Tag: Abuse of Weakness

The Female Gaze: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Female Gaze Theme Week here.

The Female Gaze: Dido and Noni, Two of a Kind by Rachel Wortherley

Directors Amma Asante and Gina Prince-Bythewood illustrate that when a story is told through the eyes of the second sex, themes, such as romance, self-worth, and identity are fully fleshed out. By examining an 18th century British aristocrat and a 21st century pop superstar, it proves that in the span of three centuries, women still face adversity in establishing a firm identity, apart from the façade, amongst the white noise of societal expectations.

Thelma and Louise: Redefining the Female Gaze by Paulette Reynolds

The violence may decrease as the movie progresses, but Thelma, Louise – and we – become comfortable about their actions as the film winds down, because they were now tapped into our veins, nourishing our battered spirits with acts that said, “See? We recognize your anger, cause we’re angry – and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

How Catherine Breillat Uses Her Own Painful Story to Discuss the Female Gaze in Abuse of Weakness by Becky Kukla

The female gaze is more than simply “reversing” the male gaze; it allows for a questioning of why the male gaze is so inherently built into cinema and why women are aggressively sexualised within cinema. With Abuse of Weakness, Breillat attacks both of these concerns whilst also actively encouraging identification with Maud – our female protagonist.

The Capaldi Conundrum: How We Attack the Female Gaze by Alyssa Franke

In any fandom based on visual media, fangirls are attacked because of the way the female gaze is misunderstood and misrepresented.

Murder Spouses and Field Kabuki: The Female Gaze in NBC’s Hannibal by Lisa Anderson

The show treats the bodies of living women with the same respect that it treats those of dead ones.

The Male Gaze, LOL: How Comedies Are Changing the Way We Look by Donna K.

The body is no longer a Lacanian reflected ideal, it is a biological mess that often exists beyond anyone’s control. The effect of this convention is two-fold–a bait and switch of expectations but also the creation of a sense of biological sameness: man or woman, everybody poops. By placing the body in a biological space instead of a symbolic one, physical comedy is questioning the visual tendencies of subconscious desire.

Please Look Now: The Female Gaze in Magic Mike XXL by Sarah Smyth

The trailer offers a kind of meta-advertisement, recognising the very marketing strategies that attracted people, including women, to the previous film. Cutting between clips of the men performing various routines, the trailer includes the line, “We didn’t want to show the best parts of the movie in this trailer but it was very very hard to resist,” before inviting the audience to #comeagain this summer.

No, You Can’t Watch: The Queer Female Gaze on Screen by Rowan Ellis

The desire to show a complex version of yourself seen with male characters in the Male Gaze, alongside a desire for a complex version of your partner seen with male recipients of desire in the Female Gaze, combines in the Queer Female Gaze to produce sexual and romantic relationships often rooted in friendship.

“Everything Is Going To Be OK!” – How the Female Gaze Was Celebrated and Censored in Cardcaptor Sakura by Hannah Collins

In other words, there was a concerted effort to twist the female gaze into a male one under the belief that CLAMP’s blend of hyper-femininity and action would be unappealing for the male audience it was being aimed at.

Catherine Breillat’s Transfigurative Female Gaze by Leigh Kolb

Breillat’s complete oeuvre (which certainly demands our attention beyond these three films) delivers continually shocking treatment of female sexuality presented though the female gaze. She wants us to be uncomfortable and to be constantly questioning both representations of female desire and our responses to those representations, and how all of it is shaped by a religious, patriarchal culture.

Jo March’s Gender Identity as Seen Through Different Gazes by Jackson Adler

The male gaze either holds Jo back from the start, or else shows an “educational” transformation from an “unruly” female into a “desirable” young woman who knows her place.

Pleading for the Female Gaze Through Its Absence in Blue is the Warmest Color by Emma Houxbois

The female gaze, such as it exists in a world that denies its existence, is an insular one that exists between Adele and Emma as opposed to how the film itself is shot. The film presents the case for the female gaze by examining what happens when it’s withheld.

Women in a Man’s World: Mad Men and the Female Gaze by Caroline Madden

In fact, many of the clients grow to appreciate the benefit of the female gaze, making their products truly (for the most part) appealing to women. This makes more profit than the false patriarchal ideas of a woman’s wants and needs. With the character of Peggy, Weiner is able to let us see the advertising world from the female gaze to criticize the falsehood that lies in selling female products with a male gaze.

Just Not Into It: Why This Female Gazer Opts Out by Stephanie Schroeder

I choose to only support women-centered film and TV efforts as a funder, promoter and, indeed, gazer, if the intent, casting, storyline, and other elements are female-positive. There’s really just too much misogynistic and women-negating/woman-hating media in the world for me to do otherwise.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and Scares Us by Ren Jender

Amirpour’s camera (the magnificent cinematography is by Lyle Vincent) lingers over Arash’s beauty–his high cheekbones and large, long-lashed eyes under a dark, curly version of James Dean’s pompadour–in a way few male filmmakers would.

When the Girl Looks: The Girl’s Gaze in Teen TV by Athena Bellas

In this moment, then, Elena is completely relieved of the conventional position of girl-as-object, and is therefore able to occupy a different position as a desiring subject. By purposefully making herself invisible, Elena momentarily evades and perhaps refuses to be defined by the adult male gaze that governs girlhood.

The Female Gaze in The Guest: What a View! by Deirdre Crimmins

Pinning down what makes the camera use a female gaze can be a little tricky, as we have all lived within the male gaze for so long. It is commonplace to see women on display disproportionately while male characters go fully clothed. The gaze’s assumption of heterosexuality also carries over to the infrequently used female gaze, making it slightly more visible. It is this consumption of the male body in The Guest which initially establishes the film’s gaze as female.

Shishihokodan: The Destructive Female Gaze of YA Supernatural Action Romantic Comedy by Brigit McCone

Recognizing the function of Ice Prince/Wolf in YA SARCom implies the continual defeat of the Whore as structural necessity in male writings also – as a pursuing character she must be resisted to generate sexual tension, regardless of whether the male author is Team Madonna or Team Whore. The destructive impact on the self-image of female viewers is pure collateral damage, just as our SARCom is poisonously emasculating for male viewers.

 

 

How Catherine Breillat Uses Her Own Painful Story to Discuss the Female Gaze in ‘Abuse of Weakness’

The female gaze is more than simply “reversing” the male gaze; it allows for a questioning of why the male gaze is so inherently built into cinema and why women are aggressively sexualised within cinema. With ‘Abuse of Weakness,’ Breillat attacks both of these concerns whilst also actively encouraging identification with Maud – our female protagonist.

1

This guest post by Becky Kukla appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

The name Catherine Breillat is almost synonymous with the concept of the female gaze.

Her works and the female gaze go hand in hand, many of her films providing a platform on which to explore and challenge ideas about sexuality, body image and sexual desire. Romance, A Ma Soeur and Anatomy Of Hell are amongst the most discussed; each film considers our preconceived notions of female sexuality and seeks to question stereotypes about it. Breillat is probably most renowned for this exploration, and the female-centric narratives that her films have. More importantly, her works talk openly from a distinctly female perspective – which is why they lend themselves so well to the concept of the female gaze.

All of this is nothing new, of course. Breillat has earned her title of “porn-auteur” a thousand times over (however ignorant that title is). However, it’s Breillat’s most recent film, Abuse of Weakness (2014), which I think actually pushes our ideas about the female gaze in relation to power and control in onscreen relationships. I was actually lucky enough to (accidentally) buy tickets to a Q & A screening of Abuse of Weakness at the London Film Festival in 2013 (accidentally because I didn’t realize Breillat would actually be there), and she spoke at great length about the biographical nature of Abuse of Weakness. The film itself has a surprising lack of explicitness in terms of nudity or sex. It stands out some way from Romance or Anatomy of Hell, but I genuinely believe it delivers a discourse about the female gaze which is just as interesting, if not more so.

Abuse of Weakness tells the story of Maud Shainberg (the incredibly talented Isabelle Huppert), a director/writer recovering from a stroke. She casts notorious con-man Vilko Piran (Kool Shen) in her new film, and a strange, manipulative relationship begins between the two of them. Somewhere between lovers and colleagues, Vilko begins to exploit Maud–emotionally and financially. Maud, desperate for affection and frustrated by her physical condition, doesn’t stop the exploitation – even though she is completely aware of what is happening to her. It’s an intricate look at relationships and abuse and an autobiographical representation of Breillat herself on making Bad Love. It’s an incredibly uncomfortable film to watch, not only because we know it’s Breillat. Throughout Abuse of Weakness we are aligned with Maud and we not only understand her desires, but can also feel ourselves becoming exploited too.

So where does the elusive female gaze come in? The female gaze is a relatively new cinematic term; traditionally the vast majority of mainstream cinema is aligned with the male gaze. To view and engage with a film, the audience must read the work as a straight, heterosexual male – identifying with the male protagonist and objectifying the women on-screen. Active male, passive female. The female gaze, especially in Breillat’s work, not only allows us to identify with the female protagonist but also allows us to objectify the male characters within the film. As Metz states, cinema is predominantly concerned with pleasure – “The spectator is seen as both the voyeur and viewer who is distanced from the object viewed and who has control over what he sees (and desires).” Breillat’s female gaze enables viewers to actively engage with the female protagonist, and derive pleasure from our identification with her. The female gaze is more than simply “reversing” the male gaze; it allows for a questioning of why the male gaze is so inherently built into cinema and why women are aggressively sexualised within cinema. With Abuse of Weakness, Breillat attacks both of these concerns whilst also actively encouraging identification with Maud – our female protagonist.

The opening sequence of Abuse of Weakness is actually a pretty neat summation of the way in which Breillat exposes the male gaze and actively rejects it. The film begins with a slow pan upward and gradually Maud is revealed lying naked within a large bed. The sheets are white (virginal) and before Maud appears onscreen, there is a familiarity to this type of scene. We expect to see a young, beautiful girl asleep on the pillows – yet we are met with Isabelle Huppert. Huppert is, of course, incredibly beautiful but at 62 she is (by Western standards) far too old to be naked in bed in your local cinema screen. Breillat, naturally, does not care. As we focus on Maud’s face, it is immediately apparent that something is wrong. Maud is having a stroke. As she falls out of the bed onto the floor, she is focused in the foreground of the shot whilst a painting of a naked woman is positioned behind her. This is no mistake; the audience are invited to gaze upon both naked bodies – not to sexualise or fetishisize but as two peieces of art. One is oil, the other is film. As we see in the opening scene of Abuse of Weakness, the audience is invited to view Maud as more than a naked body, or a sexualised piece of flesh, completely contrary to how cinema frequently presents women onscreen. Maud is naked, yes, but it is fear and death which we see in this sequence, not desire or sex. Maud can be naked without being objectified – a feat rarely achieved by women in most films.

2

Though Maud and Vilko’s struggle for power is they key theme of Abuse of Weakness, it’s actually Maud’s battle for autonomy that wins out as what the film is actually about. This, even more so, solidifies the film as a product of the female gaze. Although Maud is manipulated and abused, it is through her struggles with her own body – a feeling that most women can probably identify with. On the surface, Maud’s biggest turmoil is the moment where she must admit to her family what has been happening. She seems confused, vulnerable: “It was me…and it wasn’t.” Vilko’s manipulations (the “abuse of weakness”) meant that Maud was unable to have autonomy and live her life the way she desired. However, it was Maud’s stroke that initially took away her autonomy. Breillat often explores female body image within her works (A Ma Soeur instantly springs to mind) and Abuse of Weakness is no exception. Maud’s body has literally failed her, with no warning. The stroke takes away her freedom and her autonomy. Maud’s struggle with her body can easily be read as a comment on body image/representation in modern society. Women are expected to be younger, thinner, more beautiful than ever before – what happens when you can’t be? You lose autonomy and freedom striving to be perfect. Maud proves this in Abuse of Weakness and the question is asked; what can women amount to if their body is not good enough?

Although Abuse of Weakness is certainly the least “sexual” of all of Breillat’s films (physically, I mean), the film still places Maud’s desire for sex as an incredibly important concept. Whilst it’s never clear whether Maud and Vilko have a sexual relationship, there are many sequences where Vilko is topless or nearly nude. He is an attractive man, younger than Maud, and the viewer is invited to share in Maud’s objectification of him. To quote Penley, “Feminist film theory [seeks to] look at ways in which roles are gendered…looking is gendered masculine and ‘being looked at is gendered feminine.'” Breillat encourages the audience to place Vilko in a feminine position of objectification, and forces us to reevaluate the way we gender passivity as female and take a traditionally masculine position when we objectify Vilko.

All of these aspects – sexuality, body image, passive/active engagement and the power struggle throughout the film – combine to create a piece of cinema completely devoted to the female gaze. Viewers can easily identify with Maud and reject the notion of the male gaze. Due to Breillat’s influence as a female director and her rejection of the male gaze, the female (and male) audience are able to establish a relationship with Maud as a woman, a person and not a passive object to be lusted over or desired. Whilst it won’t stir up as much controversy as Anatomy of Hell or Romance (I mean, what can?), Abuse of Weakness is still highly valuable as a text which explores femininity and power – and well worth a watch.

Recommended Reading: France on Film: Reflections on Popular French Cinema by Lucy Mazdon

Becky Kukla is a 20-something living in London, working in the TV industry (mostly making excellent cups of tea). She spends her spare time watching everything Netflix has to offer and then ranting about it on her blog.