The Female Gaze

This past week we talked about a really interesting topic regarding the side of cinema regarding gender, and I had to talk more about it because I feel like I've gained a lot of insight from it. This topic is the Female Gaze, and it's a concept that counters the idea of the more well known Male Gaze. The main idea of the Female Gaze, as we learned in class, is that instead of viewing a character focusing on objectifying their body, the emphasis should instead be on the emotion behind the look. A simple way to put it, the female gaze focuses on the facial features rather than commonly sexualized body parts. However, the biggest focus of the female gaze is empathy.

The video we watched in class from the youtube channel 'The Take' (https://youtu.be/eCPD7Mi9504), gave a lot of new insight on this topic for me. I love how they classified the slow motion and shots and the jib shots that isolate particular body parts and hide the face from the frame. These are shots that as an avid movie fan, I knew about, but I never realized just how much they are used, how disproportionally they are used between men and women, and just how objectifying the techniques can be. Things like the way men and women are lit in cinema are a little deeper in the technicalities of how a film is made, so learning that was interesting as well. While I agree with much more than just the majority of the video, I feel there are a couple things that need to be recognized. One particular shot that caught my eye was the shot from the beginning of 'Superbad', where Michael Cera's character is caught looking at Martha MacIsaac's character Becca's boobs. This scene is shot in a particular way that is seen as objectifying the characters body, but I would argue that the point of that scene is to display what type of character Evan (Michael Cera) is. When Seth Rogan was in the writers room, I'm sure his intent was to show Cera as the slightly disgusting teenage boy that he is playing. While I understand that it may not be worth it, creating human stories showing the true Evan may be necessary. At the end of that scene there is one character that should be embarrassed, and it's definitely him. Additionally they go into depth on how the 'Magic Mike' series isn't quite objectifying men the way that other films objectify women, because the men have personality and have other plot lines like the furniture business that fits more with the female gaze. I think in that sense, you can say that a lot of movies that are deemed as 'male gaze movies' have elements of the female gaze, where female characters have eccentric and respectable personalities that are explored aside from their bodies. In reality, I feel like the male gaze existing isn't inherently wrong, as the video went into how women can use male characters and look at them using qualities of the male gaze. That form of objectification is something that men and women both occasionally tap into in order to display how a character might think of another character, or it can just be used in good fun for a movie like 'Magic Mike'. Where the true problem emerges is when it is overused, and especially when it is overused from male filmmakers to female subjects. With everything there needs to be balance, and a more emotion centered female gaze is definitely a more human and captivating way of telling stories.

There is one movie in particular that the video went into for an example of the female gaze, and that is 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire'. I am a huge fan of this movie and I never realized that so much of what makes that movie captivating and emotional comes down to how the director used the female gaze. I watched a video about the gaze specifically analyzing 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire', that brought even more insight on the idea. (https://youtu.be/DMUC584ppNQ).  There is so much to go into with the themes of how Heloise's resistance to being painted relates to the resistance to being objectified, but what I like to focus on is the way Marianne and the audience gaze at her. The entirety of the movie is about examining every detail about her both physically and personally, but it all goes back to the idea of 'looking with respect' that was talked about in the The Take video. I also don't want to spoil the ending, but the end of the movie is all about the gaze, watching the way that emotion takes over someone, and it is definitely a sublime artifact for me. There are few better endings to a movie, it makes the audience feel so much pain and happiness at the same time, and you know the two protagonists were feeling the same way. There's no doubt in my mind that the female gaze's best reference is this film.