WEEK 8
AUDIOVISUAL, GENDER AND RACE
- For centuries, women were excluded from the records of art because many of them
were kept from pursuing an education, because art forms like textiles were not
considered a fine art and because men who dominated the world and the history
believed that women were inferior artists. In the 1960s, with the boom of the
feminist movement, many women started teaching and studying in art schools.
- FEMINIST FILM THEORY: concerns women identity, who were assigned passive roles
which solidified the masculinity of the male character. This is called the “male gaze”:
women roles were passive and provided visual pleasure (scopophilia). This term was
introduced by Laura Mulvey and it can be viewed in three ways: how men look at
women, how women look at themselves and how women look at other women.
Voyeurism is the pleasure of looking and it plays a huge part in the sexual
objectification of women in film. The audience views the females as a source of
pleasure. Laura Mulvey defends the eradication of female sexual objectivity.
Feminist Film Theory also looks at how women’s issues such as rape and domestic
violence are conveyed through film. This movement must involve intersectionality: it
examines how black women are portrayed in comparison to white women. It also
studies how certain women bodies are casted and in which kind of roles. Later, this
movement started taken into account factors like sexuality, class or the gender issue
after the influence of cultural studies or the lesbian theory.
- THE RACE ISSUE: racism has been present in cinema since its origin. Racism in films is
usually towards African Americans, Asians, Mexicans, Middle-Easterners and Native
Americans. There are many stereotypes towards these races.
- BRIEF HISTORY OF WOMEN FILMMAKERS: Alice Guy-Blaché was a film pioneer
working for the Gaumont Film Company in France. She created La Fée aux Choux,
Interesting books to take a look: Raymond Williams— “Culture and Society” &
“The Long
Revolution”// Richard Hoggart— “The uses of literacy”//
probably the first narrative film ever released. As the American cinema became a
highly commercialized industry in the 1920s and its content became more and more
conventionalized, the opportunities for women producers and directors became
fewer and fewer. Around 1930s, women’s roles behind the camera were limited to
scriptwriters, costume designers or make-up artists. Dorothy Arzner was one of the
only woman director to survive in this unfriendly environment. Her film Dance, Girl,
Dance (1940), about two women struggling to make it in show business, is
particularly interesting from a feminist perspective. Other important women
filmmakers are Leni Riefenstahl, Sofia Coppola or Jane Campion. In Spain, Ana
Mariscal was a pioneer. She was also an actress, but in the early 1950s she became a
producer and then she started directing films like El camino (1963), an adaptation of
the novel by Miguel Delibes. Josefina Molina, also a novelist, started her career in
the 1960s. She directed films like the miniseries Teresa de Jesús (1984) or Esquilache
(1989). Pilar Miró was a celebrated director and screenwriter of film and TVwhose
notable works include Gary Cooper, Who Art in Heaven (1980) or El perro del
hortelano (1996), an adaptation of a Lope de Vega play which won 7 Goya Awards.
Icíar Bolláin has films like Te doy mis ojos (2003), El olivo (2016) or Maixabel (2021).
Isabel Coixet started making commercials and then she started in the cineme
industry with movies like My life without me (2003), The bookshop (2017) or Elisa y
Marcela (2019). Nowadays, there is a new generation of Spanish women filmmakers
with Nely Reguera, Alba Cros or Carla Simón.
- The 21st-century feminist film criticism remains relevant and dynamic in
responding to visual culture while also focusing on women filmmakers, offering
models of feminist intervention, recovering women's contribution to the
industry,
and recognizing their diverse roles in film.
