Feminist Film Theory and Pretty Women

October 17, 2023

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Like other academic feminist pursuits like feminist literary criticism, feminist film theory was born out of the 1960s political turmoil. To better grasp their condition as socially, politically, and economically oppressed people, women should examine their cultural environment critically. Therefore, it was understandable that the critics who founded the field of feminist film studies in the 1970s initially concentrated mainly on how women were portrayed — or misrepresented — in Hollywood films and other forms of mass media; it was also understandable that they showed a keen interest in the unfavourable stereotypes of women that were promoted by popular culture.

Such early critique usually called for more “realistic” depictions of women in films and assumed a fairly simple relationship between reality and representation. A survey of the different ways in which women were stereotyped on film served as the approach, which was roughly sociological in nature.

More specifically, early feminist film critics claimed that the small number of female roles (sex object, brainless bimbo, femme fatale, housewife, sacrificing mother, etc.) present in films restricted women's aspirations in real life and diverted them towards a smaller number of career options.

Early feminist film critics were also persuaded that the constant reinforcing of derogatory stereotypes of women strengthened the preconceptions of male spectators, hence supporting the patriarchal status quo.

Molly Haskell’s From Reverence to Rape (1974), a well-known illustration of this early feminist perspective, begins by asserting that “the big lie perpetrated on Western society is the idea of women’s inferiority,” and that “the movie business is an industry dedicated for the most part to reinforcing the lie.” By the middle of the 1970s, a more clearly theoretical approach that extensively drew from psychoanalysis and another recently popular critical vocabulary, such as French poststructuralism, had emerged as a challenge to the sociological approach to feminist cinema criticism. This competing approach, which offered more complex interpretive techniques, quickly overwhelmed the sociological school of cinema criticism, but it never completely silenced it.

The fact that the latter already highlighted a theme that is still important to many contemporary feminist critics, namely that there is an obvious connection between women’s experiences of sexual objectification in the “real world” and their sexual objectification on screen, is one reason why twenty-first-century feminist media criticism contains clear echoes of the early sociological approach. It’s nearly impossible to be a woman in today’s (Western) society without realising that the images that flash across the various screens that saturate our lives, including television, computer, billboard, and movie screens, are all a product of the same cultural mentality: a mentality that maintains that straight women are passive objects of desire. As we’ll see further below, the most potent expression of this idea came from psychoanalytic feminist cinema theory. Early sociological criticism, however, had already acknowledged its importance. And current cultural perspectives are still fixated on it. In our hetero-patriarchal society, males get to choose what (or whom) they want, whilst women’s interests are secondary in the sense that their role is only to transform themselves into alluring objects for male desire. This basic premise is as simple as it is grating. Men actively “own” their desire, but women only have the (passive) desire to be desired, goes this line of thinking. Various arguments have been made against this formulation over the past few decades.

Psychoanalytic film theory

In Freud’s era, women were frequently seen as angelic creatures with no sex urges at all. Contrarily, Freud discovered a lot of evidence of female sexuality in his clinical work, which he created in large part as a result of his interactions with hysterical female patients. Today, the term “hysterical” is used in a pejorative manner to refer to excessive (and unjustified) emotion. Although this was occasionally included in Freud’s definition as well, he used the phrase more widely to refer to a variety of pathological symptoms, some of which were physical, such as the sudden inability to swallow water or the loss of sensation in a limb. Freud came to assume that the severe restraint of female libido that was characteristic of his society was what was causing women to become unwell because the core of his interpretative practice was to link the development of such symptoms to sexual repression. In this way, despite the fact that Freud was undoubtedly not a feminist, he provided a crucial foundation for later feminist critiques of heteropatriarchal conceptions of female sexuality.

In a similar vein, Freud understood that human sexuality is not a “given,” but rather the outcome of a protracted, often harsh process of socialisation. Freud understood that sexuality is not an exception to the profoundly social tone of human life; he also understood that it is challenging to draw direct comparisons between humans and other animals because humans live in a complex cultural world of norms, customs, economies, governments, universities, nightclubs, books, and other things. This is in contrast to evolutionary thinkers who emphasize the similarities between the sexual behaviour of humans and other animals.

The power of cinematic suture

I want to note that Lacan’s theory of lack offers a compelling way to understand cinematic suture, the phenomenon of spectators being drawn into the filmic narrative so seamlessly that they forget they’re watching an illusory world, before outlining some of the ways feminist film theory has appropriated Freudian and Lacanian insights about the constitution of masculinity and femininity. Kaja Silverman makes the argument that screen images have this influence over us because they promise to close the gaping hole inside of us, or more specifically, to suture it, in The Subject of Semiotics from 1983. regained wholeness that Lacan diagnosed as one of the key elements of the human condition. The resolution of conflicts is one of the trademarks of mainstream movies. What’s more, insofar as such movies offer us conventional plot lines, they give us the satisfaction of knowing from the get-go how things are going to turn out; we may not be able to foresee every plot twist but we have a ballpark understanding of where the characters will end up. For example, when watching a romantic comedy such as Pretty Woman, we know not only that the heroine won’t die but also that, whatever the trials she undergoes during the narrative, she’ll eventually triumph. We also know that the hero of the story isn’t going to rape or beat up the heroine, that — whatever his flaws — he’ll eventually turn out to be a decent chap. And we know that no matter how much the hero and the heroine bicker, the movie will end with reconciliation and the promise of romantic fulfilment. There are popular films, particularly recent ones. Television productions that defy some of our fundamental assumptions, such as the 2006–14 television series 24. The show’s heroes were frequently killed off, shocking viewers (with the exception of Jack Bauer, of course, who had the strength to survive even his own death). This procedure was heralded as ground-breaking at the start of the series, and it has since been copied by other well-known shows like The Good Wife (2009–), Downton Abbey (2010–), Homeland (2011–), and even adolescent sensation The Vampire Diaries (2009–).

Modern television is skilled at raising the stakes by defying viewer expectations. Many movie genres, meanwhile, seem insurmountable in this aspect because it would be absurd, for example, to have the heroine die at the end of a romantic comedy. There, of course, there are films geared towards female viewers that defy expectations and, in some way or another, contradict the happy ending. audiences anticipate a conclusion. These comedies, however, are not “pure” romantic ones. Viewers anticipate their happy endings when they see a romantic comedy directed by Garry Marshall, Nancy Meyers, or Nora Ephron. We want suture so badly that we’ll pay any price, according to Silverman. This indicates, among other things, that we are prepared to put up with delays in the resolution of the story. In reality, these delays just whet our desire for suture, leading us to put up with unexpected narrative turns in the hopes that all will be resolved to our satisfaction in the end.

“Femininity” as a Heteropatriarchal Invention

Thus, feminist cinema theorists used Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis to highlight how films can draw us into their stories, even if those stories include dubious messages about gender. But perhaps more importantly, they sought to illuminate the mechanisms by which films produce gendered messages in the first place. They sought to tease out the full implications of the notion that masculinity and femininity are not biological givens — innate characteristics of men and women — but rather the outcomes of a society centred on phallic power. Feminist critics were more broadly interested in how prevailing gender and sexuality standards were internalised to the point that they are perceived as completely taken-for-granted, whereas Freud focused on the Oedipus complex as a technique of gender socialization.

They attempted to elucidate the full ramifications of the notion that men and women do not naturally possess the traits that define them as masculine or feminine; rather, these traits are the results of a Society built around phallic dominance. Feminist critics were generally interested in how dominant codes of gender and sexuality become internalised to the point where they’ve experienced as completely taken-for-granted components of our subjectivity, whereas Freud focused on the Oedipus complex as a tool of gender socialization. Many parents decorate nurseries and buy toys based on the gender of the child they are expecting, so that when the child is born, he or she is immediately exposed to either a blue world of model trains, race cars, and Lego sets or a pink world of Barbie dolls, stuffed animals, and miniature tea sets. This is how gender socialization frequently begins before birth. The young youngster has very little chance against these realities. Of course, some kids will rebel. Additionally, not all parents are interested in attending this event. Overall though, gender conditioning is practically unavoidable; if it doesn’t begin at home, it will eventually be implemented by kindergarten, elementary school, and the rest of society. Children learn early on that deviating from the norm will have consequences; castration threats are not necessary for them to comprehend that doing so would lead to rejection and contempt from their peers.

More and more people today are able to challenge the established gender norms in our culture. However, they typically don’t show resistance until they are teenagers (and occasionally even middle-aged people, like Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn Jenner). Most of us are socialised into our genders unintentionally. This means that when normative gender standards are internalized, they become so deeply ingrained in our inner lives — and even in the physical ways we occupy the world (walking, sitting, eating, smiling, and so on) — that we start to think of gender as a physical construct.

A crucial finding is that femininity is a heteropatriarchal creation. One way that patriarchy builds (and limits) males is by putting both them and women in confining gender-specific boxes. On the other hand, femininity has over the years been shaped in ways that are geared to fulfil masculine wants more so than vice versa because of the historical power disparity between men and women. This explains why women’s sexuality has been tightly controlled while also being hypersexualized.

The dichotomy here is only obvious because heteropatriarchy profits from both the discipline of female sexuality and from overt displays of that sexuality. Women have also historically been expected to perform the laborious task of supporting men’s fantasies of autonomy. By assuming the culturally assigned role of the one who “lacks,” women have increased men’s confidence in their “wholeness,” in their intactness as humans, as well as in their capacity for achievement; in other words, women have provided men with narcissistic satisfaction. Women have been asked to reflect back to men a picture of themselves that is twice as big as they are over the centuries, Virginia Woolf notes with wry humour.

Post-feminism, things changed for the better, and our society is now much more egalitarian. Most Western women do not view themselves as inferior to men, and it’s possible that they have, for the most part, actually been released from the obligation of serving as men’s narcissistic ambitions’ supporting cast members. However, there are still indications of the previous order, probably nowhere more so than in the visual iconography of our society, which continues to portray femininity as a heteropatriarchal creation. Although there may be fewer limits on female sexuality, objectification of women has arguably only become more prevalent. We’ve all seen the stereotypical perfect woman: the one with pouty, silicon-enhanced lips, perky, silicone-enhanced breasts, and a rounded, silicon-enhanced butt, gazing at us from billboards and magazine covers. This picture has been altered, that much is clear. And we are aware that the woman in this picture makes her full-time work seem stunning. However, we still can’t stop the image from creeping into our inner existence.

This woman is a fictional creation with little connection to real women. She is the contemporary representation of the mythological Woman, the symbol of femininity that has always existed. This Woman, like the phallus, is feminine but has no real-life counterpart.

Hollywood compensates for this difficulty by giving these fictional animals life so that we might pretend for the duration of the film that the ideas of masculinity and femininity in our culture are actual (walking, talking) beings. Movies these days occasionally mix genders, so Angelina Jolie, for example, frequently gets to kill people. a legion of baddies while simultaneously seeming as though she just walked out of Vogue. But generally speaking, one of Hollywood’s most notable traits has always been its ability to translate the ideas of masculinity and femininity in our culture onto (gendered) bodies that seem to represent these values in relatively unadulterated form. For this reason, the relationship between Hollywood cinema and the so-called ” patriarchal unconscious “, or the collective unconscious belief systems that underlie male-dominated society, has attracted the attention of Freudian feminist film critics. For instance, Kaplan claims that “film narratives, like dreams, symbolise a latent, repressed content, only that the ‘content’ now refers to the collective unconscious of patriarchy rather than the individual unconscious.

If psychoanalysis is a method that will reveal the significance of dreams, it ought to reveal the meaning of films as well. So, according to Kaplan, it is possible to reveal the logic of films as a representation of our society’s collective (patriarchal) unconsciousness using the interpretation techniques Freud devised, such as dream analysis.

In a similar vein, Laura Mulvey asserts, somewhat belligerently, that “psychoanalytic theory is… appropriated here as a political weapon, demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form.” Both critics are of the opinion that psychoanalysis has something to say about the fundamental principles of heteropatriarchy.

Both parties are more especially interested in learning how cinematographic conventions and methods are applied to create the alluring image of the ideal Woman and to present this image to the male gaze.

References

Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974),
See Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1961).
For a brilliant analysis of the ideology of gender complementarity, see Hilary Neroni, The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2005).
See Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jeth á , Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality (New York: Harper, 2011).
The details of the female Oedipus complex are beyond the parameters of this book.

Kaushiki Ishwar is pursuing history & philosophy at Miranda house, Delhi University. They are interested in Intersectionalities and queer theory. Their works are published in Feminism in India, livewire and youth ki awaaz.