The Female Spectator

For the last week or so, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about the male gaze and the male spectatorship that films appeal to, especially in the visual sense. During our discussion on Wednesday, we happened upon the idea of the female spectator. I wonder why it is not addressed as often because I think there is a lot to be said on the female perspective. In this blog entry I will discuss ideas of the female spectator through the class texts and Hitchcock’s films.

In Graeme Turner’s Film as Social Practice IV, Chapter 5 outlines Mulvey’s argument that much of mainstream cinema is constructed for the male gaze. The female in the film serves as the object of desire, but the female spectator is unlikely to identify with the voyeurism of the male protagonist. Feminist film theory attempts to revolutionize the acceptance of the dominant male gaze. In trying to model a “female gaze,” Modleski and other critics resist the idea that all women can be generalized to one perspective. This also makes me wonder how all the articles we’ve read can so unrealistically characterize all male viewers to have the same psychoanalytic complex. Subconscious processes do not determine the theoretical female gaze as much as the cultural and historical perspective they’ve gained from being active women in the realm of society. I think that women find pleasure in the nonsexual relationships they form with the characters on screen.

I think its fair to say that the women of Hitchcock’s era identified with the females in Suspicion and Rear Window. The fear of domestic violence is widespread and the women characters in the film are representative of the same fear. Lina’s character responds to the clues of Johnnie’s threats in the same way many of the women in the audience can see themselves reacting. Although they cannot identify with the male gaze of Lina as a spectacle to be looked at, they can connect with her emotionally in a way that the male gaze cannot. Lisa stands as an powerful character who takes the action where Jeffries can not, thereby connecting with the empowering emotions of the female spectators who like to see themselves as doing the same. Hitchcock presents the females as spectacles, but not to the likes of older movies we watched. His films don’t compare to those with Marilyn Monroe who is presently merely as a object of sexual pressure.

Another idea addressed by Turner is the female obsessions with actors and actresses beyond the stories of the films. Moviemakers must appeal to the likes of the female spectatorship because they are the ones who comprise the market of fandom. It seems that in the realm of cinema, the male gaze might dominate the perspectives on screen, but off screen, the cultural effect rings with the female population just the same. The women in the audience don’t need a cut-up male body shots to drool at to find pleasure in a film.