FEMINIST FILM THEORY Feminism fundamentally is a critical approach towards gender bias and social campaign for equal rights of all, irrespective of their gender. Feminist point of view in films came into existence due the inadequate and incorrect representation of women. (Shodhganga inflibnet) The concepts like femininity and masculinity are often misrepresented in films. (Smelik, 1999) The feminist approach to cinema asks questions like: How is woman depicted on screen, How are her issues dealt with, What is feminism for film-makers, How is male and female character placed with respect to each other (Tere, 2012) There are two theoretical frameworks; SEMIOTICS and PSYCHOANALYSIS for analysis of cinema’s narrative. SEMIOTICS Claire …show more content…
This attraction can be described through the concept of Scopophilia, The Desire to see, which according to Freud, is a fundamental drive. Classical cinema motivates the desire to look by incorporating structures of voyeurism and narcissism into the story. Voyeuristic visual pleasure; looking at another as our object, Narcissistic visual pleasure; self-identification with the image Mulvey explains narcissistic visual pleasure with the help of Lacan's concepts of ego formation and the mirror stage. Both, Ego formation and cinema is formed by imaginary functions. She added that cinematic identifications are built around the sexual difference by presenting the male hero as the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego' and female character as the passive and powerless, making the spectator is actively identify with the male rather than with the female character in …show more content…
Rendering Cinema as visual equipment being perfected to satisfy and provoke male desires. (Smelik, 1999) "Men act, women appear. Men look at women; women watch themselves being looked at." The above quote suggests very concisely the position of women in the realm of the 'look', Consider the first part of the statement, "Men act, women appear". Budd Boeticher said "What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does, and in herself the woman has not the slightest importance". The stories on screen are about men and their conflicts, their dreams, their aspirations, their tragedies, their revenge, their desires and their heroism. The women exist only in relation to those men, as their mothers, their wives, and especially their lovers. (shodhganga
Mulvey, Laura."Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality/Screen. London: Routledge, 1992.
Neill, Alex. “Empathy and (Film) Fiction.” Philosophy of film and motion pictures : an anthology. Ed. Noel Carrol and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 247-259. Print.
In the article ‘Masculinity In Movies’ the author Kenneth Mackinnon elucidates about masculinity, feminism and the technological advances that occur in masculinity in movies. He also talks about hard bodies and soft bodies and masculinity in tradition and culture. Apart from this the article also tells about the variety of movie genres, movies, film stars and mainly the tension between hyper-masculinity and feminism.
By definition, feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights - equality with men. The idea that women are inferior to men has been around since biblical times, and somewhat still is. Feminism is still an issue in today’s ever-changing society. There are still wage differences, occupational restrictions, and social expectations that men do not have. Two movies I feel display feminism through friendship are Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes. Although Fried Green Tomatoes has an engaging plot, Steel Magnolias has incredible chemistry between characters, as well as witty dialogue.
Williams, Linda. "Film Bodies: Genre, Gender and Excess." Braudy and Cohen (1991 / 2004): 727-41. Print.
“It is said that analyzing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it” written by artist-historian, Laura Mulvey, she discusses the issues that arise when studying beauty. Examining and focusing on feminine beauty to the point of destroying it, has been a constant theme in cinema for decades. Director, Alfred Hitchcock’s has created 65 films in his 50-year long career, Hitchcock is now a common household name, being one of the most widely influential directors of the 20th century. Nicknamed “The Master of Suspense,” he made a name for himself by his incredible ability to visualize his subconscious fears and desires and turn them into a masterpiece. Throughout Hitchcock’s successful career, his films have a common theme of objectifying women through the
In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey states that, “Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen.” (Mulvey 40). A woman’s role in the narrative is bound to her sexuality or the way she
Feminism, in its simplest definition, is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. (Webster) Feminists fight for equality for women to men socially, politically, and economically. At the peak of feminist discourse is equality for men and women in education and in employment. However, feminism also focuses on more than issues regarding the rights of women in relation to men. Issues of gender equality and women’s right to control their sexuality are also at the core of feminist theory. A key argument made by many feminists is how women have very little control over their sexuality, mainly being defined and controlled by men. T...
The idea of male gaze in cinema is best addressed by Laura Mulvey in her article “Visual Pleasures and the Narrative Cinema”. One idea she looks at is the notion that women are related to the image, and men assume the role as bearer of the look. She quotes “In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.” The traditional exhibition role is what Sarah Polley must overcome in order to express female and national identity in a position of strength. In order to do this she must alter some the traditional constructions associated with the gaze in cinema to bring in order to critique the gaze that is male.
According to Freud, sexual desire is the center of everything. Every action we take and every word we speak has an underlying, perhaps subconscious, sexual theme as its driving force. The first stage in Freud's Oedipus Complex is the oral stage. In the example given by Tom Davis, an English professor at Birmingham University, "the child is in a state of sexual bliss: at the mother's breast, receiving nourishment, in a sexual relationship not only with his mother, but, he thinks, the whole world." After the oral stage comes the anal stage: in this stage the child learns that he cannot always do what he wants when he wants to. Eventually the child reaches the genital stage, that is, he becomes aware of his own penis. About this time, he also realizes that girls don't have penises and irrationally concludes that they have been castrated by Daddy to prevent...
In Laura Mulvey’s article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” she uses the concept of scopophilia, or pleasure obtained through looking at things, to discuss the portrayal of women in film as passive sexual objects, while inferring that it is the active male “gaze” that objectifies them. Mulvey’s ideas are extremely relevant to Stanley Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut, in which the themes of sexuality and voyeurism are abundant. The gender roles are very clearly defined in Eyes Wide Shut. The men control the “gaze” and obtain scopophilic pleasure by looking at women. The women, on the other hand, are all presented as highly sexualized objects, or things that exist simply to be looked at. Furthermore, when they do have
Over the past decades, media has constructed and manipulated women into being the main form of sexual pleasure for the male viewer. Pleasure in looking, scopophilia, is one of many possible types of pleasure that media presents. Scopophilia does not only present looking as a source of pleasure, but also the pleasure in being looked upon. Freud explains in his book, the three essays on the theory of sexuality (1905) that one of the main instincts of sexuality is scopophilia, and that scopophilia should be isolated as an independent source of pleasure because it does not depend on the erotogenic zones. Freud further demonstrates that “he associated scopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze” (Mulvey, 1975, p. 16.). As such, the theory of scopophilia does not only involve pleasure in being looked at and the pleasure in looking, but also the pleasure of looking at someone as an object. Freud ties scopophilia to the curiosity children show considering the human body and other people’s genitals. The media pleases the primitive lust of looking, while developing a narcissistic form of scopophilia in the audience (KILDE.
Also, the film revealed women empowerment and how superior they can be compared to men. While demonstrating sexual objectification, empowerment, there was also sexual exploitation of the women, shown through the film. Throughout this essay, gender based issues that were associated with the film character will be demonstrated while connecting to the real world and popular culture.
Feminism is a movement that supports women equality within society. In relation to film, feminism is what pushes the equal representation of females in mainstream films. Laura Mulvey is a feminist theorist that is famous for touching on this particular issue of how men and women are represented in movies. Through her studies, she discovered that many films were portraying men and women very differently from reality. She came up with a theory that best described why there is such as huge misrepresentation of the social status quos of male and female characters. She believed that mainstream film is used to maintain the status quo and prevent the realization of gender equality. This is why films are continuously following the old tradition that males are dominant and females are submissive. This is the ideology that is always present when we watch a movie. This is evident in the films from the past but also currently. It is as if the film industry is still catering to the male viewers of each generation in the same way. Laura Mulvey points out that women are constantly being seen as sexual objects, whether it is the outfits they wear or do not wear or the way they behave, or secondary characters with no symbolic cause. She states that, “in traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote it-be-looked-at-ness.”(Mulvey pg. 715). Thus, women are nevertheless displayed as nothing more than passive objects for the viewing pleasure of the audience. Mulvey also points out through her research that in every mainstream movie, there is ...
Feminist theory was derived from the social movement of feminism where political women fight for the right of females in general and argue in depth about the unequality we face today. In the aspect of cinema, feminists notice the fictitious representations of females and also, machismo. In 1974, a book written by Molly Haskell "From Reverence to Rape: The treatment of Women in Movies" argues about how women almost always play only passive roles while men are always awarded with active, heroic roles. Moreover, how women are portrayed in movies are very important as it plays a big role to the audience on how to look at a woman and how to treat her in real life due to the illusionism that cinema offers. These images of women created in the cinema shapes what an ideal woman is. This can be further explained through an article 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' written by a feminist named Laura Mulvey in 1975. She uses psychoanalysis theories by Sigmund Freud to analyze 'Scopophilia' which is the desire to see. This explains how the audience is hooked to the screen when a sexy woman is present. In a bigger picture, where Scopophilia derives from, 'Voyeurism' is also known as feeling visual pleasure when looking at another. Narcissism on the other hand means identifying one's self with the role played. It is not hard to notice that in classical cinema, men often play the active role while the women are always the object of desire for the male leads, displayed as a sexual object and frequently the damsels in distress. Therefore, the obvious imbalance of power in classical cinema shows how men are accountable to moving the narratives along. Subconsciously, narcissism occurs in the audience as they ...