Feminist film theory is theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory. Feminists have many approaches to cinema analysis, regarding the film elements analyzed and their theoretical underpinnings.
The development of feminist film theory was influenced by 2nd wave feminism and the development of women’s studies within the academy. Feminist scholars began taking cues from the new theories arising from these movements to analyzing film. Initial attempts in the United States in the early 1970s were generally based on sociological theory and focused on the function of women characters in particular film narratives or genres and of stereotypes as a reflection of a society’s view of women. Works such as Marjorie Rosen’s Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies, and the American Dream and Molly Haskell’s From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in Movies (1974) analyze how the women portrayed in film related to the broader historical context, the stereotypes depicted, the extent to which the women were shown as active or passive, and the amount of screen time given to women.
In contrast, film theoreticians in England began integrating critical theory based perspectives drawn from psychoanalysis, semiotics, and Marxism, and eventually these ideas gained hold within the American scholarly community in the later 1970s and 1980s. Analysis generally focused on “the production of meaning in a film text, the way a text constructs a viewing subject, and the ways in which the very mechanisms of cinematic production affect the representation of women and reinforce sexism”.
In his essay from The Imaginary Signifier, “Identification, Mirror,” Christian Metz argues that viewing film is only possible through scopophilia, which is best exemplified in silent film.
According to Cynthia A. Freeland in “Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films,” feminist studies of horror films have focused on psychodynamics where the chief interest is “on viewers’ motives and interests in watching horror films”.
More recently, scholars have expanded their work to include analysis of television and digital media. Additionally, they have begun to explore notions of difference, engaging in dialogue about the differences among women, the various methodologies and perspectives contained under the umbrella of feminist film theory, and the multiplicity of methods and intended effects that influence the development of films. Scholars are also taking increasingly global perspectives, responding to postcolonialist criticisms of Anglo- and Eurocentrism in the academy more generally. Increased focus has been given to, “disparate feminisms, nationalisms, and media in various locations and across class, racial, and ethnic groups throughout the world”.
Whilst Laura Mulvey’s paper has a particular place in the feminist film theory, it is also important to note that her ideas regarding ways of watching the cinema have been very important in terms of defining spectatorship from the psychoanalytical view point.
Mulvey identifies three “looks” or perspectives that occur in film which serve to sexually objectify women. The 1st is the perspective of the male character on screen and how he perceives the female character. The 2nd is the perspective of the spectator as they see the female character on screen. The 3rd “look” joins the 1st two looks together: it is the male audience member’s perspective of the male character in the film. This 3rd perspective allows the male audience to take the female character as his own personal sex object because he can relate himself, through looking, to the male character in the film.
In the paper, Mulvey calls for a destruction of modern film structure as the only way to free women from their sexual objectification in film, arguing for a removal of the voyeurism encoded into film by creating distance between the male spectator and the female character. The only way to do so, Mulvey argues, is by destroying the element of voyeurism and “the invisible guest”. Mulvey also asserts that the dominance that men embody is only so because women exist, as without a woman for comparison, a man and his supremacy as the controller of visual pleasure are insignificant. For Mulvey, it is the presence of the female that defines the patriarchal order of society as well as the male psychology of thought.
Mulvey’s argument comes as a product of the time period in which she was writing. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” was composed during the period of second-wave feminism, which was concerned with achieving equality for women in the workplace, and with exploring the psychological implications of sexual stereotypes. Mulvey calls for an eradication of female sexual objectivity in order to align herself with second-wave feminism. She argues that in order for women to be equally represented in the workplace, women must be portrayed as men are: as lacking sexual objectification.
Mulvey posits in her notes to the Criterion Collection DVD of Michael Powell’s controversial film Peeping Tom that the cinema spectator’s own voyeurism is made shockingly obvious and even more shockingly, the spectator identifies with the perverted protagonist. The inference is that she includes female spectators in that, identifying with the male observer rather than the female object of the gaze.
Coming from a black feminist perspective, bell hooks put forth the notion of the “oppositional gaze,” encouraging black women not to accept stereotypical representations in film, but rather actively critique them. Janet Bergstrom’s article “Enunciation and Sexual Difference” uses Sigmund Freud’s ideas of bisexual responses, arguing that women are capable of identifying with male characters and men with women characters, either successively or simultaneously. Miriam Hanson, in “Pleasure, Ambivalence, Identification: Valentino and Female Spectatorship” (1984) put forth the idea that women are also able to view male characters as erotic objects of desire. In “The Master’s Dollhouse: Rear Window,” Tania Modleski argues that Hitchock’s film, Rear Window, is an example of the power of male gazer and the position of the female as a prisoner of the “master’s dollhouse”.
The early work of Marjorie Rosen and Molly Haskell on representation of women in film was part of a movement to make depictions of women more realistic both in documentaries and narrative cinema. The growing female presence in the film industry was seen as a positive step toward realizing this goal, by drawing attention to feminist issues and putting forth alternative, more true-to-life views of women. However, these images are still mediated by the same factors as traditional film, such as the “moving camera, composition, editing, lighting, and all varieties of sound.” While acknowledging the value in inserting positive representations of women in film, some critics asserted that real change would only come about from reconsidering the role of film in society, often from a semiotic point of view.
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