> On Sabato, luglio 26, 2003, at 11:59 PM, Dan Streible wrote: > > Thank you, Dan, for making this article accessible to those who > cannot walk to to the newsstand in LA and buy the paper. I am > particularly grateful that you posted this link first thing in the > morning, so that I, too, can read it -- from Milano. > >> "Take it from a cinema studies grad: Film theory's not for everyone, >> but there are riches within the jargon." >> by Manohla Dargis > > Manhola reinvents Doane! Check this out. > > The other clue that what I was learning might not have much to do with > lived experience occurred while I was reading a feminist study on > 1940s women's films in which author Mary Ann Doane repeatedly referred > to "the female spectator." What female spectator, I wondered — a 1940s > shopgirl? Simone De Beauvoir? Me > > At first, I think that Dargis is engaging in the unmasking of > essentialistic views of womanhood and taking feminist film theory to > the next level -- the intersection of gender and race, class, sexual > orientation, etc. However, I want to remind her that Doane did all > that, four short years after the text Dargis quotes, *The Desire to > Desire.* Hasn't she read, “Dark Continents: Epistemologies of > Racial and Sexual Difference in Psychoanalysis and Cinema” (in *Femmes > Fatales?*). > > For her analysis, Doane draws heavily on Jacques Lacan, whose radical > reading of Freud through Marx has been a cornerstone of film theory > since the mid-1970s. Like many feminist film theorists, Doane is > interested in how movies teach men and women to look at them as male > viewers and how, through seamless editing and camera placement, among > other techniques, they coerce us to look at them through what > theorists (building on Lacan) call "the male gaze." The male gaze is a > complex idea, used to uncover a complex phenomenon, but it's an > exceedingly fruitful way to explore how movies are simultaneously > created by human consciousness and actually construct human > consciousness. > > This is all true, but Dargis presents it with a major omission. > Doane was reading Mulvey. As Doane would say (in her essay), > "Ontology is out reach, here." > > Gloria Monti > _____________________________ > Gloria Monti, Ph.D. > milano, italy > [log in to unmask] ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.ScreenSite.org