Nick

Jane Gaines’ “White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory” describes the “heterosexual assumption” of the “binary oppositions of male/female.” Her argument is centered upon the idea that the construct of male/female has blinded society to other societal constructs such as class and race. Her focus is centered upon the erasure of black females by the whites within the film industry. The film Strange Days (1995) is an example of a film that challenges this lack of representation. First and foremost, it features a female director who is directing an action film – a genre seen as male-centered. Secondly, the film features a strong black female lead named Mace. Mace was created to be a tough character who often saves the male protagonist, Lenny from danger.  She is characterized by her ability to fight, but she is given more depth than this by allowing her to have feelings for Lenny. This sort of portrayal is a departure from the norm as it allows black women to see themselves on the screen in a manner that is not oppositional.  It also counters typical Hollywood tradition by vilifying the “damsel in distress.” Faith throughout the film earns the hatred of the audience especially when she turns on Lenny. This sort of vilification makes the viewer mad that Lenny saves her in the end. This film departs from traditional constraints and goes beyond the gender construct by showing class and race tensions, but it also challenges traditional gender thought on all levels from characters to director.

In Jane Gaines’ “White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory,” she discusses different feminist theories and their intersection, or lack thereof, with race. Feminist theory focuses on the idea of patriarchy being an oppressive institution. However, black women in society derive most of their identity from their race, and not their gender, which limits them in terms of protection by the feminist movement. Not only is the focus excluding gender, but it is mainly geared towards common middle-class values. It is common in society for women to be expected to gain their identity from their gender, and the occupations they are limited to due to their gender. However, this may not hold true for other classes, where these gender roles are not as enforced.

 In Strange Days (1995), an opposition of expected gender norms was shown within the character of Mace. Although she was a mother, her identity did not come from this maternal nature, despite it being a large part of her life. Her character was nothing short of badass, with her being trained in defensive driving and defensive combat.

In “She’s Gotta Have It’: The Representation of Black Female Sexuality on Film,” author Felly Nkweto Simmonds explores themes of black sexuality displayed in film and it’s complex portrayal. In Judith Butler’s article, “Gender is Burning”, she argues that gender that gender is not something one is, but something one does.  She discusses the idea of gender performativity and its relation to the institutionalized expectations that exist regarding gender identity. Identifying with a gender is identifying with a set of norms. is the acts of reiterated acts and practices. Freedom can occur through ”repetition of the law into hyperbole, a re-articulation of the law against the authority of the one who delivers it.”  She goes on to write “this ‘being a man’ and this 'being a woman’ are internally unstable affairs” There is a cost in identification — a loss of another facet of one’s being.

In her essay, Judith Butler writes that cinema often depicts wearing drag not as something intrinsic to one’s identity, but as a comedic trope—something one would only do in extreme or unusual circumstances where they were compelled. Portraying drag in this way, Butler writes, is “functional in providing a ritualistic release for a heterosexual economy that must constantly police its own boundaries against the invasion of queerness.” This is accomplished by never showing queerness as a legitimate identity. In another essay, Felly Nkweto Simmonds writes about the patriarchy evident in films that depict black female sexuality. Simmonds writes in her essay that Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It (1986) shows Nola’s existence as a symbol of male domination, as her life in the film consists largely of being sexually involved with several men who she must have, as suggested by the film’s title. This dynamic reaches its zenith in a rape scene in which the power dynamic is at its most explicit. As a solution, Simmonds posits that black women “need a wider definition of sexuality” than what heteronormativity confines it to, and that “[w]e cannot allow sexual promiscuity to be the sole defining factor in our liberation.”

Elements of the film Pariah (2011) counteract all of these problems that Simmonds and Butler write about. Pariah accomplishes both objectives that Simmonds recommends by telling the story of a black seventeen year old girl who is not only a lesbian but also sexually inexperienced. In the film, Alike’s insistence on wearing more boyish clothing shows that what she wears is a significant part of her identity as a lesbian, meant to be a normal part of her life rather that to inspire laughs or place homosexuality outside the realm of normality. The scene in which she eschews the clothing her mother buys her for the more masculine clothes her picks for herself demonstrates this, as it shows her outfit as a part of her sexual identity.

In Linda Williams’ Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess, she describes the different audiences to which a film is intended which is often classified by genre. Moreover, she argues that this differentiability by genre is based upon the intent of the film: to cause tears, to cause arousal, or to cause fear. They are all based upon the audience partaking within the action being portrayed on screen. The film Alien is a horror/sci-fi hybrid which tells the story of a crew being wiped out by a foreign organism. The overall narrative idea – that of a group being stranded with a being that threatens their lives – is typical of the horror genre; however, unlike most horror films, this film features a strong female protagonist in Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. But even so, Williams’ describes how the bodies of women are traditionally inscribed as the “primary embodiments of pleasure, fear, and pain. Alien is no exception to this idea and in fact uses all three of these at different times throughout the film. For pleasure, shot of Weaver in her underwear are shown in a sexual manner. For fear, the film features the damsel in distress when Lambert becomes paralyzed with fear after her encounter with the Alien. And for pain, the scene where Ash essentially rapes Ripley is an embodiment of pain and violation of the female body. Each genre employs some combination of these emotions/excesses but leans more towards one over another. In Alien, it leans more towards the fear aspect, as it is a horror movie, and it relies heavily upon the females to generate this fear despite the rest of the film also being geared towards this creation of fear.

In her essay “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess” Linda Williams explores the genderization of melodramas, horror films, and pornography—three categories of film that Williams says depict “excess” in the form of an emotional reaction from female characters that is reciprocated by the audience. Williams writes that “when the girl-victim of a film like Halloween finally grabs the phallic knife, or ax, or chain saw to turn the tables on the monster-killer, that viewer identification shifts from an ‘abject terror gendered feminine’ to an active power with bisexual components.” A ambiguously gendered monster is defeated—“symbolically castrated”—by an “‘androgynous’ ‘final girl.’”

This is achieved in the film Alien (1979) in the final sequence when Ripley shoots the alien with a grappling hook to push the monster out into space. The alien has killed all of her crewmates and snuck onto her shuttle, rendering her the “final girl” who has no choice but to die or “turn the tables on the monster-killer” by attacking it with a phallic weapon to symbolize her androgyny and the alien’s castration. Until now, the alien had preyed on the crew with impunity, not receiving so much as a slap from a team of people armed with flamethrowers. Following what Williams describes as an oscillation from the initial powerlessness to active empowerment of the “girl-victim” throughout a horror film’s plot, Ripley changes this course at the end of the film to save herself by killing the alien.