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Home , Female buddy film, Feminist film theory, Film studies, Laura Mulvey, Male gaze

Feminist Theory paradigm in feminist , produc- ing pertinent readings of many Hollywood ANNEKE SMELIK like , , horror, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands science fiction, and the action movie. In the 1990s 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- . Theoretical approaches were nicity, masculinity, and sexualities. In developed to critically discuss the sign and the first decade of 2000 feminist film theory image of 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 and that allowed for representations of female , especially with the study of subjectivity and female desire. The feminist woman-as-image and the male . wave in 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 . Women were often more sociological approach in study- portrayed as passive sex objects or fixed in ing female audiences and the position of oscillating between the women in the , 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- , 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 – 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, , and deconstruction, of sexualized stereotypes of women and feminist film theory claims that cinema is 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, , 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 ” as a struc- it is in fact a structure, code, or convention turing logic in 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- it was virtually impos- sented as “not-,” 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 takes from Freud the notion amalegazeweretheorized.Thefemale of , the pleasure of looking, to spectator could adopt the masochism of explain the fascination of Hollywood cinema. overidentification or the entailed Films stimulate visual pleasure by integrat- in becoming one’s own object of desire. In ing structures of 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 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 , 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 , 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. (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. The the discourse of both Freudian and Lacanian eerie property of whiteness to be nothing and psychoanalysis. Although feminists have not everythingatthesametimeisthesourceof always agreed about the usefulness of psycho- its representational power. analysis, there has been general agreement In the 1990s masculinity studies addressed aboutthelimitationsofanexclusivefocuson questions about the eroticization of the sexual difference. One such limitation is the male body as erotic object. The image of reproduction of a dichotomy, male/female, the male body as the object of a–male or that needs to be deconstructed. Another female – look is traditionally fraught with limitation is the failure to focus on other ambivalences, repressions, and denials. The differences such as class, race, age, and sexual notion of spectacle has such strong feminine preference. connotations that for a male performer to be Lesbian feminists were among the first to put on display threatens his very masculinity. raise objections to the heterosexual bias of In the last two decades other or new realms psychoanalytic feminist film theory, which of visual culture, such as advertising and seemed initially unable to conceive of repre- videoclips, have adopted of sentation outside . The shift the male body, which fed back into cinema. away from the restrictive binary opposi- The eroticization of the male body is one of tions of psychoanalytic feminist film theory the profound changes in the visual culture of resulted in a more historical and cultural today. 4 FEMINIST FILM THEORY

Feminist film theory was not only con- the complexity and paradoxes of contem- cerned with a critique of Hollywood – or porary visual culture, which has changed sometimes European – cinema, but was also rapidly because of styles like postmodernism, interested in the question of a feminist cin- developments in digital technology, and the ema. In the wake of the revolutionary 1960s, advent of new media. New forms of cine- feminists called initially for a counter-cinema matic aesthetics are breaking through the that was rooted in avant-garde film practice. classic (“Oedipal”) structures of represen- The idea was that only a deconstruction tation and narration. Changes in cinema of classical visual and narrative codes and and developments in cultural theory asked conventions could allow for an exploration for a new focus on experience, body, and of female subjectivity, gaze, and desire. Many affect. Important new sources for revital- films by women filmmakers were produced izing feminist film theory are performance within an experimental mode, which received studies, new media theory, phenomenology, a lot of attention from feminist film theorists and a Deleuzian body of thought. These are (Kuhn 1982). Gradually, women filmmakers theoretical frameworks that move beyond started to develop women’s films within the semiotic preoccupation with meaning, the framework of popular cinema, trying representation, and interpretation. The focus to create new forms of visual and narrative on the sensory and emotional experience pleasure (Smelik 1998). of the audiovisual medium of cinema oper- ates away from the purely visual that often The same development occurred for gay exclusively determined the orientation of film and lesbian cinema: from experimental films theory (Marks 2000). A Deleuzian approach to more realist or romantic films for a more allows for a less negative outlook on desire, mainstream audience. Postmodernist cinema subjectivity, and identity, opening up read- of the 1980s and 1990s brought campy strate- ings of film as embodying many forms of gies of gay subcultures into the mainstream. desire and creating experiences of affirmation As of the 1990s, and gay men iden- for the spectator (Lin Tay 2009). Deleuze tify their oppositional reading strategies as and Guattari refer to this process as a radical “queer.” Away from the notions of oppres- “becoming.” In this way feminist film the- sion and liberation of earlier gay and lesbian ory returns once again to the revolutionary criticism, queerness is associated with the attitude that started it all in the 1960s, creat- playful self-definition of homosexuality in ing space for the multiple becomings of the non-essentialist terms. Not unlike camp, but femalecharacterandthefemalespectator. more self-assertive, queer readings are fully inflected with irony, transgressive gender SEE ALSO: Camp; Feminism and parody, and deconstructed subjectivities. Psychoanalysis; Gaze; Gender Stereotypes; Feminist film theory lived through its Popular Culture and Gender; Visual Culture heyday in the 1980s, after which it became andGender;WomenasProducersofCulture less of a coherent corpus of thought by open- REFERENCES ing up to adjacent fields such as television, new media, visual culture, performance de Lauretis, Teresa. 1984. Alice Doesn’t: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana Uni- studies, and fashion studies. While the semi- versity Press. otic and psychoanalytical frameworks have Doane, Mary Ann. 1987. The Desire to Desire: The long inspired film studies, they no longer Woman’s Film of the 1940s. Bloomington: Indi- have the explanatory force of understanding ana University Press. FEMINIST FILM THEORY 5

Dyer, Richard. 1993. The Matter of Images: Essays 14–26. London: Macmillan. First published on Representations. London: Routledge. 1975. Gaines, Jane. 1988. “White Privilege and Looking Silverman, Kaja. 1988. The Acoustic Mirror: The Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema. Theory.” Screen, 29(4): 12–27. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks: Race and Represen- Smelik, Anneke. 1998. And the Mirror Cracked: tation.Boston:SouthEndPress. Feminist Cinema and Film Theory. Basingstoke: Kaplan, E. Ann. 1983. Women and Film: Both Sides Palgrave Macmillan. of the Camera.NewYork:Methuen. Young, Lola. 1996. Fear of the Dark: “Race,” Gender Kuhn, Annette. 1982. Women’s Pictures: Feminism and Sexuality in the Cinema. London: Routledge. and Cinema. London: Routledge. Lin Tay, Sharon. 2009. WomenontheEdge:Twelve FURTHER READING PoliticalFilmPractices. Basingstoke: Palgrave Dyer, Richard. 1990. Now You See It: Studies on Les- Macmillan. bian and Gay Film. London: Routledge. Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Inter- Smelik, Anneke. 2009. “Lara Croft, Kill Bill,and culturalCinema,Embodiment,andtheSenses. Feminist Film Studies.” In Doing Gender in Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Media, Art and Culture, edited by Rosemarie Mulvey, Laura. 1989. “Visual Pleasure and Nar- Buikema and Iris van der Tuin, 178–192. rative Cinema.” In Visual and Other Pleasures, London: Routledge.