Feminist Film Video Theory

Social Construction of Gender

• Sex (biological differences) vs. gender (cutlural meanings assigned to sex difference)

• Our understanding of gender is influenced by the culture in which we live.

• Gender is a peformance (of sometimes unconscious, repeated behaviors)

Mirror Stage (Lacan)

• Baby recognizes itself (develops individuated identity) by looking in a mirror.

• Our sense of self is ultimately dependent upon our sense of the “other”

• Our identity is determined by being both subject and object of the gaze.

Laura Mulvey: Male Gaze

• Camera often takes male point of view

• Cinema is all about male scopophilia (voyeurism)

• Cinema forces spectators to identify with the male looker and see the woman into a powerless, fetishized object.

Feminism Beyond Mulvey…

• Questions the idea that spectators have no choice but to identify with heterosexual male gaze.

• Suggests that spectators can resist dominant meanings (blending pleasure and critique)

• Explores how gender identity intersects with race, class, sexuality and disability (and how spectatorship is cultural).

Feminism Beyond Mulvey II

• Emphasizes how cinema teaches us how to perform gender roles (how to act masculine or feminine)

• Considers films / videos as products of their time (rather than as playing out universal psychological themes)

• Analyzes how the context of online video viewing may make us rethink theories of spectatorship.