Feminist Film Theory

Smelik, A.M.
1999, Part of book or chapter of book (Cook, Pam; Bernink, Mieke (ed.), The Cinema Book, pp. 353-
365)

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FEMINIST FILM THEORY
353

The ‘guilt’ of the woman - Mamie

FEMINIST FILM CLASSIC FILM NARRATIVE

Claire Johnston was among the first feminist
to the silver screen. Classic cinema, adds
Mulvey, stimulates the desire to look by inte­

THEORY critics to offer a sustained critique of stereo­

types from a semiotic point o f view
grating structures of voyeurism and narcis­
sism into the story and the image. Voyeuristic
Feminism is a social m ovem ent which has had (1973/1991). She put forward a view o f how visual pleasure is produced by looking at
an enorm ous im pact on film theory and criti­ classic cinema constructs the ideological image another (character, figure, situation) as our
cism. Cinema is taken by feminists to be a cul­ of woman. Drawing on Roland Barthes’s object, whereas narcissistic visual pleasure
tural practice representing myths about notion of ‘m yth’, Johnston investigated the can be derived from self-identification with
women and femininity, as well as about men m yth o f ‘W oman’ in classic cinema. The sign the (figure in the) image.
and masculinity. Issues of representation and ‘wom an’ can be analysed as a structure, a code Mulvey has analysed scopophilia in
spectatorship are central to feminist film or convention. It represents the ideological classic cinema as a structure that functions
theory and criticism. Early feminist criticism meaning that ‘wom an’has for men. In relation on the axis of activity and passivity. This
was directed at stereotypes of women, mostly to herself she means no-thing (Johnston, 1991, binary opposition is gendered. The narrative
in Hollywood films (Haskell, 1973/1987; p. 25): wom en are negatively represented as structure of traditional cinema establishes
Rosen, 1973). Such fixed and endlessly ‘not-m an’. The ‘woman-as wom an’ is absent the male character as active and powerful: he
repeated images of wom en were considered to from the text of the film (Johnston, 1991, p. 26). is the agent around whom the dramatic
be objectionable distortions which would The im portant theoretical shift here is action unfolds and the look gets organised.
have a negative im pact on the female spectator. from an understanding of cinema as reflecting The female character is passive and power­
Hence, the call for positive images of wom en in reality, to a view of cinema as constructing a less: she is the object of desire for the male
cinema. Soon, however, the insight dawned particular, ideological, view o f reality Classic character(s). In this respect, cinema has per­
that positive images were not enough to cinema never shows its means o f production fected a visual machinery suitable for male
change underlying structures in film. Feminist and is hence characterised by veiling over its desire such as already structured and canon­
critics tried to understand the all-pervasive ideological construction. Thus, classic film ised in the tradition of western art and aes­
power of patriarchal imagery with the help of narrative can present the constructed images thetics.
structuralist theoretical frameworks such as of ‘wom an’ as natural, realistic and attractive. Mulvey has disentangled the ways in
semiotics and psychoanalysis. These theoreti­ This is the illusionism of classic cinema. w hich narrative and visual techniques in
cal discourses have proved very productive in In her groundbreaking article ‘Visual cinema make voyeurism into an exclusively
analysing the ways in which sexual difference is Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975/ male prerogative. W ithin the narrative o f the
encoded in classical narrative. For over a 1989) (see Psychoanalysis, p. 349; for earlier film, male characters direct their gaze
decade, psychoanalysis was to be the dom inant discussion o f Mulvey’s work, see also p. 336) towards female characters. The spectator in
paradigm in feminist film theory. More Laura Mulvey uses psychoanalysis to under­ the theatre is made to identify w ith the male
recently there has been a move away from a stand the fascination of Hollywood cinema. look, because the cam era films from the
binary understanding of sexual difference to This fascination can be explained through optical, as well as libidinal, point o f view of
multiple perspectives, identities and possible the notion of scopophilia (the desire to see) the male character. There are thus three
spectatorships. This opening up has resulted which is a fundamental drive according to levels o f the cinematic gaze (camera, charac­
in an increasing concern with questions o f eth­ Freud. Sexual in origin, like all drives, der ter and spectator) that objectify the female
nicity, masculinity and hybrid sexualities. Schamrieb is what keeps the spectator glued character and make her into a spectacle. In
 354 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

classic cinem a, voyeurism connotes wom en difference: the voyeuristic-scopophilic gaze and changes her from a dangerous figure into
as ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ (Mulvey, 1989, and narcissistic identification. Both these a reassuring object o f flawless beauty.
p. 19). formative structures depend for their m ean­ Fetishism in cinema confirms the reification
Mulvey tackles narcissistic visual pleasure ing upon the controlling power o f the male of the female figure and thus fails to represent
with Lacan’s concepts of ego form ation and the character as well as on the objectified rep­ ‘W oman’ outside the phallic norm .
m irror stage. The way in which the child resentation of the female character. Moreover, The notion o f ‘the male gaze’ has become
derives pleasure from the identification with a according to Mulvey, in psychoanalytic terms, a shorthand term for the analysis of complex
perfect m irror image and forms its ego ideal on the image of ‘wom an is fundamentally mechanisms in cinema that involve struc­
the basis o f this idealised image, is analogous to ambiguous in that it combines attraction and tures like voyeurism, narcissism and
the way in which the film spectator derives nar­ seduction with an evocation of castration fetishism. These concepts help to understand
cissistic pleasure from identifying w ith the per­ anxiety. Because her appearance also reminds how Hollywood cinema is tailor-m ade for
fected image o f a hum an figure on the screen the male subject o f the lack of a penis, the male desire. Because the structures of
(see above discussion, Lacan, p. 346). In both female character is a source of m uch deeper Hollywood cinema are analysed as funda­
cases, however, during the m irror stage and in fears. Classic cinema solves the threat of cas­ m entally patriarchal, early feminists declared
cinema, identifications are not a lucid form of tration in one of two ways: in the narrative that a wom an’s film should shun traditional
self-knowledge or awareness. They are rather structure or through fetishism. To allay the narrative and cinematic techniques and
based on what Lacan calls ‘méconnaissance (a threat of castration on the level of narrative, engage in experimental practice: thus,
lm is-recognition’), that is to say they are the female character has to be found guilty. wom en’s cinema should be a counter­
blinded by the very narcissistic forces that The films of Alfred Hitchcock are a. good cinema.
structure them in the first place. Ego form ation example of this kind of narrative plot (see
is structurally characterised by imaginary Modleski, 1988). The wom an’s ‘guilt’ will be A FEMINIST COUNTER­
functions. And so is cinema. At about the same sealed by either punishm ent or salvation and CINEMA
time as Christian Metz worked on this analogy the film story is then resolved through the two W hat should a feminist counter-cinema look
in his essays on psychoanalysis and cinema, traditional endings which are made available like? For Mulvey, feminist cinema was to be an
Mulvey argued that cinematic identifications to women: she m ust either die (as in e.g. avant-garde film practice which w ould‘free the
were structured along the lines of sexual differ­ Psycho, 1960) or m arry (as in e.g. Mamie, look of the camera into its materiality in time
ence. Representation of ‘the m ore perfect, 1964). In this respect, Mulvey provocatively and space and the look o f the audience into
m ore complete, m ore powerful ideal ego’ says that a story demands sadism. dialectics and passionate detachm ent’
(Mulvey, 1989, p. 20) of the male hero stands in In the case of fetishism, classic cinema (Mulvey, 1989, p. 26). That such a counter­
stark opposition to the distorted image of the reinstates and displaces the lacking penis in cinema would destroy the visual pleasure of the
passive and powerless female character. Hence the form of a fetish, that is, a hyper­ spectator was no problem for women; accord­
the spectator is actively made to identify with polished object. Mulvey refers here to ing to Mulvey they would view the decline of
the male rather than with the female character losef Sternberg’s fetishisation of Marlene classic film narrative with nothing m ore than
in film. Dietrich. Marilyn Monroe is another example ‘sentimental regret’ (Mulvey, 1989, p. 26).
There are then two aspects to visual of a fetishised female star. Fetishising the Feminist counter-cinema took its inspi­
pleasure which are negotiated through sexual wom an deflects attention from female ‘lack’ ration from the avant-garde in cinema and

Feminism and the avant-garde. Mulvey and Wollen’s Riddles of the Sphinx
 FEMINIST FILM THEORY 355

theatre, such as the m ontage techniques of m irror shots illustrates the m ental processes demic attention which continued long into
Sergei Eisenstein, the notion of Verfremdung that Lacan’s m irror phase involves psychoana- the 1980s and even 1990s (see for a reap­
(distantiation) of Bertolt Brecht and the lytically. For example, when M imi I recognises praisal o f narrative feminist cinema: H um m ,
m odernist aesthetic of Jean-Luc Godard. As herself as object her shadow is throw n up on 1997; Smelik, 1998). Teresa de Lauretis (1984,
such it was very m uch part of the 1970s pol­ the screen. Mimi I is then shown with her back 1987) was am ong the first to claim that femi­
itical film-making. The privileged examples to the mirror, facing the camera. This image is nist cinem a should not destroy narrative and
of feminist counter-cinema are Chantai repeated in a series of m irrors behind her visual pleasure, but rather should be ‘na rra ­
Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du (instead o f‘correctly’ reflecting the back of her tive and Oedipal w ith a vengeance’ (de
Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Belgium 1975), head). For Kaplan, this complex shot signals Lauretis, 1987, p. 108). According to her, fem ­
Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s Riddles o f the Mimi I’s recognition of her split subjectivity. inist cinem a in the 1980s should define ‘all
Sphinx (UK 1977) and Sally Potter’s Thriller The investigation leads the wom en to under­ points of identification (with character,
(UK 1979). It is interesting to note that the stand they are not split in themselves, nor image, camera) as female, feminine, or femi­
radical films of Marguerite Duras have drawn should they be split narratively. The film ends nist’ (de Lauretis, 1987, p. 133).
m uch less attention from anglophone femi­ symbolically with both M imi’s embracing.
nist film critics. Im portant American experi­ Feminist counter-cinem a did not only
pertain to fictional film, but also to docu­
THE FEMALE SPECTATOR
mental films are Yvonne Rainer’s Lives of
The account o f ‘the male gaze’ as a structur­
Performers and Film About a Woman Who ... mentary. The problems of finding an appro­
ing logic in western visual culture became
(USA 1972 and 1974) and Sigmund Freud’s priate form and style were perhaps even
controversial in the early 1980s, as it made
Dora (made by Tyndall, McCall, m ore acute for docum entary film, because
no room for the female spectator nor for a
Pajaczkowska and Weinstock, USA 1979). traditional docum entary uses illusionism
female gaze. Yet, wom en did and do go to the
(See Feminist counter-cinema, p. 188.) and realism to capture ‘tru th ’ or ‘reality’. For
movies. Mulvey was m uch criticised for
How does feminist counter-cinema avoid m any feminist film-makers in the 1970s, this
om itting the question o f female spectator-
the conventions of classic cinema and how idealism was unacceptable. It could not
ship. In a later essay (1981/1989), she
does it accommodate a female point o f view? include self-reflexivity, one of the starting
addressed the vicissitudes of female specta-
In the short experimental film Thriller, for points o f feminist film practice. Feminist
torship in her analysis o f the western Duel in
example, this is achieved by deconstructing a docum entary should m anufacture and con­
the Sun (King Vidor, 1946). Mulvey suggests
classic m elodram a, Puccini’s opera La struct the ‘tru th ’ of wom en’s oppression, not
that the female spectator may not only ident­
Bohème (1895). The film splits the female merely reflect it (Johnston, 1973). However,
ify with the slot of passive femininity which
character into two: M imi I, who is placed other voices were also heard. Because m any
has been program m ed for her, but is also
outside of the narrative in which she is the stylistically traditional docum entaries have
likely to enjoy adopting the masculine point
heroine, Mimi II. The first Mimi investigates been im portant historical docum ents for the
of view. Mulvey elabourates on the notion of
how she is constructed as an object in the wom en’s movement, this kind o f feminist
transsexual identification and spectatorship
m elodram atic narrative. According to Ann formalism was questioned. Alex juhasz
by pointing to the pre-Oedipal and phallic
Kaplan (1983), the investigation is both criticised this kind of orthodoxy, which pro­
fantasy of om nipotence which for girls is
psychoanalytic and M arxist-materialist. On scribed anti-illusionist techniques under­
equally active as for boys, and hence, from a
the psychoanalytic level, Mimi I learns how m ining identification. She points to the
Freudian perspective, essentially ‘masculine’.
the female subject is excluded from male lan­ paradox that the unified subject which was
In order to acquire ‘proper’ femininity,
guage and classic narrative. The only position represented in early feminist documentaries,
wom en will have to shed that active aspect of
she can occupy is that of asking questions: presented the feminist viewer in fact with a
their early sexuality. Mulvey speculates that
‘Did I die? Was I murdered? W hat does it ‘radical, new and politicized reinterpretation
female spectators may negotiate the mas-
mean?’ On the M arxist-materialist level, of that female subjectivity, one which m obi­
culinisation of the spectatorial position in
Mimi I learns to investigate Mimi II’s role as lized vast num bers of women into action for
Hollywood cinema, because it signifies for
a seamstress and as a mother. As in Potter’s the first tim e’ (Juhasz, 1994, p. 174).
them a pleasurable rediscovery of a lost
second film, The Golddiggers (UK 1980) it is We witness a theoretical contradiction of
aspect of their sexual identity. Even so, the
a woman of colour w ith a deep French- feminism here: while feminists need to
female spectator remains ‘restless in [her]
accented English voice (Colette Lafont), who deconstruct the patriarchal images and repre­
transvestite clothes’ (Mulvey, 1989, p. 37).
does the critical questioning of the patriar­ sentations o f ‘W oman’, they historically need
It was not until the end o f the 1980s that
chal image of white w om anhood. Thus, in to establish their female subjectivity at the
female spectatorship was theorised outside
both films it is the ‘foreign’ female voice that same time. That is to say, they have to find out
the dichotom ous categories o f psychoanalytic
speaks the discourse of theory and criticism. and redefine what it means to be a wom an. A
theory. An account of female spectatorship in
Thriller communicates these theoretical relentless formalism may be too m uch of a
all its cultural contexts and multiple differ­
discourses both visually and acoustically. The one-sided approach to the complex enter­
ences was then undertaken in a special issue
soundtrack includes the dom inant female prise of (re)constructing the female subject.
of Camera Obscura, entitled ‘The Spectatrix’
voice, as well as a repeated laugh, a repeated Counter-cinem a represents only a small
(1989, nos 20-1). The editors Janet
shriek and the sound o f a heartbeat. These are fraction o f the m any films produced by
Bergstrom and Mary Ann Doane chose to
typical components of the classical thriller and wom en since the m id- 1970s. Yet, these exper­
give a comprehensive survey of international
horror genres, while the film narrative does not imental films have been overpraised for their
research on and theories of the female spec­
give rise to any such suspense. Instead, it refo­ subversive powers while realist w om en’s films
tator in film and television studies.
cuses the attention of the spectator on the enig­ were overcriticised for their illusionism (see
mas surrounding the female subject in classical Kuhn, 1982 and Kaplan, 1983). The suspicion
discourse. Thriller deliberately violates con­ of collusion cast on realist or narrative film THE FEMALE MASQUERADE
ventional realist codes. The m elodram atic has resulted in either a concentration o f criti­ It has becom e a general assum ption o f fem ­
story is partly told in shots which are pictures of cal efforts on classic Hollywood cinema or in inist film theory that female spectators are
photographs o f a stage performance, and a largely unjustified acclaim o f experimental m ore fluid in their capacity to identify with
partly in reconstructed scenes in which the wom en’s cinem a am ong the elected few who the other gender. For example, in her study
actors move in highly stylised movements. get to see it. This has resulted in a paradoxical of the fan phenom enon, M iriam Hansen
Another visual device is the use of mirrors. For neglect of contem porary popular films made (1991) has used the idea o f spectatorial flexi­
Kaplan, the play with repeated and jarring by wom en for a wider audience; a lack of aca­ bility to explain why wom en in the 1920s
 356 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

Space for the female gaze? Duel in the Sun

were drawn to the feminine positioning of in the deconstructionist sense of exposing ition of authority put on a m ask of fem inin­
Rudolph Valentino. and criticising. ity that functions as com pensation for their
This spectatorial transvestism of the M ary Ann D oane (1982/1991) explored m asculine position.
w om an viewer points to a female m asquer­ the notion of masquerade further to un d er­ How does this concept of the m asquer­
ade. The concept o f m asquerade was first stand w om an’s relation to the image on the ade relate to issues of identification and
introduced into feminist film theory by screen. Drawing on the psychoanalytic work spectatorship? As we have seen, the male
Johnston (1975). The notion o f m asquerade o f Joan Rivière, D oane understands the m as­ gaze involves voyeurism. Voyeurism presup­
was inspired by the role of the female char­ querade, not as cross-dressing, but on the poses distance. D oane argues that the female
acter who cross-dressed as a m ale pirate. For contrary as a m ask of femininity. Rivière had spectator lacks this necessary distance
Johnston, the female m asquerade signified noticed in her clinical observations that because she is the image. Fem ininity is con­
not only a m asking b u t also an ‘unm asking’ wom en who find themselves in a male pos­ structed as closeness, as ‘an overwhelming
FEMINIST FILM THEORY 357

presence-to-itself of the female body’

(Doane, 1991, p. 22). The female spectator
can adopt ‘the masochism of over-
identification’ or ‘the narcissism entailed in
becom ing one’s own object o f desire’
(Doane, 1991, pp. 31-2). Doane argues that
the female spectator is consum ed by the
image rather than consum ing it. This pos­
ition can be avoided n o t only through a
transsexual identification, but also through
the m asquerade. The m asquerade is effective
in that it m anufactures a distance from the
image. By wearing fem ininity as a mask, the
female spectator can create the necessary
difference between herself and the rep­
resented fem ininity on the screen.
In a study o f the w om an’s film o f the
1940s, Doane (1987) returns to the rather
negative ways in which Hollywood con­
structs female identification and subjectiv­
ity. For Doane, the female spectator o f those
m elodram as is involved in em otional p ro ­
cesses like masochism , paranoia, narcissism
and hysteria. The w om an’s film, in spite of Nightmare on Elm Street - feminising the audience?
its focus on a female m ain character, p erpet­
uates these processes and thus confirms autonom ous femininity. Koch argues that image. The condition of this active masochis­
stereotypes about the female psyche. The the image of the vamp revives for the female tic desire is that it be suspended, which is
em otional investm ents of the viewer lead to spectator the pleasurable experience o f the achieved by means of perform ance and m as­
overidentification, destroying the distance to m other as the love object in early childhood. querade on the part of the female character.
the object o f desire and turning the active Moreover, the sexual ambivalence o f the These ritualisations of fantasy keep desire
desire of b oth the female character and the vamp, o f for example Greta Garbo and under control. For Studlar, the masquerade
female spectator into the passive desire to be M arlene Dietrich, allows for a female ho m o ­ serves as a defensive strategy for women, by
the desired object. Mere ‘desire to desire’ erotic pleasure which is not exclusively which they deflect and confuse the male gaze.
seems to be, then, the only option for negotiated through the eyes o f men. In She thus creates a place for the pleasure and
women. Koch’s view the vamp is a phallic w om an desire of the female subject-spectator, albeit
rather than a fetishised wom an, as she offers the pleasurable pain of desire.
THE FEMALE LOOK contradictory images of fem ininity which go Bisexual identification has also sub­
Do these rather dire interpretations of beyond the reifying gaze. The vam p’s am bi­ m erged in studies of very different film
female spectatorship imply that the female guity can be a source o f visual pleasure for genres. In her study of the m odern horror
look is impossible and th at the look or gaze the female spectator. The disappearance of film, Carol Clover (1992) argues that both
is necessarily male? In the early 1980s this the vam p in cinema, therefore, m eans a great female and male spectators identify bisexu-
seemed the case in feminist theory. In her loss o f possible identifications and visual ally. She rests her case on the narrative role
analysis of Hollywood w om an’s films of the pleasure for the female audience. of the ‘Final Girl’: the one girl in the film
1970s and 1980s, Ann Kaplan (1983) argues A similar focus on the pre-Oedipal phase who fights, resists and survives the
that female characters can possess the look and on the m other as love object and poten­ killer-m onster. The final girl acquires the
and even make the male character the object tial source of visual pleasure has been devel­ gaze, and dom inates the action, and is thus
of her gaze, but, being a wom an, her desire oped by Gaylyn Studlar (1988), though from masculinised. The slasher film, like
has no power. The neo-fem inist Hollywood a very different angle. Analysing films made Halloween (1978), Friday the Thirteenth
movies involve a m ere reversal o f roles in by Josef von Sternberg starring Marlene (1980) and Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
which the underlying structures o f dom i­ Dietrich, she investigates the Deleuzian (and their sequels), openly plays on a differ­
nance and subm ission are still intact. The notion o f masochism. Deleuze views ence between appearance (sex) and behav­
gaze is not essentially male, ‘b u t to own and masochism as the desire o f the male to merge iour (gender). Clover argues th at it is this
activate the gaze, given our language and the w ith the m other and subvert the father’s ‘theatricalization of gender’ which feminises
structure o f the unconscious, is to be in the phallic law. Its violence is contractual and the audience. W hereas in classic horror (e.g.
“masculine” position’ (Kaplan, 1983, p. 30). consensual, in a way that sadism is not. films by Hitchcock and De Palma) the fémi­
The difficulties o f theorising the female Sadism negates difference of the m other and nisation o f the audience is interm ittent and
spectator m ade Jackie Stacey (1987) exclaim exults in the power o f the father. Studlar ceases w hen the final girl becomes the desig­
that feminist film critics have w ritten the argues that visual pleasure in cinema resem ­ nated victim (M arion in Psycho), in the
darkest scenario possible for the female look bles m ore the psychic processes of m odern horror film the final girl becomes
as being male, m asochist or m arginal. There m asochism than of sadism. Cinem a evokes her own saviour (see The h o rro r film,
have been some different voices, however. the desire of the spectator to return to the p. 194). H er self-rescue turns her into the
G ertrud Koch (1980) is one of the few fem i­ pre-O edipal phase of unity w ith the mother, hero and it is at that m om ent th at the male
nists who early on recognised th at wom en and of bisexuality. The female spectator can viewer gives up the last pretence of male
could also enjoy the image of female beauty thus identify w ith and draw pleasure from the identification. For Clover, the willingness of
on the screen. Especially the vamp, an image powerful fem m e fatale in cinema. This is a the male spectator to throw in his em otional
exported from Europe and integrated into sort o f re-enactm ent of the symbiosis lot w ith a wom an in fear and pain, points to
Hollywood cinema, provides the female through which the spectator wishes to subject m asochism. Although Clover is aware o f the
spectator w ith a positive image of herself or him self to the powerful m other misogyny of the genre of the slasher film, she
358 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

claims a subversive edge in that it adjusts identifications that the subject takes up in a Silverman discusses the cultural fantasy
gender representations and identifications. changing relation to desire. De Lauretis dis­ of the m aternal voice that surrounds the
tinguishes two different processes of identi­ infant like an acoustic blanket. This fantasy
FEMALE SUBJECTIVITY fication in cinema. The first set is an for the m aternal enclosure negatively signi­
The question of female spectatorship and oscillating either/or identification. It con­ fies the fear o f being swallowed up by the
the female look circle around the issue of sists o f a masculine, active identification m other, whereas it positively signifies a
subjectivity. Female subjectivity has been w ith the gaze (Scottie) and a passive, femi­ regression to the state o f harm ony and
explored n o t only in relation to spectator­ nine identification w ith the image abundance when m other and child are still
ship, but also with respect to the narrative (Judy/Madeleine). The second set is a sim ul­ one. Silverman argues that both these fan­
structure o f film. One o f the key figures in taneous b oth/and identification. It consists tasies equate the m aternal voice to pure
this field is Teresa de Lauretis, who exam ­ of the double identification w ith the figure sound and deny the m other any cultural role
ined the structural representations of o f narrative m ovem ent (the protagonist, the as a discursive agent. In her rereading of psy­
‘w om an’ in cinem a (1984, 1987). new Mrs de W inter in Rebecca) and w ith the choanalysis Silverman attem pts to make
De Lauretis (1984) emphasises that sub­ figure of narrative image (here the image of room for the m other and for female desire
jectivity is not a fixed entity but a constant Rebecca). This set o f figural identifications within discourse and the symbolic order.
process o f self-production. N arration is one enables the female spectator to take up both Reinterpreting Freud’s account o f the
of the ways o f reproducing subjectivity; each the active and passive positions of desire: psychological developm ent o f the little girl,
story derives its structure from the subject’s ‘Desire for the other, and desire to be desired Silverman puts great emphasis on the signi­
desire and from its inscription in social and by the other’ (de Lauretis, 1984, p. 143). This fying role o f the m other in early childhood.
cultural codes. Narrative structures are double identification m ay yield a surplus of The entry into language m eans the end of
defined by Oedipal desire, which should be pleasure, but it is also the very operation by the unity between m other and child as well
understood as both a socio-political econ­ which a narrative solicits the spectators’ con­ as o f an unm ediated access to reality. The
om y dom inated by m en’s control of women sent and seduces wom en into femininity. loss and separation entailed by the acquisi­
and as a way of emphasising the sexual The notion of the female subject, then, tion o f language lead the child to desire the
origin o f subjectivity Sexual desire is bound seems to be a contradiction in term s, so m other. The girl redirects her desire to the
up w ith the desire for knowledge, that is, the m uch so that de Lauretis som etim es refers to m other in w hat is called the negative
quest for truth. The desire to solve riddles is the female subject as a ‘non-subject’ (de O edipus complex. This can only happen
a male desire par excellence, because the Lauretis, 1987, p. 36). ‘W om an’ is fundam en­ after the pre-O edipal stage, because distance
female subject is herself the mystery. tally unrepresentable as subject o f desire; she from the m other is necessary for her to be
'W om an’ is the question and can hence not can only be represented as representation constructed as an erotic object for the
ask the question n or make her desire intelli­ (de Lauretis, 1987, p. 20). Feminist theory is daughter. Silverman thus recuperates female
gible. In Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), for built on the very paradox o f the unrepre- desire for the m other as fully Oedipal, that is
example, Scotties desire for the enigmatic sentability o f w om an as subject of desire, to say within the symbolic order, w ithin lan­
Judy/Madeleine structures the narrative of and historical wom en who know themselves guage and signification.
the film. to be subjects. For de Lauretis, the self- It is after the event o f the castration
Narrative is not oedipal in content but in conscious experience o f being both ‘w om an’ crisis, the dram atic onset o f sexual differ­
structure, by distributing roles and differ­ and ‘wom en’ is the productive contradiction ence, that the girl leaves the negative
ences, and thus power and positions. One of of feminism. W omen’s films like Les Rendez­ Oedipus complex and enters the positive
the functions o f narrative, de Lauretis vous d ’Anna or Jeanne Dielman by Chantal Oedipal phase, learning to redirect her desire
argues, is to ‘seduce’ w om en into femininity Akerman, Thriller by Sally Potter, or to the father. For the rest of her life
w ith or w ithout their consent. The female Sigmund Freud’s Dora by Tyndall, McCall, the female subject remains split between the
subject is m ade to desire femininity. This is a Pajaczkowska and W einstock, are her privi­ desire for the m other and for the father.
cruel and often coercive form o f seduction. leged examples o f films which explore and The two desires are the site o f a constitutive
Here de Lauretis turns Mulvey’s famous explode that very contradiction. contradiction and are consequently irrecon­
phrase around: not only does a story cilable. For Silverman, the daughter’s erotic
dem and sadism; sadism dem ands a story. FEMALE DESIRE investm ent in the m other can be a subver­
She refers to the ways in which the female A feminist critic who has also approached sive force for a ‘libidinal politics’ because it is
characters in Vertigo, but also in a ‘wom an’s the question of female desire w ithin psycho­ a form of desire which is opposed to the n o r­
film’ like Rebecca (also by Hitchcock, 1940), analytic discourse is Kaja Silverman (1988). mative desire for the father. Silverman
are m ade to conform to the ideal image that Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, emphasises the negativity o f the female
the m an has of them . The function of p o r­ Silverman argues that each subject is struc­ negative Oedipus complex as a political
traits o f female ancestors in both films is tured by lack or symbolic castration. In potential. She argues that it is param ount for
highly significant in this respect: they repre­ western culture it is, however, the female feminism to draw on the libidinal resources
sent the dead m other, the ideal that the male subject who is m ade to bear the burden of of the ‘hom osexual-m aternal fantasm atic’
hero desires to have and forces upon the that lack in order to provide the male subject (Silverman, 1988, p. 125).
female heroine. For de Lauretis, the desire of w ith the illusion o f wholeness and unity. Silverman also revises the traditional
the female character is impossible and the Silverman suggests that in cinema this dis­ view on the divergence of identification and
narrative tension is resolved by the destruc­ placem ent is enacted not only through the desire. In her view these two psychic para­
tion (Judy/M adeleine) or territorialisation gaze and the image b u t also through the digms are not always m utually exclusive and
o f wom en (the new M rs de W inter). Desire auditory register. C ontrary to the m ore fre­ can actually coalesce. In the negative
in narrative is intim ately bo u n d up with quent disem bodim ent o f the male voice in Oedipus complex the girl both identifies
violence against w om en and the techniques cinema, the female voice is restricted to the w ith and desires the m other, while the father
of cinem atic narration both reflect and sus­ realm of the body. This am ounts to keeping figures neither as an object o f desire n or o f
tain social forms of oppression of women. it outside discourse. The female voice can identification: for the girl he is merely ‘a
De Lauretis is hardly m ore optim istic hardly reach a signifying position in lan­ troublesom e rival’ (Freud quoted in
than Mulvey about the female spectator. Not guage, m eaning or power and is hence all Silverman, 1988, p. 153). In this stage of
that she assumes identification to be single too easily reduced to screams, babble or developm ent the girl forms her identity
or simple; fem ininity and m asculinity are silence in dom inant cinema. through the incorporation o f the m other’s
 FEMINIST FILM THEORY 359

imago; she both wishes to possess and to be

the mother. There is then a conjunction of
identification and eroticism, which
Silverman believes to have a vital relation to
female narcissism. For her, feminism’s libid­
inal struggle against the phallus lies in the
intersection o f desire for and identification
w ith the mother.
In Silverman’s reading, a fantasy for the
m aternal enclosure is the organising p rin ­
ciple of Riddles o f the Sphinx (Laura Mulvey
and Peter Wollen, 1977). In this experim en­
tal film, the figure o f the Sphinx occupies
the position of an ‘im aginary n arrato r’, a
distinctly fictionalised voice-over. This dis­
em bodied voice speaks a wide variety of
discourses about m otherhood, from psy­
choanalysis to feminist politics, thus firmly
establishing the m aternal voice w ithin the
symbolic order. The film is centred upon
the female desire to recover the Oedipal or
symbolic m other, represented by the
Sphinx. Riddles springs off from the Desiring the other: Desperately Seeking Susan
m o th e r-
daughter relationship, o f Louise and her Cut wrote in its special issue on Lesbians and matic spectatorship is needed so as to avoid a
child Anna. The m aternal fantasy can be Film (1981, no. 24/25): ‘It som etim es seems facile binarism that maps homosexuality onto
found not only in the pre-O edipal dyad, but to us that lesbianism is the hole in the heart an opposition o f masculinity and femininity.
also in the hom osexual-m aternal ménage à of feminist film criticism’ (p. 17). De Lauretis (1988) has draw n attention
trois o f m other, grandm other and child. Apparently, alm ost ten years later m atters to the difficulties of imagining lesbian desire
The film opens this m aternal enclosure up had im proved very little, as Judith Mayne w ithin a psychoanalytic discourse that p red­
to a feminist com m unity o f wom en, includ­ (1990, 1994) complains that the denial o f the icates sexual difference on sexual indiffer­
ing Louise’s friend Maxine, and the voice lesbian identity of Hollywood director ence. She here follows Luce Irigaray’s notion
and work o f artist M ary Kelly. This female D orothy Arzner points to a curious gap in of the symbolic law representing only one
collectivity, like female subjectivity is based feminist film theory, indeed to the ‘structur­ and not two sexes: patriarchy is deeply
upon the passionate desire for the m other. ing absence’ o f lesbianism (Mayne, 1994, ‘hommo-sexuaT as it erects the masculine as
p. 107). As Patricia W hite (1991) observes, the one and only norm . Discussing the same
SEXUAL DIFFERENCES AND the ‘ghostly presence of lesbianism’ does not problem atic in a later essay, de Lauretis
ITS DISCONTENTS only haunt Hollywood Gothics but also fem ­ (1991) observes that the institution o f h et­
Although feminists have not always agreed inist film theory. erosexuality defines all sexuality to such an
about the usefulness o f pyschoanalysis, there In spite o f the increasing focus on female extent that is difficult to represent homosex-
has been general agreem ent about the spectatorship in feminist scholarship (see ual-lesbian desire. She criticises both Stacey
lim itations o f an exclusive focus on sexual Feminist interventions, p. 368), the hom o­ and Silverman for conceiving of desire
difference. One such lim itation is the repro­ sexual pleasures o f the female spectator were between wom en as wom an-identified female
duction of a dichotomy, m ale-fem ale, that indeed largely ignored. Yet, it is interesting to bonding and failing to see it as sexual. Here,
needs to be deconstructed. The fear was that know what happens for the female spectator and m ore extensively in her later book The
this binary opposition would som ehow tie when a classic narrative features two female Practice o f Love (1994), de Lauretis returns to
questions of pleasure and identification to characters. This question arose as early as Freudian theory to account for the speci­
anatom ical difference. Especially w ithin Julia Lesage’s (1980) pioneering analysis of ficity of lesbian desire in term s o f fetishism.
American feminism, the term sexual differ­ the im provisational interplay of the two In answer to de Lauretis’s criticism, Stacey
ence was therefore replaced by a renewed female characters in Jacques Rivette’s Céline (1994) argues in her study of female specta­
interest in the sex-gender distinction that and Julie Go Boating (1974). She shows that torship that she is not concerned with a
Gayle Rubin had introduced in 1975. The the abandonm ent of the classic story based specifically lesbian audience but with a poss­
term gender generally seemed to indicate a on m ale-fem ale distinctions produces new ible hom o-eroticism for all women in the
clearer distinction between anatom y (sex) and previously unimaginable narrative per­ audience. Her point is not to de-eroticise
and social construction (gender), and m utations. desire, but to look for ways in which a film
equally between sexual practice and gender Stacey (1987) argues that in Hollywood may eroticise identification. The female spec­
identity. A nother lim itation of the exclusive films with two female protagonists, like All tator is quite likely to encompass erotic com ­
focus on sexual difference w ithin psycho­ About Eve (1950) or Desperately Seeking Susan ponents in her desiring look, while at the
analytic film theory is its failure to focus on (1984), an active desire is produced by the dif­ same time identifying with the woman-as-
other differences such as class, race, age and ference between the two women. These spectacle. The hom o-erotic appeal of female
sexual preference. stories are about women wanting to become Hollywood stars has indeed been widely
Lesbian feminists were am ong the first to the idealised other. An interplay o f difference recognised. Weiss (1992), for example, dis­
raise objections to the heterosexual bias of and otherness prevents the collapse of that cusses the attraction of Hollywood stars for
psychoanalytic feminist film theory. Indeed, desire into identification, prom pting Stacey lesbian spectators in the thirties. Especially
feminist film theory - not unlike the to argue that the rigid psychoanalytic distinc­ the androgynous appearances of Marlene
Hollywood cinem a it criticised so fiercely - tion between desire and identification fails to Dietrich in Morocco (1930), Greta Garbo in
seemed unable to conceive o f representation address different constructions o f desire. She Queen Christina (1933) and Katherine
outside heterosexuality. The journal Jump suggests that a m ore flexible m odel of cine­ H epburn in Sylvia Scarlett (1935) were
 360 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

embraced as an image o f a gender-in-between have been criticised for their reactionary rep­ hum orously deconstruct traditional fem inin­
and o f sexual ambiguity. The star image of resentation of strong wom en and for their ity and perversely celebrate nom adic lesbian
sexual androgyny served as point o f identifi­ exploitation o f voyeuristic themes, some spec­ subjectivities (Longfellow, 1993).
cation outside conventional gender positions. tators have appropriated them as ‘lesbian films’, These films are very different from the les­
While these discussions o f lesbian specta- enjoying images of empowered women who bian romance, Desert Hearts (1985), which
torship are part of a wider movem ent in film escape the Law (Tasker, 1993; Graham, 1995). remains to date the only lesbian independent
studies to include the heterogeneity o f the Alongside rereadings of Hollywood films, feature which made use of Hollywood conven­
spectatorial situation, m ost discussions of gay and lesbian criticism turned to films tions and was a box-office success. As Jackie
spectatorship have been about white audi­ m ade by lesbians and gay men. Early films of Stacey (1995) points out, the film, quite sur­
ences. De Lauretis was criticised for not taking European art cinema were rediscovered, such prisingly, was not followed by other successful
into account racial dynamics in the lesbian film as Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform, lesbian romances n or did it receive m uch aca­
She M ust Be Seeing Things (1987) (see the dis­ 1931). Rich (1984) argues that the anti- demic attention. She suggests that this may
cussion following de Lauretis s 1991 article). Fascist politics of Mädchen in Uniform is have to do with the popluar lesbian romance
The issue o f black lesbian spectatorship has so interconnected with its lesbian them e and its film being ‘a virtual contradiction in term s’
far hardly been raised. The collection Queer struggle against authoritarian structures and (Stacey, 1995, p. 112). The film has, however,
Looks (Gever etal., 1993) addresses the combi­ sexual repression. Rich places the film in the remained popular with lesbian audiences.
nation o f racial difference and homosexuality, historical context o f W eimar with its vibrant
but it focuses more on gay and lesbian film- lesbian subculture, especially in Berlin. FEMINIST THEORY AND RACE
making than on spectatorship as such. Mädchen in Uniform does not stand Persistent critique of psychoanalytic film
alone but is part of a tradition of gay and theory has also come from black feminists,
GAY AND LESBIAN CRITICISM lesbian film -m aking w ithin early cinema (see who criticised its exclusive focus on sexual dif­
The shift away from the restrictive dichotomies Dyer, 1990; Weiss, 1992). O ther films were ferences and its failure to deal w ith racial dif­
of psychoanalytic feminist film theory, has made by gay or lesbian film-makers, like the ference. Jane Gaines (1988) is one of the first
resulted in a m ore historical and cultural criti­ surrealist shorts of Germ aine Dulac. Her feminist critics to point to the erasure of race
cism o f cinema by gay and lesbian critics. This films have been read as critiques o f hetero­ in film theories that are based on the psycho­
involved rereadings o f Hollywood cinema, for sexuality (Flitterman-Lewis, 1990). Fantasy analytic concept of sexual differences. She
example of the implicit lesbianism of the plays an im portant role in these experim en­ pleads for an inclusion of black feminist
female buddy film. In order to avoid that tal films. In La Souriante Madame Beudet theory and of a historical approach into femi­
‘danger’Hollywood films often include explicit (The Smiling M m e Beudet, 1923) a wom an nist film theory in order to understand how in
scenes o f denying any lesbian intent. In Julia fantasises m urdering her bully of a husband cinema gender intersects with race and class.
(1977) Jane Fonda slaps a m an in the face who and escaping from her bourgeois marriage, W hite film critics have universalised their
suggests that her friendship with Julia (Vanessa and La Coquille et le Clergyman (The Seashell theories of representations of women, while
Redgrave) was sexual. O ther films put a ‘real’ and the Clergyman, 1927) exposes Oedipal black wom en have been excluded from those
lesbian in the story as a way of showing that the male fantasies about the mystery o f ‘wom an’. very forms o f representation. The significa­
female friendship of the two heroines is not Jean Genet’s prison film Un Chant d:Am our tion of the black female as non-hum an
‘that way’ (Girlfriends, 1978). In some films the (A Song o f Love, France 1950) is a classic which makes black female sexuality the great
female buddies, however, become lovers, as in has become enormously popular with gay unknown in white patriarchy, that which is
Lianna (1982) and Personal Best (1982). audiences to the present day and which also has ‘unfathom ed and uncodified’ and yet
Several critics have pointed out that the lesbian influenced gay film-makers. Dyer (1990) dis­ ‘worked over again and again in m ainstream
subject m atter of these films is acceptable to all cusses the film’s eroticism in terms o f the ten­ culture because o f its apparent elusiveness’
kinds of audiences, because its eroticism feeds sion between politics and pleasure. While some (Gaines, 1988, p. 26). The eruptive point of
into traditional male voyeurism (Williams, gay critics have reprim anded the film for its resistance presents black wom en’s sexuality
1986; Merck, 1993). Ellsworth (1990) investi­ ‘oppression’o f gay m en or were disturbed by its as an even greater threat to the male uncon­
gated lesbian responses to the film and found ‘hom ophobic’ representation of erotic pleas­ scious than the fear of white female sexuality.
that m any lesbian spectators actively rewrote ures, others took a m ore permissive or even cel­ The category of race also problematises
the film by imagining a different ending. Her ebratory attitude to the sado-masochism o f the the paradigm of the male gaze possessing the
research shows that lesbian spectators use film. Dyer argues that the renewed political female image. The male gaze is not a univer­
interpretative strategies to challenge the dom i­ interest in perverse sexualities opened a sal given but it is rather negotiated via white­
nant reading of a film. Foucauldian reading o f the film’s eroticism in ness: the black m an’s sexual gaze is socially
The them e of lesbianism still runs strong in term s of the social and historical relation prohibited. Racial hierarchies in ways o f look­
m ore recent female buddy films. Fried Green between sexuality and power. ing have created visual taboos, the neglect of
Tomatoes (1991) is one o f those films about The play of power and desire has become which reflects back on film theory, which fails
female friendship in which lesbianism remains the theme of some gay and lesbian films in to account for the ways in which some social
unspoken, although it is a source of strength the 1980s, which Dyer calls a ‘Genetesque’ groups have the licence to look openly, while
and inspiration. In Thelma and Louise (1991) tradition. A ritualisation of power and desire others can only 'look’ illicitly. The racial
the lesbian attraction between the wom en can can for example be found in the sadean structures o f looking also have repercussions
only be expressed in a kiss on the m outh just theatre of Verführung: die grausame Frau for structures of narrative. Gaines discusses
before the leap to their death into the Grand (Seduction: the Cruel Woman, 1985) by Elfi the construction of the black m an as rapist,
Canyon. Basic Instinct (1991) features lesbian Mikesch and Monika Treut. This highly for­ while in times of slavery and long after, it was
and bisexual characters as pathological killers, malised and aestheticised exploration of the white m an who raped black women. The
harping back on the tim e-old association in sado-masochism was one of the first films to historical scenario of interracial rape explains
Hollywood films of lesbianism with death and bring female desire and lesbian sexuality m uch of the penalty o f sexual looking by the
pathology. W hat else is new? Angela Galvin within the dom ain o f power and violence. black man, who was actually (rather than
(1994) suggests that the novelty may well lie in Another film-maker that m ust be m entioned symbolically) castrated or lynched by white
the heroine’s absence of a mustache. The con­ in this context is Ulrike Ottinger, whose fan- men. For Gaines this scenario of sexual viol­
troversy over Thelma and Louise and Basic tasmatic films from Madame X - eine absolute ence, repression and displacements rivals the
Instinct shows some of the various responses of Herrscherin (M adame X - an Absolute Ruler, Oedipal myth.
feminist and lesbian criticism. While the films 1977) to Johanna D A rc o f Mongolia (1989) Interventions such as Gaines’s show that
 FEMINIST FILM THEORY

the category o f race reveals the untenability tors, the w om en are by sheer necessity used ON MASCULINITY
of m any one-sided beliefs w ithin feminist to filtering out offensive racist images from While feminists have convincingly exposed
film theory, and points to the necessity of what they see in cinema. The w om en nego­ western culture as m ale-dom inated, this has
contextualising and historicising sexual dif­ tiated their appreciation of the film through n o t autom atically produced a feminist
ference. Thus, Lola Young (1996) examines their personal history and past viewing theory o f male subjectivity and sexuality.
the representation of black female sexuality experience. Moreover, Bobo found that cer­ Pam Cook’s (1982) essay in a special issue of
by situating British films in their historical tain technical aspects o f the film con­ Screen opened up a new area of investi­
and social context. Intersecting theories of tributed to spectatorial pleasure: The Color gation: the riddled question o f masculinity
sexual difference w ith those of differences o f Purple introduced an innovative way of in the age o f feminism. M uch as the dom i­
race and sexual preference, along w ith eth­ photographing black people so that they nant paradigm o f feminist film theory raised
nicity and class, will eventually make other stood out against the background. This questions about the male look and the
form s of representation thinkable, although photographic technique made black people female spectacle, it also raised questions
Young argues convincingly that white and appear m ore distinctly on the screen than in about the eroticisation o f the male body as
black film-makers find it hard to challenge the cinem atic tradition of Hollywood. erotic object. W hat if the male body is the
stereotypical images o f black women. The influential feminist critic, bell hooks object of the female gaze or o f another male
Almost simultaneously with Young’s book (1992) confirms that black viewers have gaze; and how exactly does the male body
a special issue o f Camera Obscura (no. 36) was always critically responded to Hollywood. becom e the signifier o f the phallus? (Screen,
published, the focus of which was: ‘Black Black female spectators do not necessarily 1992).
women, spectatorship, and visual culture’. In identify w ith either the male gaze or with In the discussion of m asculinity in
her reading o f Neil Jordan’s films Mona Lisa white w om anhood as lack. Rather, they ‘con­ cinem a the issue of hom osexual desire was
and The Crying Game Joy James comes to a struct a theory o f looking relations where raised (Dyer, 1982; Neale, 1983). Most critics
very similar critique as Young: these films fail cinem atic visual delight is the pleasure of agree that the spectatorial look in m ain­
to fulfil the promise o f transgressive relation­ interrogation’ (1992, p. 126). For hooks this stream cinem a is implicitly male. While for
ships and ultimately reproduce stereotypes of is a radical departure from the ‘totalizing Dyer this m eans that images o f men do not
black female sexuality. Deborah Grayson agenda’ o f fem inist film criticism, and the autom atically ‘work’ for wom en, according
examines the iconic representation o f black beginning of an oppositional spectatorship to Neale the erotic elem ent in looking at the
wom en’s hair in visual culture. Looking at for black women. male body has to be repressed and dis­
diverse media and popular practices (e.g. A search for an oppositional subjectivity avowed so as to avoid any implications of
dolls), she identifies the racialised significa­ can also be found in the practice o f film- male homosexuality. Yet, male hom osexual­
tion of hair w ithin American health and making. Ngozi O nw urah’s film The Body ity is always present as an undercurrent; it is
beauty culture. In a similar vein, Marla Beautiful (1991), for example, inscribes new Hollywood’s sym ptom. The denial of the
Shelton analyses the cross-over stardom of subject positions for the diasporan daughter hom o-eroticism of looking at images of
Whitney Houston. While Shelton celebrates of a British m other and a Nigerian father. m en constantly involves sado-masochistic
Houston’s successful construction of her own Com bining docum entary w ith fictional themes, scenes and fantasies. Hence, the
image and form ation o f different audiences, elements, this hybrid film centres on the highly ritualised scenes o f m ale struggle
she points to the inherent conflicts that con­ relation between the body of the m other and which deflect the look away from the male
verge around this ‘rainbow icon’. For example, that o f her daughter by foregrounding ques­ body to the scene of the spectacular fight.
Houston has found it hard to escape negative tions o f authenticity and authority. In a The image o f the male body as object of
interpretations of her sexuality and of her role rewriting o f the Freudian prim al scene - the a look is fraught with ambivalences, repres­
as a wife and mother. And while she has always daughter watching the lovemaking o f her sions and denials. Like the masquerade, the
had enorm ous cross-over appeal, according to m ature white m other with a young black notion of spectacle has such strong feminine
Shelton, in more recent years H ouston had to m an - the film takes on the ethnographic connotations that for a male perform er to be
embrace and express her blackness in order to gaze at the ‘O ther’ radically subverting tra ­ put on display or to don a m ask threatens his
m aintain a large audience. ditional psychoanalytic discourse. very masculinity. Because the phallus is a
Generally, little research has been avail­ Richard Dyer (1988/1993) is one of the sym bol and a signifier, no m an can fully
able about black audiences (see E thno­ few film critics who has written about white­ symbolise it. Although the patriarchal male
graphic research, p. 372). One o f the ness in cinema. He argues that it is difficult subject has a privileged relation to the phal­
exceptions is the w ork o f Jacqueline Bobo to think about whiteness, because it is often lus, he will always fall short o f the phallic
(1995) on Steven Spielberg’s The Color revealed as emptiness and absence. Because ideal. Lacan notices this effect in his essay on
Purple (1985). The film was attacked in the whiteness is constructed as the norm , it is the m eaning o f the phallus ‘the curious con­
black press for its racism. Yet, this critical unm arked. Yet, or rather, as such, it can rep­ sequence o f making virile display in the
view is mixed w ith reports of black specta­ resent everything. This eerie property of hum an being itself seem feminine’ (Lacan,
tors who found the film empowering. Bobo whitenes, to be nothing and everything at 1977, p. 291). Male spectacle, then, entails to
set out to research this apparent contradic­ the same time, is the source of its represen­ be p u t in a feminine position. The im m a­
tion and interviewed a group of black tational power. In his reading o f Jezebel nent féminisation of male spectacle brings
wom en. The black female spectators were (1938), Dyer points to the narrative tech­ about two possible dangers for the posing or
quite unanim ously impressed by the film - nique o f Hollywood colonial movies, where perform ing male: functioning as an object of
‘Finally, som ebody says som ething about us’ the white, sexually repressed heroine lives desire he can easily becom e the object of
- and felt strengthened by the triu m p h of her em otions through the black servant. ridicule, and w ithin a heterosexist culture
the female protagonist Celie. They thought Such films conventionally oppose the accusations of hom osexuality can be
the criticism o f the film (and also o f Alice chastity and virginity o f white w om anhood launched against him (Neale, 1983; Tasker,
Walker’s novel), particularly on the p art of to the vitality and sexuality o f the black 1993).
black men, quite unjustified. The w om en do w om an, usually the white w om an’s servant. M asculinity studies becam e estab­
recognise that the film continues the tra ­ Its closure is the acquired ideal o f white lished in fem inist film theory in the
dition of racist representations o f blacks; w om anhood, although m uch of the pleasure 1990s. In a special issue, on ‘Male
Spielberg’s interpretation of Sofia and of the film lies in the transgression o f Jezebel trouble’ o f Camera Obscura (1988) the
H arpo is not considered to be successful. (Bette Davis), exposing that ideal to be quite editors C onstance Penley and Sharon
However, Bobo argues that, as black specta­ an ordeal. Willis argue th at the great variety of
 362 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

images o f contem porary m asculinity are form ance rather than identity. Just as SELECTED READING
organised around hysteria and Babuscio claims that the emphasis on style, Jacqueline Bobo, Black Women as Cultural
m asochism . As they po in t out, these two surface and the spectacle results in incon­ Readers, New York, Columbia University
sym ptom atic form ations are a telling dis­ gruities between ‘w hat a thing or person is to Press, 1995.
placem ent o f voyeurism and fetishism, what it looks like’ (Babuscio, 1984, p. 44), Diane Carson, Linda Dittmar and Janice R.
the term s th at have so far been used in Butler (1990) asserts that the stress on per- Welsch (eds), Multiple Voices in Feminist
fem inist film theory to describe m ale form ativity allows us to see gender as enact­ Film Criticism, London and Minneapolis,
subjectivity and spectatorship. Lynne ing a set o f discontinuous if not parodic University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
Kirby, for example, describes m ale hyste­ perform ances. Thus, it also became an avail­ Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire: The
ria in early cinema. She argues that the able notion for lesbians (see Graham , 1995). Woman’s Film of the 1940s, Bloomington,
disturbing shock effects of early cinem a Both camp and postm odernism denatu­ Indiana University Press, 1987.
(the roller-coaster ride, the speeding train ralise fem ininity and masculinity. Patricia Erens (ed.), Issues in Feminist Film
shots) construct a hystericised spectator. It is significant that in the 1990s the Criticism, Bloomington, Indiana University
Hysteria was seen as a quintessential notion of ‘cam p’ is often replaced by the Press, 1990.
female condition, b u t w ith m odern tech­ term ‘queer’. Cam p is historically m ore Jane Gaines, ‘White privilege and looking
nology m en were equally subjected to associated with the closeted hom osexuality relations: race and gender in feminist film
shock and trau m a and hence, responded of the 1950s and only came to the surface in theory’, in Screen 29 (4), 1988, pp. 12-27.
w ith hysteria. Male hysteria and the 1960s and 1970s. Postm odernism o f the bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Rep­
m asochism are fu rth er explored in books 1980s and 1990s brought cam py strategies resentation, Boston, South End Press,
on m ale subjectivity by Tania Modleski into the m ainstream . Now, lesbians and gay 1992.
(1991) and Kaja Silverman (1992). m en identify their oppositional-reading Clare Johnston, ‘Women’s cinema as counter­
M ost studies o f m asculinity po in t to strategies as ‘queer’. Away from the notions cinema’, in Notes on Women’s Cinema,
the crisis in w hich the white male h e t­ of oppression and liberation of earlier gay London, SEFT, 1973; Glasgow, Screen
erosexual subject finds himself, a crisis in and lesbian criticism, queerness is associated reprint, 1991, pp. 24-31.
w hich his m asculinity is fragm ented and with the playful self-definition of a hom o­ E. Ann Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides of
denaturalised (Easthope, 1986; Kirkham sexuality in non-essentialist terms. Not the Camera, New York and London,
and T hum in, 1993; Tasker, 1993; Jeffords, unlike camp, but m ore self-assertive, queer Methuen, 1983.
1994). The signifiers o f ‘m an’ and ‘m anly’ readings are fully inflected with irony, trans­ Annette Kuhn, Women’s Pictures: Feminism and
seem to have lost all o f th eir m eaning, gressive gender parody and deconstructed Cinema, London, RKP, 1982; rev. edn, 1994.
w hich m akes Hollywood desperate to subjectivities. Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t: Feminism,
find a ‘few good w hite m en’, in the Semiotics, Cinema, Bloomington, Indiana
words o f Susan Jeffords. Yet, the crisis in CONCLUSION University Press, 1984.
m asculinity is w elcom ed by gay critics as The diversity of contem porary feminist Teresa de Lauretis, The Practice of Love: Lesbian
a liberatory m om ent. In his book on film theory reflects the variegated produc­ Sexuality and Perverse Desire, Bloomington,
male im personators M ark Sim pson tion o f w om en’s cinem a o f the 1990s. Indiana University Press, 1994.
(1994) takes great pleasure in celebrating W omen film-makers have increasingly con­ Judith Mayne, The Woman at the Keyhole:
the deconstruction o f m asculinity as quered Hollywood. Several of them have Feminism and Womens Cinema,
authentic, natural, coherent and d om i­ been able to m aintain a consistent produc­ Bloomington, Indiana University Press,
nant. tion in diverse genres: comedy (Penny 1990.
Marshall), rom antic dram a (Nora Ephron), Judith Mayne, Directed by Dorothy Arzner,
QUEER THEORY and action movies (Kathryn Bigelow), to Bloomington, Indiana University Press,
Gay studies o f masculinity often border on nam e just a few. This has also been the case 1994.
camp readings o f the male spectacle for several wom en film -m akers in Europe, Tania Modleski, The Women Who Knew Too
(M edhurst, 1991b; Simpson, 1994). Camp such as M argarethe von Trotta (Germany), Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory, New
can be seen as an oppositional reading of Diane Kurys (Francej, Claire Denis York and London, Methuen, 1988.
popular culture which offers identifications (France), and M arion Hansel (Belgium). In Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative
and pleasures that dom inant culture denies to a m ore non-com m ercial pocket of the Cinema’, 1975, in Visual And Other
homosexuals. As an oppositional reading, m arket, there has been a significant Pleasures, London, Macmillan, 1989,
camp can be subversive for bringing out the increase in films m ade by lesbian, black and pp. 14-26.
cultural ambiguities and contradictions that postcolonial directors: film-makers as Laura Mulvey, ‘Afterthoughts on “Visual
usually remain sealed over by dom inant diverse as M onika Treut and Patricia Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, inspired
ideology. Rozema, Julie Dash and Ngozi Onw urah, by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun’, 1981, in
This characteristic brings cam p into the Ann Hui and Clara Law. This decade has Visual and Other Pleasures, London,
realm o f postm odernism which also cele­ witnessed the popular success of feminist Macmillan, 1989, pp. 29-37.
brates ambivalence and heterogeneity. art films, like Orlando by Sally Potter Steve Neale, ‘Masculinity as spectacle’, Screen 24
Subcultural cam p and postm odern theory (1992) and the Oscar-winning films The (6), 1983, pp. 12-16.
share a penchant for irony, play and parody, Piano, a costume dram a by Jane Cam pion Constance Penley (ed.), Feminism and Film
for artificiality and perform ance, as well as (1994) and A ntonia’s Line, a m atriarchal Theory, London, BFI/Routledge, 1988.
for transgressing conventional meanings of epic by M arleen Gorris (1995). D ropping a Kaja Silverman, Male Subjectivity at the
gender. This queer alliance between camp few names and titles in no way does justice Margins, New York and London, Routledge,
and postm odernism has often been noted. to the scale of w om en’s cinema o f this 1992.
M edhurst even provokingly states that ‘post­ decade. It merely indicates a prolific diver­ Anneke Smelik, And the Mirror Cracked:
m odernism is only heterosexuals catching sity which resonates w ith film audiences in Feminist Cinema and Film Theory, London,
up w ith cam p’ (M edhurst, 1991a, p. 206). It this decade of hybridity. The polyphony of Macmillan, 1998.
is indeed an easy leap from Babuscio’s voices, m ultiple points o f view, and cine­ Gaylyn Studlar, In the Realm of Pleasure: Von
understanding of camp as signifying per­ m atic styles and genres, signify wom en’s Sternberg, Dietrich, and the Masochistic
form ance rather than existence, to Judith successful struggle for self-representation Aesthetic, New York, Columbia University
Butler’s n otion o f gender signifying per­ on the silver screen. Press, 1988.
 FEMINIST FILM THEORY 363

Matriarchal epic and feminist art film - Marleen Gorris’s Antonias Line

Morocco (USA 1930 p.c - Param ount; d - For Laura Mulvey (1975/1989) too, nation with her image accounts for a dis­
Josef von Sternberg; sd b/w) Dietrich is the ultim ate (Freudian) fetish in played self-consciousness in her perform ­
the cycle of Sternberg’s films. In order to ance before the camera. According to
For m any feminist film critics Josef von disavow the castration anxiety that the Kaplan, this creates a tension in the image
Sternberg’s star vehicle (see Stars, p. 36) for female figure evokes, she is turned into a which together w ith D ietrich’s slightly
Marlene Dietrich has been the privileged fetish; a perfected object of beauty which is ironic stance, makes the (female) spectator
example o f the fetish image o f w om an in satisfying rather than threatening. In this aware o f her construction as fetish (Kaplan,
classic cinema. Morocco features Dietrich as respect, it is significant that Sternberg p ro­ 1983, p. 51). For Mary Ann Doane
the cabaret singer Amy Jolly, stranded in duces the perfect fetish by playing down the (1982/1991, p. 26) this use o f the woman's
Morocco. In her first American movie, and illusion o f screen depth; the image o f the own body as a disguise points to the mas­
in the m any that would follow, the plot fetishised wom an and the screen space coa­ querade; the self-conscious hyperbolisation
illustrates a repeated pattern in which the lesce. In this kind o f ‘fetishistic scopophilia’ o f femininity. This excess o f fem ininity is
D ietrich character is caught between the the flawless icon o f female beauty stops the typical o f the fem m e fatale. For D oane, too,
desire o f two men. Here, she m ust choose flow o f action and breaks down the con­ the m asquerade subverts the m asculine
between wealthy European aristocrat La trolling look o f the male protagonist. The structure o f the look, in defamiliarising
Bessière (Adolphe M enjou) and foreign fetish object is displayed for the im m ediate female iconography.
legionnaire, Tom Brown (Gary Cooper). gaze and enjoym ent o f the male spectator For Gaylyn Studlar (1988) the film
Dietrich is the image o f glam orous eroti­ w ithout m ediation o f the male screen char­ expresses a masochistic m ode o f desire. In
cism and perfectly chiselled beauty. Claire acter. For example, at the end o f Morocco, Sternberg’s films the masochistic subject is
Johnston reads the fetishised image o f Amy Tom Brown has already disappeared into represented by a male character. Amy Jolly’s
Jolly as an illustration o f the absence o f the desert when Amy Jolly kicks off her repeated rejection and public hum iliation
wom an as woman in classic cinema. gold sandals and walks after him into the o f La Bessiere points to his masochistic self-
W oman is a sign, a spectacle, a fetish. For Sahara. The erotic image o f the fetishised abnegation. Masochistic desire thrives on
Johnston the image o f w om an as a semiotic w om an is established in direct rapport with pain and La Bessiere is indeed show n to
sign denies the opposition m an-w om an; the spectator. The male hero, says Mulvey, relish the public m om ents o f hum iliation.
the real opposition is m ale-non-m ale. This does not know or see (Mulvey, 1989, The pleasurable hum iliation is increased by
is illustrated by Dietrich’s fam ous cross- pp. 22-3). the entry o f the rival and it is no surprise
dressing in the beginning o f the film. The It is in this possible subversion o f the that he helps Amy to find the m an she
masquerade signals the absence o f man; the male gaze that the female star can m anipu­ loves, legionnaire Brown. Studlar reads the
fetishised image merely indicates the exclu­ late her image. Kaplan (1983) argues that exquisite torture o f the older, richer and
sion and repression o f wom en (Johnston, Dietrich deliberately uses her body as spec­ higher-class m an by the fem m e fatale
1973/1991, p. 26). tacle. Her awareness o f Sternberg’s fasci­ (either a prostitute or a prom iscuous
 364 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

The fetish object par excellence - Marlene Dietrich in Morocco

w om an), as a sustained attack on the sym ­ subculture as early as in the 1930s. can also be seen as a poetic im pression o f
bolic father and phallic sexuality. At the end Dietrich’s rum oured lesbianism has even the daily life o f women living and working
o f the film La Bessière is reduced to the been exploited by Param ounts’ publicity in a village in Senegal. Or as a self-reflexive
position o f a helpless and abandoned child. slogan for the release o f Morocco: ‘Dietrich study o f the position of the docum entary
Studlar argues that in the masochistic - the w om an all wom en w ant to see’. In the film-maker. The film is definitely an exer­
scenarios of Sternberg’s films, sex roles and cross-dressing scene, Amy Jolly perform s a cise in finding a new language to film the
gender identities are confused. La Bessière French song in a nightclub. She walks down ‘other’.
is the top-hatted, tuxedoed suitor to Amy. into tire audience looking at a wom an at a Trinh M inh-ha’s w ork challenges First
While Amy underm ines his symbolic m as­ table. She looks over her entire body, turns W orld feminism. H er focal point is the post-
culinity and social status, she in turn away and hesitates before looking at the colonial female subject. Both in her writing
becom es the top-hatted, tuxedoed suitor to wom an again. Then she kisses the w om an and films she explores questions o f identity,
Brown. Dietrich’s cross-dressing is counter­ on her lips, takes her flower and gives it to authenticity and difference. The focus of
pointed by the effeminised m asculine Tom Brown in the audience. Amy Jolly feminist film theory on a psychoanalytic
beauty of Tom Brown. The fém inisation of inverts the heterosexual order o f seducer understanding o f difference as sexual differ­
the fem m e fa tale's object o f desire is further and seduced, while her lesbian flirtation ence has produced a dichotom y that does
em phasised by the active female gaze. It is and her butch image make the scene even not allow for any understanding o f the com ­
Dietrich w ho singles Brown out in the m ore subversive. However fleeting and plexities o f the m any differences in which
nightclub where she sings and who looks transitory such m om ents may be in classic wom en live. W ithin a racialised context, dif­
him over w ith an appraising gaze. She cinema, Dietrich’s star persona allows the ference m eans essentially division, dism is­
throws him a flower, which he wears behind lesbian spectator a glimpse o f hom o-erotic sion or even worse, elim ination. Trinh
his ear. Studlar argues that D ietrichs active enjoyment. M inh-ha dedicates her words and images to
look underm ines the notion that the male understanding difference, so as to be able to
gaze is always one of control. Reassem blage (USA 1982 d - Trinh T. ‘live fearlessly with and within difference(s)’
Marlene Dietrich’s tantalising m asculin­ M inh-ha; sd/col.) (Trinh M inh-ha, 1989, p. 84). She also relies
isation added to her androgynous appeal. on post-structuralist philosophies o f differ­
Andrea Weiss (1992) argues th at her sexual Reassemblage is the first film by ence, notably Deleuze’s nomadology, in
am biguity was em braced as a liberating Vietnamese-American film -m aker Trinh order to explore the possibility of positive
image by lesbian spectators. Rum our and M inh-ha. On the surface it is a docum en­ representations o f difference; as som ething
gossip had already been shared in the gay tary about Senegalese women. However, it else than merely ‘different-from ’. She thus
 FEMINIST FILM THEORY 365

combines creative experim entation with imm ediate gaze to the other. Difference is remarkable enough. In that sense, Antonia’s
theoretical sophistication. (See Alternative fundam entally incom m ensurable and that family is truly m atriarchal. The film’s poli­
aesthetic strategies, p. 125.) is the source o f its strength and fascination. tics lie furtherm ore in the representation o f
Réassemblage is a film that is fully aware what Silverman would call the
o f the anthropological tradition in filming A ntonia’s Line (Netherlands/Belgium /UK hom osexual-m aternal fantasmatic. It is
difference and its appropriate gaze of the 1995 p . c - Guild/A ntonia’s within the em brace o f m utual love between
radical other. It is this kind o f cinem a that Line/Bergen/Prime Time Bard/NPS; d - m others and daughters that the wom en can
the film defies. It provides the spectator Marleen Gorris; sd col.) ruthlessly pursue their own desires. As their
with images of village life, singling out the desires are at odds with patriarchy, they
w om en for close-up attention and concen­ Marleen Gorris was the first wom an direc­ have to fight the bigotry o f the village
trating on the rhythm s o f their daily activi­ tor to win an Oscar for a feature film: the people and especially o f the church. It is
ties - shucking corn, grinding grain, Academy Award for the best foreign film for Antonia’s wilful strength that enables
washing babies. Repetition o f certain shots Antonia's Line in 1996. This is all the m ore wom en’s autonom y for generations to
adds to the rhythm o f the montage: the remarkable because she is known as an o u t­ come.
albino child clinging to his black mother, spoken feminist film-maker. Her first film, Female desire is represented in all of its
the rotting carcasses o f animals. A Question o f Silence (1982) won m any diverse m anifestations: Antonia’s wish for
Trinh M inh-ha breaks with tradition by prizes at festivals and became a classic femi­ independence, Danielle’s quest for artistic
experim enting with sound. Originally an nist hit. The reception was, however, mixed, creativity, Therese's pursuit o f knowledge,
ethno-m usicologist (and still a com poser), and many male critics condem ned it for its and Sarah’s curiosity about life in general.
she has used music to create a contest radical feminism, as was the case with her The life o f the m ind - m athem atics, music,
betw een the image and the sound. The second film, Broken Mirrors (1984). philosophy - is eroticised in the film. This
sound is a-synchronous w ith the images, A ntonia’s Line breaks away from the is m atched by different kinds of female
abruptly shifting from music, to voice-over, focus on w om en’s oppression and male desires, like their friend Letta who wishes
to silence in the same scene. Moreover, the violence o f G orris’s earlier films. It fea­ to procreate and produces thirteen chil­
voice-over is not ‘the voice o f G od’ o f tra ­ tures the alm ost utopian history o f a dren. The m ost m oving m om ents of the
ditional docum entary. Trinh M inh-ha her­ m atriarchal family w ithin a European film are, however, the scenes in which the
self speaks the com m entary and critically country village. Yet, G orris’s particular women explore sexual desire. W hen
reflects on her position as film -m aker and style can still be recognised in m any of Danielle meets the love o f her life,
on the anthropological recording m ethod. her ‘authorial signatures’. Hum m (1997) Therese’s female teacher Lara, she sees the
She challenges the objectivity of the cam era therefore argues that Gorris should be object o f her desire in her m ind’s eye as
('The best way to be neutral and objective viewed as a feminist auteur. Her author- the Venus o f Botticelli. W hen Antonia is
is to copy reality in detail, giving different sliip can be situated for example in the already a respected grandm other she tells
views from different angles’), flatly contra­ genre subversion, the cam era direction, the the farm er Bas that she will not give him
dicting her ironical com m entary in the representation of silence as w om an’s voice, her hand, but that she is willing to give
images that are shown on the screen, in the im portance o f female friendships, him her body; on her conditions. After
Reassemblage Trinh M inh-ha struggles to subtle lesbian inflections in the story and their first sexual encounter, the film cuts to
find a way o f approaching the subject, the biblical references. branches o f cherry blossom blowing in the
African other. She refuses to speak for the Antonia's Line is a film which reflects de wind. The film thus creates an unexpected
other women, rather, she wants to speak Lauretis’s call for a feminist cinema that is link between an older wom an’s sexuality
nearby the Senegalese. H er self-reflexively 'narrative and Oedipal w ith a vengeance’. It and the fertility of spring.
critical voice unsettles not only the subject is narrative, but w ithout a male hero, and Antonia’s Line certainly idealises the
filmed, but also the filming subject. hence w ithout the voyeurist pleasures of the productive and reproductive power o f the
Réassemblage can be seen as an example male gaze. It is Oedipal in the sense that it hom osexual m aternal comm unity. It is an
of the counter-cinem a that Claire Johnston is about a family, but instead of featuring inclusive com m unity of family and friends
and Laura Mulvey advocated (see p. 354). the triangle o f father, m other and child, the that transcends class, age and religion,
The film challenges the illusionism and the film establishes a line of m others and where the lesbian, the m entally handi­
conventions that deliver the impression o f daughters. The film opens with the old capped, the unm arried m other, the lonely
reality. However, the film deconstructs Antonia telling her great-granddaughter and the weak, and even m en, can find
m ainstream docum entary rather than Sarah that today she will die. In its explo­ refuge. However, this idealisation does not
classic Hollywood, and therefore it deals ration o f the epic genre, the film tells the mean that the wom en are im m une to the
with issues of the gaze in an altogether dif­ story o f A ntonia’s line. Upon her m other’s violence of the world outside. They are
ferent context. The gaze here is not the death after the war, Antonia returns with confronted with sadistic incest and brutal
male gaze that objectifies the wom an, but her daughter Danielle to the village where rape. But together they find the strength
the western gaze that tries to objectify the she was born to take over the family farm. to survive and to punish the culpable
racial other. This gaze bestows difference W hen Danielle expresses her wish for a men.
upon the other. The issues are thus n o t cen­ child w ithout a husband, Antonia takes her O ne o f the distinctive features o f the
tred on visual pleasure and voyeurism, but to town and m other and daughter choose a film is the use o f a disem bodied female
on conventions o f seeing the other. Trinh good-looking stud for im pregnation. voice, that is revealed in the last scene as
M inh-ha suggests that one can never really Danielle gives birth to daughter Therese, Sarah’s. It is a poetic voice that recounts
‘see’ the other. There is no direct translation w ho turns out to be a prodigy and a genius. the passing o f tim e and the cycle o f life
possible that makes the radical other Therese, in her turn, becomes m other of and death. The voice-over brings once
accessible or available. The images, which the red-haired Sarah. m ore the female fantasm atic firmly within
are often strangely fram ed, or jarringly The establishm ent of a female genealogy language and history; that is, w ithin the
edited, also suggest that there is no w ithout fathers (or sons, for that m atter) is symbolic.