Noir & Sexuality (Lecture)
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Contents |
General feminism
1st wave feminism
Suffragettes – advocating women’s right to vote
1869 National Women’s Suffrage Association
2nd wave feminism
Late 1960s
Kate Millett, Sexual Politics, 1969
- She thinks that "politics" equals "power relations". As for "Sexual Politics", it's about who is in control and who is controlled.
- Power relationships between genders.
- contemporary U.S. society is patriarchy.
- patriarchy is a society where men have dominant positions of power.
Feminist topics, historically speaking
1. Equal job opportunity
- "Equal pay for equal work."
- Equal opportunity for hiring/promotions (particularly seen in the 1970s).
E.g., only men could work as firefighter or police officer, or work in construction.
2. Free or inexpensive day care
- Many women still assume the primary care-giving role.
- Give women the option to work outside the home.
3. Violence against women, specifically rape
- Political issue instead of a moral issue.
- Violence against women is a power issue that it's part of how men overpower women.
4. Abortion
- Most disagreement with feminism.
- Those who believe in accessible abortion: A woman's right to control her body. (Pro-choice)
- Those who don't: Life begins at conception. (Pro-life)
5. Image or representation of women in media
It includes Film, TV, print pubs, Internet, advertising, Painting, and sculpture.
Feminist theory and cinema
1. Sociological interpretation of “stereotypes”
- Earliest feminist film criticism tended to take sociological interpretation of "stereotypes".
- particularly interested in how image of women in film is related to a particular culture or society.
- Direct reflection of society
- Expression of society’s repressed desires
- viewers prefer to see fantasies that are different from everyday experiences. E.g., film noir's "spider women" at a time when women were suppressed.
- The strong and independent women of film noir is the repressed desire of women during this time period.
- Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape (1974)
- Marjorie Rosen, Popcorn Venus
2. Gender identity
- it's closely related to stereotypes.
- Gender roles as social constructions
- What does it mean to be Feminine and masculinity?
- It's more important than biological differences.
- Particularly interested in the blurring of the those divisions
- Crossover figures: e.g., Marlene Dietrich, Madonna
3. Rediscovery of women auteurs
- Original auteur theory privileged men
- This was because there were not many female directors in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.
- E.g., Dorothy Arzner
- E.g., Dance Girl Dance
- Check to see whether there is any difference between how women are portrayed in her films and films directed by men.
4. Pornography
- Sexually explicit material
- Disagreement within feminism
- Those who oppose it due it from the perspective of sexual politics, not moral.
- Turns women into sexual objects
- Silent women
- Represses female desire
- Subjugates women (and makes them powerless)
- Complicated by changes in porn since videotape opened it to women
5. Woman-as-spectacle
- Influenced by Sigmund Freud, as re-read by Jacques Lacan (a French psychologist)
- Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Screen, 1975
- Used voyeurism as a metaphor for film viewing: Pleasure is received by viewers, but a key component to voyeurs is that they are not looked back at. Film viewing is like that. You look at the screen and they don't look back at you.
- Film viewer as voyeur, women on screen as spectacle.
