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Feminist Film Theory Feminist Film Theory paradigm in feminist film theory, produc- ing pertinent readings of many Hollywood ANNEKE SMELIK genres like melodrama, film noir, horror, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands science fiction, and the action movie. In the 1990s feminist film theory moved away from Feminist film theory came into being in the a binary understanding of sexual difference early 1970s with the aim of understanding to multiple perspectives, hybrid identities, cinema as a cultural practice that represents andpossiblespectatorships.Thisresultedin and reproduces myths about women and an increasing concern with questions of eth- femininity. Theoretical approaches were nicity, masculinity, and queer sexualities. In developed to critically discuss the sign and the first decade of 2000 feminist film theory image of woman in film as well as open made room for new theoretical approaches, up issues of female spectatorship. Femi- ranging from performance studies and nist film theory criticized on the one hand phenomenology to Deleuzian studies. Femi- classical cinema for its stereotyped repre- nist film theory was highly influential in the sentation of women, and discussed on the 1970s and 1980s, making a lasting impact other hand possibilities for a women’s cinema on the wider fields of visual culture and that allowed for representations of female cultural studies, especially with the study of subjectivity and female desire. The feminist woman-as-image and the male gaze. wave in film studies was prompted by the Early feminist criticism in the 1960s emergence of women’s film festivals. Fem- was directed at sexist images of women in inist film studies in general had a wider, classical Hollywood films. Women were often more sociological approach in study- portrayed as passive sex objects or fixed in ing female audiences and the position of stereotypes oscillating between the mother women in the film industry, ranging from (“Maria”) and the whore (“Eve”). Such actresses, producers, and technicians to endlessly repeated images of women were directors. considered to be objectionable distortions of Informed by a (post)structuralist perspec- reality, which would have a negative impact tive, feminist film theory moved beyond on the female spectator. Feminists called for reading the meaning of a film to analyzing positive images of women in cinema and a the deep structures of how meaning is con- reversal of sexist schemes. With the advent structed. The main argument is that sexual of (post)structuralism, the insight dawned difference – or gender – is paramount to that positive images of women were not creating meaning in film. Using insights enough to change underlying structures in from a Marxist critique of ideology, semi- cinema. Hollywood cinema with its history otics, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction, of sexualized stereotypes of women and feminist film theory claims that cinema is violence against women demanded a deeper more than just a reflection of social rela- understanding of its pernicious structures. tions: film actively constructs meanings of Theoretical frameworks drawing on critiques sexual difference and sexuality. Into the late of ideology, semiotics, psychoanalysis, and 1980s psychoanalysis was to be the dominant deconstruction proved more productive in The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, First Edition. Edited by Nancy A. Naples. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss148 2 FEMINIST FILM THEORY analyzing the ways in which sexual differ- the spectator identifies with the perfected ence is encoded in the visual and narrative imageofahumanfigureonthescreen,usu- structure of the film. ally the male hero. Both the voyeuristic gaze From semiotics, feminist film theory drew and narcissistic identification depend for the insight that Hollywood cinema veils its their meaning upon the controlling power of ideological construction by hiding its means the male character as well as on the objectified of production. Cinema film passes off the representation of the female character. sign “woman” as natural or realistic, while The account of “the male gaze” as a struc- it is in fact a structure, code, or convention turing logic in Western visual culture became carrying an ideological meaning. In patri- controversial in the early 1980s, as it made no archal ideology the image of woman can roomforthefemalespectatororforafemale only signify anything in relation to men. gaze. Within the dichotomous categories of The sign “woman” is thus negatively repre- psychoanalytic theory it was virtually impos- sented as “not-man,” which means that the sible to address female spectatorship; the “woman-as-woman” is absent from the film. female viewer could only identify with the Whilesemioticsmovedfeministfilm male gaze. Hollywood’s women’s movies of theory away from a naïve understanding the 1970s and 1980s allowed the female char- of stereotypes of women to the structures acter to make the male character the object of gendered representation in visual cul- ofhergaze,butherdesirecarriednopower. ture, it was psychoanalysis that introduced Such films involved a mere reversal of roles the famous notion of the male gaze. In in which the underlying structures of domi- her groundbreaking article “Visual Plea- nance and submission are still intact (Kaplan sure and Narrative Cinema” (1975/1989), 1983). Some alternatives to identifying with Laura Mulvey takes from Freud the notion amalegazeweretheorized.Thefemale of scopophilia, the pleasure of looking, to spectator could adopt the masochism of explain the fascination of Hollywood cinema. overidentification or the narcissism entailed Films stimulate visual pleasure by integrat- in becoming one’s own object of desire. In ing structures of voyeurism and narcissism this view, both the female character and the into the story and the image. Voyeuristic female spectator had to turn their active visual pleasure is produced by looking at desire into a passive desire to be the desired another, whereas narcissistic visual pleasure object (Doane 1987). can be derived from self-identification with The question of female spectatorship and the figure in the image. Mulvey’s analysis thefemalelookcirclesaroundtheissueof shows how both voyeurism and narcissism subjectivity and desire. Subjectivity is under- are gendered. Within the narrative of clas- stoodasaconstantprocessofself-production sical film male characters direct their gaze rather than as a fixed entity. Cinema, or visual toward female characters. The spectator in culture at large, is considered an important the theater is made to identify with the male means of constructing certain positions for look, because the camera films from the opti- female subjectivity by inscribing desire into cal, as well as libidinal, point of view of the thecodesandconventionsoftheimagery male character. There are thus three levels of and the narrative. In the 1980s feminist the cinematic gaze – camera, character, and film theory considered the female subject spectator – objectifying the female character in cinema an impossibility. In Hollywood and turning her into a spectacle. Narcissistic movies “woman” functioned as a sign within visual pleasure works through identification: an Oedipal narrative in which she could not FEMINIST FILM THEORY 3 be the subject of desire; instead she could criticism of cinema by gay and lesbian critics. only be represented as representation (de This involved re-readings of Hollywood cin- Lauretis 1984). The female character and ema, for example of the implicit lesbianism through identification the female spectator ofthefemalebuddyfilm.Theargumentwas are “seduced” into femininity. advanced that the female spectator is quite Feminist film theory in the 1980s is then likelytoencompasseroticcomponentsin builtontheveryparadoxoftheunrepre- her desiring look, while at the same time sentabilityofwomanassubjectofdesire. identifying with the woman-as-spectacle. The Several feminist film critics have tried to homoerotic appeal of female Hollywood stars theorize possible paths to female desire, still has been widely recognized. within the psychoanalytic framework, by a Persistent critique of psychoanalytic film bisexual identification with the mother as theory has also come from black feminism, love object which would then function as a which rebuked its exclusive focus on sexual potential, yet masochistic, source of visual difference and its failure to deal with racial pleasure.Thefemalespectatorcouldenjoy difference. An inclusion of black feminist identification with the image of female beauty theory and of a historical approach into on the screen, for example in the figure of the feminist film theory was necessary in order autonomous vamp or the powerful femme to understand how gender intersects with fatale. Kaja Silverman (1988) drew attention race and class in cinema (Gaines 1988; Young to the auditory register rather than the visual 1996). The influential feminist critic bell regime to make room for a cultural fantasy hooks (1992) argued that black viewers have of maternal enclosure. The acoustic voice always critically responded to Hollywood, created an opening for female desire within allowing for an oppositional spectatorship discourse and the symbolic order. for black women. Richard Dyer (1993) put From these accounts it becomes clear that forward that cinema constructs whiteness feminist film theory was much dominated by as the norm, by leaving it unmarked.
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