RETHINKING CRITICAL STRATEGIES IN FEMINIST FILM THEORY AND CRITICISM by Aspasia Kotsopoulos B.A., Carleton University, I989 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE RIGQUIRICMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Women's Stuciies Simon Fraser University O Aspasia Kotsopoulos 1996 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY April 1996 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whoie or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. National Library Bibliotheque nationale 1+1 of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Direction des acquisitions et Bibliographic Services Branch des services bibliographiques 395 Well~nglonStreet 395, rue Wellington Ottawa. 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Title of Thesis/Project/Extended Essay Rethinkino- Critical Strateaies in Fernini st Fi lrn Theory and Criticism Author:. (signa~uhei APPROVAL Name: Aspasia Kotsopoulos Degree: Master of Arts Title of thesis: Rethinking critical strategies in feminist film theory and criticism Examining committee: Meredith Kirnbdl, Chair Jacqueme Levitin Senior Supervisor Associate Professor of Women's Studies and Contemporary Arts Simon Fraser University Richard Gruneau Supervisor Professor of Communications Simon Fraser University MneMcLarty External Examiner Assistant Professor of History in Art and Director of the Film Program University of Victoria ... ill ABSTRACT In this thesis, I explore strategies for textual analysis used within Seminist film criticism in the interest of assessing their strengths and limitations. Of ~xaticularcor\ccrn is each critical approach's theorization of the relationship between fcrnnlu ;tucii~'11ccs. popular films, ideology, and the socid formation, and the implications o!' each approach for feminist politics. Psychoanalysis a~d"reading against the grain," t hc dominmn t approaches to feminist film criticism, are found to inadequately theorize the uhuvo relationships since their theoretical assumptions do not account for the popular film's historical specificity at the moment of production, nor the historical or contextual determinants that figure in female spectatorship and popular fantasy, nor the contingent and contradictory relationship between popular films, ideological struggles, and wtmcn as agents existing in history. I then consider critical strategies that overcomc thc linlitations of these dominant approaches. Other approaches to feminist film criticism are found to theorize thc relationship between ideology and the social formation as more dialectical and contingent than allowed for in the psychoanalytic or reading-against-the-grain approaches. To that end, I examine Gramscian approaches to textual analysis, which maintain that popular films must be understood as contradictory and heterogeneous. Popular films arc complcx negotiations of ideological tensions existing within a social formation, and cmbody competing voices and collective struggles. In this way, popular films are "polysernic" or "multidiscursive", containing contradictory and even resistant and oppositions! ideo1c:gics. As such, popular films do not, unproblematically, reproduce the dominant ideology, but rather, function as manifestations of ideological conflicts occurring at a particular juncture in time and space. Yet popular films are not the simple transposition of such conflicts from the realm of the social onto that of the cinematic because hegemony is at work, managing br specific ends the ideological tensions that gave rise to the representation in the first place. To demonstrate the method of textual analysis I outline, I analyze the film THELMA AND LOUISE (1991). Most discussions of THELMA AND LOUISE have emphasized its receptiol~.In contrast, I attempt to hold the text itself accountable, at least in some measure, for the diametrically opposed readings it has produced. THELMA AND LOUISE attempts to engage with each of the ideological agendas (the progressive and the reactionary, the feminist and the anti-feminist) that various critics have imparted to it. The result is that THELMA AND LOLTISE presents us with a layered, polysernic essay on contemporary gender relations. This film also works within ideological and generic parameters that limit its engagement with contemporary issues in particular ways, generating meanings that are, in some cases, contradictory, and in others, clearly hegemonic. My ana:j.sis considers both the ways in which the film itself generates diverse interpretations and the ideological implications of this polysemy for feminism. It is in the interests of feminist film criticism to account for the political or ideological stakes involved in producing polysemy, as an analysis of THELMA AND LOUISE aptly demonstrates. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is my pleasure to thank a number of people for their assistance: my dear friend Lynne Hissey for her encouragement and support; my parents Jane and John Kotsopoulos; my fellow graduate students in the Women's Studies Department, especially Joscphinc Mills; my teachers &chard Gruneau, Jacqueline Levitin and Lianne McLarty; and last hut never least, my partner Neil Monckton for his generous spirit. I am also thankful for the financial support I received from an Anne Pcters Pinto Graduate Scholarship and a Margaret Lowe Benston Memorial Award, both in Womcn's Studies, md from a Simon Fraser University Graduate Fellowship. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS . APPROVAL ..........................................................................................................11 ... ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................... 111 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................ v INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE: EVALUATING THE LEGACY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AND READING AGAINST THE GRAIN ..................................................................... 10 Psychoanalysis as an approach to feminist film criticism ............................ 11 Reading against the grain as an approach to feminist film criticism ........... 18 Notions of distance and identification and their implications ..................... 24 "Doubled vision" as an approach to feminist film criticism ........................30 CHAPTER TWO: TOWARDS A REVISED TEXTUAL ANALYSIS ................................................ 40 Approaching the popular film as negotiation ............................................... 41 Reading the popular film's polysemy ........................................................... 48 Approaching the woman's film as "hegemonic female fantasy" ..................55 CHAPTER THREE: FEMINISM. BACKLASH AND THE HEGEMONIC FEMALE FANTASY IN THELMA AXD LOUISE .....................................................................................64 Introduction ..................................................................................................h-t Notes on reception .................................................................................67 Notes on production and publicity ............................................................... 70 Narrative synopsis ........................................................................................75 Fathers and husbands ...................................................................................76 The knowing woman ...................................................................................-78 Rape and allegory .........................................................................................80 Women and the law ...................................................................................84 The female outlaw couple ............................................................................87