Singularity and Conformity: Feminism and Roberta Findlay’s Strategic Marketing Communications

This chapter re-situates Roberta Findlay’s career, and particularly her many public statements, interviews, and marketing strategies, from a strategic communications perspective. In doing so, it argues that rather than simply seeing Findlay as anti-feminist, long one of the defining characteristics of her public persona, we might benefit from understanding her choices as strategic, especially when coupled with her executive role as CEO of Reeltime Distributing. Tracing the purposeful ways in which Findlay’s misogynistic rhetoric served a purposeful industrial function, whether that was to separate herself from other filmmakers as a form of differentiation, or to conform to standard practices as a way of easing consumer anxiety, this chapter offers a new perspective through which to understand Findlay’s long and often contradictory communications history.