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feminist film theory....sounded good before i read it

2001-11-15 - 11:29 p.m.

Ok i have to clear my head of a few things in order to be able to sleep/eat/think and most importantly work what so ever today and tomorrow...i'm sorry for any of you who were hoping for something interesting,but all this is the reason for me not updating in so long....oh yeahr and my comp went on fire....so....

In film the male gaze is always in control,be it the gaze of the male character or the male spectator.Women are shown to be images,present to be controled and gazed upon by the male.

The female is an ever present reminder of the threat of castration however,(through her lack of a penis..according to Freud..) so in order to combat this the male fetishises the female and regains control of the situation. Therefore the female is always presented as a sexualised object on screen.

The female spectator is difficult to theorise as she can take one of 2 positions:by taking a feminine view thus putting herself in a mashocistic and passive position;or she can identify with the male character/gaze and accept the masculinisation/transvestitism of her spectatorship.

An alternative to this is to become a sophisticated viewer and realise that the flaunting of femininity on screen is simply a masquerade.This,however, still relies on the masculine structure of the look.

Ok that's my summary of the theories that i have to work with for my film essay..in very very simplified language.

I have to relate this all to Pulp Fiction somehow.

The question is to evaluate the theories by analysing the film.

A few questions that can be thrown in are:what happens when the spectator doesn't take the position offered and reads the film in a different way?What happens when the female character is in a position of power?Is she really ever in power at all? How can gay and lesbian audiences relate to the positions offered if at all?

And thats all i have to say about that.

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