016-10-07) (New York City) March 7, 2017 (2017-03-07) (DVD release)
Running time	117 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Red Pill is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Cassie Jaye. The film explores the men's rights movement, as Jaye spends a year filming the leaders and followers within the movement. The Red Pill premiered on October 7, 2016, at Cinema Village in New York City, followed by several other one-time screenings internationally. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray on March 7, 2017, by Gravitas Ventures. Controversy over the documentary has led to some protests and cancellations of its screenings.

Title

The title of the film refers to a scene in the film The Matrix, in which the protagonist is offered the choice of a red pill, representing truth and self knowledge, or a blue pill representing a return to blissful ignorance.^[1]

Content

The Red Pill chronicles Jaye's journey beginning as a skeptical feminist investigating what she believes to be a hate movement. She goes on to discover that the movement is different from what she expected and begins to question her own views on gender, power, and privilege. The film discusses issues facing men and boys such as male suicide rates, workplace fatalities and high-risk jobs, false allegations of rape, military conscription, lack of services for male victims of domestic violence and rape, higher rates of violent victimization, issues concerning divorce and child custody, disparity in criminal sentencing, disproportionate funding and research on men's health issues, educational inequality, societal tolerance of misandry, and men's lack of reproductive rights.^[2][3][4] It includes interviews with men's rights activists and those supportive of the movement, such as Paul Elam, founder of A Voice for Men; Harry Crouch, president of the National Coalition for Men; Warren Farrell, author of The Myth of Male Power; and Erin Pizzey, who started the first domestic violence shelter in the modern world. It also includes interviews with feminists critical of the movement, such as Ms. magazine executive editor Katherine Spillar,^[5] and sociologist Michael Kimmel.^[3] It also contains excerpts from Jaye's video diary.

Funding

Director Cassie Jaye initially struggled to find financiers who did not have an agenda.^[6] Jaye got the film off the ground with her own money as well as money from her mother, a co-producer, and her boyfriend.^[3] After it became known that the film would not condemn the men's rights movement, Jaye was unable to find funding to cover the cost of the movie from traditional sources.^[2][7] She instead started a campaign on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, which she called a last resort.^[6] The Kickstarter project promised to be a fair and balanced look at the men's rights movement.^[6] The effort was strongly criticized by some feminists ^[8][9] but received support from Breitbart News columnist Milo Yiannopoulos.^[10][11] In the end, the campaign exceeded its goal of $97,000 as well as two stretch goals to raise a total of $211,260.^[12]

Alan Scherstuhl's review for The Village Voice suggested that many of those providing funding for the film may have themselves been men's rights activists, thereby creating a conflict of interest.^[13] Jaye has said that the suggestion the film was funded by MRAs (men's rights activists) is "a common lie that keeps spreading,"^[3] despite the fact one of the largest pledges to the film was by anti-feminist and men's rights supporter Mike Cernovich, who pledged $10,000 to the Kickstarter project.^[6] Still, Jaye maintained that "our five highest backers ... are neither MRA nor feminist. I would say three out of five of them didn't even know about the men's rights movement, but wanted to defend free speech,"^[6] and that the film's backers and producers would have no influence or control of the film.^[3][6]

Release

The Red Pill had its world premiere on October 7, 2016 at Cinema Village in New York City. It played there for a week before opening in Los Angeles on October 14, 2016. One-time screenings were also scheduled at various locations in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia.

In March 2017 the film was made available online through Amazon Video, Vudu, Hulu, Vimeo, Google Play, YouTube Red, Microsoft Movies & TV, Fandango Now, and the iTunes Store.

Screening cancellations

The Australian premiere at the Palace Kino cinema in Melbourne cancelled their planned November 6 screening after a petition circulated that called the film "misogynistic propaganda".^[14][15] The Change.org petition was declared victorious with 2,370 signatures.^[14] A counter-petition to reverse the decision gained close to 5,000 supporters^[14] in the following days, characterizing the original petition as an "effort to close down free speech in Australia" by those who wish to prevent "a screening of a movie that discusses issues that they fear might interfere with their agenda."^[14] Organizer David Williams was critical of the original petition, stating that nobody who signed the petition would have seen the film.^[16]

The Mayfair Theatre, in Ottawa, cancelled a private screening of the film.^[4][17] Lee Demarbre, co-owner and programmer of the theater, said long-time patrons and a sponsor threatened to stop doing business with the venue if the film screening went ahead.^[4] The screening was organized by the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE).^[4] Justin Trottier, co-founder of CAFE, said that the screening was an attempt to find common ground instead of polarizing the debate.^[4] Julie Lalonde, who runs Hollaback! Ottawa, was one of several people who made complaints to the theater.^[4] She said the idea of freedom of expression was being abused, and that "no one has the right to have their film shown."^[4]

A screening had been planned by the Wildrose on Campus club at the University of Calgary, an organization for student supporters of the Wildrose Party of Alberta, but was cancelled after an email about the screening was sent out by the club with the subject line "Feminism is Cancer" and beginning "You and I both know that feminism is cancer. To create a dialogue on campus, we have decided to take action." The club later posted an apology to Twitter and cancelled the screening.^[18] In response to the controversy, Jaye said she would never equate feminism with cancer but "would be curious why do they think that."^[19]

After initially agreeing to finance a student screening, Sydney University's student union defunded the event, claiming the film promotes violence against women.^[20] In a public post on its website, the union said "We believe there is the distinct possibility that the planned screening of this documentary would be discriminatory against women, and has the capacity to intimidate and physically threaten women on campus".^[21] The screening was moved back a week and had to be financed privately by the clubs that had initially organised it.

Reception

Critical response

The Red Pill received minimal coverage from noteworthy critics. Review aggregation websites Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic do not provide weighted averages for the film because there are not enough eligible reviews.^[22][23] Of the critics who have reviewed the film, the response was mixed.

Katie Walsh of Los Angeles Times said the documentary "lacks a coherent argument" because it "is built on a fundamental misunderstanding" of key terms. Walsh said the terms could have been better defined "to comprehend the ways in which patriarchal systems control resources to exploit both women and men". She recognized that "there are many dire and urgent troubles men face that should be addressed" but concluded of the documentary, "[It] only exacerbates that divide with its uncritical, lopsided presentation and inability to craft a compelling argument regarding a topic this controversial."^[24]

John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter said, "Cassie Jaye's The Red Pill is clumsy and frustrating in many ways. But it demonstrates enough sincerity and openness to challenging ideas — letting representatives of this problematic movement make their case clearly and convincingly — that one wishes it were able to look at multiple sides of this debate at the same time." DeFore summarized the film as "an admirable attempt at evenhandedness whose journalistic and aesthetic failings dilute its arguments".^[5]

Alan Scherstuhl of The Village Voice, critical of the men's rights movement, considered the film's production quality weak due to being Kickstarter-funded and highlighted that it was campaigned for by A Voice for Men and Reddit's men's rights forums. Scherstuhl considered the documentary to be "amateurish" with weak visuals. He said, "What the film and the movement fail to demonstrate is any kind of systemic cause. Instead, the author of men’s troubles here is always that vague bugaboo feminism, which we’re told is designed to silence its opponents."^[13]

Cathy Young of Heat Street gave the film a positive review, saying it raised important issues that often go undiscussed and made "well-deserved" criticisms of feminism. She criticized the film for failing to devote attention to "the dark side of the men's movement", and stated that the film would have benefited from onscreen discussion of the subjects in which MRAs are on "far shakier ground".^[25]

Corrine Barraclough, of the Australian tabloid newspaper The Daily Telegraph, said "the message of The Red Pill is compassion" and the film made her "wonder why feminists tried so hard to silence this crucial conversation."^[26]

Awards

The Red Pill won three awards at the 2017 Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema: "Best of Festival", "Excellence in Directing Documentary", and "Excellence in Producing a Documentary".^[27][28]

References

External links

• Official website
• The Red Pill on IMDb