Film scholar and gender theorist Linda Williams begins her article “Film Bodies: Genre, Gender and Excess,” with an anecdote about a dispute between herself and her son, regarding what is considered “gross,” (727) in films. It is this anecdote that invites her readers to understand the motivations and implications of films that fall under the category of “body” genre, namely, horror films, melodramas, (henceforth referred to as “weepies”) and pornography. Williams explains that, in regards to excess, the constant attempts at “determining where to draw the line,” (727) has inspired her and other theorists alike to question the inspirations, motivations, and implications of these “body genre” films. After her own research and consideration, Williams explains that she believes there is “value in thinking about the form, function, and system of seemingly gratuitous excesses in these three genres,” (728) and she will attempt to prove that these films are excessive on purpose, in order to inspire a collective physical effect on the audience that cannot be experienced when watching other genres. Williams juxtaposes the three genres together, to reveal similarities and differences, and, in turn, their similar and different desire effects on the audiences. Specifically, she points out the physical reaction of characters in the films, and how the audience members mimic them. Firstly, in regards to the physical body, Williams discusses the similar uncontrollable “convulsion or spasm,” that comes with the different genres; a body on the screen is “’beside itself’ with sexual pleasure, fear and terror, or overpowering sadness.” (729) Next, she dissects the sound of these bodily reactions – the overpowering moan, scream, or sob that the chara... ... middle of paper ... ... imagination is sometimes more excessive than the action on the screen. After the application of Williams’ “theory” to David Creonenberg’s film Shivers, it is apparent that the spectator’s personal perception of the action (or inaction) is more the cause of the bodily reaction that Williams is referring to, rather than the objective excess on the screen. Ultimately, various characteristics of Williams’ arguments are true, but as a film theory in general, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess” needs further research and flexibility in order to be both relative to all “body” genre films, and applicable to all unique spectators. Works Cited Williams, Linda. "Film Bodies: Genre, Gender and Excess." Braudy and Cohen (1991 / 2004): 727-41. Print. "Shivers (1975) - IMDb." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 08 Feb. 2011. .
Neill, Alex. “Empathy and (Film) Fiction.” Philosophy of film and motion pictures : an anthology. Ed. Noel Carrol and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 247-259. Print.
In the classical Western and Noir films, narrative is driven by the action of a male protagonist towards a clearly defined, relatable goal. Any lack of motivation or action on the part of the protagonist problematizes the classical association between masculinity and action. Due to inherent genre expectations, this crisis of action is equivalent to a crisis of masculinity. Because these genres are structured around male action, the crises of action and masculinity impose a crisis of genre. In the absence of traditional narrative elements and character tropes, these films can only identify as members of their genres through saturation with otherwise empty genre symbols. The equivalency between the crises of genre and masculinity frames this symbol saturation as a sort of compensatory masculine posturing.
“Queer Cinema is Back” – headlines the front page of the 2005 issue of the Advocate, signifying to a new flood of movies making way into theatres. Five years prior to this news release B. Ruby Rich, who coined the art as New Queer Cinema almost a decade earlier, declared that the cinema had co-opted into “just another niche market” dominated by popular culture (Morrison 135 & Rich 24). What had seemed to be a movement, turned out to be only a moment in the brief years between the late 1980s and early 1990s when the energies of queer theory, the furies of AIDS activism, the legacies of independent and avant-garde filmmaking, and the schisms of postmodern identity politics came together in a bluster of cultural production to form a cinema of its own (Morrison 136). In many ways Rich’s criticism of the cinema is correct, the queer aspect that so brightly shone in films like Poison, Swoon, Paris Is Burning, Tongues Untied, The Living End and Head On, was shifting as the new millennium was approaching and making more difficult for queer films to stay queer against the forces of Hollywood. However, Rich lacks in her analysis on New Queer Cinema because she does not consider the breadth to which queer operates as a concept within the cinema. For Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin, the editors of Queer Cinema, queer is an umbrella term encompassing dissident sexualities through history and, indeed, nominating them more productively than they were ever named in their own time (Morrison 137). For Michele Aaron, queer is a specific product of exigencies of social activism of the late 1980s and early 1990s, “with AIDS accelerating its urgency” and New Queer Cinema arising as an “art-full manifestation” of i...
Unacknowledged Sources." Literature Film Quarterly, 1998, Vol. 26 Issue 2, 109 116. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO Publishing. March 23, 2001 http://ehostvgw16.epnet.com
“It’s a whole different sex!” Jerry (Jack Lemmon) exclaims in ‘Some Like It Hot’ (1959), while admiring Sugar’s (Marilyn Monroe) body. It is with statements like this that Billy Wilder’s movie challenges traditional views of binary genders. While probably unintentional, this movie uses cross-dressing , among other things, to parody the performativity of gender. This method of subversion was not conceptualized until the 90’s by Judith Butler in her books ‘Gender Trouble’ and ‘Bodies that Matter’ (171-189; 223-242), showing how ahead of its time the film was. ‘Some Like It Hot’ subverts heteronormativity by deconstructing binary genders, separating gender from sexuality and satirizing heterosexuality.
The American black comedy The Wolf of Wall Street directed by Martin Scorsese was released December 25, 2013 and stars the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and Margot Robbie. While on face value The Wolf of Wall Street looks like a film about excessive cocaine binges, long evenings filled with men with cigarettes, large portions of alcoholic consumption, having many sexual escapades with various women and even dwarf tossing from time to time, the film is deeply rooted in perception gender within the genre of The Wolf of Wall Street. The word ‘genre’ is rooted into a similar category as
In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey states that, “Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen.” (Mulvey 40). A woman’s role in the narrative is bound to her sexuality or the way she
In her essay, “Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema”, Claire Johnston proposed a path to creating Women's cinema to counter the numerous dominant male-oriented mainstream films. In it, she argues that you must first understand the ideology that is found in mainstream movies, and the ways that women are portrayed within it. She determined that there were two principle concepts to understand: how women are visually represented, and the effect that women have upon the creation of meaning within the film. The how refers to all the film techniques used in the creation of the image: lighting, hair, makeup, choice of lens, choice of wardrobe, and the framing of the camera shot are some examples. These are often done to increase the attractiveness of the female character, and creates a sign for the audience to accept and decode. The effect of the female character is limited to her physical traits and the impact that her presence has on the male protagonist, typically to send him off on an Oedipal journey.
Led by Laura Mulvey, feminist film critics have discussed the difficulty presented to female spectators by the controlling male gaze and narrative generally found in mainstream film, creating for female spectators a position that forces them into limited choices: "bisexual" identification with active male characters; identification with the passive, often victimized, female characters; or on occasion, identification with a "masculinized" active female character, who is generally punished for her unhealthy behavior. Before discussing recent improvements, it is important to note that a group of Classic Hollywood films regularly offered female spectators positive, female characters who were active in controlling narrative, gazing and desiring: the screwball comedy.
For the purpose of this study, I will critically examine the representation of homosexuality in Hollywood cinema. I will specifically analyse films from the early 90’s to mid 2000’s from ‘Philadelphia’ to ‘Brokeback Mountain’. This dissertation will argue that over the space of 12 years homosexuality has become an acceptable part of cinema. I will look at early Hollywood’s representation of homosexuality depicting how aesthetically so much has changed. The current paper will predominantly focus on the two films ‘Philadelphia’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain’, by critically analysing the aesthetic differences between each film as well as their overall importance to gay culture.
In the article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey discusses the relationships amongst psychoanalysis (primarily Freudian theory), cinema (as she observed it in the mid 1970s), and the symbolism of the female body. Taking some of her statements and ideas slightly out of their context, it is interesting to compare her thoughts to the continuum of oral-print-image cultures.
Kaplan, Ann. "Is the Gaze Male?" Women in Film: Both Sides of the Camera. London and
British Feminist Film theorist Laura Mulvey uses psychoanalysis to show the pre-existing “patterns of fascinations” (Mulvey) with the sexual differences in society that is portrayed through film. She says in her paper “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, that there is a structured film form that feeds a patriarchal order because of social patterns based on the fascinated subject-women. Drawing from Freud’s Three Essays on Sexuality, Mulvey states that cinema allows for a lot of pleasures, and one of these pleasures is scopophilia, or the love of looking, because there is pleasure in looking as well as being looked at. Film allows for an amazing outlet for this scopophilia because it gives one the pleasure of looking at something pleasurable on screen as well as scopophilia is a narcissistic aspect because the audience will identify with a character on screen. With the patriarchal structural form in place as well as the scopophilia present in films, it leads to the main idea of Mulvey’s paper; that Hollywood films use women to create a pleasurable experience for men. In the films the Mulvey studied, the women are just objects to be looked at never the main driver of the plot. Budd Boetticher put it best when he said, “What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.” (Mulvey)
The objectification of women has been a long standing debate since the first leading role in a large cinema screen write. In Laura Mulvey’s essay on “Cinema and Visual Pleasure,” the reader is introduced to various topics within media, but moreso Mulvey’s argument on objectifying women; the idea that hollywood cinema is watched from a male’s perspective, or more formally known as the “male gaze.” While these different theories have come about in several different genres of film, it is much apparent in the classic era of hollywood film and, Alfred Hitchcock's 1958, Vertigo.
Rendering Cinema as visual equipment being perfected to satisfy and provoke male desires. (Smelik, 1999)