SEEING THE SEVENTIES: PHOTOGRAPHY AS FEMINIST LABOR

By

LAUREN BURRELL COX

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2018

1

© 2018 Lauren Burrell Cox

2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my committee Dr. Barbara Mennel and Dr. Leah Rosenberg for all of their guidance and support. I would also like to thank my writing group: Leila Estes, Peter

Gitto, Lauren Pilcher, and Cristina Ruiz-Poveda for all of their feedback throughout writing this thesis. I thank Min Ji Kang for listening to me and supporting me through this process. I thank

Dr. Susan Hegeman for helping me develop the topic of this thesis in her class. Finally, I thank my parents for helping me follow my dreams.

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 3

LIST OF FIGURES ...... 5

ABSTRACT ...... 6

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 8

2 STEPPING INTO STEPFORD: THE WHITE SUBURBAN HOUSEWIFE AND THE FAILURE OF ARTISTIC LABOR ...... 11

3 A PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST AS A YOUNG WOMAN: CLAUDIA WEILL’S GIRLFRIENDS (1978) ...... 25

4 FAILING SIGHT, FAILING MOVEMENTS: EYES OF LAURA MARS ...... 38

5 CONCLUSION...... 49

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 51

FILMOGRAPHY ...... 53

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 54

4 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure page

2-1 Joanna takes photos of the man and the mannequin ...... 17

2-2 Joanna puts away her camera ...... 17

2-3 Joanna's first trip to a New York Art Gallery ...... 19

2-4 Joanna's artistic breakthrough ...... 21

2-5 Joanna in the darkroom ...... 21

2-6 Joanna's photographs ...... 22

2-7 Joanna's uncanny robot double ...... 23

4-1 Laura's photoshoot stance ...... 46

5 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

SEEING THE SEVENTIES: PHOTOGRAPHY AS FEMINIST LABOR

By

Lauren Burrell Cox

May 2018

Chair: Barbara Mennel Major: English

This thesis examines the 1970s women’s movement in the United States through the lens of female photographers in film. What can the close study of these representations illuminate about the successes and failures of the movement? How do these films trace the development of the movement from 1963 with Betty Friedan’s “the problem that has no name” to the commercialization of the movement by the end of the 1970s. Chapter 1 investigates the housewife’s attempt to define herself outside the domestic sphere and enter the professional world through Bryan Forbes’ 1975 cult classic The Stepford Wives. Chapter 2 takes up the question of the young struggling female artist in Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends (1978). Chapter 3 focuses on Eyes of Laura Mars (1978). Through the character of Laura Mars, the film foreshadows the downfall of the women’s movement of the 1970s, which coincided with commercialization of mainstream feminism.

This is the time to revisit these 1970s films because more than forty years later American society is still confronting the issues raised by the women’s movement. American society today is trying to control the “nasty woman” for daring to be independent. The current women’s movement, as seen by the Women’s March, demonstrates that the reigniting of issues of

6 representation and work in society is not only timely but crucial for women’s dire need for social progress.

7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Jordan Peel’s horror-comedy film Get Out (2017) centers its narrative around a black photographer’s ill-fated trip to visit his white girlfriend’s parents. The film perfectly skewers white liberalism in the Obama era through its mélange of amusing dialogue and commentaries on the history of the black man’s experience in America. The film immediately infiltrated the

United States’ social consciousness and became a critical and commercial hit through its clever use of the horror genre. Part of Peele’s deft analysis of contemporary culture stems from the main character’s profession: photography. While at first this film’s employment of a photographer main character may seem a clever nod to scholar Laura Mulvey’s notion of the gaze, examining photographers and the labor of artists reveals deeper truths about social progress movements and the failures and shortcomings of these movements, which is especially true in the current political climate. Photography as a medium and photographers as an artistic profession present a particularly fecund area of research because of its intersection with art and technology as well as its very impulse to document. Therefore, studying the representation of photographers in film has much to reveal about social movements of the 20th century.

This thesis examines the 1970s women’s movement in the United States through the lens of female photographers in film. What can the close study of these representations illuminate about the successes and failures of the movement? How do these films trace the development of the movement from 1963 with Betty Friedan’s “the problem that has no name” to the commercialization of the movement by the end of the 1970s. The thesis explores the housewife’s attempt to define herself outside the domestic sphere and enter the professional world, the young woman as an artist struggling for recognition in the art world and control of her

8 own work, and finally the successful woman photographer who must contend with the consequences of her work.

Chapter 1 entitled “Stepping into Stepford: The White Suburban Housewife and the

Failure of Artistic Labor” analyzes the 1975 cult classic The Stepford Wives, a B-horror film directed by Bryan Forbes and starring Katharine Ross based on the 1972 Ira Levin novel. Even though this film not successful financially or critically, it has infiltrated the popular consciousness with the term “Stepford wife.” This chapter investigates the clash in the film between the traditional role of the housewife in the domestic sphere and the efforts for her to be recognized and taken seriously as an artist in the professional world. How do these ultimately unrealized dreams of the protagonist reflect the failures of the film itself, and by extension the shortcomings of the women’s movement regarding suburban housewives? The chapter also examines the invisible labor of art and the potential for the failure of this labor.

Chapter 2 “The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman: Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends” takes up the question of the young struggling female artist. Girlfriends is a 1978 independent comedy by Claudia Weill. This chapter links the film to the 1970s women’s movement and its connections to women’s activism in the art world. At this point, many of the ideals of the women’s movement of the 1970s have taken hold and are beginning to mature, just as the young photographer in the film does. A central question of the chapter is the photographer’s pursuit of control not over her art but over her own life.

In the Chapter 3 “Failing Sight, Failing Movements: Eyes of Laura Mars,” the woman artist is now fully formed and incredibly successful. Eyes of Laura Mars is a 1978 Hollywood mystery-thriller film directed by Irvin Kershner from a spec script written by John Carpenter and stars Faye Dunaway as Laura Mars, a successful New York City fashion photographer. The

9 photographer in this film is an extremely successful fashion photographer known for her violent and sexual photographs, until her life begins to fall apart when a psycho-killer begins using her photographs as inspiration to murder her colleagues. Through the character of Laura Mars, the film foreshadows the downfall of the women’s movement of the 1970s, which coincided with commercialization of mainstream feminism.

Although this grouping of films runs the gamut from B-movie to independent comedy to slick Hollywood thriller, they all share a similar aesthetic. This soft focus and washed out color palette is a distinctive aesthetic of 1970s film and makes them immediately recognizable of the period. This consistent aesthetic across different genres again links these films together in more than just the ways of subject matter and time period. The location of New York City creates an additional relationship between the films. The microcosm of 1970s New York City encapsulated many issues of American society at large, namely the violence, which contributed white-flight to the suburbs.

This is the time to revisit these 1970s films because more than forty years later American society is still confronting the issues raised by the women’s movement. American society today is trying to control the “nasty woman” for daring to be independent. The current women’s movement, as seen by the Women’s March, demonstrates that the reigniting of issues of representation and work in society is not only timely but crucial for women’s dire need for social progress.

10 CHAPTER 2 STEPPING INTO STEPFORD: THE WHITE SUBURBAN HOUSEWIFE AND THE FAILURE OF ARTISTIC LABOR

The term “Stepford wife” has infiltrated the popular consciousness, despite the film being rarely seen. The film details a white family’s flight to the safety of the suburbs, which acts as a microcosm for the way American society treats women. In Stepford Wives, Joanna Eberhart

(Katharine Howard) is a Manhattanite, who moves with her young family to the town of Stepford at the urging of her lawyer husband, Walter (Peter Masterson). He thinks the city is too rough to raise a family in, an example of the white flight1 from urban centers to the suburbs that started in the 1950s. Joanna longs to stay in the city to continue to pursue a career as a photographer. This reinforces the themes of examination and exposure through the use of photography. She likes the city and finds the people in it interesting, and she has unrealized artistic aspirations in the form of photography. Through Joanna’s representation as a mother, wife, and photographer, The Stepford

Wives attempts, but ultimately fails to illuminate the concerns of the feminist movement of the

1970s.

Stepford is not remembered for its wit and nuance. Critic Lilly Ann Boruzkowski argues that Stepford’s success is its “synthesis of genre formula with social observation” (2). This would be an over-appraisal of Stepford and a much more apt description of Get Out, the apparent re- packaging of Stepford. Boruzkowski further claims that, “to be included in the horror genre, a film does not need viscerally to ‘scare’ the spectator, but rather address issues and ideas which are ‘scary’ or ‘frightening’” (2). The film’s misuse of horror that instead turns into unselfconscious comedy undermines the social commentary attempted in the film, social commentary that directly relates to Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique. The film is not

1 Sechandice, Aristide. “White Flight.” Salem Press Encyclopedia. 2017.

11 remembered for its contributions to the horror genre. Elyce Rae Helford states that critics at the time had trouble deciphering the film’s tone and message. (24-25). Again, this is further proof of a history of the film being misread.

Rather, the film gained status as a cult classic because of its unintentional use of camp via the attempt at horror. As Susan Sontag notes argues in her essay Notes on Camp, “the essence of

Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” Stepford embodies all of these things. The women are turned into the unnatural and uncanny robots at the end of the film. The robots an artificial and distinctly male portrayal of hyper-femininity. The film exaggerates the women’s issues of the 1970s it portrays through cartoonishly reducing them. In fact, the film is perhaps not most remembered for the film itself, or even the Ira Levin novel, but instead for the term coined from the film: Stepford Wife. The phrase has continued cultural currency although the film itself is not popular. Helford defines “Stepford wife” as “a label for white, economically privileged housewives married to dull, older rich white men” (146). I would like to extend that definition to include a woman without seeming autonomy whose husband controls every aspect of her life: a mindless robot. This infiltration into the vernacular should be seen as one of the major successes of the film.

Stepford’s social commentary of second wave feminism in America is much too heavy handed. The film’s critique of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique is not subtle. It comically reduces the women’s issues raised by Friedan’s book. Friedan condemned the film as “a rip-off of the women’s movement” (Klemesrud 28). Anna Krugovoy Silver asserts that the film addresses three main issues from second wave feminism a la Friedan: a woman’s domestic labor, a woman’s role in the nuclear family, and a woman’s control over her body (110). Curiously,

Silver leaves out Joanna’s labor in the public sphere via her artistic and professional aspirations

12 as a photographer. Joanna’s work as a photographer is an extension of workplace rights, a main concern of second wave feminism2.

Betty Friedan details “the problem that has no name” in The Feminine Mystique. This problem with no name is the dissatisfaction that housewives, in Friedan’s case particularly white, middle class suburban housewives, have with their lives. According to Friedan, society has convinced women that they should be happy and content to stay home and manage the domestic sphere. Friedan writes:

If a woman had a problem in the 1950s and 1960s, she knew that something must be wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Other women were satisfied with their lives, she thought. What kind of woman was she if she did not feel this mysterious fulfillment waxing the kitchen floor? She was so ashamed to admit her dissatisfaction that she never knew how many other women shared it. If she tried to tell her husband, he didn’t understand what she was talking about. She did not really understand it herself … “There’s nothing wrong really,” they kept telling themselves. “There isn’t any problem.” (6)

This “problem with no name” is the driving force of The Stepford Wives. Joanna is literally forced into this suburban housewife role when Walter moves the family to Stepford. Silver argues that, “Forbes replicates Friedan’s concern with housewives’ depression and nervous breakdowns in The Stepford Wives as Joanna and Bobbie constantly question their dislike of

Stepford and, ultimately, their sanity” (112-113). This dissatisfaction with housework is linked to not having any other fulfillment outside the home. Joanna makes a serious attempt to fix

Friedan’s “problem with no name” by trying to catapult her work as an amateur photographer to that of a professional one, but this ultimately fails. These women completely lose their minds when they are turned into automatons by the insidious Men’s Association of Stepford.

2 Baxandall, Rosalyn and Linda Gordon. “Second Wave Feminism.” A Companion to American Women’s History. Edited by Nancy A. Hewitt. Blackwell Publishing, 2005. pp. 414-432.

13 Many previous readings of the film see Joanna’s photography aspirations as a way of usurping the male gaze by giving her some kind of agency. Discussions about Mulvey’s essay

“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” have dominated feminist film studies since its publication. The study of the gaze in relationship to feminist film theory was also furthered by

Mary Ann Doane when she claimed that, “the intellectual woman looks and analyzes, and in usurping the gaze she poses a threat to an entire system of representation” (83). This reading of the film reduces Joanna as a photographer to a clever plot device. However, Joanna’s photography does not challenge the male gaze by giving her some kind of agency. Further complicating this reading is the fact that “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” and The

Stepford Wives both appeared in 1975. Mulvey’s essay dealt with films of classical Hollywood, but The Stepford Wives is a Hollywood B-movie. Helford reads the texts as “historical/cultural documents that are deeply invested in feminist discourse and use divergent yet not oppositional strategies to provide similar insights into gender relations during the height of the second wave of the women’s movement” (145). While this is a striking coincidence, this is not the only way that the film can be read, nor should this reading reduce Joanna’s photography to simply an attempt for her to reclaim the gaze for herself or assert some kind of female gaze. Instead,

Joanna’s photography, the subsequent artistic labor it requires, and the failure of this labor more accurately reflect the questions of the women’s movement of the 1970s. This is where

Boruzkowski misreads Joanna’s artistic aspirations. She claims that, “Joanna realizes that women’s identity and power are at stake. Her early identity comes from her burgeoning career as a photographer. There her power lies in appropriating the gaze rather than being subject to it…

Not only does Joanna’s photography allow her to go out into the world and explore it on her own terms, it also awards her financially, making her more independent from her husband” (9). In the

14 film, Joanna’s early identity comes from being a mother, not from being a photographer. Joanna states that she has an interest in photography, but nothing seems to come of it until late in the film. In fact, it is only through photographing her children, that is, through motherhood that she is able to get a gallery owner to take interest in her work. This scene will be read closely later in the chapter. The film does not make it clear if Joanna is compensated financially for her photography. I argue that the film posits that she does not. She never tells Walter that she sold a photograph or that a gallery wants one of her photographs. The film never suggests that she could be financially independent because of her photography career. Instead it is her failed artistic labor that is the key to the film.

Artistic labor is not always seen as a proper kind of labor. Inherently, artistic labor lacks a quantifier; most traditional jobs have some kind of measurement for labor. A doctor will see so many patients in a day, a lawyer will work on a case, a teacher will grade so many papers. But artistic labor cannot be quantified in the same way. The quality of art is not based on how many hours an artist spent creating the piece. Instead, the quality of art does not come from a quantifier of work but from talent and subjectivity. The labor surrounding art has a mysterious quality to it.

If the labor were demystified, the artwork could run the risk of losing its value. Again, the value of art is subjective and also due partially to luck. An artist with more exposure often makes artwork that sells for a higher price.

Through the lens of Joanna’s photography in the film, the issues of artistic labor come into focus. The opening scene of the film subtly posits Joanna’s photography as an important aspect of her identity, while still tying it to her duties as a mother. This nuance in the opening scene could easily be taken for granted, but in the context of the whole film foreshadows the entire narrative. The camera opens on an intricate wallpaper pattern, but then the camera tricks

15 the viewer because this wallpaper is actually a reflection, the medicine cabinet mirror closes and

Joanna comes into view. This sets up the idea of Joanna as a woman to be looked at, but in this moment, it is also her own self-reflection. The look on her face is one of defeat — her husband has decided the family should move out of New York City and into Stepford. After surveying the empty house, she walks outside with her two small children. While waiting, she sees a man carrying an unclothed mannequin across the street. She gets out of the car and snaps a couple of photos of the man and the mannequin. The film’s sound track reinforces this through the exaggerated shutter noises. Joanna’s two children, both girls, also watch the man and the mannequin with fascination. Finally, Walter comes out of the apartment building, and criticizes

Joanna for apparently leaving some things behind in the apartment. He gets into the car and one of the little girls tells him, “Daddy, I just saw a man carrying a naked lady.” To which he replies,

“well, that’s why we’re moving to Stepford.” Later on in the car ride, there is a shot of Joanna putting the lens cap on her camera and putting it in the glove compartment as the opening credits of the film play.

This opening sequence foreshadows the many of the events of the film and highlights key tensions. Joanna wants to be taken seriously as a photographer. She chooses to take a picture of the man carrying the mannequin, an image that could be classified as either street photography or even art photography. Regardless, this signals her aspirations of becoming a photographer.

However, she ends up photographing what she will ultimately become by the end of the film, a lifeless mannequin, a plastic shell of a woman. This looking rhymes with the earlier shot of

Joanna looking at herself in the mirror. The children watching Joanna as she photographs the man and the mannequin also hint at a major plot point of the film. Joanna’s photographs of her children are the only photographs the gallery owner likes. She is literally pointing her camera in

16 the wrong direction. She is leaving Manhattan, a place much more conducive to her professional pursuits for the suburbs of Stepford, a place without any opportunities for her outside the home.

Joanna’s putting away of the camera in the glove box signals that she will ultimately have to give up her photography dreams, or that they are not possible because she will not survive long enough to truly pursue them.

Figure 2-1. Joanna takes photos of the man and the mannequin from The Stepford Wives. Dir. Bryan Forbes. Perf. Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson. Columbia Pictures. 1975 DVD.

Figure 2-2. Joanna puts away her camera from The Stepford Wives. Dir. Bryan Forbes. Perf. Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson. Columbia Pictures. 1975. DVD.

17 Not only does Joanna’s photography position itself as central in the beginning of the film, but it is also how she meets Bobbie (Paula Prentiss), the woman who will become her only confidant in the terrifying town of Stepford. Bobbie uses the biography of Joanna in the town newspaper reporting Joanna as being a “shutterbug” as an entrée into talking to her. In a prior scene to this, the reporter, an older woman, spoke to Joanna about herself and her family. The reporter eagerly asks what Joanna’s husband’s occupation is, to which Joanna responds that he is a lawyer. When the reporter asks what Joanna does, she says that she is an aspiring semi- professional photographer. A comment the reporter quickly ignores. This seems to undermine the possibility of Joanna at all getting some recognition for her work. However, when Bobbie first encounters Joanna in a rural field she exclaims, “are you the Joanna Eberhart? … Avid shutterbug and ex-Gothamite, who misses the noise of the naked city?” Apparently, the reporter decided to include Joanna’s interests in the biography, but reduces them to playthings with the term “shutterbug.” Joanna sincerely told the reporter that she was a semi-professional photographer. While these are her own words, and perhaps a self-important exaggeration, they are nonetheless much more serious than the term “shutterbug,” which implies an air of the amateur or that it is only a hobby. This failure to be taken seriously as an artist is part of the failure of Joanna’s artistic labor. She is not able to convince anyone to take her seriously, even

Bobbie uses Joanna’s photography aspirations as a kind of joke in the tone of voice she uses when asking Joanna if she is the Joanna Eberhart. Even other women do not take Joanna’s artistic labor sincerely.

Joanna’s first trip to a New York photography gallery does not go well, but even this demonstrates the seriousness with which she takes her career, and again the failure for her labor to be recognized. The scene of Joanna going to the gallery has no audible dialogue. Instead, the

18 camera watches Joanna from across the street in longshot. Joanna presents herself with all of the facets of a professional photographer. She looks hip and chic in her fashionable blouse, trousers, and boots, and she carries a large portfolio. As Joanna walks into the door of the gallery, a bus passes in front of the camera, this prompts a cut and Joanna then emerges from the gallery, with a disappointed look on her face. The presumed gallery owner or curator talks with her for a few moments on the street, most likely giving her advice. Then Joanna walks away, and the film cuts to Joanna in the same clothes talking with Bobbie back in Stepford. This is where she recounts what happened at the gallery, which was not much. Joanna merely says that he hated the photographs. Why then does the film include this aside at all? This New York scene could have easily been omitted and the plot of the film would not have been affected. However, the film including this scene again highlights the importance of Joanna’s labor, and not just her artistic labor in making the photographs, but also her labor of going to New York in an attempt to sell them.

Figure 2-3. Joanna's first trip to a New York Art Gallery from The Stepford Wives. Dir. Bryan Forbes. Perf. Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson. Columbia Pictures. 1975. DVD.

19 Eventually, Joanna does have an artistic breakthrough, which comes at a crucial point in the plot of the film. Joanna is babysitting Bobbie’s children while Bobbie enjoys a weekend in

New York City with her husband. Unbeknownst to Joanna and Bobbie, this is the weekend in which Bobbie will be transformed into a Stepford wife — a lifeless automaton. Joanna’s transgression outside the domestic sphere must be punished. If Joanna succeeded in the domestic and professional sphere, she would no longer need her nagging husband, which threatens the status quo. While watching all of the children, Joanna has a spark of artistic inspiration and begins photographing them playing. For the first time, Joanna smiles while she is behind the camera. Formally, the film also positions this as her artistic breakthrough. The score soars with uplifting strings as the children frolic in an idyllic field. The film then cuts to Joanna in the dark room developing her pictures. Walter knocks on the door, exasperated at having to deal with the children while she works. He says he has played all the games with them and he does not know what else to do. Joanna protests and says that he has to continue watching them because she is

“really onto something.” This is the beginning of the end for Joanna. Perhaps this is when Walter decides to go through with his plan of turning Joanna into a robot. At an earlier point in the film he had wavered in that decision. Joanna develops the photographs and takes them to the gallery where she had previously been rejected. The gallery owner calls them “quite good.” Joanna has found her artistic niche through her role as a mother. She finally obtains artistic success through photographs of motherhood. Imperatively, when the gallery owner asks Joanna what she wants to gain from becoming a photographer she replies, “I want someone to look at a photograph and say, ‘that reminds me of an Ingalls.’ Ingalls was my maiden name.” In her art, Joanna wants to completely abandon her husband, a view that obviously does not compute with the men of

Stepford. She does not want him to have any ownership over her work at all. This transgression

20 is penalized when Joanna returns from New York to tell Bobbie the good news, only to find out that Bobbie has suddenly turned into one of the robotic women like every other woman in the town.

Figure 2-4. Joanna's artistic breakthrough from The Stepford Wives. Dir. Bryan Forbes. Perf. Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson. Columbia Pictures. 1975. DVD.

Figure 2-5: Joanna in the darkroom from The Stepford Wives. Dir. Bryan Forbes. Perf. Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson. Columbia Pictures. 1975. DVD.

21

Figure 2-6. Joanna's photographs from The Stepford Wives. Dir. Bryan Forbes. Perf. Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson. Columbia Pictures. 1975. DVD.

The incompatibility between Joanna’s burgeoning career and her assigned domestic duties precipitates her destruction. As is the ritual in Stepford, before the women are killed so that their robotic counterparts can take over their lives, the women are separated from their children and taken to the Men’s Association headquarters. By the time of Joanna’s scheduled

“transformation,” she has already figured out that there is some kind of evil plot against the wives of Stepford. She attempts to flee Stepford, but refuses to leave without her children. She even attacks Walter with a fire poker and as she screams, “where are my children?!” A severely injured Walter mutters, “association.” Therefore, Joanna must travel to the root of evil — the headquarters of the Men’s Association. Once there, Joanna hears one of her daughters calling out, “mommy!” but she cannot locate the child. Instead, she finds a recording device that has been playing the child’s taped cries and Diz, the leader of the Men’s Association, in the room.

He informs her that her children are safe at another woman’s house. Joanna has been duped and can no longer escape her fate. Her duty as a mother has prevented this. Joanna simply asks Diz why he is doing this; his response is, “because we can.” The men of Stepford have to reinforce

22 that status quo which Joanna has challenged through her interests outside the home. Diz complains that Joanna made the men have to expedite their plan for her. She was capable of escaping Stepford and potentially earning a living as a photographer, but she crossed a boundary with straying outside the home. Maybe Walter would have let her live he still had ultimate ownership over her photographs via his last name. This looking at her robot double is the last time we see Joanna alive. Tellingly, the robot Joanna only has black orbs for eyes. This symbolizes the loss of her artistic potential. Eyes are crucial for taking photographs. The men have consciously decided to eliminate that part of her being.

Figure 2-7. Joanna's uncanny robot double from The Stepford Wives. Dir. Bryan Forbes. Perf. Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson. Columbia Pictures. 1975. DVD.

The Stepford Wives is far from a perfect film, but there is indeed a reason that it has attained cult status. Its’ obtuse handling of social issues and misfired horror caused it to not be taken seriously at the time. However, now is the time to revisit the issues addressed in the film and the issues that have been previously overlooked regarding the scholarship of the film.

Joanna’s failed artistic labor still resonates with women today. Women are still not paid as much as men, and women still have trouble infiltrating the art world and attaining the same status as

23 men. Joanna begins to find her identity as an artist through her motherhood. Often motherhood is posed in opposition to other kinds of work. In Chapter 2, I will look at Claudia Weill’s 1978 film

Girlfriends and the question of balancing societal expectations of women when it comes to marriage, domesticity, and the possibilities of female friendship.

24 CHAPTER 3 A PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST AS A YOUNG WOMAN: CLAUDIA WEILL’S GIRLFRIENDS (1978)

The title of Claudia Weill’s 1978 film Girlfriends is misleading. Instead of being about the friendship between two women, the film centers on a young budding photographer living in

New York City named Susan Weinblatt. The girlfriend in question is her roommate aspiring writer Anne Munroe. Susan pursues a career as a photographer as an attempt to control her life.

The women’s movement of the 1970s attempted to redefine the role of women and create a new paradigm in which women were equal to men. Girlfriends creates this paradigm through a potential feminist utopia: the only artists in the film are female. Although the film presents a potential female artist utopia, it still contains conflicts for Susan. Throughout the film, Susan struggles with gaining control of her life, her work, and her relationships with others. This attempt to control her life occurs not only through the narrative, but through the formal aspects of the film as well.

Girlfriends garnered praise upon its release, but critics misunderstood the meaning of the film. In Rebecca Baum’s 1979 review of Girlfriends in Jumpcut, she argues that the film

“seriously invalidates the way in which women care for each other” (3). She criticizes the film for exploiting female friendship arguing that, “Girlfriends’ audience is drawn to see ‘girl friendship’ but the film shows little of the very powerful intimacy of women” (3). Baum assess the film correctly: the film does not focus on female friendship. However, this could be the result of the film’s genesis from short film to feature film1, as the narrative changed from focusing equally on the two women to focusing on Susan. Baum contends that, “Girlfriends is a major

1 Kinder, Marsha. “Reviewed Work(s): Girlfriends by Claudia Weill” Film Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1. Autumn, 1978. Pp. 46-50.

25 departure from the traditional movie images of women. Girlfriends’ Susan and Ann [sic] are life- sized; they are not great beauties or superwomen… This is a film by people who really know and like women. It is a major step in defining ourselves” (3). This “major step in defining ourselves” unlocks the key to the film. Simone de Beauvoir in her book The Second Sex states that, “it is through work that woman has been able, to a large extent, to close the gap separating her from the male; work alone can guarantee her concrete freedom” (721). The gap between men and women began to close with the women’s movement of the 1970s.

In the 1970s women’s activism exploded, not only in the political sphere, but in the art world as well. Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock contend that, “from the beginning feminist artists had confronted the feminist dictum: ‘the personal is political’ (74). The spark of the women’s movement was ignited into a fire when the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was re- introduced into congress in 1971 after it had been dormant since its original introduction in

19232. In 1970 women in New York protested the 5 percent of women exhibited in the annual survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The campaigners picketed the museum and employed Tampax and uncooked eggs in the protest tactics.3 In the early 1970s art magazines began to have women’s issues. Parker and Pollock stressed that, “questions raised by women about their historical and current position in the arts led to the publication of special issues of magazines focusing on women, or to the foundation of magazines devoted to coverage of women’s activities and debates” (14). Linda Nochlin expanded the field of feminist art history with her seminal article “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists,” which identified the

2 Brown, Barbara A., Thomas I. Emerson, Gail Falk, and Ann E. Freedman. “The Equal Rights Amendment: A Constitutional Basis for Equal Rights for Women” The Yale Law Journal. Vol. 80, No. 5. April 1971. Pp. 871-985.

3 See Framing Feminism: Art and the Women’s Movement, 1970-85 pp. 4

26 exclusions of women artists in the art history canon. In reaction to this criticism for the lack of women in art shows, there was an explosion of women’s exhibitions in the 1970s.4

Not only were the early 1970s ripe with women’s activism in the art world, but film studies shifted towards women’s issues as well. B. Ruby Rich argues that the 1970s introduced what she terms “cinefeminism” (1). This term describes

the broad field of feminism and film that began in the seventies with the flourishing of film festivals and the simultaneous invention of theoretical approaches to classic Hollywood representations of women, eventually expanding to other films as well. It’s a discipline that began as a movement, drawing its strength from the political breakthroughs of the women’s liberation movement as well as from the intellectual and ideological lessons of the New Left. (Rich 1-2)

This cinefeminism comes into its own when in 1975 Laura Mulvey published her seminal essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” a study of the male gaze in classical Hollywood cinema. Rich argues that this essay gave feminist film theory “theoretical legitimacy, currency, and prestige” (2). Through these awakenings, women were beginning to be recognized not just as passive subjects, but as subjects that could attempt to take control. Although feminist film theory’s shift to psychoanalytic theory gave it legitimacy, psychoanalysis has arrested its further development (Rich 298). Decades of feminist film scholarship has continued to focus on psychanalytic theory (291-292). Thus, feminist film theory must return to its pursuit of a wide range of perspectives, which this paper attempts to do.

However, by the close of the decade, the backlash to the women’s movement had begun.

Although the ERA had shown promise of passing in 1975 and even 1976, by 1977 the ERA amendment had been ratified in 35 of the necessary 38 states. The amendment stagnated and was never able to gain the remaining 3 ratifications before the deadline set by congress. This failure

4 See Framing Feminism: Art and the Women’s Movement, 1970-85 pp. 20

27 of the ERA was a blow to the women’s movement, but the ideas set in motion by it had already taken hold.

Girlfriends was released in 1978, situated in the middle of the women’s movement with the attention paid to women artists and their representation, but before the failure of the ERA.

Thus, the film consciously focuses on these issues, and they manifest in Susan’s quest to become an independent woman in control of her life. Susan’s pursuit to become not just an artist, but an artist in the medium of photography epitomizes this struggle for control. In the act of taking photographs, the artist completely dominates the environment. Everything in photography must be in the artist’s control: the lighting, the shutter speed, the framing of the photo, the developing technique. This struggle for control is directly tied to the formal aspects of the film.

The brief opening scene sets-up Susan’s struggle for control throughout the film. The first shot of the film is a darkened close-up of Anne in bed. A camera shutter clicks in the background. Anne awakens from the camera shutter and asks Susan “what’re you doing?” to which Susan replies, “go back to sleep.” The camera cuts to reveal Susan crouching over Anne taking photographs of her. While Susan does not take the control to this extreme, she does attempt to direct Anne in the photoshoot while she sleeps. Immediately this blocking of the scene brings to mind the famous scene from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) in which

Thomas vigorously takes photos of the models as he straddles them. He completely controls the women he photographs; he can invade their personal space in order to get the photographs he wants. They are not living subjects, but objects for him to photograph. This contrasts to Anne’s autonomy. Anne turns on the light, which spoils the “fantastic lighting” Susan captures. Anne retorts, “you can’t take pictures of me asleep if I’m awake, right?” Anne is not the passive subject of the Antonioni film. Turning on the light effectively ends the photoshoot. The screen

28 cuts to black, and the opening credits begin to roll over pictures of Susan and Anne together.

These photos are not photos that Susan has taken herself, but rather photos from a photo booth, souvenirs of a friendship. Susan has not come into her own enough as a photographer to merit having her photographs shown over the opening credits of the film. Susan documents her personal life, but this is not yet political.

The resulting photograph of Anne becomes a site of control for Susan later in the film.

The first time the photograph becomes a subject of contention when Susan and Anne meet up in a laundromat. Susan rushes in and gushes to Anne, “you’re going to be famous, and I’m going to be famous!” A magazine has decided to buy three of Susan’s photographs, one of them being the photograph that Susan took at the beginning of the film. Anne quickly undercuts this joyous when she announces that is getting married to Martin, a man Susan says Anne “hardly even knows.” This scene avoids typical shot-reverse-shot style. Although the camera cuts back and forth between the two characters, of the nine shots that makeup the scene, only two of them focus on Anne. These two shots last for only a of couple seconds. The other shots in the scene almost completely obscure Anne’s face to prioritize Susan’s. Within the shots that make up the scene, the camera tracks Susan’s movements. In this pivotal moment for Anne, the camera focuses on Susan. Through this lop-sided use of shot-reverse-shot, the camera wants to put Susan in control, but she is too afraid to voice her true feelings to Anne. Within the shots that make up the scene, the camera tracks Susan’s movements. In this pivotal moment, the camera focuses on

Susan. Susan loses control of her friendship with Anne, but maintains the control of the camera within the scene.

The second time the photograph becomes a site of lost control for Susan occurs when she sees the proof of the photo for the magazine. In fact, Susan goes to the magazine office not to

29 check the proofs of her photos, but to try to sell more of her photos to the magazine. The photo editor shows no interest in seeing more of Susan’s work, but practically forces her to look at her proofs, something that would be an industry standard to have a photographer do. The photo editor also takes this time to give Susan some unsolicited advice. He tells her that she must walk right up to people and put her camera in their face. The editor violently smacks his hands together to illustrate how close Susan should be to the subject. Susan’s reaction shot displays pure disgust at this proposition. This comment highlights the dominant ideas of masculine art- making. The artist has a right to assault the subject with the camera. In this sense, the subject becomes more of an object than a subject. Susan continues to try to get the photo editor to look at her new pictures, but he ignores her, much as he advocated for Susan to ignore the boundaries of the subjects she photographs. When Susan receives the proofs, to her horror one of her photographs, the one of Anne from the beginning of the film, has been cropped. The photo editor nonchalantly tells her that he thought the photograph needed re-framing. Thus, the new photograph no longer belongs to Susan; she did not create this image. The editor continually stares at Susan over his glasses, as if simultaneously daring her to protest his decision to crop the photograph and checking her out. Susan does not protest, which exemplifies de Beauvoir’s assertion that femininity leads to doubt of professional opportunities (738).

Susan does not have the masculine aggression that the photo editor implores her to have.

Later, Susan complains to a rabbi, who is also her boss, that the photograph was cropped, rendering it no longer her photograph. The rabbi asks her if she did anything about this, to which she said that she did not. This image that once represented her intimate friendship with Anne and her burgeoning career as a photographer is sullied. The cropping of the photograph caused Susan to lose control of her art.

30 The film juxtaposes Susan’s lack of control over her own photography to Julie’s, another photographer, over-controlling of her photography. Julie simultaneously functions as Susan’s mentor and foil in the film. Julie has been in the art world slightly longer than Susan, and this has rendered her much more confident and in control of her artwork. Susan offers Julie a spot in the gallery show she has landed. In the scene in which the gallery owner discusses the placement of the photographs for the show, Julie oversees how her photographs should be exhibited and where they will be hung. In a wide shot, she argues with the gallery owner about it. The camera places a considerable distance between the viewer and Julie. The framing proves that Julie is a complete person; a person in control of her art. In contrast, the next shot shows Susan in close-up during her own discussion of what photos will be exhibited and where. Once again, the camera focuses on Susan, as if to ask her to take control of her artwork. The gallery owner questions Susan as to how she would like her pictures to be hung. Susan gives non-committal answers and defers to the gallery owner. She does not have the confidence an artist should have over her own work. This recalls her earlier mistake of not asserting herself and having her picture be cropped in the magazine. However, the gallery owner, notably another woman, insists that she has the artists decide where the pictures will be displayed. Susan still yields to the gallery owner. Resigned, the gallery owner agrees to use her own judgement in the placement of the photographs, but tells

Susan to come by the gallery the night before the show to endorse the placements. This scene reflects Susan’s hesitation when it comes to control of her own art. As de Beauvoir implores, femininity causes one to question professional ability (738). Susan has one more chance to take control of her own work.

The film never aggrandizes the issue of the two-woman photography show. Parker and

Pollock argue that, “to show women indiscriminately together suggests that their shared biology

31 is the over-riding factor in their art and denies the real differences between women” (63). The film subverts this, and is in fact progressive in never mentioning how a photography show of the photography of two women would be innovative or cutting-edge at the time. In fact, the film exists in a world which never directly questions the idea of a woman artist. All of the artists encountered throughout the film are women. The female utopia of Girlfriends portrays a counter world to the real-world combat female artists of the 1970s were engaged in for representation.

The film’s imagining of the art world as a female driven utopia opens up the possibility for direct control of artistic pursuits by women. Therefore, Susan’s struggles to control her art are legitimized.

Control becomes an issue not only in Susan’s professional life, but in her personal life as well. Susan’s first encounter with her eventual boyfriend Eric completely focuses on their negotiation of control. A downtrodden Susan meets Eric at a party she attends shortly after having gone to Anne’s wedding. The host introduces her to Eric, and then immediately abandons the two, initiating a forced interaction akin to a blind speed date. Eric continually asks questions that Susan responds to with the complete opposite of the expected response. This includes Eric’s racist joke asking if she is of Chinese ancestry, to which she replies the she is Japanese (she is in fact neither – the film posits that she is Jewish). Eric asks her to dance, which she declines, but then as soon as she sees another of her friends approaching her, she quickly asks him if he would like to dance. Stunned and intrigued, Eric agrees and follows her to the dance floor. Susan pauses before she gets to the dance floor and asks if Eric lives close. He replies that he does, and she asks if they can leave together. Taken aback with her forwardness, he says that he still wants to talk to some people at the party. Susan nods and goes back to sipping her drink. A few moments later, he asks if she would like to leave with him, and she agrees. Unlike other scenes of Susan

32 interacting with another character, this time the camera is not fixed on her. The camera follows

Eric’s movements, signaling his control of the relationship. Susan’s attempt to take control of the encounter initially repulses Eric. Susan has upset the cultural expectation that men should be the ones to initiate a relationship. However, this film does not punish Susan for the role reversal.

Although the camera privileges Eric in this scene, the film does not punish Susan for trying to take control. In fact, she ultimately gains control of the sexual encounter that follows when she leaves his apartment without an explanation.

In addition to her relationship with Eric, Susan also has two other romantic encounters that revolve around her control or lack thereof. The first ensues when Susan picks up a woman hitchhiker named Ceil on her way back to New York City after a disheartening weekend visiting newly married Anne. Clearly, Susan picks up the young hitchhiker out of loneliness. Susan longs for the days when she and Anne were both single and lived together. In the young woman, Susan sees potential for not just friendship, but she also views her as a way to build her confidence as a professional photographer. When Ceil asks what Susan does in New York, she tells her without hesitation that she is a photographer, and Ceil has no reason to question the validity of this statement. Susan should have qualified that she is a struggling photographer, but this immediate admiration from Ceil bolsters Susan’s sinking moral. Afterwards, Ceil stays with Susan rent free for a time. Like most of the other women in the film, Ceil is a dancer, which again contributes to

Girlfriend’s development of a female utopia full of women artists. While Susan initially enjoys

Ceil’s company and adoration, the relationship becomes complicated when Ceil comes onto

Susan. The film does not treat same-sex attraction in a necessarily productive way, however,

Susan’s rejection of Ceil is not laced with any kind of animosity. Susan simply tells Ceil she is

33 not interested. Ultimately, Ceil encroaches too much on Susan’s space in the apartment, and therefore her development as an artist, so she must move out.

While Susan has control in her relationship with Ceil, her brief liaison with Rabbi Aaron highlights another of Susan’s attempts to gain control. Rabbi Aaron is Susan’s boss as she takes the photographs for the weddings and Bar Mitzvah’s he officiates. After one Bar Mitzvah, Susan reveals to the Rabbi that as a child she watched her orthodox grandfather pray. In the memory

Susan explains that her grandfather would not let her pray with him. He denied her from speaking to god. Therefore, as a child Susan decided that she wanted to become a rabbi. This interest in becoming a rabbi when Susan was a child emphasizes her constant search for control and meaning in her life, and that she ultimately finds this through art, not religion. The rabbi ruins the moment of candidness when he takes this opportunity to come onto Susan. Perhaps seduced by the power of an older man, Susan allows the advances from the rabbi. The brief would-be tryst abruptly ends when the rabbi cancels their lunch date so that he can take his family to a football game. Susan realizes she would possess any kind of control in the relationship; she would always be subordinate to the rabbi’s family. Throughout the film, Susan constantly pursues control, and through the encounter she finally becomes mature enough to know to extricate herself from the situation.

The battle for control in Susan and Eric’s relationship continues throughout the film and reaches a fever-pitch the night before Susan’s photo exhibition. As in the first scene with Susan and Eric, in this scene the characters have the opposite response to every question the other asks, however, this time there is no playful joking back. Eric wants Susan to move in with him, but she wants to maintain the security of having her own place. She has finally realized that she wants to remain independent. Throughout the fight, Eric mashes potatoes, symbolizing his attempt to beat

34 her into agreement and the repetitive nature of their fights. Susan suggests an alternate way to make the potatoes, but Eric rejects this suggestion. Thus, Eric offers a subtle ultimatum to Susan

—she must acquiesce to how he thinks they should live.

Susan’s loss of control in her relationship with Eric causes her to lose control of her photography show when the fight causes her to forget to go to the gallery and check on her photos as the gallery owner had asked her to do. At the show, Susan complains to the gallery owner that her photograph of the Bar Mitzvah boy is not included. When Susan asks if the show can be re-worked to include the photograph, the unsympathetic gallery owner stresses that Susan grow up. The exclusion of the photograph of the Bar Mitzvah boy is ironic. The entirety of the film has been focused on Susan’s attempts to grow up and have control of her life and her work as an independent woman. In Judaism, a Bar or Bat Mitzvah is a rite of passage for an adolescent. A Bar or Bat Mitzvah is when a child becomes officially recognized as an adult in the Jewish religion. The Bar Mitzvah boy’s omission from Susan’s first show proves that she has not gained entire independence. She does not attain the status of an adult. The portrait of the Bar

Mitzvah boy could be a substitute for Susan’s own portrait. This exclusion highlights Susan’s underdevelopment, and the outside world’s dismissal of her rite of passage. The camerawork in the scene reflects this as well. As stated previously, the camera often prioritizes or follows Susan in its framing. The first shot of the scene begins by zooming in on Susan and pans to cut out the gallery owner, but then reframes to focus more on the gallery owner chastising Susan. Susan has lost control over the camera, just as she has lost control of the images she produces with her own camera.

Throughout the film, Susan and Anne follow completely different paths to find artistic fulfillment. The final scene of the film maintains the juxtaposition. At the gallery opening, Susan

35 assumes that Anne did not attend because of their recent fight. However, Susan leaves the opening early to go see her best friend, which affirms the strong and unbreakable bond between the women. Susan finds Anne at her guest house in the country. Anne reveals to Susan that she came to the country house to recover from an abortion that she had that morning, not because she wanted to avoid Susan’s gallery opening. The film takes a progressive stance on abortion here.

Roe v. Wade had only declared abortion legal five years before Girlfriends came out. Susan nor

Anne question Anne’s decision to not have a second child. In fact, Susan shares a look of understanding with Anne in this moment: they have both taken initiative and control over their own lives.

This scene of the two women epitomizes the film’s longing for a female utopia. The women talk about their own struggles for control and ownership of their art. Although they have pursued different life paths – Susan as single woman, and Anne as a married mother – their artistic interests remain important to them. The concluding shots of the film are of Susan and

Anne on the couch together. The opening piano theme from the beginning of the movie begins.

Perhaps the women can go back to their lives before Anne got married. However, the film only briefly imagines this possibility, as Martin’s voice punctuates over the piano music calling for

Anne. The camera frames Susan in close-up as she sighs and looks down. Then the camera freezes on Susan. The potential for the female utopia shattered by the voice of Martin. This closing shot emphasizes the work that still needs to be done for the advancement of women.

Work that was started long before the women’s movement of the 1970s.

Throughout Girlfriends, Susan attempts to take control of her life — her work and personal life, with varying degrees of success. The women’s movement of the 1970s began the decade with promise, but the failure of the ERA and the schisms within the movement caused it

36 to lose control of its momentum. In Girlfriends, Susan does come into her own and experience success as an artist, albeit imperfectly.

37 CHAPTER 4 FAILING SIGHT, FAILING MOVEMENTS: EYES OF LAURA MARS

On the surface, Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) could be dismissed as a star vehicle for Faye

Dunaway and Tommy Lee Jones. It could be discounted as a typical psychological horror slasher film. In his review of the film for American Film Now, James Monaco described the film as having:

a rather silly plot upon which is hung great gobs of would-be-significance Semioticians speak of a sign of communication composed of two equal halves: the ‘signifier’ and the ‘signified.’ A film like Laura Mars is all signifiers that never connect with the signified. Or to put it more poetically, full of sound and fury. (32)

Lucy Fischer and Marcia Landy in their 1982 Screen article “‘The Eyes of Laura Mars’: A

Binocular Critique” argue that “the film deserves more than Monaco’s hasty dismissal” (12).

Fischer and Landy go on to claim that, “the problem is not, as Monaco indicates, that the film says nothing but that it says everything” (12). For Fisher and Landy, the film represents the

“relationship between sexual oppression, violence and pornography, and the role of film, television, advertising and photography in producing and reproducing patriarchal ideology” (5).

While I agree with their reading, I would like to infuse it with nuance that historical distance from both the film and the article can provide. Eyes of Laura Mars is certainly a tale of the sexual oppression of women by men and the return to patriarchal dominance. However, the film also foreshadows the shortcomings and eventual downfall of the women’s movement of the

1970s, which coincided with commercialization of mainstream feminism.

The production of the film further complicates the commercialization and gender dynamics of the film. First, the film is written and directed by two famous men. Irvin Kershner not only directed Eyes of Laura Mars, but a film from one of the most commercially successful film franchises of all time: The Empire Strikes Back (1980). John Carpenter, of Halloween

(1978) fame, wrote the spec script for the film. The Star Wars films pioneered the merchandising

38 and licensing of products for films, what would become a hallmark of many hugely successful films of the 1980s. Thus, Irvin Kershner’s direction imbues Eyes of Laura Mars with the questions of commercialization, and by extension the commercialization of feminism into the structure of the film from the outset. John Carpenter’s Halloween was a breakout hit and also reinforced the rigid gender structures of the horror genre. These elements clearly convolute the potential for feminism in the film.

Eyes of Laura Mars tells the story of renowned fashion photographer Laura Mars. She seems to have it all: fame, fortune, and a successful career in which she is respected. That is until her friends and colleagues start being murdered, and she experiences a kind of psychological connection with the killer because she can see the murders as they are committed. However,

Laura finds comfort and love in the police detective assigned to solve the murders, John Neville, or so she thinks. The film concludes with the killing of the supposed murderer: Laura’s chauffer.

However, in last minutes of the film, Neville reveals that he framed the chauffer and he is in fact the murderer. He breaks down while telling an incoherent story of his past to Laura, and then begs her to kill him. In the end, Neville commits suicide as a horrified Laura watches. This simple retelling of the film’s plot could lead one to believe that it merely rehashes the traditional sexual roles of men and women. However, the gender dynamics in the film are more complex.

Eyes of Laura Mars begins with Laura as an already successful artist, unlike the women photographers discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. The film neither depicts her struggling for recognition nor as a starving artist. Instead, Laura is a kind of photographer rock star. The launch party for her book is a star-studded and glamorous affair. Reporters and television cameras at the party narrate Laura’s every move. The public is fascinated by her and her provocative photographs. She constantly refers to herself as a “meal ticket” for the men in her life. She lives

39 in a cavernous and swanky New York City apartment. Laura’s photography does not depict her everyday life as Susan’s did in Girlfriends and Joanna’s did in The Stepford Wives. The personal is not political for Laura. Instead, Laura’s photographs combine depictions of graphic violence, often against women, and high fashion. Laura seems to think that these images of graphic violence are political, and maybe even feminist because they represent the violence that women face in society. Laura does not see the photographs as exploitative, the models willingly submit these poses, and the violence in the photographs are imaginary, or so Laura thinks. However, the link between real-life crimes and Laura’s photographs tightens when Laura begins having visions of her friends and associates being murdered, which turn out to be real.

Although Laura thinks that her photographs raise awareness of social issues through the depictions of violence, her work is not that of a feminist artist. Laura exploits her subjects putting them in revealing outfits and posing them in precariously violent situations. These resulting photographs sell things from clothes to perfume. Fredric Jameson’s envisions postmodernism as the amalgamation of art and commercialization. He claims that:

what has happened is that aesthetic production today has become integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods (from clothing to airplanes), at ever greater rates of turnover, no assigns an increasingly essential structural function and position to aesthetic innovation and experimentation. (5)

The nature of the work undercuts the potential for social or political value because of this usurpation into. Laura’s does not articulate a message of the violence against women to raise awareness of it. Instead, she sells commodities with the violent images of women.

However, this does not mean that the film is not a commentary on feminism in the late

1970s. The women’s movement by the late 1970s was beginning to wane. Support for the Equal

Rights Amendment 1978 had stagnated with only 35 of the needed 38 states to ratify the amendment. Other issues began supplanting it. Some women had gained a modicum of success

40 and could be touted as exceptions to the rule. In the world of Eyes of Laura Mars, this is what happens. Laura has reached a level of serious success in spite of, or maybe because she is a woman. But this success links the exploitation to capitalism. Her art is not taken seriously as art, but rather for its ability to sell products.

Critics of the film question Laura’s art. Linda Pannill’s critique of the film points out that

Laura is a descendant of the archetype of woman artist as vehicle. Pannill describes this archetype of the woman as “the apparently passive agent for a transcendent power” because it is

“less threatening than the idea of an autonomous woman” (26). Pannill argues that Laura exemplifies this archetype because her work was “inspired by a psychopathic killer” (28). In other words, Laura’s art was not her own, but the work of the crazed police detective who had been committing the murders and communicating with Laura telepathically. Laura has lost control of her work and her mind. While this is technically accurate, this does not mean that

Laura’s photography and by extension the films commentary on feminism are reducible to only the work of John, the murderer. Instead, this plotline is a forewarning. The goals of feminism and capitalism conflict because of the inherent inequality present in capitalism. If women are too ambitious or try to imitate men, they will be punished. Thus, the goals of feminism have potential to be supplanted or sidetracked. Laura wants to raise awareness for violence in society, but the price she pays for recognition undercuts her message. The women’s movement, like

Laura, has lost its way because of the commercialization of the movement.

The intertwining of gender roles and the commercialization of women’s issues are apparent from the credit sequence of the film depicting the launch of Laura’s photobook Eyes of

Mars. Laura is swarmed by paparazzi and reporters as she makes an appearance at the event.

Obviously, she’s a well-known or at least infamous artist. As she enters the event a reporter

41 frantically asks her if her work is offensive to women. Laura does not give an answer, instead she rolls her eyes and walks into the party. This interaction encapsulates the rift that was growing in the women’s movement. Women had struggled for recognition, as seen through the women- only-art shows of the early 1970s. Women had gained legislative recognition through laws such as Title IX and the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision of the early 1970s. However, the galvanization of the early 1970s was beginning to wane with the failure of the ERA. Perhaps this breakdown of the movement can be attributed to the lack of inclusion in the women’s movement of the 1970s, an issue that would become central to the later women’s movement of the 1980s and 1990s. This same reporter later on in the scene asks Laura if she is a serious artist. Even though the reporter wants to question Laura about the ethics of her photographs and their commentary on women’s issues, namely the violent and sexual nature of the images, she undercuts herself by questioning Laura’s status as an artist. Why would Laura not be a serious artist? Perhaps this failure is represented in the outfit she wears to the party. Laura tries to play the role of non-threatening woman, which is embodied in the paradox of her outfit. The outfit appears to be conservative, in a style similar to Grandma Moses. Laura even jokingly tells a partygoer that she is Grandma Moses. She retains her non-threatening femininity in this way.

However, the dress also has a high slit in the leg and the chest. This outfit signals that Laura’s not that conservative. She wields her power covertly.

This scene epitomizes the film’s commentary on art, exploitation, and commercialization through a literal television commentator that attends the party. Again, this demonstrates

Jameson’s conception of postmodernism as the mixing of aesthetic production and commodities.

The depictions of violence in Laura’s photographs are considered novel by the film. The photographs are so controversial that the TV news covers the launch party for her book and

42 paparazzi swarm her. Not only are the photographs pieces of art, the commentator constantly refers to them as “saleable” art. He tells the camera that they will “sell pictures like crazy tonight.” The commentary is not notably about the artistic merits of Laura’s work, but about their potential for profit. Throughout the party, the commentator and the other party goers treat the photographs as if they were rising stocks. Laura produces the art not with the intention of exhibiting it in a museum, but for sale. This commercialization of her art compounds with her employment of art to sell banal commodities such as clothes and deodorant. The violent and sexual images of her photography become inseparable from the advertising. Art that is sold and exhibited in museums or by private collectors is one form a profit. However, employing artistic works to sell things is another. In a sense, Laura sells out by producing and commercializing these provocative images so that she gains recognition as an artist. This commercialization as a form of recognition reflects the ways in which the women’s movement also commercialized and was waning in power by the end of the 1970s. The women’s movement of the 1970s would give way to the later phases of the feminist movement with its focus on recognition of women in the workplace. Thus, the movement inextricably linked itself to capitalist ideals.

Laura Mars’ photographs literalize the potential for violence inherent in photography and links violence to capitalism. In her book On Photography, Susan Sontag argues that, “there is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera” (7). Sontag goes on to claim that this aggression has been fundamental to photography since its inception as a medium in the 1840s and 1850s.

Photography conceptualized the world as a set of potential photographs (Sontag 7). Photography invades the world with its goal of reproducing it without permission. However, Laura does not attack an unknowing world with her camera. Her subjects are models, willing participants in her photographic exploits. As Sontag claims, “photographed images do not seem to be statements

43 about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire”

(4).

Laura’s statement exposes the paranoia of the 1970s, especially the violent New York

City of the 1970s. In The Stepford Wives, Joanna’s family leaves 1970s Manhattan for the safety of the enclave of Stepford. However, for Joanna, there is no safety in Stepford. Joanna’s dream of becoming a photographer is never realized, she is punished for wanting to have a family and a successful career. In contrast, Laura stays in New York to document the violence of the city, although not literally, and she becomes rich and famous for it.

Laura’s photographs in the film were taken by real-life high-fashion photographers, and the historical linkages of these photographs allude to photography’s violent history. Laura’s photographs in the film are actually the photographs of Helmut Newton and Rebecca Blake.

Newton’s New York Times obituary claims that, “he photographed some of the most beautiful women in the world in poses that emphasized their sexuality, often with an accompanying sense of danger and violence.” Rebecca Blake’s oeuvre is similar to Newton’s in that the subjects in her fashion photographs are often also women provocatively posed with a feeling of impending danger. However, both of these photographers and by extension the film are indebted to Weegee, the pseudonym for Arthur Fellig. Weegee is best known for his sensationalist photographs of

New York in the 1930s and 1940s from his photobook Naked City (1945). In Anthony Lee’s book Weegee and Naked City, Lee recounts that Fellig:

labored nightly as a hustling street photographer who monitored the police radio, chased ambulances and paddy wagons… by the early 1940s, Fellig had made a name for himself as a freelance photographer with an almost preternatural ability to arrive at crime scenes before other photojournalists —and, sometimes, before the police— had done so. The name he made in the press was not Arthur Fellig but “Weegee”—a catchy moniker that referred to his uncanny prescience or Ouija-like knowledge of the city and its vices. (1-2)

44 Weegee stormed onto the art scene with his book Naked City (1945), which was subsequently used as the inspiration for the Hollywood film noir of the same name. Eyes of

Laura Mars strengthens this connection to noir through its indebtedness to Italian giallo film.

Mikel J. Koven argues that the 1970s are the threshold for giallo film (4). Giallo films intertwine horror and crime. Often, an innocent person witnesses brutal murders that seem to the work of a serial killer. Young, beautiful women are often the victims (Koven 4-5). Eyes of Laura

Mars eerily conforms to this genre. The Naked City book showcased his sensationalist photographs. Many of these photographs were in fact crime scene photos that were originally sold to newspapers, but Fellig’s work eventually ended up in museums and art shows. Thus,

Laura’s photographs transform Fellig’s photographs from newspapers and art shows, to Laura’s violent high-fashion spreads and commercial advertisements.

The violent subject matter is not the only link between Fellig and Laura. Like Fellig,

Laura legitimizes her photography through the release of a photobook Eyes of Mars. Although

Laura Mars’ is indebted to the actual work of Newton and Blake, Laura is further linked to Fellig through their shared supernatural abilities. Fellig’s arriving at the scenes of crimes before anyone else, as if he too shared Laura’s extra sensory perception (ESP). Sontag’s claim that photographs are “miniatures of reality” is complicated by these two figures seemingly supernatural abilities.

Thus, the film questions the reality depicted.

The fusing of violence and commercialization are disrupted by Laura’s supernatural connection during the first photoshoot scene in the film. At the beginning of the shoot, Laura is completely in control. Laura is notably the only woman on set besides the models. She has to direct all of the men around her: she tells one to redo the model’s makeup, she tells another to reposition the lights, to yet another she insists that she needs to make sure to showcase the lace

45 on the garments in the photoshoot. All of these men attempting to side track Laura from doing her job. Laura thinks that she will be completely in control over the photoshoot. As the shoot commences an upbeat pop song starts.

Figure 4-1. Laura's photoshoot stance from Eyes of Laura Mars.Kershner, Irvin, Jon Peters, John Carpenter, David Z. Goodman, Faye Dunaway, Tommy L. Jones, Brad Dourif, René Auberjonois, Raul Julia, Rose Gregorio, and Artie Kane. Culver City, Calif: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 1978. DVD.

The scene is shot as if it were a music video directed by Laura. A play catfight breaks out between the models as Laura assumes a provocative stance while she snaps pictures. Violence and sexuality combine to sell something as mundane as lace. Laura’s stance emphasizes the slit in her outfit, a callback to the slits in her outfit from the earlier book launch scene. Laura quietly wields her sexuality while making her art. Traffic stops and a crowd gathers during the photoshoot. The cars used in the photoshoot are set on fire as the models continue to tousle. The shutter of Laura’s camera goes off, like a gun. But then suddenly her vision switches to that of the killer. Laura loses control of the shoot because of this and can no longer continue. This loss of control reflects the waning visibility of the women’s movement in the late 1970s as epitomized by the failure of the ERA amendment. From this point in the film forward, Laura

46 cannot pick up a camera without the killer invading her mind. Yet, Laura also remains powerless to stop it or save her friends from their horrible fates. As if the killer always knows when she is about to work and literally prevents her from doing so.

The film’s foreshadowing of the waning power of the women’s movement comes to a head in the final scene of the film. Laura thinks that the sadistic serial killer who has been killing her friends and colleagues has been killed. Once the supposed killer is dead, her visions do not cease. John Neville is coming to take Laura away. Although her life is broken because of the death that surrounds her, she will still have love with John, or so she thinks. The scene begins with Laura in her apartment waiting to be rescued by John. Laura’s visions start-up again, and

John smashes through a window to get to her. He hugs her, but something is off. The scene culminates in the reveal that John is actually the sadistic murderer. In John’s confession, he repeatedly tells Laura that the killer hated her. The killer did not like Laura’s work claiming that death should not be used to sell things. During this confession, John goes in and out of using first person and third person to recount the story. John has transposed his hatred of his mother onto

Laura. The film only gives that as the explanation for John’s heinous crimes and his obsession with Laura. In the moment that John tells Laura that he is the killer, the camera switches back to the hazy killer’s point of view. Therefore, Laura can now see herself through John’s eyes, a moment of complete disembodiment and realization. This is amplified by all of the mirrors in the scene, thus the film creates three images: Laura, the killer, and the mirror, which is the moment of ultimate recognition. Then, the image of John stabbing the mirror replays three times. Laura’s dreams have been obliterated. John begs for Laura to kill him, but she cannot acquiesce. He ends up pulling the trigger on himself while the gun is in Laura’s hand. Laura then stands in front of the smashed mirror with the gun, her image split into threes. The last shot of the film is a freeze

47 frame of Laura in tears as the color is drained from it. The film punishes Laura for her lifestyle because of its unsustainability. She capitulated to commercializing her art, and must be punished for her provocative images, thus reinstating the patriarchal order.

This order that the film re-establishes at the end mirrors the loss of momentum that the women’s movement experienced in the late 1970s. The women’s movement tried to change the dominant patriarchal order in America. However, the failure of any actual legislative change passing as exemplified in the failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment meant that this dominant order had not been disrupted, but rather maintained. The marginal strides were subsumed and commodified. Women had gained a greater visibility through the movements of the 1970s, but they were far from equal.

48 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION

The historical distance from the feminist movement of the 1970s more fully illuminates the successes and failures of the movement. Although many of the failures have been highlighted and discussed at length in this thesis, obviously the movement was successful in many respects.

The recognition gained through the movement laid the groundwork for subsequent women’s movements and issues.

The women photographers discussed in this thesis vary widely in their respective careers.

Joanna in The Stepford Wives is a young mother struggling to balance domestic responsibility and career aspirations of becoming a professional photographer. Joanna’s artistic labor eventually fails when she attempts to move beyond the domestic realm. She is punished for her transgression by being turned into a robot. However, this failure begins an awakening. In

Girlfriends, the photographer is not a young mother looking for recognition outside the home, but a young artist struggling for recognition and control over her own work. Susan’s lack of confidence often hinders her from achieving her full potential as an artist. Ultimately, she experiences success with her first show, but only after many personal failures. The film’s final freeze-frame on Susan’s downward gaze after her best friend Anne is greeted by her husband reminds the audience that there is potential for failure in Susan’s life, that something could be missing if she continues focusing too much on her artistic pursuits. Finally, in Eyes of Laura

Mars the female photographer is fully-formed and incredibly successful. Laura does not have to search for a career outside the home like Joanna or recognition and control like Susan. Instead, she has complete control. Nevertheless, Laura still faces backlash for her sexual and violent images that commercialize many of the issues of feminism. In the end, she must be punished for

49 them. Eyes of Laura Mars is about the failures of the feminist movement of the 1970s. Women gained recognition, but this recognition fell short of equality.

Like the invisible artistic labor of photography, many of the failures of the 1970s feminist movement are also seemingly invisible. These failures of the movement created the need for it to widen and recalibrate, enabling new issues to take root. The later feminist issues of the 1980s and 1990s still hold onto many of the ideals of earlier movements. The feminist issues raised today still have their origins in issues of previous movements. The failure of the Equal Rights

Amendment means that women must still fight for equal treatment in the workplace. The issue of equal treatment in the workplace has become even more visible through the #MeToo movement.

It is not coincidence that #MeToo rose to popularity because of its connection to art, this time the connection to Hollywood and the entertainment industry as a whole, demonstrating the importance of art in social movements. Although, the #MeToo movements even more radical claims demand that sexual harassment be addressed and banned in the workplace. However, the movement is not without its own flaws, which are mainly the result of a generational clash between feminists. where women have demanded that sexual harassment be banished from the workplace. For movements such as #MeToo to work, an examination of not just the successes of past social movements must be examined, but also the failures.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aaron, Michele. "17. Looking On: Troubling Spectacles and the Complicitous Spectator." The Spectacle of the Real(2005): 213.

Barzilai, Gad. "Culture of patriarchy in law: Violence from antiquity to modernity." Law & Society Review 38.4 (2004): 867-884.

Baum, Rebecca A. “Girlfriends No Celebration of Female Bonding” Jump Cut. No. 20. May 1979. Pp. 3-5.

Beauvoir, Simone, and H M. Parshley. The Second Sex. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Print.

Boruzkowski, Lilly Ann. “The Stepford Wives The Re-Created Woman.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media no. 32, April 1987.

Brunsdon, Charlotte, and Jane Clarke. "A Subject for the Seventies." Screen 23.3-4 (1982): 20- 29.

Doane, Mary Ann. “Film Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator.” Screen, 23. September/October 1982.

Fischer, Lucy, and Marcia Landy. "‘The Eyes of Laura Mars’: a Binocular Critique." Screen 23.3-4 (1982): 4-19.

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 2013. Print.

Helford, Elyce Rae. “’It’s a Rip-Off of the Women’s Movement’: Second Wave Feminism and The Stepford Wives’” Disco Divas: Women and Popular Culture in the 1970s. ed. Sherrie Innes, Philadelphia, UPA Press, pp. 24-38. 2003.

Helford, Elyce Rae. “The Stepford Wives and the Gaze.” Feminist Media Studies vol. 6, no. 2. Pp. 145-156.

Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991. Print.

Kinder, Marsha. “Girlfriends by Claudia Weill.” Film Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 1, 1978.

Klemesrud, J. “Feminists Recoil at Film Designed to Relate to Them.” New York Times, 26 February 1975, 28.

Koven, Mikel J. La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film. Scarecrow Press, 2006.

Lee, Anthony W., and Richard Meyer. Weegee and Naked city. Vol. 3. Univ of California Press, 2008.

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Lippard, Lucy R. "Sweeping Exchanges: The Contribution of Feminism to the Art of the 1970s." Art Journal, vol. 40, no. 1, 1980, pp. 362

McKinley, Jesse. (24 January 2004). “Helmut Newton, Who Remade Fashion Photography, Dies at 83” The New York Times.

Monaco, James. American Film Now. New York, New York. New American Library. 1979. Pp. 275.

Nowell, Richard. ""the Ambitions of most Independent Filmmakers": Indie Production, the Majors, and Friday the 13th (1980)." Journal of Film and Video, vol. 63, no. 2, 2011, pp. 28-44, Performing Arts Periodicals Database; Screen Studies Collection

Pannill, Linda. "The Woman Artist as Creature and Creator." Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 16, no. 2, 1982, pp. 26

Parker, Roziska and Griselda Pollock. Framing Feminism: Art and the Women’s Movement, 1970-85. New York: Routledge, 1987. Print.

Rich, B R. Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Internet resource.

Silver, Anna Krugovoy. “The Cyborg Mystique: The Stepford Wives and Second Wave Feminism.” Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory vol. 58, no. 1, Spring 2002.

Sontag, Susan. “Notes on ‘Camp.’” Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Picador. 1961. pp. 275-289. Print.

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FILMOGRAPHY

Blowup. Antonioni, Michelangelo, Carlo Ponti, Pierre Rouve, Tonino Guerra, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, David Hemmings, John Castle, Jane Birkin. 1966. DVD.

Eyes of Laura Mars.Kershner, Irvin, Jon Peters, John Carpenter, David Z. Goodman, Faye Dunaway, Tommy L. Jones, Brad Dourif, René Auberjonois, Raul Julia, Rose Gregorio, and Artie Kane. Culver City, Calif: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 1978. DVD.

Girlfriends.Weill, Claudia, Vicki Polon, Melanie Mayron, Anita Skinner, Eli Wallach, Christopher Guest, Bob Balaban, and Michael Small. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 1978.

The Stepford Wives. Dir. Bryan Forbes. Perf. Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson. Columbia Pictures. 1975. DVD.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Lauren Burrell Cox earned her BA in English (summa cum laude) from the University of

Florida in 2016 with a concentration in film studies and a minor in Spanish. She is currently a

Ph.D. student in the Department of English at the University of Florida specializing in feminist film and media studies. Her research areas include gender, American film, documentary film, archival film, and photography. She also teaches film in the Department of English and serves as the Vice President for the UF Graduate Film Studies Group.

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