I am reading Feminist film Theorists by Shohini Chaudhuri and will be taking notes, some will be quotes to possibly use for essay but mostly i will just be copying exerts from the book, mainly where important details on theories are explained so i can fully understand the concept so i can come back to it and use the concept within my analysis of case studies i.e. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Scream and Alien.
Woman ' is defined solely in terms of sexuality, as an object of desire, in relation to, or as a foil for, 'man' - Shohini Chaudhuri pg. 2 -- on Laura Mulvey
Look at: Visual and other pleasures (1989) and Fetishism and Curiosity (1996) - Laura Mulvey
Look at: The Acoustic Mirror (1998) and Male Subjectivity at the Margins (1992) - Kaja Silverman
Teresa de Lauretis - "draws on an alternative theoretical base for her concept of the technology of gender, which seeks to go further than either the work of cultural historian Michel Foucault from which it derived or existing psychoanalytically-informed feminist theories which appeared unable to address the different experiences of women with regard to race, sexuality, and class." - Chaudhuri p.3 - not a quote for essay/just overview of what they look in to
Kaja Silverman - "departs from ongoing feminist debates about the 'gaze' and whether it is male by extending the feminist critique of narrative cinema into the area of the voice, including the question of authorial voice" she also (in her other book) "deals with the phenomenon of male masochism and other forms of male subjectivity that exhibit classically 'feminine' traits. In the process, she exposes the ideological vulnerability of so-called masculine 'norms', showing masculinity itself to be a representational category, not unlike femininity." - Chaudhuri p.3 - not a quote for essay - just summary
Barbara Creed - "Creed has extended feminist insights to many aspects of postmodern culture. In particular, she has produced an extremely influential analysis of patriarchal ideology in the horror genre, which abounds with visions of woman as the 'monstrous-feminine". - Chaudhuri pg.3
Look at: Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex (1949)
Martha Lauzen's research into the 'celluloid ceiling' has recently brought to attention the problems within the Hollywood film industry. women are significantly under-represented behind-the-scenes as directors,cinematographers, editors, producers and writers but their chances of advancing through the industry are far less than men's. - Lauzen 2005
^ Not just on the screen but behind the scenes there are major feminist issues within the Hollywood Film Industry, is this why there are so many issues on screen? could this be the norm?
"'Norms of feminine appearance' they promote are unobtainable for most women" Saul 2003:144 - Chaudhuri pg.7
^ Lara Croft, appearance is always perfect, even in fights with robots, falling through tomb ceiling, her appearance never falters.
Western Feminine Ideals - adverts, magazines
Claire Johnston, Kuhn, Pam Cook
"She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the subject, he is the absolute - She is the Other" de Beauvoir 1993: xxxix-xl)
Beauvoir - asserts that men have claimed this subject position for themselves and, in order to ratify themselves in it, they have reduced women to the position of an objectified 'other', denying women existence for themselves. pg. 16
Beauvoir - Man purports to be universal. He is equated with rationality and transcendence of body. Woman appears as his other: irrational, tied to the body, in all respects defined in relation to man. For de Beauvoir, in the source of this gender hierarchy and sexual inequality is patriarchal culture, as purveyed by 'religion, traditions, language, tales, songs, movies' all of which help compose the way in which people understand and experience the world. pg.16
vehicles for myths - Semiotics - tales in which we believe in something without needing proof
"Men have used the patriarchal myth of the 'eternal feminine' to justify women's oppression.' pg.17 Chaudhuri
'External feminine' - attributes qualities such as inferiority, gentleness and emotionality.
"feminine fulfilment" 1960 American housewife
Freidan's book reiterated how women were defined only in sexual relation to men - this time as "Wife, Sex, object, mother, housewife" pg. 17 Friedan 2001:xv
^ I can compare this to Lara croft:Tomb Raider especially out of the other films i am studying as this film was primarily made based on the game, which main audience was male. The Male Gaze theory can be seen a lot, showing Lara Croft as 'Other' an objectified character purely defined in sexual relation to men. But I could then question whether it is Hollywood that defines the character only in sexual relation to men or whether it was the game company, but if it is the latter then Hollywood must take the responsibility of reinforcing and allowing this, so all in all the blame falls on both the games company and the Film Industry.
Ideology - set of rules or beliefs that we are taught, normally by authoritative figures, like priests, teachers, police officers etc. - patriarchy
denotation - literal meaning
connotation - Implied/associated meaning.
"myth transmits and transforms that ideology of sexism and renders it invisible" - Johnston 2000:25 pg.26
Hollywood uses iconography - visual and stylistic motifs making up a system of signs based on genre conventions - to build its mythical female stereotypes.
Johnston - semiotics in feminism, Marxism, structuralism
'Women's voices are invariably tied to bodily spectacle, presented as 'thick with body' - for example, crying, panting, or screaming - and insistently held to the rule of synchronisation, which marries the voice with the image.' - Chaudhuri pg. 45
Suture - the 'hook' by which the film accomplishes the entrapment of the viewer - Silverman
Chaudhuri pg. 50
Cinematic enunciator - Tape recorder, machines etc. the bit we don't see within the film that adds narrative - Psycho 1960 shower scene - only see stabbing knife, no other character for the viewer to identify with, except the enunciator (tape recorder, machines (sounds and Camera shots etc.)) leaving the viewer looking for meaning and narrative they sympathise with the killer, feeling anxious for him etc. this is suture - the 'hook' - the entrapment - Silverman 1983:212 Chaudhuri 50
Woman - woman is represented in the media and advertising
Women always aspire to woman - reinforce unachievable
Cultural representations of Woman - virgin and whore - housewife and business woman
The image of woman, moreover, casts none other than a man's shadow. pg 63 de Lauretis 1987:104
'When she writes 'Woman' (usually with a capital 'W'), she means 'a fictional construct', an essence ascribed to all women distilled from numerous Western cultural discourses. (de Lauretis 1984:5) pg.63 Chaudhuri
Althusser -'ideological state apparatus' - 'the media, schools, family and law courts. All these institutions produce discourses that have the power to produce and promote representations of gender, which are then accepted and internalized by subjects.' - Chaudhuri pg. 67
'The powerful social technologies such as mainstream cinema undoubtedly affects the way in which gender is internalized and constructed by individuals - but our individual self-representations of gender impact on the broader social construction of gender, too. - de Lauretis 1987:9 - Chaudhuri pg. 67
'When i look at the movies, film theorists try to tell me thst the gaze is male, the camera eye is masculine, and so my look is also not a woman's. But i don't believe them anymore, because now i think i know what it is to look at a film as a woman' - de Lauretis 1987:113 pg. 68
'Women's cinema" - films by women, made for women, or dealing with women, or allof these combined.
"the conscious attempt to address the viewer as female, irrespective of it's viewers' actual gender, is what 'allows the film to draw to it's discursive texture something of that "real" which is the untheorized experience of women' de Lauretis 1987:119 - Chaudhuri pg. 68
'Oedipal contract, therefore, lays the foundations for (patriarchal) social stability bu urging the boy to identify with the father and objectifying the mother' - Chaudhuri pg 71
^ Fairytales, Monarchy, Son proceeds father on the throne, to marry wife who will be queen - reflection of father and mother
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