Smelik, Anneke. Janet Bergstrom's article Enunciation and Sexual Difference (1979) uses Sigmund Freud's ideas of bisexual responses, arguing that women are capable of identifying with male characters and men with women characters, either successively or simultaneously. Mulvey identifies three "looks" or perspectives that occur in film which, she argues, serve to sexually objectify women. Home Page Research Feminist film theory. In: Laura Doyle (ed.). Feminist theory has been foundational to the establishment and development of film studies as a discipline. This gave rise to a contradiction: whereas feminist film The inference is that she includes female spectators in that, identifying with the male observer rather than the female object of the gaze. Feminist film theory, however, like most film theories, has a tendency to be ahistorical. However, Rosen and Haskell argue that these images are still mediated by the same factors as traditional film, such as the "moving camera, composition, editing, lighting, and all varieties of sound." such, to. This theory, dominant in the 1970s, says that ALL movies were made to reflect some reality and Feminist Film Theory. Feminist film theory is a theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory influenced by Second Wave Feminism and brought about around the 1970s in the United States. Emily Poole J320 3/9/2018 Final Paper The Other Feminist Film Theory During the mid-20th century, second and third wave feminism swept the nation. She argues for a removal of the voyeurism encoded into film by creating distance between the male spectator and the female character. Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. Clover further argues that the "Final Girl" in the psychosexual subgenre of exploitation horror invariably triumphs through her own resourcefulness, and is not by any means a passive, or inevitable, victim. "And The Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory. [17] The matrixial gaze offers the female the position of a subject, not of an object, of the gaze, while deconstructing the structure of the subject itself, and offers border-time, border-space and a possibility for compassion and witnessing. Laura Mulvey, in response to these and other criticisms, revisited the topic in "Afterthoughts on 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' inspired by Duel in the Sun" (1981). Additionally, they have begun to explore notions of difference, engaging in dialogue about the differences among women (part of movement away from essentialism in feminist work more generally), the various methodologies and perspectives contained under the umbrella of feminist film theory, and the multiplicity of methods and intended effects that influence the development of films. [19] Scholars in recent years have also turned their attention towards women in the silent film industry and their erasure from the history of those films and women's bodies and how they are portrayed in the films. Documentary and feminist film studies have long been separate or parallel universes that need to converse or collide. "[23]:28 Mulvey argues that the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan is the key to understanding how film creates such a space for female sexual objectification and exploitation through the combination of the patriarchal order of society, and 'looking' in itself as a pleasurable act of scopophilia, as "the cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking."[23]:31. [23], Mulvey's argument is likely influenced by the time period in which she was writing. Carol Clover, in her popular and influential book, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton University Press, 1992), argues that young male viewers of the Horror Genre (young males being the primary demographic) are quite prepared to identify with the female-in-jeopardy, a key component of the horror narrative, and to identify on an unexpectedly profound level. It. To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds toupgrade your browser. In reaction to this article, many women filmmakers integrated "alternative forms and experimental techniques" to "encourage audiences to critique the seemingly transparent images on the screen and to question the manipulative techniques of filming and editing". It also examined how the process of cinematic production affects how women are represented and reinforces sexism. [8], Beginning in the early 1980s feminist film theory began to look at film through a more intersectional lens. Jane Gaines's essay "White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory" examined the erasure of black women in cinema by white male filmmakers. a metaphor for feminist film theory's search for an analytical. Feminist film theoryFeminist view film to be a cultural practiserepresenting myths about women and femininity aswell as men and masculinity. [1] Initially in the United States in the early 1970s feminist film theory was generally based on sociological theory and focused on the function of female characters in film narratives or genres. [6], Other key influences come from Metz's essay The Imaginary Signifier, "Identification, Mirror," where he argues that viewing film is only possible through scopophilia (pleasure from looking, related to voyeurism), which is best exemplified in silent film.