If you are involved in any film classes, productions, events or the film department at all, then you must know Dr. Martin (she actually prefers to be called Dr. M, because it makes her “sound like a superhero of some sort”).
Her favorite film of all time is Last Year at Marienbad, a French avant-garde film that is altogether too complex to categorize, which she screened last year at a presentation with the student Film Society. Dario Argento’s horror classic Suspria and foreign art-house film The Double Life of Veronique take the second and third spot, while Todd Haynes’ Safe and Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic Magnolia round out her top five.
She decided to take the path of becoming a film professor when she was a sophomore at Ithaca College.
“I loved talking about film, and I wasn’t so good at making movies. I had visions of what I wanted to make, but I wasn’t good at delegating on sets, I wasn’t at ease around the technology.”
And so she chose to go into film scholarship, which encompasses thinking about film theory, both psychological and ideological.
After graduating Ithaca, she went on to New York University to obtain her Masters in Arts, and then to Northwestern University to procure her PhD.
Along the way she worked hard to support her education.
“I grew up in rural New York, outside of a small town called Newark, so I didn’t have the chances as a kid to go to the movies.”
Her film tastes and appreciations sharpened when she went to college, where she encountered film and feminism.
“When you’re a humanities professor, you’re not going to ever make six figures,” said Martin. “You do it because you love it. Teaching requires self-discipline – a lot of it.”
And speaking of writing, her novel Sexy Thrills: Undressing the Erotic Thriller hit the shelves in 2007. It functions as a critique (to a certain extent) of the soft-core porn shown on television cable, designed as the “pornos for women.”
In the 90s, when scholars were whole-heartedly dismissing these B-films, other theorists went in the opposite direction, seeing these kinds of works as forms of empowerment in post-feminism.
“There was the sense that a woman being sexy was empowering, but as it evolved over time, it became another way of self-exploitation. So the book functions more of a critique than an advocacy.”
Currently she is working on two other books: one on Hollywood remakes, which will most definitely make for an interesting read because of the jarring lack of originality in movie-making today, and another on horror films, which are always just plain fun.
When asked what she loves most about movies, she asserted: “Two things: that they can transport me to another place, and that they can make me feel strong emotions. I like that kind of manipulation.”
You’d be hard-pressed to find people who disagree with that.
