Feminism

Feminism and film theory
To understand and critique gender hierarchies and

patriarchal ideologies in commercial narrative
cinema.
To define the terms of an alternative, feminist
aesthetics; the search for a feminine style or
language.
in popular films (e.g., Arzner)

in experimental or avant-garde films by feminist filmmakers.
To define the specificity of female spectatorship; i.e.,

forms of identification, understanding, and pleasure
that are appropriate to the psychology and cultural
experience of women as opposed to men.
1972: the first two women's film festivals organized

in New York and Edinburgh;
Women and Film begins publishing in California.

1973: Season of women's cinema organized by
Claire Johnston at the National Film Theatre in
London; publication of "Notes on Women's Cinema."
1975: Screen begins publishing feminist film theory,
beginning with Laura Mulveys Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema.
1976: Camera Obscura, Frauen und Film.
Essentialism: a core identity that defines women

psychologically. That there is a repressed, integral
experience appropriate to women's bodies and lives
that is no less powerful because of its invisibility or
marginality in patriarchal culture.
The objective of women's filmmaking (and history) is to

restore the visibility of women's experience to the screen, or
to replace negative images of women with positive ones.
In contrast, the anti-essentialist position argues that

sexual difference was constructed in language and
through aesthetic forms.
Laura Mulvey
A feminist (counter)aesthetic must

examine, challenge, and transform the
form and position of identification offered
by dominant cinema.
A politics of the unconscious:
The structuring of desire in relation to lack is

most often articulated as an imaging of women
from the point of view of male fantasies.
The forms of visual pleasure and point of view in Hollywood

cinema work for the control of the male subject by
objectifying images of women.
Construction of these images is meant to contain a threat
that can be a source for a potential feminist counter
cinema.
Laura Mulvey
An active/passive heterosexual division of

labor controls narrative structure.
Male
Active
Origin of look
Narrative
Female
Passive
Object of look
Spectacle
Laura Mulvey
Fetishism overplays the woman's objectification, puts

her on a pedestal, builds up the glamour and physical
beauty of the female store, invests in her the potential
for erotic satisfaction.
Voyeurism is associated with a fantasy of mastery and

control,
"asserting control, and subjecting the guilty person through

punishment or forgiveness. The sadistic side fits in well with
narrative. Sadism demands a story, depends on making
something happen, forcing a change in another person, a battle
of will and strength, victory/defeat, all occurring in a linear time
with a beginning and ends" (205).
Feminism and counter-cinema
The feminist critique of Screens project.

To define the terms of a feminist countercinema
Popular cinema expresses contradictions concerning

sexual difference that it fails to master.
The aggressivity of looking can be turned against the
spectator.
The female image given as lack "constantly
endangers the unity of the diegesis and bursts
through the world of illusion as a one-dimensional
fetish" (209).
Feminism and counter-cinema

Voyeurism
Fetishism
Sadism [Negation]
Narrative Spectacle
--------------------------------------------Linearity Stasis
Unity
Disunity
Action Interruption
Depth
Flatness
Illusion Defamiliarization
Mary Ann Doane
Address. How the womans film targets a female

audience through marketing, themes, plot structures,
and prominence of female protagonists.
Spectatorship. What Doane calls the projected image
of the female spectator: How films organize scenarios
of looking in order to outline how they prefer to be read.
(In the womans film, the activity of looking on the part of the
female protagonist is often punished and returned to the male.)
Subject-position or identification. What

psychoanalytic concepts best characterize femininity or
feminine identification?
Film and the Masquerade
The woman as image is assigned a

special place in narrative cinema, yet
positions of point of view, identification,
and pleasure seem to be denied to her.
What, then, of the female spectator?
What can one say about her desire in
relation to this process of imaging?
Doane on the female spectator
Proximity and distance

Female spectatorship as transvestitism
Female spectatorship as masquerade of
femininity.
The masquerade, in flaunting femininity, holds it a

distance.
Masquerade . . . constitutes an acknowledgment
that it is femininity itself which is constructed as mask
. . . . To masquerade is to manufacture a lack in the
form of a certain distance between oneself and ones
image.
Doane on the female spectator
The characterization of femininity as closeness or overidentification is a cultural stereotype closing off other possibilities
of identification.
The options of female spectatorship in this respect:
1. Adopting masculinity.
2. The masochism of over-identification or losing ones self in the image.
3. Narcissism in becoming ones own object of desire. This too is a
fantasy of being one with the image; in Hollywood cinema, this often
means becoming one with the fantasized image of masculine desire.
The effectivity of masquerade lies precisely in its potential to

manufacture a distance from the image, to generate a
problematic within which the image is manipulable, producible,
and readable by the woman.

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What are some of the objectives of feminism and film theory?

What are some of the objectives of feminism and film theory?

What are two positions on essentialism discussed in the text?

What are two positions on essentialism discussed in the text?

Feminism and film theory

To understand and critique gender hierarchies and

in popular films (e.g., Arzner)

To define the specificity of female spectatorship; i.e.,

Feminism and film theory

1972: the first two women's film festivals organized

Women and Film begins publishing in California.

Feminism and film theory

Essentialism: a core identity that defines women

The objective of women's filmmaking (and history) is to

In contrast, the anti-essentialist position argues that

A feminist (counter)aesthetic must

The structuring of desire in relation to lack is

The forms of visual pleasure and point of view in Hollywood

An active/passive heterosexual division of

Fetishism overplays the woman's objectification, puts

Voyeurism is associated with a fantasy of mastery and

"asserting control, and subjecting the guilty person through

Feminism and counter-cinema

The feminist critique of Screens project.

Popular cinema expresses contradictions concerning

Feminism and counter-cinema

Mary Ann Doane

Address. How the womans film targets a female

Subject-position or identification. What

Film and the Masquerade

The woman as image is assigned a

Doane on the female spectator

Proximity and distance

The masquerade, in flaunting femininity, holds it a

Doane on the female spectator

The effectivity of masquerade lies precisely in its potential to

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