I have a feminist film theory question. I read Laura Mulvey's essay and had some questions about her use of feminist theory. Since the essay was written during the mid 1970s, I take issue with the structural feminist ideology in the article, particularly when applied in the present day. Yet, I have seen a number of metas which uncritically use this text as a foundation. Do you find structural feminist ideology limited? I know little of film studies, but a bit of women's studies. Thanks
Thank you for this wonderful ask! I was hoping someone would bring up a question like this.
I want to start by saying that I am somewhat protective of Mulvey and feminists of her ilk and era. I think it is very tempting to imagine ourselves *beyond* their concerns and therefore no longer in need of their theories, or to fixate on the flaws in their arguments and use that as an excuse to dismiss them. It is tempting (for me as much as anyone) to say, “this is not my experience of gender, therefore this type of theory is useless to me.”
I think we need to resist this temptation, because the arguments of 70s feminists, while they may strike us as old-fashioned, are usually more complex than they seem at first glance, and often confront us with truths that remain as uncomfortable now as they were then. A lot of people around today stand to benefit if they can convince us that patriarchal structures have all been vanquished, and feminism is no longer necessary. It should come as no surprise that those people are the ones propping up patriarchal structures.
Okay, now that I’ve gotten that caveat out of the way… Yes, I think there are flaws in Mulvey’s argument, and I think we owe it to Mulvey to engage critically with her text, rather than accepting it as some kind of untouchable gospel. That was, in fact, one goal of my meta – to point out that patriarchal structures like traditional cinematography and entrenched beauty standards can be used to objectify men as well as women. Patriarchy actually doesn’t care whether your body is male or female, as long as the structures of power remain in place.
I also wanted to point out that women, like men, derive pleasure from these structures of power and are complicit in maintaining them (an idea which Mulvey emphatically rejects at the end of her essay: “Women, whose image has continually been stolen and used for this end, cannot view the decline of the traditional film form with anything much more than sentimental regret.”).
There are other issues, too. Writing up this meta and searching for useful screen grabs over the past couple of days has made me very aware of certain places where Mulvey’s argument… I don’t want to call them weaknesses, but there are places where I agree that it would be productive to put a little pressure on her analysis. Not to tear it apart, but to complicate it and enrich it. The biggest problem as I see it is that Mulvey cherry picks her evidence. Why rely only on old black and white movies when she was writing in the 1970s?  And if she is trying to make a point about cinematography/cinema in general (rather than Hollywood in particular), why never reference other film traditions, like French or British? Or even Hollywood produced female-centered movies of the Golden Age like Mildred Pierce? Why only use the vampiest vixens as her examples, instead of talking about Joan Crawford and Katherine Hepburn? And in fact, even the examples she does use are more complex than she allows… certainly Lauren Bacall and Marlene Dietrich are objectified in their movies, but there is also a ton of gender play in their roles. I rewatched a fair amount of these stars in various roles in order to collect screen grabs for this, and I was surprised at how playful their movies are with gender conventions. For example, the plot of To Have and Have Not strongly emphasizes that Bacall’s character is sexually pursuing Bogart’s, even while acknowledging that this runs counter to gender norms. And I hardly need to mention Dietrich’s affinity for dressing in drag, both onscreen and off. And why did Mulvey ignore classic films like Tarzan, which can certainly be read as sexually objectifying male bodies? I suspect Mulvey was aware of all these issues, but needed to simplify her analysis in order to make a powerful argument. (I’m sympathetic because I just did the same thing – in my meta, I deliberately favored concision and coherence over a richer but harder to grasp analysis of the material.) The reality of gender and cinematography throughout the history of cinema is indeed more complex than is conveyed by Mulvey’s short, incisive essay, but that, to me, is not at all the same thing as saying that her argument is wrong, that women are not objectified, or that movies treat men and women the same.
One last thing – I noticed in your tags that you referred to Mulvey’s feminism as “essentializing.” I think Mulvey would reject that notion. For Mulvey, her main goal was to point out the usually-invisible structures of patriarchy in hopes of destabalizing them. If these structures were inherent, natural, essential, or inevitable, there would be no point in trying to dismantle them. It would be like arguing with gravity. My sense is that Mulvey believes patriarchy to be culturally constructed, and her purpose is to shift that culture.Â
I happen to believe that culture *has* shifted, and I think Mulvey is to be credited with some of the work that required. But there is still work to be done.
(And thanks again for raising a very important and thought-provoking question!)
