The Love Witch

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Recommended: Masculinity and stereotypes in movies

This was my first time viewing The Love Witch by Anna Biller. I enjoyed every aspect of it. It was extremely theatrical and intellectual. I also loved the actress who played Elaine and how she performed the character. It was an overperformance that painted Elaine as the ultimate femme fatale, she is the literal personification of male fear towards women. Elaine is beautiful, powerful, charming, and uses love magic to get her way. This film explores archetypes of sex, desire, and love through a unique female gaze. One thing that stuck with me the most was something Anna said before the film started. She was talking about how feminist film theory influenced her work but how some people(specifically men) didn’t get that upon viewing the film. Some people have criticized The Love Witch because it portrays a beautiful, sexual, women and …show more content…

However, when Anna spoke about the film, she talked about how women also like to see pretty, sexy, beautiful things. I always think that to myself. There are films where the women is gazed at and it makes me super uncomfortable (think Martin Scorsese), but there are also films like The Love Witch, where I enjoy the gaze. I enjoy it because it’s a female one. Most people like to forget that women also enjoy looking at other beautiful women. In this film, Elaines beauty and charm is seen as an innate female power to be used to her advantage. She is strong, narcissistic, and gets what she wants out of the men who surround her. In Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the Female Spectator by Mary Ann Doane, she states that since the cinema caters to a male gaze, women are somewhat forced to adopt it. She talks about “distance” from the object of desire, and says that women are

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