Chapter 2 Revised

Feminist film theory rose out of Second Wave feminism in the 60’s and 70’s, the theorists based their work on the issues that were brought to attention in the women’s movement. Studies have revealed experiences in which women alone have faced throughout history that once more, creates a division between sexes.

·       Political oppression. Women, especially historically, haven’t had a substantial role in politics, not having control in what changes the society in which they live in.

·       Domesticated roles. Women have assigned to domestic roles, even in the work place women are usually given roles in which can be seen as a ‘women’s’ job. For example, cooking, cleaning, catering, caring for children and the elderly.

·       Violence against women. Women have and continue to be victims to violence at the hands of men. Rape, sexual harassment and physical abuse, are all issues that can be applied worldwide.

Josephine Donovan (2012:168-169)

Although Second-Wave feminism is said to have began in the 1960’s, the book ‘The Second Sex’ written by Simone de Beauvoir in 1949 was a key text, which influenced feminists in this movement. She had noticed how women at the time were very unhappy in their day-to-day lives, which encouraged her to write the book. Even after the beginning of the 20^th Century, and the suffragists being the first women to openly voice their opinions of oppression, after the second-world war it seemed Europe had only gone backwards. With the scare of communism spreading throughout countries, the role of the traditional housewife was yet again pressured onto the women for stability. Any kind of uprising within society was thought as a possible way to weaken the country in their time of panic, so once again women were oppressed to their traditional ideological roles of being domesticated figures ‘Woman was ordered back into the home the more harshly as her emancipation became a real menace.’ De Beauvoir (1949:24)

It was this same issue of women being forced into a domesticated housewife role that Betty Freidan wrote her book ‘The Feminine Mystique’ (1963), which became another key text in the movement, she questioned women’s position within society, which was a question central to Second-Wave feminism Hannam (2013:137). Betty Freidan labelled this issue as ‘the problem with no name’, as she interviewed white, middle-class, suburban housewives that stated their lives had no sense of fulfilment.

‘Personal is Political’ was one of the biggest slogans to come out of Second-Wave feminism, as feminists were bringing to attention the way in which women were portrayed as sexual objects to sell products within advertising. This created an issue of the ‘ideal body shape’, leading to anxiety within women for the ‘perfect body’, with possible eating disorders emerging. ‘‘Norms of feminine appearance’, they promote are unobtainable for most women’ Saul in Chaudhuri (2006:7)

A lot of texts were written within the movement that helped show the ideas expressed by the feminists. One of the most influential texts was Kate Millett’s book, Sexual Politics (1969), where she expressed that patriarchy was the reason in which social forms were underpinned, giving feminists a way to challenge the division between public and private that was critical to liberal political thought. Hannam (2013:145)

Alongside these issues, feminists fought for equal pay, an end to sexual discrimination at work, pre-paid housework, childcare facilities and contraceptive advice, although reproductive rights, including free contraception and abortion on demand were the issues central to the women’s movement (Hannam 2013:143). ‘No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.’ Rossi in Donovan (2012:51)

Second-Wave feminism challenged women’s roles within society, which were widely accepted, and in turn, made huge steps in changing aspects of life for women. In most countries the movement helped the aid of legislations that were made for equal pay, against discrimination in the work place and the legalisation of abortions (Hannam 2013:155). Also women’s organisations were put in place and shelters for battered women also were made available. But it has to be said that there is a level of controversy around the movement, as it was lead by white, middle-class, educated, heterosexual women. Women from other minorities mention how the movement cannot speak for all women, as there was not a range of experiences from different classes, races and cultures. ‘when the women’s movement raised the issue of sexist oppression, we argued that sexism was insignificant in light of the harsher, more brutal reality of racism.’ hooks (1987:1)

The issues that arose within the movement, influenced a new way to critically analyse films and pin point the issues enforced by patriarchy in society and how these are reflected into the cinema by the use of narrative, camera angles, sounds and even what happens behind the scenes, the ‘Cinematic Enunciator’ (Silverman 1983).

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 – it displays and embarrassing flexibility on a basis of rigid concepts.’ de Beauvoir in 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 looking and 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 an erotic 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 are not designed for the male viewer, these films are rarer than the popular Hollywood Cinema. With Martha Lauzen’s research into the ‘Celluloid ceiling’ (2005) bringing 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 (1949:8)

Beauvoir's concept of the 'other' with regards to feminism, 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.

Chaudhuri writes how Althusser’s idea of the ‘Ideological State Apparatus’, which is the media, schools, family and law courts all promote representations of gender, which are taken in and accepted by society (2006:67). This is how we don’t question the representation of genders within media and film for example, as these establishments drive this in to us from a young age.

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)

I think the changes that i made since the previous tutorial has really improved the chapter as a whole, it now clearly defines the issues brought to light within second wave feminism, and how the theorists used these issues within their work. I also think these outlined issues will come in useful within my next chapters as i can relate analysis back to the issues.