2. Feminism to Film
A critical approach
What‟s wrong with images of women
in the cinema?
lGreater differentiation of men‟s roles than women‟s roles.
lMen portrayed as actors within history; femininity as
ahistorical and eternal (myth).
lMen represented as active subjects, controllers of look;
women objectified as a passive “to-be-looked-at-ness.”
lIdentification of femininity with the sexual and erotic.
“Woman is presented as what she represents for man”:
woman as phallic replacement, a projection of male
narcissistic fantasy.
3. Feminism to Film
A critical approach
Jacques
Lacan:
Symbolic
The Symbolic includes all expressive behaviors: language
and art as well as social structures such as kinship relations
(Claude Levi-Strauss).
The Symbolic includes not only language and expression, but
all the positions of identification and subjectivity that
individuals must take up in order to have a "place" in society.
4. Feminism to Film
A critical approach
Psychoanalysis
and sexual
differencemeans to identity themselves with the
lHaving the
phallus, men have a privileged access to the law,
authority, and symbolic manipulation;
lFailing this identification women do not.
lFrom the point of view of men, women come to
represent lack, an anxiety that they will fail before the
Law.
Women are represented has “failing” the symbolic and
relegated to a negative representation, what is “not-
male.”
5. Feminism to Film
A critical approach
Are women “outside” the
symbolic?
If women stand outside the symbolic . . .
Women are not represented for themselves, but rather as
that which is “not male.”
Women are occluded from positions of identification and
pleasure in the cinema.
Mulvey: [and so elude the snare of identification]
Doane: “filming a women becomes equivalent to a terrorist act.”
Or, perhaps women have a different relation to language
and identification?
6. Feminism to Film
A critical approach
Feminism and political
modernism
Mulvey: the history of women‟s participation in filmmaking is allied
with both an independent and avant-garde practice.
The threat of negativity implied by the imaging of women in classical films
are the source for anti-illusionist counter-strategies that undermine new
cinematic forms and meanings.
Redirecting negativity to undermine masculine pleasure in looking.
Doane: to define an autonomous space of language and desire for
women.
Michèle Montrelay and Luce Irigaray
To define a non-phallic language or desire
A feminist political modernism must define a feminine poetic syntax and
position of looking and desire that derive from a new way of imaging the
female body.
7. Feminism to Film
A critical approach
Theories in Summary
Mary Ann
Doane
The search for a feminine poetic syntax (A set of
rules for Poetry/Film which are inline with femininity)
“which constitutes (establishes) the female body as a
term.” (rather than an object)
Doane desires „a feminine poetic syntax and position of
looking and desire that derive from a new way of imaging the
female body.‟ (we have to look at things not from a Male
perspective)
8. Feminism to Film
A critical approach
Theories in Summary
Teresa De Lauretis
We should rethink the idea of women in cinema…
She is searching for films whose visual and symbolic spaces addresses the
spectator as a woman. (Very Few, even if directed by a woman)
Understanding That there is a difference between the general women from
each Woman, as well as there being differences among women. (They are
not all the Same)
The audience should be conceived as a heterogeneous community (A
DIVERSE COMMUNITY, ie not just White rich MEN).
9. Feminism to Film
A critical approach
Laura
Mulvey and Narrative Cinema”
“Visual Pleasure
She argued that the spectator is put in a masculine
position with the woman on screen presented as an object
of desire
Three Different
Looks
The camera (shot types and angles used)
The audience (voyeuristic)
The actors (interaction with each other)
The main idea that seems to bring these actions together is that "looking" is
generally seen as an active male role while the passive role of being looked at
is immediately adopted as a female characteristic.
10. Feminism to Film
A critical approach
The Role of
Women
Mulvey argues that women in film are tied
to desire and that female characters hold
an "appearance coded for strong visual
and erotic impact"
11. Feminism to Film
Three Different
A critical approach
Looks
The camera (shot types and angles used)
The audience (voyeuristic)
The actors (interaction with each other)
The main idea that seems to bring these
actions together is that "looking" is generally
seen as an active male role while the passive
role of being looked at is immediately adopted
as a female characteristic.
12. Steve Neale – The Gay Gaze
It can be argued that we can also have a „gay male
gaze‟ (Steve Neale, 1992)
Images which show men passive, submissive,
sexual poses – lying down, looking up at the
camera so that the viewr is dominant can be
described a HOMOEROTIC. In this case the male
subject will have hands behind their heads in a
pose which could suggest relaxation but could also
be read as submissive and non-aggressive.
13. Feminism to Film
A critical approach
Where
can we
apply
this to
fight
club?
