Female Gaze Theme Week – Page 2

Women in a Man’s World: ‘Mad Men’ and the Female Gaze

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.

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

Mad Men is a remarkable portrayal of the 1960s that explores the office and home lives of workers in the New York City advertising industry over the course of a decade. The 60s was a particularly patriarchal and sexist period of history, as was the profession that Mad Men depicts. Advertising, even for women’s products, was driven by the male gaze. Mad Men aims to portray the decade and the world of Madison Avenue advertising as accurately as possible, but does not view it from the patriarchal standpoint of the time.

In the Establishing Mad Men documentary, creator Matthew Weiner states that Mad Men “is about conflicting desires in the American male, and the people who pay the price for that are women.” The leading women in the series who pay that price are Peggy Olson, Joan Harris, and Betty Draper. The struggles of Mad Men’s male characters have ramifications on them. Weiner uses the female gaze of these women to criticize the sexism of the era and profession they inhabit, while rendering fully realized and dynamic female characters. Peggy, Joan, and Betty are depicted as sexual, complicated, and diverse human beings.

In the first season of Mad Men especially, much of the dialogue shows the vast amount of overt sexism in the workplace. The Sterling Cooper secretaries are a smorgasbord available for men’s consumption, objects they can use for their amusement or lust. For most audience members of the 2000s, this blatant sexism is baffling, and some may find it oddly humorous just how much was acceptable or tolerated back then.

We experience this sexism through the eyes and gaze of Peggy Olson, who, much like the audience, is being introduced to the world of Sterling Cooper in the first episode. Peggy ends up being the female character most tied with the nature of advertising- making her way from Don Draper’s secretary to copywriter and then copy chief. But at first she is just another secretary, a new piece of fresh meat for the men. Peggy has never worked in an office before; she is straight out of secretarial school. Raised in a strict Catholic family, Peggy has likely never experienced male ogling at quite this level. By Episode 2, “Ladies’ Room,” Peggy is already fed up: “Honestly, why is it that every time a man takes you out to lunch around here, you’re…you’re the dessert!” she bemoans to Joan. Matthew Weiner uses the female gaze purposefully in the following scene where the camera allows the audience to identify with Peggy as the men’s prey. As Peggy sits at her desk on the typewriter, the camera cuts to many different men in slow-motion gazing at her, with reverse low angle-shots of Peggy. The multiple and unrelenting gazes of men echoes Peggy’s dialogue from minutes before: “It’s constant from every corner.” The low-angle on Peggy heightens her overwhelming feeling of their gaze.

Peggy’s role puts her in the position of seeing not only the advertising world firsthand, but also the male point of view that it so actively employs, and from her first account, she begins to challenge that point of view. Peggy’s rise in advertising begins with a Belle Jolie lipstick campaign. The Sterling Cooper secretaries are treated to a testing session (viewed by the men behind a two-way mirror) where they can try on as many Belle Jolie lipsticks as they please. The gaggle of secretaries are thrilled, but Peggy sits there unhappily. The camera shows Peggy watching the girls try on lipsticks in slow motion, the seeds of her first copy pitch planting in her brain. Freddy Rumsen asks Peggy why she didn’t try on any lipsticks. Peggy tells him that they didn’t have her color, that she is very particular: “I don’t think anyone wants to be one of a hundred colors in a box.” The men are failing to see the individuality in women, and instead choosing to see them as a limited whole. Peggy’s observations leads her to be promoted to copywriter for that campaign.

In Season 3, Peggy continues to challenge the male gaze in advertising. In a campaign for Patio, the clients want a shot-for-shot reenactment Bye Bye Birdie’s opening: “She’s throwing herself at the camera. No one seems to care that it speaks to men. Not the people that drink diet drinks.” Peggy asks Don about the faux Ann-Margaret. “It’s not about making women feel fat. It’s ‘look how happy I am drinking Patio. I’m young and excited and desperate for a man,’” Don replies. “I don’t mind fantasies, but shouldn’t it be a female one?” Peggy asks. “Peggy, you understand how this works: men want her, women want to be her.” Don is subtly insisting to Peggy that advertising, even for women’s products, is aimed for men. Don is also hinting to Peggy that if she keeps up the criticisms about the male gaze in advertising, she will lose her job.

Another example is the Playtex ad from Season 2 Episode 6’s “Maidenform.” Kinsey comes up with an idea that every woman is either a Jackie or Marilyn. He points to various women in the office pinpointing which one they are. “I don’t know if all women are a Jackie or a Marilyn. Maybe men seem them that way,” Peggy counters. “Bras are for men. Women want to see themselves the way men see them,” Kinsey insists.

As the series progresses into the mid-60s, we see the gradual shift into (slightly) more open-minded ideals about the roles of women in the workplace. Peggy is promoted and works on many campaigns. 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.

Peggy makes the biggest change as the series goes on, from a meek, mousy girl to a headstrong woman, though her evolution is no surprise upon reflection. Outside of the office, Peggy is seen many times exerting control over her own sexuality and choice of sexual partners. Peggy’s struggles of putting career over having a family are honestly and sensitively executed by Weiner.

Another female character tied to Sterling Cooper is Joan Holloway (later Harris). No other character experiences the male gaze as much as Joan. In the beginning seasons, the camera flatters and accentuates every curve of Hendricks’s voluptuous body. We see her as the men in the office see her. But one scene turns this on its head, in Season 1’s “Babylon,” at the Belle Jolie lipstick testing. Joan oversees the secretaries wearing a gorgeous skin-tight red dress. The camera views Joan (as the men view her) as she walks across the table, slyly looking at the two-way mirror. The camera then glides over to and fixes on Joan’s bottom as she bends over. Cut to Joan smirking, turning around and looking squarely at the mirror, almost straight into the camera. Joan knows the men are gazing at her, and she takes possession of that gaze by giving them what they want to see. The men think they have the power in being able to gaze at her unknowingly, but the power lies in Joan’s hands as she presents herself to be looked at. When Joan looks into the camera, it is almost as if she is also challenging the audience as well.

The character of Joan is frequently seen as a sexual object by all those around her. Many of her storylines revolve around the harmful ramifications you experience when you are only viewed by how you look and your body. The men around her, and even Joan herself, tend to use that sexuality as a pawn. Joan knows she exactly how she is viewed and objectified by the men in the office, and she yields that power for better or for worse. Two significant plot points happen to Joan–the rape by her fiancé and the act of prostitution to obtain the Jaguar account and a higher position in the office. As she lies on the office floor with Greg on top of her, or as awful, the awful car salesman kisses her and takes off her fur coat, the camera fixes on only Joan in a close-up. By doing that we are able to empathize with only her instead of focusing on the act. Weiner visually does not reduce these scenes to moments of exploitation. We are not centered on the event itself, but on what Joan is going through.

The show itself does not reduce Joan to just a sexual object as much as the men around her would like her to be so. Joan is a very smart, capable woman that is excellent at her job, more so than some of the men are. She often goes unappreciated until she does obtain her higher-up position. The show’s finale shows Joan running a production company in her home while raising her son.

Outside of Sterling Cooper, but connected to leading man Don Draper, is Betty Draper (later Francis). Betty’s image is one of passive, docile sexuality and complete perfection. Throughout the series, we quickly learn that there is more beneath Betty’s Barbie Doll-esque façade, for Weiner delves deeper than the false image she presents. Betty’s character seems ripped straight out the pages of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, a visual personification of “the problem that has no name” that she studied in housewives. Betty’s character allows viewers of modern day to see the nature of those housewives’ lives; there are multiple scenes of the dull drudgery and loneliness Betty deals with day to day alone in the house.

We first get a glimpse at her underlying sexuality when she tells Don, “I want you so much. I thought about it all day. No I mean it. It’s all I think about…every day. Your car coming down the driveway. I put the kids to bed early. I make a grocery list. I cook butterscotch pudding. I never let my hands idle. Brushing my hair, drinking my milk…and it’s all in kind of a fog because I can’t stop thinking about this. I want you so badly.” From this we learn that Betty is very much at the whim of Don’s actions. One episode delves further into Betty’s brimming sexuality, when we see her pleasuring herself against a washing machine while fantasizing about making love to the air conditioner salesman. In Season 3, after seeing Don sleep with so many other women, there is a scene of Betty controlling her sexuality when she sleeps with a stranger from a bar. Matthew Weiner takes great care in telling her side of the story in the marriage and relation to Don. Betty is not shown to be the demure or child-like woman that Don or others may view her as.

Mad Men is one of the few shows that depicts a successful representation of the female gaze, despite taking place in an era and profession where female’s experiences were often devalued. Weiner does not reduce the women to just mere symbols of the decade’s movements but crafts them as complicated and dynamic human beings living in an equally complicated time. And this is not limited to just Peggy, Joan, and Betty. Mad Men has many women, good qualities and bad, older women, mothers, grandmothers, young girls, teenagers, within the show that Weiner manages–even through small parts–to finely craft. Weiner uses the female gaze as one of many ways to examine the fascinating decade.

Caroline Madden has a BFA in Acting from Shenandoah Conservatory and is working on an MA in Cinema Studies at Savannah College of Art and Design. She writes about film at Geek Juice, Screenqueens, and her blog. You can usually find her watching movies or listening to Bruce Springsteen.

‘A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night’ and Scares Us

This repost by Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

Nice girls aren’t supposed to walk alone in the dark, even in the movies. So in the generically titled A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, the debut feature from writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour, we in the audience wonder what a woman in a black cloak (a traditional Iranian garment called a chador) is doing on the streets of a largely empty desert town in the wee hours. We see her witness a pimp (Dominic Rains) exploit and then cheat a sex worker (Mozhan Marnò). We soon find out the woman in the chador, The Girl–we never find out her name (played, unforgettably, by Sheila Vand) is no ordinary woman, but a vampire with fangs that retract like a cat’s claws–or a switchblade.

The film takes place in a parallel California which contains a Farsi-speaking, Iranian enclave called “Bad City.” We know we’re not in Iran because the pimp has visible tattoos and later we see a woman in public with her hair and much of her body uncovered. Also The Girl wears her chador in such a way that we see her hipster, stripey, boat shirt (too short for modest dress) and skinny jeans underneath.

In spite of its surface differences, the film to which Girl has the greatest parallel is probably David Lynch’s Eraserhead. Like that film, every sumptuous, black and white shot is framed and lit with care, creating an alternate universe for the audience to lose themselves in. And as in Eraserhead, even what we hear is fussed over in a way that grabs our attention: incidental sounds are recorded close. The proximity doesn’t alienate us, the way less skillful dubbing in other films often does, but gives us a heightened sense of intimacy, as if we are almost touching the characters.

When The Girl interrogates The Street Urchin (a young boy played by Milad Eghbali) the film shows a truth that many films, including horror films, elide–but that the other recent acclaimed horror film directed by a woman, The Babadook, also addresses–the first person who scares us when we are children is often a woman, whether it’s a mother or another woman authority figure. Tilda Swinton has said that her character in Snowpiercer was based on a particularly terrifying nanny from her own childhood. Few lines in films this year have been more chilling than the one The Girl leaves The Street Urchin with after she threatens him: “Be a good boy.”

Like Michael Almereyda, who, in the ’90s made a stylish black and white film about a woman vampire among New York hipsters, Nadja (its star, Elina Löwensohn, had eyes you couldn’t look away from, much like Vand’s) Amirpour combines familiar elements in an unfamiliar way for maximum resonance. In Almereyda’s modern day New York Hamlet (from 2000), he famously incorporated a video of Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh talking about “being” in the background of a scene, priming us to later hear Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy.

In Girl Amirpour gets at how women in modest Muslim dress (including those from Iran) are used for xenophobic and anti-Islamic fear-mongering (often in the guise of “feminism”) in the US (like in the recent ad campaign for Homeland) but also uses a chador’s resemblance to a cape to give us an eerily familiar–but new–“Dracula” silhouette. When The Girl rides on the skateboard The Street Urchin leaves behind (after he runs away from her in terror) the chador billows around her as she rolls down the road, and she becomes, without CGI trickery, a bat in flight.

Americans often read chador on women to mean vulnerability, but like the frail-seeming, pale, young, blonde Mae in another beautifully-shot, vampire Western (also directed by a woman, the pre-Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow) 1987’s Near Dark, who, when her cowboy boyfriend lassoes her as a “joke” takes hold of the rope and pulls him in, The Girl has hidden reserves of strength. The Girl becomes an avenging angel in black, attacking the men we see abuse women, using her “traditional” quiet passivity to draw these guys close. As the abusive men do with the cat who is many times in the frame (rarely has a filmmaker caught how much of our daily lives our animals witness) they ascribe motivations and personas to The Girl which are more about their own perceptions than about who she is or what she is thinking.

Like a number of films Girl has an early scene, fast becoming a campy cliché, in which a woman suggestively sucks the finger of a man. But when The Girl takes the pimp’s forefinger into her mouth, he gets more than he bargained for.

And as we do with Mae, we see that The Girl is lonely, and a hapless, good-looking guy, Arash, played by Arash Marandi touches something in her. When they meet, he’s coming from a costume party where he’s taken some of the club drugs he was dealing and is still wearing a vampire cape as he stares into a street light. She immediately becomes protective of him.

Vand’s presence burns through the screen. She has the intensity of the great silent actresses–and in many of her scenes, the ones in her room plastered with ’80s music posters, dancing by herself to Farsi synth-pop records or even when she interacts with other characters, she often does not speak. This film is low on back story but Vand’s face, especially her huge dark eyes (we see her put on her heavy eyeliner in the bathroom mirror before she goes out) tells us what she is feeling in every scene.

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. His clothes (a plain white t-shirt and jeans that hug his muscled body) also evoke Dean’s. And even though the pimp, Saeed, is a villain, meant to repel us, Amirpour lets us take in the attractiveness of his body, especially in a shirtless scene with The Girl when his pants hang very low and we see the full extent of his tattoos–and his muscles.

LA has enough Iranian-Americans in it that some have nicknamed it “Tehrangeles” (after Iran’s capital), but I can’t think of another film produced near there (Girl was actually filmed in Bakersfield) in which most (or all) of the cast is of Persian descent, but no one is a terrorist or a relic from the old country. These characters speak Farsi to each other but, except for Arash’s father, with his drug addiction and collection of pre-revolutionary framed photos of family (complete with 60s-style teased hair on the women), these people aren’t living in the past–even The Girl’s retro record collection, clothes and bobbed hair reflect present-day fashion.

We can never know for sure, but just as with Black actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw giving two terrific, completely different star-turns in movies in one year but the media still largely ignoring her, I wonder if Amirpour’s flawless visual sense, skill with actors and unique reworking of a genre many of us thought didn’t have an original angle left would garner more attention if she were a white guy. Girl is distributed in partnership with VICE‘s film arm and has even made some year-end, top-10 lists, but I had to go to New York to see it and whole countries (like Canada) have yet to get even limited distribution. Nevertheless Amirpour continues to work on films unimpeded. Her next work is about cannibals. I can’t wait until its release.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YGmTdo3vuY” iv_load_policy=”3″]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

Just Not Into It: Why This Female Gazer Opts Out

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.

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

This recent social media missive summed up a lot in terms of both my feelings and viewing habits:

…except I generally don’t and won’t view at all.

I haven’t owned at TV for over 25 years and in that time I have only watched television programs occasionally and mostly only looking on while someone else has their TV playing in the background. This is not snobbery, but rather a consciously made decision not to watch and support the assault on women to which television contributes on an ongoing basis.

Similarly, I rarely go to or stream films. The exceptions mostly come in the form of either accompanying my girlfriend in watching a movie of mutual interest or watching a film she stars in. I do watch friends’ films that present women as human beings with parts other than victims of violence and interests other than being a male appendage.

The article Loofbourow’s above Tweet links to is an August 5, 2015 piece by Manohla Dargis, “Report Finds Wide Diversity Gap Among 2014’s Top-Grossing Films” published in The New York Times. I don’t really need yet another report to tell me what I already know and have understood for decades: TV and films generally do not represent women in any capacity except as adjuncts to or prey for men. The relentless verbal, psychological, physical, and sexual violence against women on screen is untenable. Why are so many film and TV narratives dependent on the violation of women? And narratives not so dependent are still filled with misogynistic violence–“gratuitous” it’s often termed but it’s actually very pre-meditated and well-thought-out in scripts and directors’ minds.

The statistics in the New York Times article, based on the study “Inequality in 700 Popular Films” produced by the Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, are staggering but not at all surprising.

Dargis writes, “…one of the report’s researchers, Stacy L. Smith, describes an ‘epidemic’ when it comes to lack of diversity.”

It’s 2015 and the number of female protagonists with personal agency (or even more than one line of female-positive dialogue) are almost zero. Female filmmakers find funding near impossible, and female actors who are not conventionally “attractive” are fewer than few. These stats also hold true for older women, women who are racial and ethnic minorities, and lesbian, trans, and queer women.

Definitely a groan, but no shocker.

I’m a lesbian who doesn’t watch OITNB. A mortal sin. “I know you hate Orange is the New Black, but….” friends say to me on the regular. No, actually I just don’t watch it. I also don’t criticize it or discuss it at all, a venial sin. I have never seen it, which, to my mind, renders me unqualified to give an opinion about it.

I’m friends with a female actor who is on mainstream television shows fairly regularly whose work I don’t watch. I support her and wish her well, but I have no desire to see the work she is doing in mainstream TV-land.

I am the girlfriend of an indie actor whose work I support, promote, watch and enjoy. Lots of folks inquire, “Why doesn’t she have an agent?” “Why isn’t she being cast in more films?” I don’t have the time or the inclination to get into the business of the film industry and report back on my partner’s lack of visibility or inability to get the attention of an agent, even with some amazing credits to her name. I do have my theories: she’s fat, a lesbian who “looks like a lesbian” and the other usual reasons so many unconventional-looking – by Hollywood standards – actors are overlooked. Women like her are basically invisible on-screen and go more-or-less unrecognized and under appreciated as actors, even though the world is actually populated with more people who look like her (and me) than conventional model/actress types.

I’m a writer with my own projects. A real woman of the type almost never depicted on the screen, large or small. I’m not rich, my apartment isn’t grande, I don’t make much money from my writing and must to hustle other gigs to pay my expenses. Unlike depictions on-screen, it’s not at all a glamorous hustle. It’s a struggle that is neither noble nor character building, just extremely tiring and very real.

What I desire is a world where women are reflected in popular media as the rich multitudes we are as human beings, where both mediums are not monopolized by well-funded (or not) men in every role (creator, talent, funder, distributor, etc.), whether overtly sexist or or not. Where women are people, not possessions.

There are a lot of films and TV shows that are just plain stupid and dumb, period. Others are subtly sexist, and still others are full on murderously misogynistic. I don’t want to in any way lend my support to these endeavors.

So, when friends mock me, implying I’m a TV snob, I let them know: I’m just not into it.

Stephanie Schroeder is a freelance writer and activist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been widely published, including in the classic anthology, That’s Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation. Her essay, “I Don’t Want to be Part of Your [De]Evolution,” is included in the Lammy-nominated anthology Here Come the Brides: Reflections on Lesbian Love and Marriage. She has performed at and curated installments of the LBGT storytelling series Queer Memoir, was a contributing editor at Curve Magazine for seven years, and the featured creative non-fiction editor for Iris Brown Lit Magazine’s debut issue. Schroeder is the author of the memoir Beautiful Wreck: Sex, Lies & Suicide.

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

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.

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

Within contemporary visual culture, girls are frequently positioned as spectacular objects to be looked at. For example, girls are often either positioned as eroticised objects of desire for an adult male gaze, or as pathologized objects of adult concern in order to makes diagnoses about “the problem with girls today.” Both of these gazes police the borders of girlhood, placing girls under the surveillance of a watchful and scrutinising adult eye. In both instances, the girl is positioned as a to-be-looked-at object rather than an active and agentic subject, which means that it is sometimes difficult for our culture to create space to imagine the girl as the holder of the gaze. When we do get representations of girls erotically contemplating the male figure, these representations are often met with derision and dismissal by adult culture. For example, reviews of the Twilight films repeatedly ridiculed Bella Swan’s erotic contemplation of Edward Cullen’s glittering, perfectly coiffed figure as mere fodder for girls’ “wet dreams” (like this is a bad thing), and fangirls shrieking with delight at the sight of their favourite boy band are diagnosed as embarrassingly hysterical and hormonal. This contempt for the girl’s gaze in patriarchal visual culture leads to what Michele Fine calls the “missing discourse of desire” for girls, because there is a consistent shaming, silencing, and erasure of girls’ expressions of desire.

However, even within this complex web of regulatory adult gazes, there are intervals and gaps where challenges and disruptions can take place. There are important spaces within visual culture that provide representations of a girl’s gaze, and I am particularly interested in teen television as one of these spaces. This television genre often centres on representing a teen heroine’s perspective and addresses a teen girl spectator, and the privileging of this frequently dismissed point of view has the potential to disrupt the central position of the adult male gaze. While not all teen TV does this successfully, there are certainly moments within this genre that provide a significant space for the representation of girls actively gazing, exploring, and acting upon their desires. There are, of course, many great examples of girls’ gazes in teen shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, My So-Called Life, Veronica Mars, and The 100, among others. In this article, I want to explore the CW network’s paranormal teen series The Vampire Diaries, because it has depicted clear moments in which the gendered terms of the desiring gaze are reversed, turning conventional tropes and iconographies of desire on their head. In this reconfiguration, the girl looks and is (at least temporarily) able to refuse her position as object-to-be-looked-at.

In one of the most iconic scenes from The Vampire Diaries, we can see a powerful, desiring teen girl gaze being represented. Damon and Elena are on a road trip together, and they stop at a motel for the night. At this stage in the narrative, the sexual tension between the two of them is so ridiculously palpable, and everyone is screaming, “Just kiss already!” at their TV screens. Elena feigns sleep, secretly watching a half-dressed Damon sip whiskey as he languorously reclines in a chair.

His bare torso is bathed in the moonlight that streams through the window, creating a beautiful dappled pattern of light and shade across his figure. The camera is aligned with Elena’s gaze, recording the details of Damon’s body in lingering extreme close-ups.

Importantly, Elena is temporarily “invisible” in this scene – her gaze is unmonitored and unreturned as she secretly watches him. 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. I think that this moment is resistant space where alternatives to the dominant system of desire can be explored. This sequence provides an alternative visual language in which the male figure is made to bear what Laura Mulvey calls “the burden of sexual objectification,” allowing for the representation of the heroine’s active and agentic desire.

In another scene in season four, Damon undresses in front of Elena. In the first shot, we see Elena’s eyes carefully scanning Damon’s figure from head to toe and in the reverse shot, the camera scans and records the contours of his body in intricate detail, encouraging spectators to look at him in the same manner.

Like the scene described above, his body is spot-lit, but this time by shafts of gold sunlight streaming in through the windows, emphasising the openness of his display, and the clarity of Elena’s view of him. Damon unbuttons his trousers and asks Elena, “Are you staying for the whole show or…?” The soundtrack punctuates his playful offer by emphasising the sound of each button popping as he strips off his clothing. Damon recognises his status as Elena’s object of desire, and that he is “on show” for her gaze. As a spectacular object on show, Damon occupies a conventionally feminine position – he is definitely an object of erotic contemplation and spectacle – rather than occupying the traditionally masculine position of action, moving the narrative forward, and control.

By spectacularizing Damon’s figure through the use of extreme close-ups, ultra slow motion, and dramatic lighting, the text invites spectators to look at the male figure through Elena’s desiring perspective. So, the female gaze exists within the narrative world of The Vampire Diaries, and through these representational strategies, spectators are also encouraged to align and identify with it – to occupy and explore this position of active looking alongside Elena. I think that these moments, which reverse the conventional politics of representing the gaze, reconfigure some of the traditional iconography associated with girlhood that ordinarily positions girls as desirable, rather than desiring, and as spectacles, rather than subjects. In this text, we are presented with girls who are able to find moments in which they can evade the adult male gaze, and also claim a desiring subjective position from which to look. This pushes the representational boundaries that often contain girlhood, and I am hopeful that this results in an expansion into new and even more disruptive territories of articulation for the teen girl gaze.

Dr. Athena Bellas has a PhD in Screen and Cultural Studies from the University of Melbourne. Her PhD and current research explore representations of adolescent girlhood in fairy tales and contemporary screen media. She blogs at teenscreenfeminism.wordpress.com and tweets at @AthenaBellas and @TeenScreenFem.

The Female Gaze in ‘The Guest’: What a View!

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.

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

Whether you consider it an homage to 1980s thrillers, or a throwback to action films of the 1990s, it is clear that The Guest has much more meat in it than your typical fast-moving fun flick. Watching the film unfold before you—with both literal and metaphorical guns blazing—it feels intentionally crafted to simultaneously occupy the same space as action films and to also coyly toy with the audience’s expectations of those films. One of the ways that The Guest intentionally subverts audience expectations is its assumption of the female gaze.

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.

Dan Stevens plays the main character, David. Stevens was most well-known to audiences as the romantic and strong cousin Matthew in Downtown Abbey. Matthew made many women in the television show swoon with his soft blond hair and blue eyes. Stevens’s role in the program was decidedly British. From the accent to the tuxedos to living in an honest castle there was a level of exoticness to him. His casting in The Guest adds a level of this “otherness” to a firmly American character.

Just your average American psycho coming home from war.

David is a good old boy. Returning home from Afghanistan he first visits the family of a fallen soldier to pay his respects and carry out the dying man’s wishes. While staying with the Peterson family David quickly establishes himself as their protector, whether they want the help or not. The daughter, Anna (Maika Monroe) seems uncertain at first, but one thing wins her over to David’s good graces: his body.

A quick encounter in the hallway before heading out to a friend’s birthday party put Anna face to pecs with David’s patriotic and glistening muscles. He was just getting out of the shower before dressing for the party, though his timing seems more intentional than fortuitous. David’s towel is slung low, below his hips, and the hot shower has left his body shining in the hallway lights. Anna stutters and can barely get a few words out before recoiling to her bedroom.

With David in his towel the camera’s gaze is firmly female. Not only does it linger across his body, slicing him up into distinct regions of rippling muscle rather than showing him as a whole person, but the entire experience is filmed with sympathy to Anna’s experience. It is in Anna’s reaction we see to the hunk in the hallway. The editing and music in this scene are clearly geared toward aligning with Anna’s pleasure in the sight. She is delighting in seeing this beautiful man in her own home. Though she is slightly embarrassed by her inability to concentrate when faced with such a specimen, she is not ashamed by her desire. Anna’s sexual longing for David’s ripped abs, paired with the audience’s similar want, is presented as a certainty.

This is the most striking visual representation of the female gaze in The Guest, but there are elements in the story that also align the audience with the female characters, rather than the male characters.

When we first meet David he is running. Running down an empty road, toward the Peterson’s house. The mother, Laura (Sheila Kelley), is the only one home to meet him for the first time. As David is an outsider coming in to their town and home, the film establishes itself as coming from the perspective of Laura. The first shot we see of David is from her view of opening the door to meet him. The film’s frame is the same as Laura’s gaze. During their first conversation we follow Laura in and out of her kitchen and we too are initially suspicious of this handsome stranger. As David wins over Laura with his charm and stories from her dead son, we too are won over.

Near the end of The Guest, the film’s tone shifts from that of a thriller with escalating tension to something that resembles a slasher film. It never fully mutates into the horror genre, but the final stand-off between Anna and David is very similar to a cat-and-mouse chase that you would find between serial killer and final victim. Shifting Anna from an actively sexual female gaze to being a near final girl works especially well here because she was never the one being objectified in the film. The audience has always associated its gaze with that of Anna. The typical final girl story first associates itself with the killer, but then pivots to identifying with the last living character. This final girl then bests the killer, with the support of the audience. But in The Guest we have never associated with the killer. We have always kept an emotional distance from David and seen the story from the female perspective.

It is not surprise that The Guest takes on a female gaze, given the history of the filmmakers. Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett have collaborated on many films over the last five years. They first worked together on A Horrible Way to Die and more recently on You’re Next. You’re Next has been widely discussed as not only one the best horror films of the last decade, but also one of the most feminist.

Wingard and Barrett’s creation of these feminist films (that are still damn good and fun too) can be read as refreshed vision of films made by filmmakers with the female gaze. The female gaze in The Guest makes for a more natural story than the converse. (Objectifying and being seduced by David, the exotic “other,” in the secluded hometown has more likely narrative flow than gazing on Anna or Laura.) And in the end, that should be the goal for any filmmaker. Have enough respect for the story and belief in both your characters and the audience to tell the story as it should be told, from the appropriate perspective, regardless of the gendered gaze.

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and is a staff writer for All Things Horror. You can find her on Twitter at @dedecrim.

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

This repost by Brigit McCone appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

YA Supernatural Action Romantic Comedy (SARCom) was created in 1987 by the manga artist Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma 1/2. Her mixture of kung-fu demon-of-the-week fights, romance and comedy, with a supernaturally strong heroine, dual shapeshifting supernaturally strong love interests and sarcastically quipping sidekicks, was then a completely unique format and rapidly became popular in the West and Japan. Takahashi’s creative control as visual and story artist (particularly after the success of the slapstick Urusei Yatsura) meant that the aesthetics of SARCom were shaped by the female gaze from the outset. Among its innovations, Ranma 1/2 introduces an Ice Prince/Wolf love rivalry between the hero Ranma and his rival Ryoga, a trope Takahashi would develop in her next SARCom Inuyasha. Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer popularized the SARCom in mainstream Western culture, developing its own Ice Prince/Wolf rivalry with the characters Angel and Spike. The Ice Prince/Wolf dynamic now dominates teen girl cinema, after Catherine Hardwicke’s Twilight set a new record for commercially successful female directors.

Hardwicke’s camera continually privileges Kristen Stewart’s female gaze as Bella Swan, moving with her and focusing on her lip-biting lustful reactions, while offering Robert Pattinson’s Edward Cullen as erotic spectacle, the camera panning over him lovingly. Twilight also almost fails a reverse-Bechdel through the intense Bellacentrism of all its characters. Male viewers react with defensive ridicule to the uncomfortable sensation that they are supposed to be lustful fourteen-year-old girls when watching this film. In this moment, they have a brief sensation of what it is to be the female spectator of 90% of Hollywood films, uncomfortably reminded by the Male Gaze that you are somehow supposed to have the reactions and expectations of a heterosexual man. Their unfamiliarity with the mechanics of the female gaze became obvious when Hardwicke was replaced in Twilight sequels by male directors, who fumbled uncomfortably to recapture her intensity. Not only excluded as unintended spectator, the male viewer of SARCom is more likely to identify with the always defeated “Wolf” (sexual pursuer, equivalent to female “Whore”), the vulnerable, openly desiring rival. The victory of the unrealistic “Ice Prince” (sexual resistor, equivalent to female “Madonna”) is therefore destructive to the male viewer’s ego, often provoking a hostility barely concealed under sneering ridicule, just as the Male Gaze’s Madonna/Whore logic has always been destructive to the female ego. So what, actually, is going on?

Celebrating Celibacy: The “Ice Prince” Archetype

The defining characteristic of the “Ice Prince” is his combination of emotional fidelity and sexual unavailability, which amplifies gazing female desire and sexual frustration simultaneously, and is generally accompanied by his emphasized superiority and/or physical threat. That is, his sexual unavailability becomes a symptom of his overall domination. Ranma, the hero of Ranma 1/2, not only rivals the heroine Akane in martial arts, but periodically transforms into a girl more sexually attractive than she is. This tantalizing superiority enhances the character’s sexual unavailability; the world of Ranma 1/2 plays with gender but is strictly heteronormative with biological sex. Ranma 1/2 occupies an intermediate position between the shounen (boys’ manga) harem plot of Takahashi’s previous Urusei Yatsura and the love rivalries of her later Inuyasha: as a shounen hero, Ranma is the center of a harem of sex-crazed women, but as a shoujo (girls’ manga) hero, he must be sexually attracted to none of them. The sexual friction from these conflicting genre demands seems to have accidentally invented the “ice prince” archetype.

Inuyasha tames its threateningly feral hero, while maintaining his sexual unavailability, by making him frustratingly in love with a previous incarnation of the heroine Kagome – thus, he loves Kagome as a reincarnation, but cannot consummate this love due to his frustrating fidelity to her original.

The most extreme “Ice Prince” archetype in Takahashi’s work is Sesshomaru, the haughty, aristocratic pureblood demon introduced as a villain, accompanied by a sycophantic toady, who is attempting to cheat his socially inferior, half-brother Inuyasha out of his inheritance; that is, almost exactly the set-up of Fitzwilliam Darcy in Pride & Prejudice. She may have intended to create a villain, but Takahashi falls into Austen’s tried and tested Darcy arc: Sesshomaru meets an open-hearted, mischievous and unintimidated girl whom he struggles to scorn as inferior; his flaws are contextualized by introducing his controlling, snobbish mother; finally, he risk everything to rescue the redeemer-girl. Introducing a poison-clawed Demon Dog Darcy, with the power to raise the dead and blast his enemies to hell as a supporting character, unbalances Inuyasha: Sesshomaru’s well-written redemption arc commences just as Inuyasha’s own arc grinds to a halt, spending a hundred chapters randomly upgrading his sword while the fandom sways toward the narratively marginalized Sesshomaru. Demon Dog Darcy is then forced to hand his emotionally-earned powers over to Inuyasha in an exasperatingly contrived plot twist. But Sesshomaru’s very marginalization in Inuyasha‘s narrative, and total detachment from the main heroine, function to intensify fangirl emotional and sexual frustration: the ultimate aim of any Ice Prince. Although Demon Dog Darcy progressively thaws emotionally, the character’s sexual unavailability is emphasized by spiked armor encircling his chest and maintained by filling the “Elizabeth Bennet” role with a pre-pubescent girl.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel loves and saves Buffy but is made sexually unavailable by a curse that he will lose his soul if he has sex with her. This loss of soul also allows the intensification of Angel’s dominating physical threat and sadism, while permitting the “real” Angel to remain a dutiful lover. Twilight likewise presents Edward Cullen as a deeply loving and loyal “Ice Prince” who threatens Bella repeatedly by mentioning his urge to devour her and, of course, is sexually unavailable through his fear of ‘losing control’. All these narrative devices intensify friction, rather than satisfaction. However, since a female viewer can never fulfil her own sexual desires for a fictional construct, her experience of frustrated sexual tension is most satisfyingly expressed by sexual tension within the narrative. Also, because society constructs men as permanent sexual pursuers, a woman is relieved of her need to resist, and able to fully and extravagantly express her lust in a safer space, when the male is reimagined as loving resistor.

Demon-in-Distress: The “Wolf” Archetype

The defining characteristic of the “Wolf,” the eternally rejected sexual pursuer, is his combination of desperate emotional and sexual availability with repeatedly emphasized vulnerability and animalism. The most exaggeratedly vulnerable is Ranma 1/2‘s Ryoga, a little boy lost in the literal sense that he farcically lacks any sense of direction. The fanged, impulsive Ryoga’s regular transformations into a small, cute piglet add to his vulnerability. His inability to tell the heroine Akane of his true nature and feelings, out of fear of losing his privileged access as her pet pig, forms a near-perfect satire of the “Friendzone” phenomenon.

Inuyasha‘s impulsive, hotheaded Koga is a wolf-demon. In contrast to the elusive, emotionally conflicted hero Inuyasha, Koga falls for the heroine Kagome almost immediately and pursues her consistently. The manga is notable for constantly placing Koga in helpless “demon-in-distress” situations requiring rescue, and for counterbalancing Sesshomaru’s spiked, hug-repellent armor and Inuyasha’s loose robes with Koga’s skimpy armor and furred micro-miniskirt, concealing his crotch only by careful choice of viewing angle. This ogling display of male flesh is characteristic of the Wolf, maximizing the friction between his overt desirability and the need to resist him.

Although Buffy‘s Spike is a vampire, theoretically an “ice prince” archetype, the character bears a dog’s name and typical “wolf” impulsiveness and romantic vulnerability. In his second season introduction, he is confined to a wheelchair and forced to watch his beloved Drusilla seduced by ‘Ice Prince’ rival Angel. In the third season, he’s pathetically dumped and weeping. In the fourth, he’s neutered by a brain chip that zaps him for attacking, so “he doesn’t chase the other puppies anymore.” In the fifth, the trope of Spike’s muscular nakedness is introduced as vulnerability; he bares his chest to Buffy’s stake and confesses his love. This sequence is revealed as Spike’s dream; he is stripped and Buffy is fully clothed even in his own sexual fantasies. Spike is also stripped and tortured for love of Buffy by the dominant, female deity Glory in this season. In the sixth, after their first sexual encounter, Buffy is again fully clothed, abusing Spike verbally while he sprawls naked and defenseless. She repeatedly violates his sexual boundaries from a position of dominance; his attempt to force himself on her is presented as a crime of pathetic desperation. Though ‘Ice Prince’ Angel wishes to torment and kill Buffy when he is soulless, Spike’s soulless state is no obstacle to his love – the emotional dependence of the “Wolf” knows no bounds.

Twilight’s Jacob Black is another wolf defined by constant loyalty, before attempting to force himself onto Bella in an act portrayed as pathetic desperation. Where Edward’s brief moment of toplessness is a dramatic, suicidal act that will dazzle a watching crowd, Jacob’s muscular toplessness and skimpy attire are chronic, underlining his tantalizing availability and maximizing mental friction in the female spectators, as the heroine resists.

Shishihokodan! Or, Why Team Jacob Loses

Comparing the fandom of all four series reveals an interesting trend: fangirls are roughly equally divided between Team Jacob and Team Edward, Team Spike and Team Angel, Team Ryoga and Team Ranma, Team Koga and Team Inuyasha; nonetheless, the “Ice Prince” always gets the girl. It would be easy to blame the creators. Yet, Stephenie Meyer claims to be “Team Jacob.” Both Marti Noxon and Jane Espenson, Buffy‘s major female writer/directors, have made statements in support of the Buffy/Spike (“Spuffy”) romance. Rumiko Takahashi’s writings in the romcom genre, Maison Ikkoku and One Pound Gospel, also reward and root for heroes in the vulnerable “Wolf” mode, and it is Takahashi who provides a structural explanation for ‘ice prince’ triumph with Ranma 1/2‘s Shishihokodan arc.

The “Shishihokodan” is a blast of energy which enables perpetual loser Ryoga to defeat the hero Ranma by harnessing his own heartbreak. Ranma attempts to defeat the all-powerful Shishihokodan with a confidence-blast, but can only triumph by giving Ryoga momentary hope of sexual opportunity. In other words, Ryoga loses not because he is inferior, but because losing is the paradoxical source of his power. Any woman attracted to the “Wolf'” archetype is inherently drawn to vulnerability; her attraction is intensified by the wolf’s heartbroken rejection, her frustration intensified by the heroine’s resistance. Any woman attracted to the “Ice Prince” is inherently drawn to dominance; her attraction would be reduced by his loss of mastery if he were defeated. As such, pursuing the resistant hero, and resisting the pursuing hero, create positively and negatively charged polarities to an explosive battery of sexual tension; a narrative trap which dooms the “wolf,” as Takahashi showed herself sympathetically aware with the Shishihokodan arc.

The wolf is difficult to dispose of: any alternative love interest would undermine his painful availability, thus one could only be introduced with unsatisfactory suddenness at the last minute to make a weak consolation price. The sudden arrival of a pig-fetishist marks Ryoga’s sidelining in Ranma 1/2; a wolf-girl for Koga is a last-minute addition to the Inuyasha anime, while Koga simply loses his previously foolhardy fighting spirit, forgets his long-established vengeance vendetta and slinks out of the original manga after admitting that Kagome should be with Inuyasha. Abandoning pursuit annihilates a Wolf’s narrative role. Most disturbingly, the newly arrived love interest for Jacob Black is literally newly-arrived as a newborn; his obsessive need to psychologically groom an infant into a future bride doesn’t bother the infant’s parents, presumably merely relieved that the wolf has been disposed of. More satisfyingly, rather than slinking away Koga-style, Spike’s acceptance that Buffy can’t love him “but thanks for saying” allows him to destroy the Hellmouth and be redeemed, incinerating himself in a spectacular blast of purest self-destructive Shishihokodan.

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. In fact, mankind’s Whore is generally more empowered than womankind’s Wolf, probably because culture sees male sexuality as common weakness but female sexuality as social rebellion. It is the female gaze’s model of dominant-resistor/submissive-pursuer that aligns the rivalry dynamic of triumphant dominant with the love dynamic of triumphant resistor in a perfect feedback loop, structurally maximizing sexual tension (hence the squealing). But the collateral damage for a male viewer is the destruction of the character he most identifies with, in a blast of purest Shishihokodan. As women well know, it sucks to be the unintended spectator.

Brigit McCone is unapologetically Team Wolf, writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and making weird Pride and Prejudice analogies.