Male Gaze

1788 Words4 Pages

A challenge that faces both Canadian cinema and women’s cinema is the idea of the male gaze. The film industry is a phallocentric institution that since its inception has always faced the problem of objectifying women. As well Canada has faced similar problems long before the existence of film in the form of the colonial gaze, with attempts from both Britain and France to take what Canada had to offer and make it its own. In the film Away From Her (2006) Sarah Polley recognizes this problem that the gaze has on both the identity of women and Canada in film, and tries to express these problems by foregrounding the gaze to show it in a way that is unusual. This essay looks to explore the various ways that Polley uses the gaze in order to explore national and feminine identity, and argues that feminine and Canadian national identity face similar obstacles regarding the male gaze.
The idea of male gaze in cinema is best addressed by Laura Mulvey in her article “Visual Pleasures and the Narrative Cinema”. One idea she looks at is the notion that women are related to the image, and men assume the role as bearer of the look. She quotes “In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.” The traditional exhibition role is what Sarah Polley must overcome in order to express female and national identity in a position of strength. In order to do this she must alter some the traditional constructions associated with the gaze in cinema to bring in order to critique the gaze that is male.
The first way that Polley addresses the gaze is who is in control of it, specifically her as th...

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Works Cited

Elder, R.Bruce. Image and Identity: Reflections on Canadian Film and Culture. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1989.
Gittings, Christopher. Canadian National Cinema. London: Routledge, 2002.
Levitin, Jacqueline, Judith Plessis, and Valerie Raoul. Women Filmmakers: Refocusing. Vancouver : UBC Press, 2003.
Longfellow, Brenda. Gender, Landscape, and Colonial Allegories in The Far Shore, Loyalties, and Mouvements du désir . Gendering the Nation: Canadian Women's Cinema. Edited by Kay Armatage, Kass Banning, Brenda Longfellow, Janine Marchessault. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999.
Monk , Katherine. Weird Sex and Snowshoes. Vancouver: Raincoast Books, 2001.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema." Screen. no. 3 (1975): 6-18. http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/3/6.full.pdf html (accessed November 14, 2013).

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