Women as Image essays

Women as Image essays One of the most basic connections between womens experience in this culture and womens experience in film is precisely the relationship of spectator and spectacle. Since women are spectacles in their everyday lives, theres something about coming to terms with film from the perspective of what it means to be an object of spectacle and what it means to be a spectator that is really coming to terms with that relationship exists both on the screen and in everyday life. Judith Mayne Since the 1960s feminist film theory has been examined in relative detail. The idea of the male gaze, conjectured by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her well known article Visual pleasure and narrative cinema became a base point for further analysis of the spectators role in film. However relevant the idea of the male gaze became, an area requiring more investigation was that of the female spectator and her role in viewing the spectacle on the screen. In the above quote Judith Mayne highlights the importance of the female spectators journey through realizing herself as a spectacle in her everyday life and realizing herself also as a spectator viewing herself as a spectacle on the screen. By coming to terms with the fact that women are spectacles in life, their relationship to women on the screen becomes complex. The male gaze is both voyeuristic and narcissistic, as the male spectator as the bearer of the look sees the female protagonist as both an object/spectacle, and also adopts a narcissistic identification with the ideal ego of the male protagonist. The female spectacle is offered up as an object of fetish for both the male spectators in the film and in for viewing audience. The gaze however need not be specifically male as theorist E. Ann Kaplan explored the relevance of the active/male passive/female debate. The female spectator need not necessarily adopt a masculine gaze to the scree...