How Critical is the Female Gaze ?

In 1975 Oxford University Aluma and British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey challenged the Film Industry establishment with her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, published in “Screen” magazine. Mulvey asserted that, “Female roles in narrative cinema should be constantly examined and challenged in what they communicate about the symbolic and ideological aspects of films”. Mulvey’s statement gave significant weight to feminist advocates by radically challenged women’s portrayal in cinema. Mulvey implicated the defining power of the ‘Male Gaze’, which is elucidated by Kaplan as being that ‘which, in patriarchy, is viewed as dominating and repressing women through its controlling power over female discourse and female desire. …in terms of dominant film narratives, of classic forms, women, as they have been represented by men.” (E. Ann Kaplan, 1983, page 1-2). 

Laura Mulvey in 2010 (via Wikipedia)

Since the debate first began with authors such as Mulvey and Kaplan championing the issues of female representation in cinema has much changed? Is it getting better or is it just as common to see a film where women portray a traditional masculine role as it is to see a film containing women in the stereotypical, historical context of objectification? And has the change in the status of females in films had any real effect on the way women experience their actual lives in society? Do the gradual changes in gender roles reflected in films really represent the way women view themselves and their place in their own communities, professions, societies? In other words, are the film industry representations accurate in reflecting the changes in our contemporary world? To explore this concept and the changes that have occurred in the past two decades, the films Orlando (1993) and The Proposal (2009), respectively the two most commercially successful films by British director Sally Potter and the American director Anne Fletcher, are examined in relation to their objectification of women and their gaze on the central female character. 

Particularly interesting to note is that Mulvey’s essay centred on the fact that women were mostly being objectified in cinema by the patriarchal establishment based on their innate fear of castration, which stemmed from a deep subconscious fear based on male and female archetypes and especially that of women being objects of beauty, sexual desire and reproduction. As well as psychoanalytic theory, the notion that women are objectified in cinema is supported by the theory that the Hollywood machine saw a necessity to continually react the glamorous fantasy of female perfection in order to give its audiences a reason to continually return to the theatres. ‘As far as the film industry is concerned, to place the consumer of the films themselves in a constant position of desire is to bring him or her back to the cinema time and time again, to seek an unattainable fantasy life. The star system, founded crucially on idealized images of women, constitutes those images as commodities which would, in a self-perpetuating cycle, generate further relations of exchange and profitability.’ (Annette Kuhn, 1985, page 13.) 

Therefore, it can be accepted that historically, the value of a woman was based on her ability to bear children, her aesthetic beauty and to a certain extent her social status and these confines were the defining attributes of most female cinematic portrays. Various psychoanalytical theories exist to justify the historical and social signification processes that amount to historical gender associations (De Lauretis, Teresa, 1984, page 17). Like all language, cinematic signifiers stem from semiotics and the archetypical signs that humans have constructed since society began, one of the most powerful of these symbols being the phallus (Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, 1968). Mulvey’s essay is based on the theory that women were objectified because of men’s fear of castration and women’s ability to overpower their status as the dominant sex. The potential influence of the meanings that are attributed to signs in cinema is explained by James Monaco in his seminal work, ‘How to read a film’, which states ‘Film does not suggest, it states. And therein lies its power and the danger it poses to the observer: the reason why it is useful, even vital, to learn to read the images well so that the observer can seize some of the power of the medium.’ (Monaco, 1977, pg.128). Mulvey clearly understood what Monaco outlined as her essay is famous for being part of the wave that instigated irreversible changes in gender definitions portrayed in cinema and hence, the role of women in society. 

Mulvey also wrote, somewhat prophetically, of the changes in cinema thanks to improvements in technology that would make the medium more accessible to independent filmmakers and hence, create more artistic and less commercially oriented films. Mulvey stated, ‘Cinema has changed over the past few decades… technological advances have changed the economic conditions of cinematic production… The alternative cinema provides a space for a cinema to be born which is radical in both a political and an aesthetic sense and challenges the basic assumptions of mainstream film.’ Constance Penley (Editor) 1988, page 58. The transformation of the cinema film into a digitalized medium allowed for more films to be produced independently by women that portrayed not only the women’s gaze but also a non- gender gaze or ‘general audience’ gaze as the female characters in cinema took on traditional masculine roles. One of the most significant films to achieve such a drastic change in the representation of women in a traditional masculine role was Orlando by Sally Potter. Moreover, I would argue that Potter’s oeuvre not only challenged conventional thinking but provoked an entirely new frame of thought based on the idea of the hermaphrodite, or non-gender specific role and even goes so far as to eliminate any favour towards a gender specific gaze, urging the gaze to be considered unified, non-sexual, general audience viewing through her portrayal of a single person’s journey of life over the span of 400 years, during which a vast array of archetypal signification is represented along with a protagonist that changes sex halfway through the story. 

Potter challenged almost every traditional cinematic gender convention by having a woman (Tilda Swinton) play the male lead character of Lord Orlando. The film’s story follows the journey of Orlando from the year 1600 to the present day. In his opening line in the film, Orlando breaks the fourth wall, directly addressing the audience, inviting them into his own private world. This tactic is used intermittently throughout the film. The very next scene involves an opera singer, who is to represent a eunuch singing ‘Eliza is the fairest queen’ in alto, a typically female voice as he is rowed gently down a stream in front of a castle in front of the proud, old Queen Elizabeth, to whom she becomes “a favourite, a mascot”. Orlando falls in love with the daughter of the Russian Consul, but she betrays him, compelling him to seek a life abroad. He is given the post of ambassador in a far eastern country, where he subsequently falls in love with his new culture and exotic lifestyle. On the night he is knighted for this work as an emissary to her majesty, war breaks out and Orlando (©) agrees to go to battle his ‘brother’ the Shah. Orlando then loses his life and comes back to life as a woman. Awakening from death, she studies herself naked in a full-length mirror and addresses the audience directly stating, ‘same person, just a different sex.’ This declaration and imagery challenge the question of whose gaze is the film for. At this point, it could be argued it is ‘the audience as a whole’ or a non-gender specific gaze. 

Cover of the first edition of ‘Olando’         Poster for ‘Olando’, directed by

by Virginia Woolf (via Wikipedia)        Sally Potter, (via imdb)

For the rest of the film, Orlando lives as a woman and embraces every aspect of existence from the feminine point of view. Potter fills this segment of the film with as much symbolic imagery as the first half; including Lady Orlando washing her lover’s feet as a gesture of affection and devotion. To portray the sexual act between them, Potter follows the form of Orlando’s female figure so slowly in that it resembles the form of a far-off mountainous landscape, perhaps a metaphor for a woman being a vast, unknown territory to men? Indeed, when her lover leaves to conquer new territories in America, scenes of war follow. In the aftermath, Lady Orlando finally loses her status of wealth and her stately home but now has given birth to a little girl. A narrator explains, ‘She is changed. She is no longer trapped by destiny and ever since she let go of the past, she found her life was beginning’ while the little girl holds a video camera and runs freely through the field while Orlando leans against the tree in the same position and style that he did in the opening scene of the film. Through its’ statements and symbolic references, Orlando can be considered poignant declaration of the intention of the film maker to blur the divide between the masculine and feminine and challenge the conventional status quo on not only the cinematic ‘gaze’ but also audience expectations of what defines us sexually should not divide us. 

Anne Fletcher’s film The Proposal also demonstrates the reversal of roles and transition in cinema from being a male gaze to a female gaze. The film’s opening credits address the gaze as being subjectivity that of a woman in a position of power with the protagonist in a strenuous workout routine wearing traditionally male clothing. The protagonist, Margaret Tate (Sandra Bullock) is a successful, self-made editor in chief whose character can be compared to the traditional masculine. Tough, controlling, unapologetic her character arch is to find her feminine, which is found through an unexpected engagement to her male assistant, Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) to avoid deportation. Fletcher does not openly reveal the intention that the protagonist be viewed as a masculine figure, but uses a multitude of subliminal signifiers, including her wearing a tailored, black suit to the office, her outsmarting and consequently firing the male co-worker who could have posed as a threat to her, and generally causing a mix of fear and admiration in her subordinates at the office. Such behaviours would have certainly been identified as masculine in Mulvey’s era. 

Poster for ‘The Proposal’, Directed by Anne Fletcher (via idb)

Fletcher even goes so far as to signify the hermaphrodite in the opening scenes that establish the character of the protagonist as that of a masculine/feminine. When Margaret enters the office, the workers name her ‘It’ as they send messages about her to each other. Margaret’s position of power and authority in a patriarchal context is further established when she meets with the male board members who express how dependent they are on her and their desire for her to remain the editor in chief of their publishing company. However, in the same scene Margaret’s position of power is transformed when she realizes the only way to remain in the country is to marry her lowly assistant. Following this, the film follows a typical romantic comedy formula that contains various feminist significations including a male stripper who performs for Margaret. 

Andrew’s role of the subservient assistant reverses as each character arch develops; they eventually bond over a song and a series of accidents that force them to embrace the gender roles/personal issues that they had been avoiding. By the end of the film, Margaret has rediscovered her feminine side and Andrew has proved himself to be a real man. Does this empower women and constitute a female gaze or does the film revert to traditional masculine objectification by its ending? Even though the final part of the film involves Margaret realizing what true love is and reluctantly undertaking the traditional role of the feminine, the film can still be considered to reflect the changes that occurred in cinematic representation of women that Mulvey sort to attain in her statement on objectification. Overall, The Proposal is inherently patriarchal with the female protagonist being the dominant masculine figure. In the sense that the dramatic point of view is Margaret’s it does allow audiences to analyse the perspective of a powerful woman and her place in society in both a professional and personal context. 

Both The Proposal and Orlando demonstrate the epic changes that occurred in direct consequence to the feminist revolution and the work of theorists such as Mulvey, who challenged the portrayal of women’s roles in cinema and subsequently society in general, thereby paving the way for the new generation of female filmmakers. The fact that women remain subjects of sexual desire and beauty within the constructs of many cinematic portrayals is due to cinematic storytelling being based on the role of female throughout history, which was until the feminist revolution, primarily defined by her objectification as a reproductive commodity and symbol of beauty and desire. It is interesting to note that cinema developed onto its position of unparalleled social influence during the same century that the feminist revolution irreversibly changed the traditional roles of women in society. Mulvey understood the power of the cinematic medium and made a strong statement so to transform the way that not only men but also women themselves perceive the systematic significance of gender and roles in filmmaking and society. 

It is important to understand that how women are currently portrayed in cinema is no longer limited to the constructs of Mulvey’s statement. Almost fifty years after Mulvey’s essay was published, filmmakers and audiences are now attuned to the ideological cinematic constructs contained and presented by the male gaze, the female gaze, the general audience gaze, or the non-gender gaze. Thanks to directors such as Potter and Fletcher, actresses are given more opportunities to interpret traditionally masculine roles while audience demand for such representations continues to grow stronger. Indeed, many of the roles where women play characters that would have previously been identified as masculine have earned the actress’s academy awards or nominations. Although this does not mean that women can now be complacent, nor that male hegemony no longer exists. The number of strong female roles or films for and about women is still significantly less than our male counterparts. It is crucial that the flag raised by Mulvey continue to be held in account as a reminder of what women have achieved and that even though the battle for a strong female voice in cinema is won, the real victory for true equality is yet to be achieved. 

References 

Mulvey, Laura (Autumn 1975). “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema”. Screen. 16 (3): 6–18. 

Carl Gustav Jung (1968) Man and His Symbols. Dell Publishing. 

De Lauretis, Teresa (1984) Alice Doesn’t: Feminism Semiotic, Cinema. MacMillan Press Ltd. 

Kaplan, E. Ann (1983) Women & Film: Both Side of the Camera. Methuen & Co. 

Kuhn, Annette (1985) The Power of The Image: Essays on Representation and Sexuality. Routledge & Kegan Paul Plc. 

Monaco, James (1977) How to Read a Film, Oxford University Press. 

Penley, Constance (Editor) (1988) ‘Feminism and Film Theory’. Rouledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. 

Orlando (1992) Directed by Sally Potter [DVD]. U.K. Adventure Pictures. 

The Proposal (2009) Directed by Anne Fletcher [DVD]. U.S.A. Touchstone Pictures.