Deadly Female Sexuality

The movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith was released in 2005 and was about a hot, young married couple, played by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who were both secretly government hired assassins. The irony of the film comes from the fact that while both the husband and the wife were assassins, neither of them were aware of the other’s status. Accidentally crossing paths out in the field creates the plot of the movie in which both of their agencies request that they eliminate the other. A cat and mouse type of game ensues as both Mr. Smith and Mrs. Smith attempt to hunt each other down but ultimately realize that they love each other and cannot complete their mission.

Despite being a highly skilled and powerful female character in the movie, Mrs. Smith, aka Angelina Jolie, is portrayed in a highly sexualized manner. Wearing lingerie, men’s shirts, and sexy dresses throughout the movie, the character Mrs. Smith is defintely exploited through her sexuality which she then uses to do her job and assassinate her targets. The movie depicts Jolie’s character in an overtly sexual way which is not necessary to the progression of the main story line of the film. It can be inferred from the story line of the movie that much of Mrs. Smith’s power comes from her ability to manipulate men using her sexual charisma. The portrayal of the Mrs. Smith character in this way

“[goes] beyond highlighting a woman’s to-be-looked-at-ness [and] builds the way she is to be looked at into the spectacle itself”

(Mulvey, 38)

This example directly represents the idea presented by Mulvey of women as the image and men as the bearer of the image. The purposeful representation of the Mrs. Smith character in this way serves as visual pleasure for the male audience while subjecting the female to being a pawn in the story without true depth other than the manipulation of her outward appearance.

Laura Mulvey; Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Screen, Volume 16, Issue 3, 1 October 1975,  https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6