Relatively Plastic

Feminist Readings of the Representation of Womanhood

Critical Analysis of Determinants within Patriarchal Capitalism

Cinema is often a mirror in which, in Lacanian terms, one projects his or her own idealized self stripped from the constraints of movement of which the child becomes aware during the primary formation of the ego. If I look at myself in the mirror, what do I see? A white, Eastern-European, queer male? What are the parameters that define one’s identity and what are the circumstances that allow one to categorize one’s complexity of existence? Why would it not be appropriate to think of myself in terms of my height, weight, eye colour and taste in music rather than focusing on my race, ethnicity and sexual orientation? How are categories generated? What is their reflection like in the societal mirrors that surround us? Am I living up to the screens and mirror images that so profoundly rule my existence? From these, seemingly egocentric premises, I want to look into one of the most firmly consolidated categorization of a section of humankind that has only recently been challenged: the yonic, the womb, the female, womanhood.

From the point of view of a cinema theorist, one could argue that my concerns with issues of womanhood and the semiological analysis of the means by which meaning is attached to one’s gender, is unrelated and only indirectly pertinent to the cinematic institution. One could easily argue that cinema is merely a means of expression of the auteur’s voice. Playing the devil’s advocate, I could quote Modleski, who in her response to Mulvey’s seminal essay “Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema” states, the following:

“The feminist critics I have mentioned (Mulvey) […] use Hitchcock’s work as a means to elucidate issues and problems relevant to women in patriarchy. In so doing these critics implicitly challenge and decentre directorial authority by considering Hitchcock’s work as the expression of cultural attitudes and practices existing to some extent outside the artist’s control.” (Modleski, 3)

Modleski thus seems to negate that the pro-filmic subject, selected by the auteur in creating the cinematic product, displays significant symptoms of submission to means of categorization and shaping of reality, legacy of the dominant ideology of patriarchal capitalism. I feel that the initial identification of the auteur, in this case Hitchcock, with the idealized mirror of his ego that he then reproduces in his films, in Modleski’s words, is free from a predetermined background that yields the initial image to be reflected in the mirror. Paradoxically, it seems she argues that the process of selection and creation of the filmic product is one of expression of the authorial voice alone, without considering that the tone and the words used by this voice are themselves predetermined by the environment where the pro-filmic subject is to be found in the first place.

An inexperienced reader might ask him/herself: how does the fact that the creative power of an auteur is shaped by the dominant ideology correlate to the means by which categories are determined? How does the mere reflection of the world onto a screen define the pro-filmic subject itself? In other words: how can a photograph merely chemically reproducing a compressed bi-dimensional transposition of a human image, determine and perpetuate the existence of categories and therefore asymmetrical power dynamics within society? I do not hold the answers to these questions, nor do I want to indicate that the solutions to such a riddle can be easily extrapolated from our everyday context. However, in this short essay looking at the ways in which categories are often manufactured by the subconscious, I want to elicit a critical approach in the viewer. I want to initiate a process of questioning of otherwise invisible dynamics that have bled from the dominant ideology we are immersed in, onto the silver screen. By taking in consideration Modleski’s theoretical work and juxtaposing it to Mulvey’s, I would like to bring to light my own vision on how I see womanhood being defined, represented and perpetuated in media today. For practical reasons and the lack of the appropriate space for the development of my argument, I will narrow down the examples I would like to bring onto the critic’s table to Hitchcock’s Rear Window that lends itself easily to clarifying the clash between Modleski and Mulvey and my own research of the means of representation of womanhood in media.

Before attempting to deconstruct the categories that one often finds him/herself trapped within, I would like to bring up couple of examples of how media shape and guide the formation of the dominant ideology, which eventually helps constituting a very firm divide of humankind along gender lines. After clarifying the means by which I see the audience being manipulated by the invisible selection processes of the meaning genesis in media, I would like to put these processes in perspective and superimpose them on the ideological clash between Modleski and Mulvey. Only after portraying the ultimate manufactured nature of the societal construct of gender, I will try to hypothesise that a quest for a new redefined inquisitive nature of cinema spectatorship, may spur a domino effect that will bring to light other categories that we are unconsciously surrounded and defined by. By means of feminist analysis, I hope that film and film critiques may acquire a new scope, which will eventually help us make sense of the processes of generation of the idealized self that we seek in the mirrors and screens that blind us everyday with their persuasive depiction of who we are.

Coming back to the beginning of this essay, before looking at some cardinal examples of representation, and therefore definition of womanhood in media, I feel the need to justify my choice of engaging in this social analysis by quoting Entman and Rojecki that have justified anthropologists’ and sociologists’ efforts in gaining insight in humankind by means of analysing media, especially cinema: “researchers have consistently noted that because of the widespread segregation of people’s social lives (due to the capitalist post-industrial class system), most of what people learn about (the) other […] comes from the media and not personal experiences” (Cole, 196). Lynn Edith Paulson further builds on this point by observing that: “… film television, print media or popular culture do not serve the function of representing the real world so much as they reveal, reinforce, and shape the cultural beliefs, values, and myths held about the ‘real world’” (Cole, 35).

Narrowing down the means by which cinema shapes the very subject it represents and thus creates “the most effective kind of propaganda, the one which is not recognized as such” (Cole, 94), I want to focus on couple of examples on how womanhood is depicted in popular cinema. There is no doubt that the feminist and social rights movement spurred by the protests against the War in Vietnam, by the resistance to the efforts of North American society to re-incorporate women in their traditional roles after the men came back from WWII, has deeply transformed the representation of women in cinema. However, rather than questioning the validity of a distinction along gender lines, “the role models of women changed from one narrow and unrealistic ideal (the beautiful, contented housewife) to another (the beautiful, smart, and athletic private detective)” (Cole, 61). More “than thirty years later (the first inklings of feminist movements) the non-conscious ideology of sexism continues to rule” (Cole, 73).

The dominant ideology of capitalism does not allow for a fluid understanding of the roles assigned to its subjugated subjects because this awareness could easily contribute destabilizing the very premises of the ideology’s adequacy. Patriarchy, the ideological umbrella that has reinforced and promoted division according gender lines in order to guarantee the sustenance of the primitive role attribution along lines of biological determinants, is still perpetuating the procreative and child-rearing aspects of womanhood as its primary purpose. Within this framework, capitalism thrives on the unequal division of labour reinforced by patriarchy that allows for the very basic unit of family, male and female and their offspring, to feed its economy. If women were to redefine their role within humankind according to other determinants other than that of procreation (to say the least redundant in this overpopulated planet with limited resources), this could jeopardize the very existence of capitalism. The dominant ideology would then need to bend to a new societal structure, based on the personal affiliation to a function within society rather than on a predetermined patriarchal power hierarchy.

The fear and the resistance to a fluid understanding of the identity of women within the construct of womanhood can be observed in examples as banal as the representation of female psychologist in mainstream Hollywood cinema. Psychology has often been seen, especially after the revolutionary theories brought forward by Freudian psychodynamics, as a means by which to reach the most remote parts of the human soul. Psychology has thus often been identified as a very strong power tool in shaping the human mind, by consequence a tool deemed inappropriate for women to use within their submissive role defined by patriarchy. For years one has seen an under-representation of female psychologists within the American Psychological Association, but even when the trend has finally been reversed, the contribution of media, above all Hollywood has been more than eager to discredit the ability of women to assume such a prestigious role as the one of “the ruler of one’s mind”.

“Female psychologists (studying the phenomenon) have identified a pattern in which female psychotherapists start out as cold intellectual professional women with no romantic attachments. In movie after movie they are eventually cured of this problem by falling in love with her male patient, who diagnoses her, sweeps her off her feet, and shows her how to become a true woman, loving and submissive” (Cole, 103).

The reluctance of the patriarchal system to accept women’s integrity and independence from male’s approval and guidance appears also when it comes to treatment of violence in media. The fear of the “otherness” of the sexual difference in women and the potential of negation of the importance of such difference can be seen in another aspect of media and cinema that often depicts female violence as something so sensational to be regarded as a “spectacle of the unnatural”. “The first thought that probably comes to mind when people hear about a woman who has committed a murder is that a crime against nature has occurred. That is, primarily a crime against her culturally prescribed nature” (Cole, 133). Even in films that celebrate the rebellious nature of women embracing their violent side and instincts of competition (e.g.: Ridley’s Scott’s: Thelma & Louise), such threat is easily mediated by having “bad women meet a bad end, and good women put down the gun or drive of a cliff” (Cole, 132). The fear of the ruling ideology of allowing the breaking down of the categories within which women have found themselves defined as the “other”, is so great and pervasive that it projects itself on men themselves, that are cautious from identifying with a female, for fear of taking on attributes of the submissive consumer of male manufactured ideological goods that the women are seen as within patriarchy.

After this seemingly unrelated analysis of the representation of a certain aspect of womanhood in dominant media and cinema, that I recognize being absolutely partial and incomplete in nature, I would like to come back to Mulvey and portray how an active reading of women’s role within film can contribute in the process of questioning the very appropriateness of her “otherness”. In her analyses of cinema, Mulvey often takes psychoanalysis, quintessential product of a patriarchal reading of womanhood that identifies the woman as the “bearer of the bleeding wound” (Mulvey, 14) (the castrated man), Mulvey bends it to the advantage of her own critical reading of cinematic codes that perpetuate differentiation along gender lines.

Taking in consideration Grace Kelly’s character in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, it is interesting too see how even though Modleski argues that the film revolutionizes the usually monolithic and exclusive presence of only the male gaze by playing with the character with which the audience identifies during the climax of the film, the film nevertheless concludes by having Grace Kelly

“no longer representing sexual difference, nominating herself and speaking her own desire, […]. More clearly than most, the film’s ending and its “narrative image” of Lisa (Grace Kelly) in masculine drag reveals the way in which acceptable feminity is a construct of male narcissistic desire, …” (Modleski, 84).

Here, Modleski negates her own argument that she makes in juxtaposition of Mulvey’s reading of the same film that sees “Lisa’s exhibitionism established by her obsessive interest in dress and style, in being a passive image of visual perfection; [in juxtaposition to] Jeffrey’s voyeurism and activity established through his work as a photojournalist, a maker of stories and captor of images” (Mulvey, 16).

In casting Grace Kelly’s character as an objectified image, the position of women within a patriarchal reading of society is safely reintroduced, re-establishing and simplifying women’s role to a fetishist object meant for male pleasure. Mulvey summarizes this device of patriarchal manipulation by elucidating its workings within a psychoanalytical reading:

“the presence of the female, using a phallic substitute to conceal or distract attention from her wound, haunts the male unconscious. The presence of the female form by no means ensures that the message of pictures and photographs […] is about women. We could say that the image of women comes to be used as a sign, which does not necessarily signify ‘woman’ any more than does Medusa’s head. The harem cult which dominates our culture springs from the male

unconscious and the woman becomes its narcissistic projection” (Mulvey, 11).

 The phallic substitute here mentioned by Mulvey is established when at the end of the film, Lisa conforms to Jeffrey’s fears of her sexual difference, that are only muffled when she attempts to recreate the fantasy of the young-boy imagining woman not different from him and therefore ceasing to represent a threat of castration.          

But how can one dismiss that the film itself is a product of a patriarchal system that subjugates both men and women under its totalitarian determinations? One could argue, along the lines of Modleski argument, that the fantasy of Lisa being tamed into a surrogate man safe for Jeffrey’s masculine integrity is nothing but the manifestation of Hitchcock’s own issues with dealing with sexual difference and fear of identifying with the opposite sex. However, taking in consideration my previous examples of how pervasive and persuasive the influence of media can be in constructing and modifying the very perception of the pro-filmic subject, I am brought to think that the simplification of Lisa’s character down to a tamed rebel is symptomatic of a general tendency and fear in patriarchal organization of society. A fear that is seen disturbing the well established modes of production determined by the existence of heteronormativity and the paramount value of family as generator and perpetrator of capitalism.

I recognize that I have only brushed the surface of the issues that make up the core of the means by which categories are determined, put in a hierarchy and administrated to the masses by means of media by the dominant ideology. However, I think that by introducing the reading of a prototypical sample of the way womanhood is approached and represented in films (e.g.: Hitchcock’s Read Window), I think I have made otherwise invisible dynamics jump to the eye of the audience that I hope will engage in a process of critical thinking when exposed to further cultural production promoted by patriarchy and aided by capitalism. Mulvey says that “by analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it” (Mulvey, 16). Nevertheless, it is my intention to support this approach and “leave the past behind without simply rejecting it, transcending outworn or oppressive forms, and daring to break with normal pleasurable expectations in order to conceive a new language of desire” (Mulvey, 16). Having very briefly looked at one example of how the image of womanhood is manipulated and tamed in order to be rendered acceptable within a patriarchal framework, I think that several avenues are opened for a critical thinker that is thus encouraged to look at the bulk of messages in media from a fresh perspective that ultimately allows one to progressively deconstruct the artificial nature of determinations in society and societal pre-established roles.

Concluding, I would like to come back to my initial argument in which I have chosen to speak about the feminist reading of film and media in order to approach a broader topic. I like to think of the efforts that have been brought forward in the attempt to reformulate a cinematic language devoid of gendered determinants, as a breakthrough that will open the doors to a more generalized trend in society that will see the very existence of categories brought into question. It is beyond doubt that my examples of feminist reading of film are very partial being that they do not represent other categories that have been constructed and perpetuated by the dominant ideology. I also feel the need to stress that my outlook is a very Western one in nature, and it does not take in consideration the discourse of feminism and socio-cultural innovations in the Global South and in backgrounds different from the pseudo-secular post-Christian and post-modern environment in which I was brought up and shaped into a critical thinker.

Nevertheless, I feel that the very trend of breaking down dichotomies, such as the one I have approached in this short essay of female vs. male, is very valuable because it opens up new horizons in other aspects of human rationality and perception of the world. By showing how such a basic categorization of humankind such as the one determined along gender lines might not be as natural as it might be represented by “film, as a primary vehicle of contemporary cultural mythology, which transforms the ideology of patriarchy and renders it invisible” (Cole, 135), I want to initiate a discursive practice in the viewer. I would like the sceptical questioning of “natural” determinations to be furthered and to encompass other categories such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, etc. I would like to encourage the initiation of a global critical sense in spectatorship. I hope I was able to contribute to the achievement of an introspective insight in one’s fluidity of identity that will thus redefine the way we see each other. By showing the imperfections of our images in the mirrors of current society, I hope that a new breeze of relativism activates humankind and promotes a wave of social change taking in account the richness of everybody’s diversity and interrelatedness.