Mike Frank wonders: " in the system of film analysis associated especially with SCREEN, it was taken for granted that, to quote jane gaines, "the ways in which the masculine gaze controls viewing within the film, sets up the spectator's viewing position, and coincides with the look of the camera in the classic realist text" all serve the "construction of male pleasure" now, assuming for the moment that this is analysis of the classic realist text is accurate, what causes this to be the case, that is to say, why is it true?" and offers the following possibilities: "1. in classic narrative film the story told is almost invariably that of a man; thus the narrative focus forces the look to be a man's look? note that if this is the case then simply telling a woman's story and suturing the spectator into an exchange of women's glances would work differently . . . the masculine force of the text is then circumstantial, not a function of the textual system itself. "2. in our [patriarchal/late-capitalist/post-modern] culture the gaze is owned by males; it has become so much a feature of masculine hegemony that even the gaze of a woman [or women] is coded as male . . . thus an economy of looking is always oppressive to women's subjectivity ? note that in this view the gaze CAN be female, but not in the present cultural climate "3. given the psychodynamic foundations of masculinity and femininity, the gaze cannot but be male . . . the regime of the visual is inherently patriarchal . . . female subjectivity and women's pleasure require a radically different mode" My own understanding of these issues is hardly very sophisticated, and most of the reference below are (I think) pretty well known, but a couple of responses come to mind (these are summaries of what I take to be some positions on the question; my own thoughts are far more muddled!): 1. The analysis detailed in Mike's first point builds on ideological critiques of the cinematic apparatus itself, such as by Jean Louis Baudry. In this vein, the system of monocular perspective that is necessarily encoded by the film lens is historically tied to the rise in the Renaissance of bourgeois individualism, which in turn undergirds a social system in which the gaze is one of ownership and possession. It is necessarily individualist, capitalist and voyeuristic--which is to say, necessarily male and patriarchal. (Compare the taxonomy of film types offered by Comolli and Narboni in their introduction to the Cahiers du cinema critique of YOUNG MR. LINCOLN.) 2. This synopsis is probably the most problematic of the three scenarios, and it does reflect some of the dissension and discussion that can be found even in the SCREEN discussions of some 20 or so years ago, not to mention many feminist analyses since. Christine Gledhill's "Recent Developments in Feminist Criticism" from 1978 is a good overview of the problematic issues arising from the use of Althusser and Lacan in such analyses. The implications of this position put the emphasis not so much on the need for more women directors or for a "feminist" style of filmmaking that would be radically subversive of current practice as a need for a new way of *looking* so that the hegemonic male gaze can be subverted by the spectator's laughter or analytic distance--and we probably all know (or are!) people who do watch films that way. 3. This is more or less the position that Laura Mulvey stakes out in "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," and of course a number of women filmmakers have tried to create such modes for female subjectivity and women's pleasure. Numerous feminist critics, including those feminists and others who do not necessarily accept that analysis of the classic realist text in the first place, have offered many variations and exceptions to these positions. Few, however, have had anything like the impact and influence of Mulvey's original and rather brief essay. For better or worse, much of this vein of discussion for nearly three decades has been a set of footnotes to Mulvey! I don't think that these summaries are terribly new, but I hope that they will spark some more interesting responses! Don Larsson ----------------------------------------------------------- "Only connect" --E.M. Forster Donald F. Larsson Department of English, AH 230 Minnesota State U, Mankato (56001 [log in to unmask] ---- To sign off Screen-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF Screen-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]