Feminist film theory is a fairly new form of analysis, which came to light after the second-wave feminism in the 70’s and 80’s. Although theorists started with the same common idea, to tackle feminist issues within film, from what was brought to attention within the women’s movement. Theorists from different countries, started with totally different approaches. American’s used the narrative within the films and the gender stereotypes forced upon women to calculate their theories, where English theorists used psychoanalysis, semiotics and Marxism to base their studies on.
Psychoanalysis plays a big part in some feminist film theories, although accepted by some theorists, not all agree with the concept. Lucian Freud's Oedipus complex is very controversial, he analysed children and their sexual development from a very young age, stating that male children have a sexual attraction to their mother, but fear ‘castration’ when they see their mother's ‘lack’ of a penis. The child then identifies with the power of this father, moving his attraction for his mother onto other objects or fetishes. The female child on the other hand, has penis envy and moves her sexual desire from the mother onto something else.
Not all feminist film theorists approve of Freud’s findings, they are predominantly sexist towards women. His mention of the women’s ‘lack’ of a penis, and the boy’s identification with the power of his father, only enforces societies ideology of women, as lesser to the man. The ‘other’ of man.
‘Freud is target number one as a personal male chauvinist whose so-called ‘scientific’ propaganda has been responsible for damning a generation of emancipated women to the passivity of the second sex.’ Juliet Mitchell (1974:303)
Although the theorists who do use this approach for their own theories, see it as an important tool, focusing on how his theory relates to women, understanding how women are oppressed by men from an early start within life, and use this as a tool to figure out strategies for change.
‘An entire system has been built up in this perspective, which I do not intend to criticize as a whole, merely examining it’s contribution to the study of woman. It is not an easy matter to discuss psychoanalysis per se. Like all religions – Christianity and Marxism, for example – itdisplays and embarrassing flexibility on a basis of rigid concepts.’ Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Jonathon Cape (1960:65) Juliet Mitchell (1974:305)
Laura Mulvey is a feminist film theorist who bases her work around the importance of Freud’s psychoanalysis theories. She is mainly noticed for her theory of the ‘male gaze’, where she explores film as it ‘reflects, reveals and even plays on the straight, socially established interpretation of sexual difference which controls images, erotic ways of lookingand spectacle’ Mulvey (1975:1). She claims that the camera angles, editing, narrative and dialogue all coheres the audience to view the film with male spectatorship. She states that there a two ways in which you can gain pleasure through cinema, one being Scopophilia, a term created by Freud, which is the pleasure of looking, Freud also ‘associated schopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze.’ Mulvey (1975:3), this is applied to Mulvey’s ‘Male Gaze’ theory as she points out how women are objectified within cinema and are used for the object of male desire. Mulvey claims that the cinema surroundings, the dark atmosphere and the characters unaware they’re being watched, forces the audience to take on this way of viewing, almost like a ‘peeping-tom’. The second way is a voyeuristic gaze, which in Freud’s Oedipus complex, can be a fetish in which the child can replace the mother’s desire for.
Mulvey explains how cinema is made by man, for man, and how female roles are there as anerotic object for the male characters and an erotic object for the male audience (Mulvey 1975:6). With this concept she states that every film is viewed with the male gaze and how this is unavoidable as the female characters are mirroring societies ideologies of women.
‘The image of woman as (passive) raw material for the (active) gaze of a man takes the argument a step further into the structure of representation, adding a further layer demanded by ideology of the patriarchal order as it is worked out in its favourite cinematic form – illusionistic narrative film.’ Mulvey (1975:11)
The ‘Male Gaze’ theory is well acknowledged as useful film analysis, with examples in cinema, media and art. But the question of whether this could change would be difficult if Mulvey was right when she said everything was made by man, for man. De Lauretis said that through Women’s Cinema, the male gaze is no longer forced upon the spectator.
‘When I look at the movies, film theorists try to tell me that the gaze is male, the camera eye is masculine, and so my look is also not of 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)
Women’s cinema is films by women, made for women, or dealing women or all of these combined, de Lauretis says that with these elements, the notion of the ‘Male Gaze’ is no longer present. Although, these are examples of film, which isn’t designed for the male viewer, these films are rarer than the popular Hollywood Cinema. With Martha Lauzen’s research into the ‘Celluloid ceiling’ (2005) brought the problems within the Hollywood Film Industry to attention, as women’s chances to advance within the industry are much harder than it is for a man (Chaudhuri 2006:6), meaning that women’s cinema and the absence of the ‘Male Gaze’ will still only be the ‘other’ to Hollywood’s male spectatorship films.
The concept of ‘otherness’ is also used a lot within feminist theories, relating it to how women are the ‘other’ to the man. There are a lot of examples of this within film, by analysing the camera angles, shots, narrative and genres you can see how these patriarchal ideologies show through. Although the concept of 'otherness' was first developed within philosophy in 1807 (Hegel, G), it has been adapted over time by numerous theorists. It was only in 1949, Simone de Beauvoir related this to the way in which men treat women in her book, The Second Sex.
'Otherness' is how the majority within patriarchal societies label minorities; this can be within different cultures, societies and gender.
'Woman is the other of man, animal is the other of human, stranger is the other of native, abnormality the other of norm, deviation the other of law-abiding, illness the other of health, insanity the other of reason, lay public the other of the expert, foreigner the other of state subject, enemy the other of friend' (Bauman 1991: 8).
Edward Said wrote Orientalism in 1978, on how the East represent the West as 'other', portraying the cultures using stereotypes, creating a false image for others to believe in, this is what he called Orientalism.
‘No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are not more than starting-points, which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind. Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or Black, or Western, or Oriental. Yet just as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. Survival in fact is about the connections between things; in Eliot’s phrase, reality cannot be deprived of the “other echoes [that] inhabit the garden.” It is more rewarding - and more difficult - to think concretely and sympathetically, contrapuntally, about others than only about “us.” But this also means not trying to rule others, not trying to classify them or put them in hierarchies, above all, not constantly reiterating how “our” culture or country is number one (or not number one, for that matter).’
― Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism
Simone de Beauvoir on the other hand, uses the concept of 'otherness' to demonstrate how patriarchal society (men) categorise women.
'Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being… 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 (1968:15-16)
Beauvoir's concept of the 'other' is now widely used within feminist film theory, using it as a way to analyse how images and social conventions relate to gender inequality.
Semiotics is another tool used by feminist theorists to analyse film. Semitics is almost like another language, used to interperate hidden meanings. Semiotics (semiology) was first started in the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, where he stated that there are hidden signs within text that isn’t its usual meaning, but an alternative meaning, which derives from social behaviours. Using semiotics can show how ideologies are shown within films by semiotic signs. For instance, traditional ideologies of women are commonly represented within a lot of films, with female characters playing a housewife, being maternal or emotional, these are only a few example of the ideologies of women that patriarchal society enforce upon us, condemning women to an oppressed existence.
Ronald Barthes’ theory on ‘myth’ is also important when looking at ideologies, as the two go hand-in-hand, it is through history and culture that we create myths. For instance, the colour red is seen to be a symbol of many things, but if we choose ‘love’ as an example, it has no real connection to love at all, other than it being the colour of roses, which we also use as a signifier of love, but it is only through history and culture that we have made this connection, through the act of giving this object as a way to show affection. But it is these ways of finding the small, possible connections between things that we can start to analyse text or image.
‘Myth divests the sign ‘woman’ of it’s denotative meaning (a human being or person with the potential for bearing children) and replaces it with connotative meanings, such as ‘woman as other’, ‘the eternal feminine’, or ‘object of male desire’, which give the air of being woman’s ‘natural’ characteristics when in fact they have been constructed through patriarchal discourse’ Creed (1987:300)
A number of feminist film theorists acknowledge the importance of semiotics as a tool of analysis within films, using it as a way to find hidden connotations, ideologies and uses of myths within the narrative, camera angles and dialogue. Claire Johnston, driven from the works of Louis Althusser and Roland Barthes, applies their concepts of semiology and applies it to feminist analysis of films. She discovers that ‘signs’ show myths of ‘woman’, created by patriarchy, reflecting societies sexist views on women.
‘Iconography as a specific kind of sign or cluster of signs based on certain conventions within the Hollywood genres has been partly responsible for the stereotyping of women within the commercial cinema in general, but the fact that there is a far greater differentiation of men’s roles than of women’s roles in the history of the cinema relates to sexist ideology itself, and the basic opposition which places man inside history, and woman as ahistoric and eternal.’ Johnston in Kaplan (2000:23)
Carol J. Clover is an American theorist, who is most renowned for her theory of the ‘Final Girl’ in the horror genre. Clover focuses towards the narrative of the film and the ‘heroine’ within Slasher films, stating that the ‘final girl’ characteristics are shown in all of these films.
She describes the character as being different from the other characters or associates within the film, she is normally uninterested in the same hobbies/actions as them, for instance, she will be a virgin, sexually inactive by choice. She will have a good sense of her surrounding, noticing clues or being more aware than her friends. She will also have masculine traits, like her name, mannerisms, hobbies or job.
‘Female monsters and heroes, when they do appear, are masculine in dress and behavior (often name), males are shown in feminine postures at the moment of their death, and that it would suggest that gender inheres in the function itself – that there is something about the victim function that wants manifestation in a female and something about the monster and hero functions that wants expression in a male.’ Clover (1992:12)
This shows how even when the film has a heroine within the film, the industry still show the traditional ideologies of women being helpless and a victim, through the role of a man, and how to be a heroine, which is goes against societies categorization of ‘woman’, they have to totally strip away all her characteristics to masculine ones.
Clover goes on to mention how the female role within films has drastically changed since the 1970’s, this is a really interesting statement as there could be a few reasons, as at the time of the Women’s Liberation, the roles could have changed or possibly the male viewer now craved a more independent female character.
Unlike Laura Mulvey, who claims the audience is forced to look upon the film and identifying with the male view, Clover states that the Slasher film encourages the audience to relate at first with killer, and then switch to the female (final girl), as she kills the villain and ultimately stops the threat. She explains this by saying how the importance of camera angle, going from the ‘final girl’ to what she then sees herself, forces the audience to relate with her.
Although Clover’s research is specifically based upon slasher films, I think her theory can be relates to other genres also. It seems that films which include a female heroine as the lead role, follow the same characteristics Clover points out in the ‘Final Girl’ theory.
It is important to analyse these films using feminist theories as like Simone de Beauvoir states, sexual inequality derives from patriarchal culture in the form of ‘religion, traditions, language, tales, songs, movies’ (de Beauvoir in Chaudhuri 2006:16), and with highlighting these issues created by society, we can strive to challenge these conventions. In my film analysis, I will be using these theories outlined in this chapter as a tool for critically unlacing three Hollywood films of varied genres.
