Laura Mulvey's groundbreaking essay "Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema" revolutionized the way that representations of women in film were analyzed. Her essay and criticism was based on the Hollywood mainstream movies that existed prior to her writing. The critiques that she leveled are extremely perceptive and easily justified in reference to the films that she looked at. Recent years have seen the advent of a new type of representation of women, one that perhaps extends beyond the tight confines that Mulvey explored. Her theory leaves room for this break from convention. One filmmaker who seems to be able to transcend the paradigms that Mulvey discusses is Dutch filmmaker Marleen Gorris. Her films have been heralded as feminist works in the sense that they do not fall into the typical pitfalls of representations of women.
Mulvey addresses the cinema as a male-oriented arena for scopophilia, where pleasure is gained through the voyeuristic act of watching and looking. In her analysis, she discusses how this looking exists in a dichotomous way with "woman as image, man as bearer of the look" (Mulvey, p. 62). The camera exists to show the gaze of the male viewer looking at the female for consumption, often in a sexual way. This is something that has been evident as long as Hollywood has been in existence. It seems rare to see a movie in which a camera does not pan across a woman's body, or one where a woman strips, or is shown in other explicit ways. A second major feature that she discusses is that there is a sexual division in the active/passive roles within the narratives (Mulvey, p. 63). Many movies still conform to the hero and damsel in distress plot. This is all held together by the fact that this fantasy is acting to be reality with no acknowledgement of a camera, audience, or any other part of the cinematic reality. According to her theory, this leaves no room for female pleasure in the cinematic experience.
While most of the films that Mulvey was looking at when she wrote her article followed this form, as do most mainstream films today, she does acknowledge that there is potential for transgressive types of representations. In her final paragraph, she states that the "first blow against the monolithic accumulation of traditional film conventions…is to free the look of the camera into its materiality in time and space and the look of the audience into dialectics, passionate detachment" (Mulvey, p.68). Some radical filmmakers, she claims, were already undertaking this. Gorris's films, Antonia's Line and A Question of Silence can be seen as working towards this goal of destroying conventional cinematic techniques.
Gorris's films do not rely on the same type of pleasure that typical mainstream films use. The films revolve around female characters, none of which are portrayed in any of the conventional sexual to-be-looked-at ways. The filming technique is also uncharacteristic of the traditional Hollywood style since the films often break chronology and avoid point-of-view shots. The point-of-view shots that do occur are from the vantage point of the female characters. It becomes very difficult to perpetuate the male gaze when it is through the eyes of a woman. This point is most clear in the sex scenes in the films. They are not typical Hollywood scenes where pleasure is derived from looking at the women as sexual objects. The sex scenes that Gorris constructs are very unglamorous, and denaturalized, including a space for lesbianism. This does not allow a viewer sitting in the audience to have the visual pleasure that would ordinarily be gained.
I personally enjoyed the film Antonia's Line a great deal, and I think it demonstrates how this male gaze can be destroyed. The story of the film revolves around a three-generation family headed by Antonia. There are a few male characters in the film, but the story is mainly focused on Antonia and her female descendents. The film opens by telling us the end of the film, namely that Antonia is going to die. Within the first moments of the film, we can see that it will not follow typical conventions. While Hollywood films often take a male point of view, this film does not. What few point-of-view shots that do occur are from a female vantagepoint. There is a complete absence of stereotypical depictions of women. In fact, a scene in the film actually mocks this when a father puts his semi-retarded daughter on display in a sexual way. The female body is definitely present in this film, but not in a standard way. There are several sex scenes with female bodies, but they are done in a way that conveys the female control. For instance, Antonia's daughter wants to have a child, so she sleeps with a man to get pregnant. While conventional Hollywood tactics portray sex in an idealized, romantic way, Gorris displays it in a humorous way. Female pleasure is emphasized in the sexual encounters, as well. They are agents with their sexuality. The film completely destroys the dichotomies that most films portray. There is no Madonna, nor whore.
Mulvey's original essay is extremely important and represents the history of filmmaking to that point. I think that it is important that she acknowledges the possibility of subversion of this problem. Gorris's films go a long way in destroying that attachment between the audience and the film. She manages to redefine how cinematic pleasure is created and received, without the use of conventional Hollywood traps. Mulvey seems pessimistic that there is a space for this type of pleasure, but I think that Gorris has proven that it does actually exist, and they can be used as a roadmap for future cinematic enterprises.