Conference Proceedings – Thinking Gender – the NEXT Generation UK Postgraduate Conference in Gender Studies 21-22 June 2006, University of Leeds, UK e-paper no. 26 Ironic Identities and Earnest Desires: King Kong and the Desire to- be-looked-at Damon Young University of Sussex
[email protected] Abstract: Since the 1970s, feminist film theory has worked with the assumption that women’s objectification in films and images is the very index of their disempowerment. However, in equating ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ with a loss of subjectivity, could such a formulation be seen to conceal the cultural privilege that inheres precisely in being looked at, and the seductiveness of this position for the subjects of an increasingly visual culture? In the light of recent claims that the work of feminist film criticism has been done – that ‘the battles have been won’ - this paper considers what there might still be left to say about the relationship between looking, being looked at, desire and power in contemporary culture. Who is looked at? Who looks? What does it mean to be invisible in a culture of images? If irony complicates our reading of the politics of representation, does it mask a deadly earnestness in the contemporary aspiration to be seen at any cost? These topics are broached across a comparative reading of King Kong in its original and contemporary incarnations. Keywords: feminist film theory; gaze; narrative cinema; King Kong; to-be-looked-at; Laura Mulvey; visual pleasure; irony; politics of representation; sublime The conference and