BEYOND THE GAZE: JULE CAMPBELL’S SWIMSUIT ISSUE – Review by Cate Marquis
Who knew that Sports Illustrated’s Annual Swimsuit Issue was largely the invention of a woman at Sports Illustrated? In 1964, Jule Campbell took a throwaway assignment, to shoot swimsuit photos on a beach, as a filler in the lull between football and baseball seasons. Campbell turned it into the magazine’s most popular and profitable issue, then an annual event that grew into a cultural phenomenon that also launched the careers of numerous supermodels such as Christie Brinkley. And Jule Campbell did this in an era when publishing and especially anything about sports was almost exclusively the domain of white men. In the documentary BEYOND THE GAZE: JULE CAMPBELL’S SWIMSUIT ISSUE, writer/director Jill Campbell, Jule’s former daughter-in-law, takes an affectionate, personal at Jule Campbell’s life and work, with on-camera segments with the then 95-year-old.
The documentary does not shy away from the controversial nature of the SI Swimsuit issue, which has been the target of feminists and female athletes alike over the years, but director Campbell puts what Jule Campbell did in the context of the era in which the SI Swimsuit Issue was born. This well-made, warmly personal documentary highlights the way in which Jule used her artistic eye to serve as a female filter to the male gaze of photographers and the magazine’s senior editors, all male. She controlled how the women were photographed, carefully selecting photos that went to the final selection. The issue was required to be sexy but Campbell aimed to keep it tasteful and not lewd. Further, Campbell also carefully chose the swimsuits and selected the models with an eye for intelligence as well as beauty, and her insistence on listing the names of the swimsuit manufacturers and the names of the models brought financial success to small swimsuit businesses, some women owned, and launched the careers many supermodels, including Christie Brinkley, Elle McPherson, Tyra Banks and others, some of whom appear in the documentary.
