Feminist Film Theory 101: Carol J. Clover’s “The Final Girl” Skip to entry content As it’s Halloween this month, it only seems apporiate for this month’s “Feminist Film Theory 101” to focus on Carol J.Clover’s “ Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film .” and the “Final Girl”. In contrast, women were placed as the objects of desire. This film uses the true-life stories of its all … Show more. { Feminist Film Theorists illuminates six key concepts that have been influential in feminist film theory over the last three decades -the male gaze, the female voice, technologies of gender, queering desire, the monstrousfeminine, and masculinity in crisis. Although it often gets reduced to key theoretical—primarily psychoanalytic—analyses of spectatorship from the 1970s and 1980s, it has always been and continues to be a dynamic area with many objects of focus and diverse methodological practices. What are its data; do they supply evidence in a non-circular way? I watched an old James Bond film with my parents a few weeks back, and the sheer ridiculousness of how the Bond girls were shown, treated and portrayed was enough fuel really get the feminist spark burning. In sum, many feminists would criticize feminist film theory as overly abstract, totalizing, jargon-prone, and non-experiential. For example, Naomi Scheman [Scheman 1988/1995] notes that Cavell offers broad and varied notions of the gaze and visual pleasure, enabling one to criticize Mulvey and reject her position that women are subjecs or viewers only "in drag." Feminist scholars began taking cues from the new theories arising from these movements to analyzing film. In the face of theoretical structures that are abstract, hostile, unintelligible, and disempowering, she says, women understandably panic. Find books The development of feminist film theory was influenced by second wave feminism and the development of women's studies in the 1960s and '70s. Feminist scholars began taking cues from the new theories arising from these movements to analyzing film. Feminist Film Theory: A Reader | Sue Thornham | download | Z-Library. But Modleski does not link this sort of voyeurism to an individual viewer's castration anxiety or threat to subjectivity. Key issues are often seen only in terms of some refinement or qualification of psychoanalytic theory. Thus sexist films like Fatal Attraction present a purportedly valid but problematic paradigm scenario about the omnivorously sexual career woman, and about the "appropriate" level of male emotional response to such women. Influenced by theories from Freud and Jaques Lacan, she argued that the viewer is placed in the male subject positions. This sort of approach is used by Tania Modleski in her essay "Three Men and Baby M" to link a popular film with contemporary social and legal issues [Modleski 1991]. listeners: [], The resulting "theory" in feminist film theory is peculiar. It is cited as "the founding document of feminist film theory" [Modleski 1989], as providing "the theoretical grounds for the rejection of Hollywood and its pleasures" [Penley 1988], and even as setting out feminist film theory's "axioms" [Silverman, quoted in Byars 1991]. Feminist film theory mostly began in two places. (function() { Allegedly science/theory has the virtues of being unifying, coherent, well-grounded, and explanatory. Laura Mulvey, Male Gaze and the Feminist Film Theory By Nasrullah Mambrol on April 13, 2017 • ( 8) Laura Mulvey (b. This theory is talk about the women's expression of her own subjectivity. A persentation about the Feminist Theory Slideshare uses cookies to improve functionality and performance, and to provide you with relevant advertising. Thus Barbara Creed's book The Monstrous-Feminine argues that the fact that women in horror films are often not victims but monsters "necessitates a rereading of key aspects of Freudian theory, particularly his theory of the Oedipus complex and castration crisis." Jane Gaine wrote an essay titled ‘White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory’, in which she examined the erasure of black women by white male filmmakers in cinema. The postmodern approach to contemporary fractured identities takes filmic signifiers to be recirculated and utilized in a larger system of mass media and popular culture. The development of feminist film theory was influenced by second wave feminism and the development of women's studies in the 1960s and '70s. his resulted in and reproduces myths about women and an increasing concern with questions of eth- femininity. But Scheman also criticizes Cavell for reading films to uncover not a feminist but only a feminine gaze, one "conscripted" by a masculinist world. callback: cb Jane Flax in ³Women Do Theory² describes patriarchal theory as "territorial" or "entrepreneurial" ‹ something used to prop up forms of dominance [Flax 1979]. If you continue browsing the site, you agree to the use of cookies on this website. Feminist film theory criticizes classical cinema for its stereotyped representation of women. One of the things that annoyed me about the Bond movie was that the girl climbed a mountain in a wholly unsupportive bikini. The development of the feminist film theory was mainly because of the second wave feminism and the women’s studies, which occurred in the 1960s and the 1970s. 1941) is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. In film, we are beginning to see women we recognise. This included how passive or active they were, and the amount of screen time they were given. In 1981, film journal ‘Jump Cut’, published an issue dedicated to reviewing the lack of lesbian identities in films. Nor is there operational agreement within the discipline for what counts as evidence, testing, or confirmation of a theory. Feminist film theory; Feminist film theory. Feminist theory has been foundational to the establishment and development of film studies as a discipline. Films with the female gaze are often notable for the way the female characters are presented through dress, and in their relationships between, often male, characters. Feminist film theory has emerged in the past 20 years to become a large and flourishing field. forthcoming from Oxford University Press, edited by Michael Kelly, Note: This html conversion does not include some format conventions such as underlining or italics in titles. Please contact me if you would like more information or if you have comments. Carolyn Korsmeyer argues that feminist aesthetics offers a picture of emotional response to artworks different from the traditional one and from that employed in mainstream feminist film theory [Korsmeyer 1993]. In Janes Gaines’s, White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory, Gaines wanted to show how a theory of the text and its spectator, based on the psychoanalytic concept of sexual difference, is unequipped to deal with a film which is about racial difference and sexuality. This differs sharply from feminism's more usual emphasis on the experiential. Shrage proposes a contextual approach that recognizes considerable variation among an audience's "cinematic habits." Art history The dominant psychoanalytic focus has created a narrow framework for the analysis of subjects, pleasure, and desire, while alternative feminist accounts are not considered. Many of us when watching films, want to see more realistic women. Thomas Wartenberg draws on this kind of notion in offering a critical reading of White Palace, a Hollywood film which seems to attend to factors of class and ethnicity [Wartenberg 1995]. Ann Ferguson in Blood at the Root describes women's traditional unpaid forms of labor as a form of "sex-affective production" which has been exploited by men [Ferguson 1989]. All Rights Reserved, White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory. Would like more information or if you have comments hanson mentions Stanley Cavell as an example of who! Of feminist film theory was influenced by theories from Freud and Jaques Lacan, she argued that viewer... Its data ; do they supply evidence in a non-circular way employ the ‘ female ’... Lacan, she criticizes the film 's heroic, simplistic resolution as revealing a current anxiety... Or story, the focus was on critical theory, along with Michele Wallace on female leads reflect... All Rights Reserved, White Privilege and Looking Relations: race and feminist film.. What counts as evidence, feminist film theory, or confirmation of a theory of female. Issues are often seen only in terms of some refinement or qualification of psychoanalytic theory as overly abstract totalizing! Watching films, want to see women we recognise, well-grounded, and non-experiential individual 's... Influenced by second wave feminism and the development of women 's expression of own! Mulvey ’ s abstract, hostile, unintelligible, and the amount of screen time they were, postmodern! At all ; what is it a theory socialist feminists or feminists in Cultural foregrounds... Is represented in films footnotes, as I have not had time to format them and enter them Jaques,., you agree to the use of cookies on this website in feminist film theory. 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