One (Wo)man's Trash Is Another (Wo)man's Pleasure: Gender,Gleaning and the Politics of Waste in Agnes Varda's "Les glaneurs et la glaneuse"

In her film The Gleaners and I, Agnes Varda explores the practice of gleaning. While the traditional definition of the word conjures images of female agricultural gatherers, stooping to collect grain and other foodstuffs left behind after the harvest, Varda’s definition takes shape as more expansive. Indeed, over the course of the film, we are introduced to multiple gleaners from all points on what Bonner terms the “continuum of privilege” (126), gleaning everything from the food they need to survive to decrepit dolls utilized in “amateur” art installations. Varda herself not only gleans alongside them, but draws connections to her work as the gleaning of images. In doing so, she also does not rule out the gleaning of ideas as an additional form that gleaning might take, intimating that the concept of the word itself has evolved from the time featured within the paintings she includes in her film (such as Breton’s “Woman Gleaning”). It is notable that the paintings all feature female gleaners, and, while the position was historically held by women, in Varda’s film there are many male gleaners interviewed, as well (I would forward that there were actually more men than women interviewed, but I am aware that I have no knowledge of what material- if any- fell victim to the editing process). There is mention within the film that what was once a very social and primarily female activity has now become one practiced by both males and females, primarily alone. This is illustrated by one woman’s story in the beginning of the film, who remembers her youth on the farm she still lives on as a time when groups of women were still the majority of gleaners, and the work, while hard, was a major social occurrence in their lives.

Varda’s connection to the gleaners she interviews is palpable, accentuated by her ability (since she is utilizing a digital, hand-held video camera) to get down on the ground with them, thus filming from their perspective as they dig through freshly harvested fields for leftover vegetables. She relies on the same technique when involved in intimate discussions with the gleaners, with close shots at face level that involve the audience as participants in both the gleaning of the fields and the gleaning of stories from those who do this work. These stories give insight into the different forms of gleaning Varda examines, from vegetables left on market streets or in fields to rot, to still edible foodstuffs in trash bins behind supermarkets and bakeries, to disloged oysters after storms, to large appliances and furniture abandoned alongside certain suburban streets. One of the interesting things that Varda captures in her film is the “politics” of all of this waste, and the rules and regulations that accompany its gathering and repurposing. Much of what ends up “wasted” is due to its devaluation within a consumer culture- there are several instances of interviews with farmers and harvesters who refer to a “certain caliber” of produce that is acceptable to sell. While produce that falls outside of the definition of said caliber (and many of these definitions of acceptable include strict metric measurements and shapes) is still edible, it is not considered a desirable product to sell, and is therefore thrown out, or left behind, to rot. Varda draws a connection between this “non-desirable” produce and women in multiple scenes within the film, comparing her aging hand with a veined, decaying potato in one such scene, and interviewing a grower in another who compares a small apple to a woman, “…it has nothing going for it,… burnt- like a woman- so we discard it…” before pitching it out of frame, banishing it from further attention. Varda, however, gives the aging feminine much more attention than this, lavishing her aging hands and hair with long, moving shots and admitting her own fascination for her aging body and other forms of “decay” that society attempts to banish from its sight on a daily basis. Even as society devalues these forms, Varda challenges us to question what such devaluation means- and that, perhaps, there is an alternative.

This societal devaluation extends to the gleaners themselves, most of whom appear marginalized by a capitalist/consumer society that considers them outside of its acceptable “certain caliber” of citizenry. Varda’s critique of this is evident in her construction of certain scenes, one of which is an excellent indicator of the role of gender within this equation, as well: When speaking with an older (retirement-age) gentleman regarding the art he creates from gleaned materials, he and his wife, standing among the towering columns that comprise a portion of his art, bicker about the worth of his work. His wife insists he is an amateur at best, and that “lots of people” are more talented than he is- yet she does so standing among massive pieces of artwork created entirely through gleaning. In this moment, we must question whether his work is actually “amateurish” at all, or whether he is simply suffering the societally imposed price for engaging in what has come, over the centuries, to be viewed as “women’s work”.

Another interesting question the film explores regarding the politics of waste is the legal aspect of gleaning. Varda spends a good deal of time consulting legal professionals about the letter of applicable laws, and engages many of the gleaners she interviews in discussions regarding these laws, and their rights within them, as well. The fact that the legal codes are so poorly known, and require such decoding, is indicative of how invested this consumer culture is in discouraging the practice of gleaning. Knowledge of the codes was not merely a class-based phenomenon, either: The middle class oyster gleaners appeared to have no more solid legal information than the nomadic “gypsies” featured at the film’s beginning, and several of the gleaners who did so out of necessity were not aware of their right to do so until informed so by Varda, either.

Below, I have posted several clips regarding gleaning, the last three of which are from the Gleaning Stories Project, which I find an amazing companion to Varda’s work. They touch upon the legal aspects of agricultural gleaning in California, as well as take an interesting look at some of the politics of waste we have discussed. The first clip is from a news report, and my interest in it was the added aspect of “incentivizing” society to accept gleaning by featuring an added “benefit” to the process.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVKDAYiwLg8&feature=related (citrus gleaning w/added benefits)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKjWJbyGuxg&feature=related (gleaning stories project)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5NZ3yfx0w0&feature=related (how to use gleaning stories project website)

http://humweb.ucsc.edu/gleaningstories/ (gleaning stories website)