"The
history of mankind is the history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the
part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an
absolute tyranny over her."
-- Seneca Falls Convention. As quoted in Feminism:
The Essential Historical Writings, part 3, by Miriam Schnier (1972).
INTRODUCTION
Why do we need a feminist approach to film theory? Who
says filmdom isn't egalitarian?
Consider writer Deborah Solomon's assertions about the field of
photography: "Of all the arts, photography might seem to be the most
virile. It can fairly be likened to big-game hunting. When we speak of
'capturing' a moment or 'shooting' a scene, we poach verbs that in earlier times referred
to messy transactions between men and deer" (Solomon, "Portrait of the Artists:
The Women Behind Photography's New Golden Age," New York Times Magazine,
Sept. 9, 2001, 39). Since photography is integral to filmmaking, and we talk
about "shooting" a movie, surely the masculinity associated with photography is
extended to cinema, as well. Hollywood, in particular, is highly patriarchal, as
detailed below.
FREUDIAN
PSYCHOSEXUAL THEORY
The feminist model of film analysis
initially appeared in the U.S. during the 1960's, as the Women’s Liberation
movement first gained prominence. At that point, the theory employed a sociological
approach; that is, a particular film analyzed from a feminist perspective was studied in
terms of the era in which it was made and, if it was a period piece, the time frame in
which it was set. Later feminist film analysts began to deconstruct movies by employing
Freudian psychoanalytic and psychosexual theories. This does not mean scholars
have embraced Freudian ideas; rather, feminist film theorists have recognized how Freud’s
highly sexist ideas have permeated and been accepted by American society. This was (and
still is) particularly true of Hollywood, which has always been run by a "good ol’ boy" network.
Those of you unfamiliar with Freud’s theories need at least a very brief overview. (We could spend a whole semester on just this topic.) Freud, of course, was a Viennese doctor and the first psychoanalytic theorist. He came up with a comprehensive personality theory, including a psychosexual analysis:
According to Freud, all human personality is biologically based, and everyone passes through a series of biological stages:
Stage
One is the oral stage, which lasts from birth till about 1-2 years of age. The central
issue during this stage is oral gratification. A child sucks on everything and receives
all pleasure from the mouth.
Stage
Two is the anal stage, from 1-2 till about 3-4 years of age. The central focus at this
point is waste elimination and control, with a child concerned with controlling
him/herself (being retentive/letting go).
The
third phase is the phallic stage, from age four till around six years. This is the stage
feminist film theorists tend to focus on, because this is when there is the first
differentiation between genders. Boys go through what Freud terms the Oedipal complex,
when they fall in love with their mothers and see their fathers as rivals. This is because
their fathers also have penises. A resolution occurs when a boy sees his dad as a buddy
and realizes his love for mom is less intense and not threatened by his father’s
love for her. Boys who do not resolve this see their dads and other males as authority
figures. They also psychologically fear castration. Similarly, girls fall in love with
their dads at this age, and they see their moms as rivals. This is called the Electra
complex, and according to Freud, this can never be resolved. Their anger towards their
moms is based on the idea that girls want to have penises and blame their moms (whom they
realize also don’t have them) for them not being "endowed," i.e., penis envy. The
closest females can come to resolving this so-called inadequacy is to have a male child,
thereby having a surrogate penis. But because females are never "gifted," they
remain psychologically dysfunctional, and so less able to cope. Thus, in Freud’s
view, females should never hold positions of control and power. In other words, this
psychosexual theory upholds the views of the typical patriarchal society: that men are
superior to women and should be the ones in charge.
Freud’s take on females is clearly biased, and I’m certainly not saying his theory is true; rather, I’m merely relating his theory to you and stating it has found wide acceptance, especially in the U.S. I am also saying feminist film scholars obviously take issue with the notion, inferred from Freud’s theory, that females, given their biological "inadequacy," should not be in positions of power. If women do try to compete with men, it’s perceived as a threat by the patriarchy because the women are not only out to gain power for themselves, but they want to usurp power from males, thereby "castrating" them.
Freud’s view of females is manifest in movies where women who assume positions of
power, e.g., become sexually aggressive or desirous of a career, are punished for stepping
outside the boundaries established by the ruling patriarchy; that is, the pigeonholes of
faithful wife/caregiving mother/virginal, dutiful daughter. The punishment for
transgressing these roles can be death (Double Indemnity), jail (The Maltese
Falcon), failure or ridicule. The latter occurs in Steel Magnolias, when a rich
widow takes over a radio station and makes a fool of herself on the air doing color
commentary on a football game from the men’s locker room. It also shows up in an
early Martin Scorsese film, Knock on Any Door, when a young woman tells her
boyfriend that she was raped years earlier. Her boyfriend turns on her, blaming her for
the rape, claiming she must have been sending out signals that she "really
wanted it," despite her pleas to the contrary. He then calls her a tramp and wants
nothing more to do with this "tainted" woman. These punished filmic females
end up serving as a warning to other women to know their proper place in society and not to
overstep the boundaries.
SCOPOPHILIA
"Scopophilia, a drive which has the look as its object of desire, is evidently of crucial importance to the cinema. It is a drive that is dependent upon the maintenance of a distance between subject and object." -- Stephen Neale
An issue central to feminist film analysis is how women are typically objectified in mainstream Hollywood films. According to film theorist Laura Mulvey, popular movies are philocentric; that is, constructed for male viewing pleasure. This means that films are scopophilic in nature, with women as passive objects meant to satisfy the active male desire to gaze at the female form. This is referred to as the male gaze, and it is accomplished in the cinema in three distinct ways:
females within the narrative who are shown looking at (and usually lusting after) female
characters;
through
the lens of the movie camera, which lingers on a woman in scopophilic fashion;
through
the eyes of (heterosexual) males in the viewing audience who are invited to stare at
an attractive woman on the screen and live out their fantasies through her
All three methods of the male gaze objectify a woman, turning her into a commodity on display, instead of recognizing her as an equal human being. In this way, she loses her basic humanity.
There are countless examples of objectified women on the screen. Rita Hayworth,
the seductive femme fatale in The
Lady from Shanghai, is captured by the camera in
a series of close-ups as she’s sunbathing on her husband’s yacht, singing as if
she were a mythic siren luring men to her side (and their deaths). Indeed, we see the hero
watching her, unable to resist her, and another man lasciviously ogling her through the
lens of a
telescope. Of course, the straight men in the audience are also meant to be
captivated by her beauty. Thus, she’s presented as a sex object, not as a person. Then
there’s the famous sequence in The Seven Year Itch where Marilyn Monroe,
wearing a seductive white chiffon dress, stands over a subway grate, her skirt catching a
breeze and blowing up around her waist. In a third example, consider the opening of the
aptly named Pretty Woman. The camera focuses only a series of female body parts
– a long pair of legs, the curve of a waist, and shapely breasts (in a lacy bra),
taking its time to finally reveal the film’s star, Julia Roberts. Again, we have a
filmic female depicted as a mere commodity, both literally (she’s a hooker) and
figuratively. What makes the last example even worse is that, according to Hollywood
legend, the lovely Ms. Roberts was said to have demanded a stand-in, not out of modesty
but because she didn’t think her body was good enough to be displayed! (She has
obviously developed some self-confidence, as she’s on display – albeit clad
– in Erin Brockovich.)
In a third twist, women in film can be punished if they do not construct themselves for the male gaze. Early in the 1989 film Steel Magnolias, for instance, no one pays attention to M’Lynn (Sally Field) while she’s sporting jeans and a rumpled polo shirt, unkempt hair and no make-up. It’s only when she feminizes her dress and fixes herself up that she is ceded any power (finding and hiding her trigger-happy husband’s gun). Similarly, M’Lynn’s friend Ouiser (Shirley MacLaine) can only attract a man when she properly constructs herself, i.e., abandons her sneakers, overalls and floppy gardening hat and adopts ladylike attire. Again, this teaches women that they must conform to male standards in order to fit in.
Of course, over the past few decades, an alternative cinema has asserted itself. Films such as The Piano, positioned from a female perspective, have become more available. Some 30 years after the onset of Women’s Lib, some femme fatales are actually getting away with their machinations, à la Kathleen Turner’s character in Body Heat and Linda Fiorentino’s in The Last Seduction. And there are more female film directors working in Hollywood today. However, it’s important to note that many female directors tend to imitate their successful male counterparts by embracing patriarchal standards in order to make it up the ladder of success themselves, and maybe even crashing through the glass ceiling.
The explanations below help illuminate what two of the world's best known film scholars,
Laura Mulvey and E. Ann Kaplan, have written on feminist film theory.
LAURA MULVEY'S VISUAL PLEASURE
AND NARRATIVE CINEMA
Feminists use Freud's psychosexual theory to explain patriarchal views -- the Electra complex
thesis that "the unconscious of patriarchal society
has structured film form"
phallocentrism -- the castrated woman, a.k.a., the Female Other, is merely
the bearer of meaning, not the maker of meaning; thus females are passive while males are
active
Alternative cinema vs. Hollywood mainstream cinema, with the latter playing
on male scopophilic instincts
As noted above, three different "looks" are associated with
mainstream cinema:
characters within the film's narrative, generally men
gazing at women, thus objectifying them
the camera in the act of filming, focusing on a female
character
the viewer (whether male or female), who is supposed
to identify with the male protagonist and the gaze, thus also objectifying the
on-screen female character
Visual pleasure associated with erotic pleasure -- scopophilia, love
of looking
Scopophila objectifies people, subjecting them to a controlling gaze
involving perversion and obsessive voyeurism, as with peeping Toms
Scopophila has a narcissistic aspect
Male active and dominant, female passive and submissive -
with male controlling the narrative structure, as he is the bearer of "the
look"
Women, who are gazed upon, are thus eroticized
NOTES ON E. ANN KAPLAN'S "IS THE GAZE MALE?"
The signs in the Hollywood film convey the patriarchal ideology that underlies our
social structure and that constructs women in very specific ways -- ways that reflect
patriarchal needs -- the patriarchal unconscious" (p. 24).
Men don't simply look at women: rather, their gaze carries power
of action and possession. The sexualization and objectification of women is not just
for purpose of eroticism, but it is designed to annihilate the threat that females pose.
Mainstream Hollywood films can be analyzed and criticized for
being pro-patriarchy, usually through by applying psychoanalytic theory. This is
often referred to as "reading (them) against the grain."
Patriarchal myths function to position women as silent, absent
and marginal.
FOR YOUR DANGEROUS BEAUTY ASSIGNMENT
Before viewing Dangerous Beauty, make sure you've read the assigned handouts, including Mulvey's article (which you can get to here) and the hand-out I prepared outlining the various aspects of feminism and anti-feminism in film (which you can access here). Then watch the film on your own, either in IMS, where it's on reserve, or renting it from a video store. As you watch the film, be able to pinpoint what is feminist and what is anti-feminist, within the heroine, the other women in the film, as well as in Venetian society as a whole.
There will be a quiz on Dangerous Beauty at the beginning of the class for which it's assigned. You need to be present and on time to take it (no make up without a note from the Dean's office or a physician), but the quiz question won't be esoteric; that is, if you've seen the film you'll be able to answer the question.
Among the web articles that relate to this topic (in addition
to the assigned Mulvey article) are the following:
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze.html
- A series of highly illuminating articles on the gaze. The section on Laura Mulvey
and spectatorship is particularly relevant and helps clarify her stance (which is one of
your reading assignments on feminism in film).
http://www.let.uu.nl/womens_studies/anneke/filmtheory.html - Another overview that is more historically based, by Anneke
Smelik, Assistant Professor in Film Studies at the University of Nijmegen, the
Netherlands. The article, which also includes some interesting links, can also be
found in in Pam Cook and Mieke Bernink, (eds), The Cinema Book, 2nd edition.
London: British Film Institute, 1999, pp 353-365.
http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/women/papers.html - A trio of scholarly essays on "Scary Women in the Cinema"