Stop trying to make fetch happen

Hooks presents a new way of looking for me, a new way of viewing cinema. She describes a look as being “confrontational, as gestures of resistance, challenges to authority (Hooks,247).” When viewing with an oppositional gaze, it’s obvious that mainstream cinema continues to be very problematic due to its unequal representation of minority groups, as well as its overrepresentation of wealthy white people.A cult classic, Mean Girls(2004) is a great example of this.

The dominant representation of this movie is a lighthearted comedy of a girl just trying to find her place in the hierarchy that is high school after being homeschooled her whole life. The protagonist, Cady has just moved from Africa to Illinois to attend public high school for the first time. She finds herself with the popular clique, the “plastics”, who are all white, wealthy and stereotypically pretty. Everyoneat school wants to be like or with Regina George, the leader of the Plastics. The problem with this dominant representation is that it portrays the white woman as more desirable than other races. This film also focuses a lot on race and separates groups based on their race and general personality. For example, the cafeteria is divided into groups like “cool Asians”, “nerdy Asians”, “unfriendly black hotties”, etc. They most often associate being popular with being wealthy and white.

This all becomes apparent when you view the film with an oppositional gaze with lens of race, gender and class. As previously discussed, all of the main characters that are viewed as appealing happen to be white.“…black female spectators have had to develop looking relations within a cinematic context that constructs our presence as absence, that denies the “body” of the black female so as to perpetuate white supremacy and with it a phallocentric spectatorship where the woman to be looked at and desired is “white” (Hooks, 250).” This is true for Mean Girls, with no people of color playing a significant role, and when there is a person of color they’re being stereotyped. Along with this, the females are shown are extremely sexualized. Regina and her clique are constantly obsessing about their image and weight, and in addition to this they put others down for not conforming to their definition of pretty.

Mulvey’s theory of male gaze is another dominant theme. She comes to the conclusion that “The woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium (Mulvey, 33).” The plastics are constantly dressed to impress, with rules dedicated to not wearing sweatpants and wearing pink on Wednesdays. Apart from this, they are constantly being looked at by men and women, for pleasure and always under scrutiny. This act of being looked at is evident during the Halloween party and the talent show especially. They describe Halloween as being the one time of the year that you can dress like a “total slut” and no one judges. All the girls dress in lingerie and animal ears in an attempt to look sexy and appeal to the men at the party, at one point we can see two females kissing and two men cheering them on while they watch. This is an obvious example of Mulvey’s male gaze, using the women as an object for the male sexual pleasure. They also serve as an erotic object for the audience watching the film. During the talent show, the Plastics are dressed in sexy Santa outfits and dance in a way that can be observed as provocative. In this scene, a male character approaches a different girl and says, “damn, rather see you out there shaking your thang” outright objectifying and reducing her value as a person, a very common theme.

When viewing with a lens of economic class this film continues to show how problematic it really is. The fact that the plastics as all wealthy is made apparent to the audience from the very beginning and is meant to add to their appeal. It is pointed out that Gretchen’s father invented the toaster strudel and is extremely wealthy. We also quickly find out that Regina lives in a mansion and is not modest about it. Even Cady, although her house is more modest, lives very comfortable with two successful, educated parents. This is a concern when analyzing the movie because similar to the lack of women of color, the lack of lower class portrays the superiority of the wealthy. This wealth also aligns closely with the hierarchy of the high school, the more money you have the more popular you are despite your personality.

One might argue that this is just a comedy and harmless satire. However, this film is still relevant to this day and has had an influence on the youth. All films are very purposeful and thought out. “The filmmaker and the editor watch the collected footage over and over, deciding which portions of which takes they will assemble into the final cut of a movie. They do so with the same scrutiny that was applied to the actual filming. Even if something occurred on film without their planning for it, they make a conscious choice whether to include that chance occurrence. What was chance in the filming becomes choice in editing (Smith, 128).” Every detail of mean girls was scrutinized by multiple people who were all very aware of the messages that it was sending to its audience. All aspects from using the “R” word multiple time to the lack of colored cast members, along with all the other problematic factors the film portrays.

References:

Hooks, bell. (2002). “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation.

Mulvey, Laura. (1975). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16(3), 30.

Smith, Greg. (2001). “’It’s Just a Movie”: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes.” Cinema Journal 41(1), 127-134.

The outsiders within

The iconic pop idols Beyoncé and Jay Z challenge the white supremacist capitalist imperialist phallocentric gaze in their new music video “Apes**t”. When they take over what is considered one of the most prestigious institutions for fine Western art – Louvre – as their location for the music video, it clarifies the lyrics for the audience: “I can’t believe me made it”. The Carters show that they are holding the power now. They have taken over the elite space and challenge our white western male gaze and the stereotypical viewing of black people.

In this musicvideo, the Carters put themselves at the center of the scene, in the position of the “to be looked at-ness”. We as the spectators get the pleasure of looking at their beautiful powerful rebellious appearance. In big parts of the video, the couple is staged in front of the Mona Lisa painting with their backs turned against the painting as the opposite of what you would normally do in that space. By placing themselves in front of the Mona Lisa and not giving it any attention by looking at it, they are questioning what’s usually considered as the object of desire. They are challenging the notions of her value, and in the broader context, the value of the perspective and the gaze that all the art at the Louvre was made from – the white western patriarchal perspective.

At the same time, they also take on the role as the spectators as they constantly hold their eyes at the camera almost through the whole video.  In a lot of the clips, they stand in a static non-moving pose, as if it were a picture, the only thing moving is their eyes always following the camera. This video is a prime example of what Hook means when she says, “there is a power in looking” (Hooks 1996, 247). With their ice-cold gaze, they show their resistance – the resistance of the white supremacy and the claiming of a predominantly white space. They show their power by steering, calming black people’s right to gaze as a political commentary to what has always been the white man’s right.

“My mother taught me the importance of not just of being seen but of seeing myself,” said Beyoncé to the magazine Vogue in August this year. In this sentence, Beyoncé pinpoints Hooks notion of the black female spectator. The fact that the representation of black women in media has been so sexist and stereotypical has forced black women to look critically at what they have been shown. “Given the context of class exploitation, and racist and sexist domination, it has only been through resistance, struggle, reading, and looking “against the grain” that black women have been able to value our process of looking enough to publicly name it” (Hooks 1996,258). Beyoncé shows this theme in the clip where she and the troupe of dancers stand in front of the Jaques-Louis David’s The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress Joséphine. Again, neither the dancers or Beyoncé ever takes a look at the classist painting behind them. By their dancing, they claim the spectators’ attention, while the painting again works as just a background. The black women, of different shades, marked by clothing fitted for their shade, holds hands and show their strength and resistance as a critique of their lack of representation within the western art canon.

As they celebrate their beauty trough amazing choreography and a majestic powerful appearance, they also present a resistance by challenging the stiff predominantly white museum institution and transform the Louvre to a marker for their own success. With this video, the Carters blur the lines of high culture and pop culture. The lyrics saying “We made it!” gives hints about the ambiguous aspect of their roles as outsiders within with an oppositional gaze ­– they spot the hypocrisy of the supremacist power dynamic, but also take advantage of it. This is not just a happy celebration of their own success, but an ironic identification. The short clips of real black lives, with the recreation of the NFL players kneeling, as a reference to police brutality stands in stark contrast to the couple rich, successful couple at Louvre. By being a part of both worlds, the black experience and being a part of the pop culture elite, it gives more power to their “fuck you” to the white supremacy.

The Carters seem like they are very conscious of their double standard of appreciating high art, but also being conscious of the historical inequality and repression that art represents. Their power lies in the counterpoint they represent by appropriation Louvre. Being a part of a marginalized and often stigmatized community, but also by being a part of the pop culture elite and acknowledge that, they have the power to both correct and remind us of the erasure of black lives and also potentially ordain a new status quo by establishing a new black elite.

 

Sources

Hooks, Bell. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators”. New Jersey 1996

https://www.vogue.com/article/beyonce-september-issue-2018

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/beyonce-jay-z-louvre-apeshit-1304711

Lets Transform Transformers!! (Media Example)

As a kid one of my favorite things to do each weekend was to huddle up with my siblings, and watch Transformers cartoon series. The show reached out to our childish imagination, with its robots transforming into cool, and colorful cars, jets, and sometimes even crazier things like a Star Wars battle ships. The cartoon series was born in Japan, and the first run took place from 1980 to 1993. The premise of the show was very simple, yet exciting; two different groups of robots transform into cool things and battle it out – the funny thing is that no side ever really won, so the show continued, and as we got older our focus shifted more towards different cartoon series as transformers started airing less in US, and finally stopped (this is before internet was available to many households, so online viewing was not possible).  In this essay I will be looking at Male Gaze, and Oppositional Gaze, and the evidence of how it is present in Hollywood, and the 2007 Block Buster – Transformers.

Now fast forward to 2000. Cartoon network decided that that they would pick up the series and remake it, giving it a new story, and a fresh start. By this time, I was in my late teens, a junior in high school, but I would still make time to enjoy the series. The first thing I noticed is that the series had lost its simple yet effective charm of good guys vs bad guys, each episode would focus on a human element that was missing from the Japanese original and added some sort of drama. I did not like the cartoon network version very much, so I stopped watching the series, and watched more of family guy/ south park. Sometime passed and while watching a movie in a theater with friends, we saw preview of what came to be the most illogical, stereotypical movie of 2007. This was off coarse Transformers the movie directed by Michael Bay.

While the idea was great and fun, the execution, and the direction the movie took was extremely poor, it almost seemed like it was written by a 13-year-old, and it was almost amazing to see that the movie was OK’d by the cast. Now to be fair it is not the worst movie I have seen, that honor would go to “The Room” but it was still extremely bad. To start with the movie has lots of explosions, so if you are a fan of fireworks or feel like you missed the 4^th of July fireworks in your city just watch the first transformers movie, and your urge for watching fireworks will be satisfied for the next few years. Now let’s talk about more serious things in the movie – the Characters, especially the female cast of the movie. In my humble opinion I can’t seem to find out what motived them to sign up for this movie, after they read the script.

Alongside Sam we have two important (but not important, you will see why) female characters in the movie. The first is Mikaela (Megan Fox), and second is Sam’s mom (Julie white, a traffic actor who is not given much to work with). While Megan Fox has potential for good acting, the big issue in this movie is that the director reduces her role to be eye candy for other characters in the movie, and the audience. Transformers uses Mikaela as an object of Male Gaze (Laura Mulvey – Visual Pleasure, and Narrative Cinema). If we examine Mikaela’s introduction scene, we notice that the we don’t really go into depth to build her character up e.g. what is she going to school for? What are her future plans after high school? What does she want to do in her life? Why is she not given any intellectual character development? None of those questions are ever brought up, but instead our focus becomes how well she knows cars, and how well she knows sexual relationships. In her introduction scene the camera pans over her sweating body, starting from stomach, panning over her legs, and finally her breast, and face – I kid you not, but this scene is uncomfortably long, maybe a 2-3 minutes. This theme continues in the movie, because Sam’s whole family comments on Mikaela and her looks, but even the robots in the movie are commenting, which seems a bit odd since they don’t have any concept of attraction or gender attraction, but yes, the movie goes there, because for some reason it thinks it needs to (Robotic Gaze? I am not sure, as we also see a little robot trying to hump Mikaela’s leg for no apparent reason). We notice that after Sam graduate’s college, he is going to a 4-year university while his girl-friend has no goals afterwards, none that she mentions, or the movie ever brings up. Mikaela is just there to be saved by Sam, first by her weird boy-friend, second by the hordes of transformers that are invading the earth.  When in trouble Mikaela screams from scene to scene and is not able to take decisions on her own unless Sam or the autoboots (good transformers) are there to make the choice for her. Sam’s mon the only other important female character and is also given zero depth to her character, her main purpose in the movie is to make jokes, that aren’t very funny, she is very one dimensional, and shown how a cool mom figure should behave, but nothing she does is cool – e.g. commenting on Sam’s girlfriend, laughing at her dogs having sex, getting high and making wise cracking jokes. The things are funny, but again they make the character look very stupid, because besides these things she is helpful to the movie in any other way. Male gaze is extremely evident in this movie, misogynistic themes are present all over the place.

Another thing that a critical viewer will notice is the lack of black female characters. The movie has no black female characters at (Bell Hooks – Oppositional Gaze) – since there is a lack of female representation oppositional gaze can still be applied to women in this film. The issue is that how can female audiences of color connect themselves to this movie? Well they can’t – at all, due to the lack of representation – they are not represented and missing. Most people of color in this movie serve as comic relief characters, but that’s a topic large enough to be discussed by itself. We see that (Mulvey) that the male protagonist is manipulating the plot while the female alongside is just along for the ride and accommodate his needs.

Overall the lack of strong female characters, and their representation in this transformers movie has led to be more critical of the series, and as new transformers movies have been released in the past few years, which I have also seen due to requests from friends, and family members the issues from the first movie are exacerbated, and criticized by the audience, and reviewers. Even though the Transformers movie premise is a fun and exciting one, I think the director should take a different approach. If the movie wants to focus on drama, it should give its male, and female characters stronger, more intellectual character development. The main protagonist could be a strong, independent female/ female of color. (like the one from the fallout game series, or like the one from the newest tomb raider game). I also think that the film deserves a new director, as Michael Bay has made the issues worse in the later iterations of the movie. Nothing against Mr. Bay, but sometimes it is helpful to apply new ideas instead of rehashing old ones. Come on Hollywood “Just Do it” – and yes I am not quoting Nike, its Shia LaBeouf.

 

Material used:

Laura Mulvey – Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (Male Gaze)

Bell Hooks – The Oppositional Gaze, Black Female Spectators

Mean Girls And Gays

“She doesn’t even go here!” From Damian’s lips to God’s ears, actor Daniel Franzese spoke the truth in Tina Fey’s 2004 hit Mean Girls. And yes, you read that right; this movie was released 14 years ago. For those who have not seen Lindsay Lohan’s career highlight, the movie surrounds an exclusive clique of young women in high school. When Cady (Lohan) first joins the new school, outcasts Janis and Damian take her under their wings. Rejected from the mainstream high schoolers, Damian and Janis have established a strong friendship outside of the high school populars. From the start, the character of Damian was an instant classic, spouting iconic one liners like it was his job. And in a way, it sorta was. Damian exists as a one-dimensional gay stereotype, perpetuating the idea that feminine gay men exist as complementary sources of comedy for the heterosexual female and nothing more.

The gay-sidekick is a well-trodden trope, sprouting up in classics like Sex & The City, Will & Grace, and Lena Dunham’s Girls. Mostly employed in female-led comedies, the Gay Best Friend acts as an alleviation of heterosexual male ideals, showcasing feminnine attributes in every dose of fashion tips or sex advice. Through these actions, effeminate gay men further Mulvey’s ideas surrounding symbolic castration. “The woman as icon … always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified,” (Mulvey, p. 35). It is in effeminate gay men that women see an alleviation of this anxiety from men in power as effeminate gay men could also be seen as castrated. By not possessing and exhibiting traditional aspirational male attributes, effeminate men are seen as a threat to male pleasure and identity.

This is so clearly showcased in Damian’s performance of “Beautiful” at the school talent show.

According to Billboard of December 14, 2017, the UK LGBT rights activist group Stonewall named Christina Aguilera’s anthem the most empowering song for LGBT individuals in the past decade. This song and accompanying music video offer words and images of LGBT affirmation so it makes sense Damian would perform this song two years after this song was released. In the scene, Damian is situated against a group of presumably heterosexual masculine males in the audience who quite literally throw a show at his head.

This shared theoretical castration offers a unique opportunity for a kinship to be shorn between gay men and straight women. But the secondary representation of the Gay Best Friend produces an unequal relationship in which gay men function as little more than comedic breaks and sources of advice. We can see this idea play out in the aforementioned talent show. Damian’s performance at the talent show is played for comedy. His song choice and performance style could be interpreted as parody, an exaggeration of a classic gay sterotype. It is important to look at why this is funny and what function this scene serves. It is one of the only times Damian is shown without direct relation to a female and this song and his performance is used as a punchline.

In Mean Girls, Damian is introduced straight-away (no pun intended) as too gay to function. His femininity and gayness are inherent to his identity in the movie, which is not necessarily a bad thing. My condemnation towards this representation is not that his sexuality is showcased and primary, but rather that is only exists in relation to the heterosexual womanhood showcased in the movie.

Damian does not exist beyond a sidekick, coming around and touting instantly quotable catchphrases. He does not transcend the stereotype he is representing; we see nothing truly human about him. And this is absolutely not to say that a feminine man is bad representation, but one must look at the power that is being employed and why. His interests are not inherently bad but they are positioned as a complement to straight womanhood; Damian knows everything about fashion so he can help Cady with clothes, he knows everything about the Plastics so he can help Cady fit in, he knows exactly the nuances of female politics in the school so he can help Cady take down Regina.

We hear a lot about how representation is important. But how exactly? “Identification can only be made through recognition, and all recognition is itself an implicit confirmation of the ideology of the status quo,” (hooks, p. 251). In a lot of ways, I identify with Damian. The majority of my friends are girls and you can bet your bottom dollar I notice when they dye their hair or wear a new shirt. But through this identification with the character, I am simultaneously acknowledging the status quo and internalizing the norms presented in this form of media representation.

It is hard to criticize media that has a positive takeaway message that was created by a well loved public figure (Tina Fey). The central lesson in Mean Girls is feminist solidarity, building women up instead of tearing each other down. This noble message can make it hard to criticize aspects of the movie. “If you let go of the notion that the filmmaker is trying to convey a message, then the activity of viewers is to interpret the film according to their lives, their experiences, their tastes—not the filmmaker’s,” (Smith, p. 130). Our viewpoint and criticism of the movie is not less valuable than what the director or screenwriter is trying to say. Yes, Tina Fey was great on SNL and 30 Rock is potentially the best sitcom ever created, but that does not mean we can absolve her of any wrongdoing.

Damian and other Gay Best Frienders marked a significant step forward in represenation. We were seeing mainstream portrayals of gay men, many of whom were effeminate, in a way we had never seen before. But we must work to make these gay men central to the story, not just in service to the straight female lead. Because Damian deserves better.

 

References:

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

Bell Hooks (1992). “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectator”. The Feminism and Visual Cultural Reader. New York: Routledge, 2003: Amelia Jones. ISBN 9780415543705.

Greg M. Smith; “It’s Just a Movie”: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes, Cinema Journal, 41, Number 1, Fall 2001 (Article) Published by University of Texas Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2001.0025

Yeah Yeah, Audrey Hepburn’s Great and All…

Breakfast at Tiffany’s is regarded as one of the cult classics in cinematic history and likewise, Audry Hepburn one of the most highly sought after actresses after this film. I watched it when I was 8 with my family and you can guess the silence that occurred after the film ended. I didn’t know what I was feeling I just knew it felt bad– a mixture of confusion and self-hatred I couldn’t quite understand but would take years for me to conquer. The film centers around an odd socialite named Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) and Paul Varjak (George Pepperd), a writer who meets Ms. Golightly in the big apple, facing obstacles concerning both of their fears of love and intimacy.  It’s New York at it’s finest, where writers come to dream, and romantics find their happy ending. Unfortunately, Hollywood has its dark side. Golightly’s neighbor. I. Y. Yunioshi is an encapsulation of every weapon of discrimination aimed towards Asians and Asian-Americans and even worse, was played by Mickey Rooney, a white comedian and actor. With Bell Hook’s use of oppositional gaze, an argument can be illustrated by studying how the perception of Asian men can be convoluted in Western society through the reiteration of racist stereotypes and propaganda.                                     

In Hollinger’s book, Feminist Film Studies, Fanon mentions Said’s concept of Orientalism stating, “…portray Asian and Middle Eastern men as the antithesis of everything that Western men like to think they are. Thus, Eastern men are characterized as weak, feminized, inferior, and welcoming of Western domination” (193). There’s a scene where Holly Golightly throws a roaring party in her apartment and Yunioshi complains but can’t control the volume or craziness of the party representing his useless attempts and easy vulnerability to “Western domination.” As Yunioshi gets up from bed, he falls down numerous times, perpetuating the stereotype that Asians have small eyes which contrasts Euro-centric beauty standards of wide eyes, but it shows his weakness and this strange dysfunctionality that dehumanizes him.

If that wasn’t enough, the movie writes Yunioshi with a peverted gaze, always peering at Golightly in a way that raises hairs and doing favor after favor for her with hopes of a date. There’s a scene where Holly needs to be rung into the building and Yunioshi has to ring her up late at night. He’s clearly angry but Golightly promises him “pictures” which eases his distress. This brings light to Mulvey’s idea of the “woman as image, man as bearer of the look” in her essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, as she writes, “The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure” (3). The film could show a different interpretation; of course the gaze represents the sexualization of women but there’s also this hilarity that the audience is supposed to be tapping into. We’re supposed to guffaw at the mere thought that Yunioshi could ever be in the same league as Golightly, apart from the looks and the idiocracy. There is a history that Asian men are undesirable in western society and you can feel the film telling us supposed to ridicule Yunioshi’s futile affections.  

Yunioshi is the only character that has an uncomfortable aggression inside him. This could be an ode to World War II Japanese propaganda and reiterate that Japan is an enemy to the U.S. This just further supports the tragedy that Japanese and Asian-Americans will never truly belong here. The dark makeup and over exaggerated broken teeth make Yunioshi into this alien-like caricature that is reminiscent of the scary and villainous images drawn for World War posters against the Japanese. Yunioshi’s frightening temper further exiles him as the other, different and dangerous from the main white cast- the Asian man is this scary criminal while the white people are innocent citizens. It leaves the only Asian men in his own corner and further supports that white people are not only the default but “precious” or to be protected.

The fact that it’s a white man playing this character addresses the issue of the erasure of Asian faces in Hollywood that’s still present today. Asians are always written out of stories or if they’re included, their “otherness” is either accentuated like in this film or neutralized, assimilating them to whiteness so they’re more accepted. It’s like Hollywood doesn’t understand that Scarlett Johansson is not Asian and there is a way to celebrate a culture without ridiculing it or erasing their differences to show everyone “they’re just like us.” Yunioshi’s room with its bamboo panels and bonsai trees is a clear act of cultural appropriation because we know it’s not coming out of a place of respect but from a place of ridicule. It emphasizes the differences between the typical or golden American home and the strange home of an unfamiliar foreigner. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is just one of the first of many to follow throughout film history to portray or erase Asians and Asian-Americans in an unjust and inaccurate light.

In Bell Hook’s essay, Movies and Mass Culture, she notes, “They were all acutely aware of cinematic racism…” (4). I just remember watching this movie when I was young, knowing it was big and famous and a beautiful ode to the New York dream, and seeing this version of what people thought I was, my family was, and not being able to find any joy in the rest of the film or the gloriousness of Audrey Hepburn.  I thought of all the brilliant and strong Asian men in my life who have sacrificed everything for their loved ones and I couldn’t fathom why or even how anyone could come up with this character that was supposed to represent all the strong immigrants I had the privilege to know. It came as a sudden realization to me that people didn’t see us the way I saw us, and it honestly affected how I saw us after that. Either the misrepresentation or underrepresentation in the mainstream narrative slowly changed how I saw myself and my culture… and that’s a whole other story.

References:

Hollinger, Karen. (2012). “Feminist Film Studies and Race.” In Feminist Film Studies, 190-204.

hooks, bell. (2002). “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation, 115-131.

Mulvey, Laura. (1975). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16(3), 6-18.

The Women of “Spytainment”

Every time I sit down to watch a mainstream action movie… I’m waiting, waiting for the token hot girl to show up and draw in the looks of the main man and the voyeuristic male audience.  She is always elusive and resisting, right up until the point where she sleeps with the leading man. I get my hopes up every time, thinking “maybe this is the movie when it doesn’t happen” or “wow maybe she really is here to progress the plot” until inevitably, the leading man becomes too hard to resist

My experience watching “The Bourne Identity” (2002), a “spytainment” (Hasian) movie  riddled with american exceptionalism and misogyny, provided me with that same false optimism as every other time I’ve seen an action movie.  Marie, the leading woman is introduced when Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) fleeing the swiss government, jumps into her car and offers her $20,000 to drive him to Paris.  Marie accepts, as she is in desperate need of the money. For the rest of the film acts is at the whim of the troubles of the fugitive Jason Bourne, supporting him through his time on the run.

The movie uses Marie as an object of voyeuristic male gaze that Laura Mulvey describes in her piece “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. The portrayal of the woman in the movie is misogynistic and should be viewed with a critical eye. Bell Hooks describes the oppositional gaze of black female spectators in her piece “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators” saying “black viewers of movies and television experienced visual pleasure in a context in which looking was also about contestation and confrontation”  Acknowledging that “The Bourne Identity” does not represent black females at all, this confrontational and contestational gaze can still be applied to the representation of women in general in the film, looking specifically at the character Marie. Maire is used as an object of male desire in the film, and exemplifies Laura Mulvey’s idea of “Woman as Image.”  

Before even the first frame of the movie plays, the presence of the male gaze is evident.  Prominently displayed on the movie poster is an image of Marie and Jason kissing seemingly naked.  This invites the viewer to view Marie in a voyeuristic way.

The interpretation of Marie, an unsuspecting, struggling german woman is one that does not align with real women and is all to familiar in action films. Marie is easily convinced to help Jason, as she is presented as helpless and needs to accept his offer.  After driving the fugitive Bourne to Paris, she sees her own face on a wanted poster, as an international search for the two ensues. Instead of leaving Bourne behind after she receives her payment she decides to continue to help him.

During viewing I found myself confused about the motivations of Marie.  She has nothing to gain and everything to lose by deciding to help him, especially because at this point in the film, their relationship has not taken a romantic turn.  But the reality is that Marie’s character does not have the complex motivations I am trying to analyze, she is there simply to provide a point of gaze for the audience and the man in the film.  The objectification of Marie is so striking, I could not seem to enjoy the action and plot of the film as I usually would. Similar to the oppositional gaze of black women who “testified that to experience fully the pleasure of that cinema they had to close down critique, analysis, they had to forget women” (Hooks).  In order to enjoy this movie, a woman would have to ignore the rampant sexism of the existence of the character of Marie, who I argue is there explicitly to provide an object of sexual desire and sleep with Jason Bourne.

It is frustrating to see so few female characters in action movies, and even more frustrating that when they are present, they are stereotypical damsels in distress, who always seem to fall madly in love with the main male and lose all sense of judgement. These motifs are exemplified in the film “The Bourne Identity.” When a special agent breaks in the apartment where Marie and Jason are hiding, Marie stands by helplessly, periodically screaming.

This reiterates Laura Mulvey’s conclusion that “pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female” (p. 33) with the man actively manipulating the plot and the woman standing passively by.

After escaping the assassin, Jason and Marie survive yet another car chase and take refuge in a Parisian hotel. With little buildup, the two sleep together even though Marie admittedly does not know who Jason is, as he doesn’t even know himself.  This again exemplifies the role of the woman to “work against the devolopment of the story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation” (p. 33). Throughout the entire film, Maries actions have little to no effect on the plot.  

Another problematic element of the film that I mentioned earlier is the theme of “american exceptionalism” that drives the plot of the film.  A perfect example of the “spytainment” films that M. A. Hasian discusses in “Military Orientalism at the Cineplex: A Postcolonial Reading of Zero Dark Thirty.” Bourne, who is an american operative was originally sent to assassinate the black leader of an african nation, Nykwana Wombosi.  The movie portrays the dictator as one sided and corrupt, convincing the viewer that his extermination is necessary.  When Bourne decides not to murder Wombosi, he is perpetuating a positive portrayal of american military in film, showing the ability of americans to control foreign affairs, but also paining them in a humane light.

Next time I watch a mainstream “Spytainment” film, I’ll hope its different than the others.  Hope this time the objectified woman on the poster is complex and manipulates the plot, interacts with other people in a way that is not inherently sexual and helpless. Likely, I’ll be disappointed again, as these misogynistic motifs are what continue to sell films to the american public. It is important that I continue to apply an oppositional gaze towards these portrays, in the hopes that they will improve in the future.

 

Sources:

Class Readings:

Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”

Bell Hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators”

M.A Hasian, “Military Orientalism at the Cineplex: A Postcolonial Reading of Zero Dark Thirty”

Video Clips: Youtube

Photo: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258463/

 

Spring Breakers – Just No.

In case we needed more examples of young, hot girls in tiny bikinis on a beach ready to party hardy for spring break, this movie does literally exactly that. With some pretty big name actors (Selena Gomez, James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens) I expected so much more from this movie.

The opening scene is something reminiscent of a late night Girls Gone Wild commercial; lots of boobs and alcohol and sexual licking of popsicles. Not exactly the most subtle way to indicate what is to come of the movie, but hey, it least they got the point across! The focus is completely on the women in the footage, turning them into sexual objects right off the bat.

We learn early on that Selena Gomez’s character, Faith, is from a religious family and participates in behaviors with her friends that her family would not approve of like smoking, drinking, and partying with her friends. By acting rebellious to earn enough money for spring break (such as stealing her teacher’s car with her friends to go and rob a business at gunpoint) and spending spring break in Florida, Faith is acting in resistance to the small town conservative life she grew up in. Not bad, right? A coming of age story about a girl learning to make her own decisions, leave her parents, and do what she wants! Right? Oh how I wish it were that simple…

The focus on the spring break vacation as a spiritual and invigorating trip for this group of girls but painting the entire experience as nothing more than a giant objectification of women’s bodies just doesn’t quite sit right with me. I’m all for partying and having a good time and there is nothing wrong with nudity, sex, and sexuality – but this film really missed it big time to show a transformative story focusing on empowerment and autonomy for Faith and the other characters of this movie. The film contributes to the narrative that the best time of your life and the most fun you can have as a young woman is getting drunk and being objectified by a bunch of dudes slapping your ass and encouraging you to strip and take body shots.

All of the women in this film are portrayed as nothing more than an object for male satisfaction, including a pretty problematic scene that depicts a very drunk girl and an encounter with a large group of men. She is shown heavily drinking with the men and encouraged to strip and participate in sexual activity with them, and at many points she is saying “you can’t have this” and telling them she won’t sleep with them while taking off her bra and what is portrayed in the movie as enticing them. So much for “no means no” and enthusiastic consent!!! The movie reallllllllly got some things wrong and the perpetuation of rape culture isn’t my cup of tea. This reminds me of Mulvey’s argument and when they write, “In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.” (Mulvey, 33). The scene is shown while we hear Faith on the phone with her parents assuring them she’s not partying, having a good time, and staying safe. Meanwhile the girls are living out their fantasy of sex, drugs, and violent/threatening crimes. Faith’s clear internal struggle with her new lifestyle and the conflict with her morals is honestly kind of hard to watch because the entire premise of her fantasy of spring break revolves around the use of the female body as an object for the male gaze and male satisfaction and perpetuation of rape culture.

I’m pretty sure this movie was aimed to be a satirical mockery of the spring break culture, but it wasn’t funny at all – it was just the worst of the worst parts of spring break culture wrapped up in a box with big celebrities on the cover. James Franco’s character was the only comical part of this movie just because he was so ridiculous, but his character was still pretty dang problematic. He appears in the movie when he bails the group of friends out of jail, saving them as the heroic gangster prince charming he is. His character romanticizes what it means to embody a badass gangster and running with “bad bitches.” The race of the characters in this movie seems to be no mistake but yet a pointed decision in who would play these roles. Smith argues that every prop, setting, actor, and moment is a thought-out decision made by the directors and producers of media (Smith, 130). The gangster and the group of girls are able to conveniently move around the concept of race in this film as they are mostly white or white-passing.

The way women are portrayed in mass media and in this movie reinforces the power in Mulvey’s concept of the male gaze; the position of power in the male, heterosexual, masculine viewer and the female body as an object of sexual pleasure. bell hooks theorized about the oppositional gaze, in which black women reclaimed cinema and media through the power of the gaze. In this film, I am reminded of hooks’ concept that black women were (and unfortunately still are) not only represented in media as hypersexual tropes, but they are expected to be the viewee and never the viewer. The power in gaze is seen in this film as it is directed toward heterosexual male viewers who want to see the “good girl gone bad” and not the women who are being objectified.

By the end of the movie Faith and her friends evolve into true violent criminals, still reliving their days over spring break. They are seen threatening people with guns on multiple occasions, spending hours doing nothing but drinking and doing drugs, and romanticize a lifestyle of drugs sex and crime. Encouraging young women and our society as a whole to engage in this spring break culture is problematic and the movie literally wasn’t even funny at all. So just no.

hooks, bell. (2002). “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation, 115-131.

Mulvey, Laura. (1975). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16(3), 6-18.

Smith, Greg M. “‘It’s Just a Movie’: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes.” Cinema Journal, vol. 41, no. 1, 2001, 128-131.

Long Duk Dong is the Tip of the Iceberg Oppositional Gaze Post

The film Sixteen Candles (1984), directed by John Hughes, was meant to be an American coming-of-age comedy film that stars Molly Ringwald, Michael Schoeffling, and Anthony Michael Hall. Molly Ringwald plays Samantha who is turning 16 who is infatuated with the character Jake. Jake is played by Michael Schoeffling and he is a sports star with good looks and clothes, and he is dating the prom queen Caroline. Anthony Michael Hall plays Ted who is known as the geek at their highschool and has a crush on Samantha, however he ends up befriending Jake to get some physical action with Caroline. There is also an exchange student named Long Duk Dong, who is played by Gedde Wantanabe, which literally translates into penis. Long Duk Dong serves practically no purpose other than to poke fun at the expense of another race. There are so many racist and sexist things within this film when you look at it through the oppositional gaze. Looking at the film in particular from a 19 year-old straight white female perspective, the sexism and predatory nature of the film seeps out from the “comedy” that it was once seen as. Sixteen Candles reinforces the idea of rape culture where men run the world and have the ability to run over women in whatever ways they please.

When I first watched this film, I saw it for no more than a light-hearted comedy. I laughed at the boys looking at the girls underwear. It was silly how someone did not recall how they ended up in someone else’s car the morning after when they were waking up. But now, 9 years later watching this film a second time, I am astonished at the deep levels of pressing sexist issues that this film underlines and the rape culture that it can instil in young men and women all around. As Hooks writes, “Even in the worst circumstances of domination, the ability to manipulate one’s gaze in the face of structures of domination that would contain it, opens up the possibility of agency”.1 This resonates with my viewing of this film as I look with an oppositional gaze against the objectifications against the women, men succeeding in their conquests at the woman’s expense, and sexual predatory nature and gestures taken towards the women with no consequences whatsoever for their actions.

Thijssen writes, “Sixteen Candles contains some worrying messages with regards to gender roles, female agency, and consent”.3 Tying all of these underlying messages together creates the morality and system of rape culture instilled within these characters that were supposedly telling a simplistic teenage coming-of-age comedy. Rape culture can be defined as, “an environment in which rape is prevalent and in which sexual violence against women is normalized and excused in the media and popular culture”.2 More than anything else highlighted via my oppositional gaze through watching this film is the rape culture perpetuated through the use of misogynistic language, objectification of women’s bodies, and the glamorization of sexual assualt.

The entire film is about a young woman, Samantha, infatuated with a young man, Jake. Yet somehow, Samantha ends up kissing Jake in the end of the film over a candlelit cake right after meeting him for the first time… Samantha has never met Jake before this incident. All she knows is that he is pretty and has nice clothes and is good at sports. Jake is a jerk in real life, yet he still ends up getting the girl in the end. This example shows that a good looking guy can get whoever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants, wherever he wants. Another example of this is when Jake is talking to Ted about Caroline at a party while Caroline is passed out. Jake says, “I could violate her in 10 different ways if I wanted to”. Ted goes on to ask him why he hasn’t already, and then Jake proceeds to offer Caroline on up to Ted. Ted takes Jake up on the offer and goes off with a passed out Caroline in his car. This is an example of complete masculine predation of both Ted and Jake against Caroline. Jake offers up his own girlfriends practically lifeless body up to Ted, and for Ted to take advantage of the offer is abuse of the situation. Caroline is passed out. She cannot provide consent, nor can she physically handle herself in this situation. In this moment, she is relying on her boyfriend, Jake, to take care of her. However, Jake literally hands her off to Ted to later on be raped.

This film portrays the message that rape is okay and that consent is not necessary no matter what states people are in. Consent is not only about sex or sexual acts. As stated above, Ted literally rapes Caroline while she is drunk and passed out in the backseat of his car. He not only rapes her, he also goes to his friend’s house to show them of this great act of having a girl in his car and proceeds to take photos for proof. This goes to show that consent can be applied to things such as marriage and photographs as well. For another example, Samantha’s sister gets married while intoxicated on pain killers due to period pains. It’s supposed to be humorous because aren’t all menstruation jokes funny? Samantha’s sister should not have been allowed to give legal consent to get married while under complete intoxication, however everyone in her family pushes her along to the altar practically against her will.

As practically any other 80’s movie about teenage love, there is a school dance. At the dance Ted continously asks Samantha to dance. Samantha clearly doesn’t want to particapte with him and is getting uncomfortable, but he keeps pressing her to. Ted doesn’t seem to get the message and it pushes Samantha to the edge of breaking down where she runs off into the hallway crying. This example shows that it is okay for men to act like predators against women no matter if they say no. Ted proves this true in another example with Samantha in which he pressures her to give him her underwear. He then uses Samantha’s underwear to show off to his friends and demonstrate his ability to “get women”. This demonstrates the nature of the teenage men in this film to so easily objectify women and their bodies. Ted seems to disregard how Samantha will feel when everyone in school will go around calling her a “skank” and “slut” for having her underwear being shown to the school. Ted not only breaks Samantha’s trust, but he dehumanizes her by sacrificing her self-respect for his own self-pride.

To conclude, the film Sixteen Candles reinforces and instills the system of rape culture which can be identified when viewing this film through the oppositional gaze. Rape culture is not only dangerous, but it is important to recognize and address early on because once it is created it can be dismissed and regarded as everyday nature and be normalized.

 

References:

1. Hooks, B. (2015). Black looks: Race and representation. New York: Routledge.
2. Marshall University. (2018). Rape Culture. Retrieved October, 2018, from https://www.marshall.edu/wcenter/sexual-assault/rape-culture/  
3. Thijssen, K. (2016). Hooked on Hughes: A feminist consideration of Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink. Radboud University, (Nov.)

The Curse of the Damsel in Distress

As a kid I was obsessed with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Jack Sparrow’s antics kept me glued to the TV to the point where my brother would come into the living room and yell at me to turn it off claiming I had just watched this same movie last weekend. Knowing this was one hundred percent true, I adamantly denied it and clung to the argument that anything was better than Simpsons reruns. And so, I happily continued to watch Captain Jack save the day while guzzling rum and sailing the open ocean.

A few years later, Curse of the Black Pearl showed up on Netflix and, feeling nostalgic, I decided to relive my childhood. As I started to watch, something was not the same, something was bothering me. Then I realized… Elizabeth Swan was bugging the shit out of me. Without even realizing it, I was employing the oppositional gaze into my own critical analysis of her helpless character which is primarily portrayed as the damsel in distress and love interest.

The opening scenes of the movie portrays Elizabeth as an intelligent, well respected woman of her time. But, this is short lived. Within minutes, Elizabeth is shoved into a corset and toted off to her husband to be’s coronation ceremony. There, not being able to breath due to the torture device she is wearing, she passes out and falls off a cliff into the ocean where she is quickly rescued by none other than Captain Jack Sparrow. What follows is an uncomfortable scene where Jack holds Elizabeth hostage and forces her at gunpoint, to re-buckle his belt and even put his hat back on for him. Historically, pirates are crude, rowdy criminals who steal things and are mean to girls. This is understood and these attributes cannot be left out of a movie about them. Except maybe the last one. Especially when that particular film is deemed fit for thirteen year olds. This is where Greg M. Smith’s “It’s Just A Movie” essay becomes important. Smith states, “Examining a film can give us clues about the meanings and assumptions shared by the members of a culture (pg 132).” Young girls watch this movie and assume they should wait for a man to save them.

This scene effectively plops Elizabeth into the well known role of damsel in distress. But it does not end here. In the next scene, pirates invaded the town and she is captured. William Turner, her longtime admirer, sets out to rescue her. Damsel in distress and now the object of Will’s affection. I wish I could say there is more to Elizabeth’s story but unfortunately there is not. Throughout the rest of the film, Elizabeth is harassed while aboard the ship by the pirates who abducted her. At one point, she is coerced into a risque red dress under the threat that if she did not wear it she could attend dinner naked (again..thirteen year olds?! come on). This scene brings to mind Mulvey’s argument of woman as a sexualized image whose primary function is to be the object of the man’s look. Meanwhile, Will and Jack have all the fun sailing across the sea on a heroic quest to rescue her.

As I rewatched my favorite childhood film I kept hoping Elizabeth’s character would redeem herself in some way. The directors do throw her a couple bones. When she is first being attacked by the pirates she tries defending herself by attempting to arm herself with a sword that is hung on the wall. Additionally, she almost succeeds in outsmarting her captors by invoking the right of parley. They are shocked and somewhat impressed by her knowledge of pirate code. Another thing Elizabeth has going for her is her link to the pirate world. Years ago, she stole a cursed medallion from Will when they rescued him from a shipwreck. Ever since, Elizabeth was fascinated by pirates and oddly in tune with their activities. Furthermore, on the pirate ship, she steals a butter knife and stabs Barbosa in the chest. Unfortunately for her, Captain Barbosa and the rest of the crew turn out to be ghost pirates and cannot be killed because they are already dead. Bummer. All of this aside, the truth is, these small acts of defiance and supernatural edge do little to elevate Elizabeth from her main function in the story line as stereotypical damsel in distress love interest.

The dismal depiction of women in Curse of the Black Pearl comes as no surprise after one trip through the animatronic ridden Disneyland attraction. The film was actually based on the ride. Hopefully Disney does not get the same idea with Splash Mountain because personally I find the animatronics in that one to be even more terrifying. Anyway, one disturbing segment of the Pirates ride is the notorious auction scene where numerous women are being sold to pirates as wives. This year, Disney finally addressed this sexist portion of the ride and instead replaced it with a female pirate named Red auctioning off treasure. Took them long enough.

In the movies that follow the Curse of the Black Pearl, Elizabeth’s story does evolve. One particularly redeeming moment is in the third movie, “At World’s End”. She disguises herself as a man and sneaks onto a ship. No longer in need of the dress she was wearing, she plants it where she knows the crew members will find it. Once they do, their first thought-as Elizabeth expected- is that the ship is haunted. Taking advantage of the crews thick headedness and blind superstition, she ties strings to the arms of the dress and makes it into a puppet. One foggy night, she plays puppet master to both the dress and the crew convincing them to change their course bringing Elizabeth closer to her goal of finding Will.

Wherever Elizabeth’s story takes her in the rest of the franchise, the fact remains that in The Curse of the Black Pearl, Elizabeth’s main role is the girl who needs saving.

References:

Elizabeth, Devon. “Disney World Finally Updated a Very Sexist ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ Ride Scene.” Teen Vogue, TeenVogue.com, 21 Mar. 2018, www.teenvogue.com/story/disney-world-replaces-sexist-pirates-of-the-caribbean-ride-scene.

Greg Smith, Greg M. Smith: It’s Just a Movie, www2.gsu.edu/~jougms/Justamovie.htm.

“LUX Online Template.” Luxonline – Educational Resource about British Film and Video Artists, http://www.luxonline.org.uk/articles/visual_pleasure_and_narrative_cinema(printversion).html.

The Bisexual Woman Tango

Introduction

A work in which a version of me was represented with problematic elements is the film Rent. In Rent, there is a female bisexual character named Maureen who consists mostly of bisexual woman stereotypes. Being a bisexual woman, I have experienced the stigma against us firsthand and am all too familiar with the ideas of what bisexual women are supposedly like. Films that spread stigma, especially a film so widely known as progressive for tackling queer issues, are incredibly harmful. The argument that it is simply a movie and has no harm is extremely misguided, and it is essential that we turn the gaze on bisexual women in Rent back on the film and address the issue of stereotyped bisexual women. Maureen’s character is a fragmented portrayal of what it means to be a bisexual woman. The main pieces of her character that are known to the audience are that of her promiscuous sexuality, while the other characters are developed much more thoroughly as having emotional pain, struggles with disease and addiction, and experiences with impoverishment. Maureen’s character reflects the stereotypes of bisexual women that have been constructed within U.S. society, and it is essential to address the stereotypical portrayals of marginalized groups in order to end those stereotypes.

Maureen

In the film Rent, the first time Maureen is mentioned is when her ex-boyfriend Mark confesses to his ex-friend Benny that she left him for a woman. Mark’s friend Roger and Benny proceed to tease Mark, because his ex-girlfriend now dating a woman somehow implies that Mark is de-masculinated. This teasing implies that lesbian relationships are inferior to heterosexual relationships and invalidates the relationships of bisexual women that are prior to their current relationship, as if our sexuality flips with each partners sex. Shortly after that, Mark gets a call from Maureen where she asks him to come help her fix the audio equipment for her show. Mark eagerly agrees and his friend Collins implies that Maureen has him whipped. Maureen is shown as Mark’s ex who is using him and he is her defenseless victim. This portrayal of Maureen demonstrates the stereotype that bisexual women are manipulative. This scene portrays Maureen as a predator to the poor, helpless, straight Mark. When Mark goes to help Maureen, he meets her girlfriend Joann and they proceed to sing a song called “The Tango Maureen” about how promiscuous she is and how she has the tendency to cheat, but they are unable to leave because of how much they are entranced by her. This portrays bisexual women as predators to heterosexual and homosexual partners. During the song, Maureen is shown tangoing in a tight, red dress with a bunch of people and at the end she kisses and leaves with two of them. This shows her as promiscuous and manipulative of her partners. This depiction objectifies bisexual women and portrays them as seductive antagonists that the protagonists cannot overcome. During the song “Take me or Leave me,” Maureen expresses to Joann at their engagement party that Joann can either accept her as promiscuous or leave because it is who she is. This depicts bisexual women as driven by and unable to control their promiscuity so much so that they will dispose of their partners.

It’s just a film, right?

It is a common argument against feminist film studies that films are for entertainment and should not be criticized so harshly as the negative aspects of them were not intended. On the contrary, media greatly impacts society’s perceptions and films are very intentional. In Smith’s “It’s just a movie,” he asserts that films are “one of the most highly scrutinized, carefully constructed, least random works imaginable,” (Smith, 128) as they are quite expensive to produce and there are many people involved in the production of every film. Some argue that accidents are made during filming and that results in some of the problematic content. Smith reminds his readers that “even if something occurred on film without their planning for it, they make a conscious choice whether to include that chance occurrence. What was chance in the filming becomes choice in editing,” (Smith, 128) which emphasizes how many times during the production process intentional acts are taken to edit the content and remove anything that the film makers did not intend. Thus, Maureen’s very stereotyped character was intentional and needs to be addressed so that film makers are held to higher standards in the future when attempting to depict marginalized identities.

Oppositional Gaze

An oppositional gaze is when the group that has been gazed upon (i.e. black women for their sexuality) looks back on the gazers. hooks in her piece “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators” explains that those being gazed upon are “afraid to look, but fascinated by the gaze. There is power in looking,” (hooks, 247) which expresses the urge to look when you know you are not supposed to. In order to provoke change, groups that are gazed upon need to turn that gaze around and confront the ways they are portrayed. hooks asserts that “even in the worse circumstances of domination, the ability to manipulate one’s gaze in the face of structures of domination that would contain it, opens up the possibility of agency,” (hooks, 248) which emphasizes the choice that altering gaze provides. Thus, in order to break away from misconceptions about bisexual women, we need to address the stereotyped ways we are portrayed in film.

Visuals in Film

The way things look in film are very impactful in audience perceptions. Mulvey in her piece “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema” explains that “film reflects, reveals, and even plays on the straight, socially established interpretation of sexual difference which controls images, erotic ways of looking, and spectacle,” (Mulvey, 28) which emphasizes the way pre-existing norms impact the way films look and what is eroticized and made into a spectacle. The majority of the stress put on Maureen is about her sexuality and how attractive and ‘sexy’ she is. The things that audiences enjoy looking at are impacted by what society claims is attractive or exotified. Mulvey argues this in saying “as an advanced representation system, the cinema poses questions of the ways the unconscious (formed by the dominant order) structures ways of seeing and pleasure in looking” (Mulvey, 29). As bisexual women are largely believed to be promiscuous and hyper-sexual, that is how Maureen was portrayed to resonate with the audience’s preconceptions of bisexual women.

Conclusion

In the film Rent, Maureen’s character is portrayed as hyper-sexual and unable to control her promiscuity. Maureen falls into stereotypes of bisexual women as being overly sexual and cheating, as well as treating their partners as disposable. Maureen’s visual pleasure in the film is largely associated with her sexual orientation, which contributes to the sexualization of bisexual women in society. The way films are made is very intentional and film makers need to be held to higher standards of non-stereotyped portrayals of identities. In order to gain the choice in changing the stereotyped perceptions of bisexual women, we have to confront film makers by putting the gaze back on them as media largely impacts the perpetuation of societal perceptions.

 

 

Works Cited

hooks, bell. (2002). “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation, 115-131.

Mulvey, Laura. (1975). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16(3), 6-18.

Smith, Greg. (2001). “’It’s Just a Movie”: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes.” Cinema Journal 41(1), 127)134.