I'm reading about that movie today in "‘Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power’ Review: Demystifying the Male Gaze/Directed by Nina Menkes, the film is a distressingly prescriptive documentary aimed at unpacking the patriarchal ways of seeing that have dominated the history of cinema" (NYT).
Distressingly prescriptive?
A Bernard Herrmann-esque score... pulses conspiratorially throughout the documentary, giving the sense that Menkes’s narration is revealing secret and sinister facts about the way cinema caters to male fantasy. It uses examples from beloved and acclaimed films like “Apocalypse Now,” “Do the Right Thing” and “Phantom Thread,” and, toward the end, it presents the apparently rare films in which women do have agency, namely ones directed by Menkes.
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It seems that males don’t have agency since Hollywood so easily manipulates them,
This film may or may not be successful, but it seems the Right People have noticed it, so expect it to actually have at least a slight impact on how films are made. Seems like we'll now be judging directors on whether they rely on these "patriarchal ways of seeing."
'...and, toward the end, it presents the apparently rare films in which women do have agency, namely ones directed by Menkes.'
So a feminist raised in Berkeley is saying that men and women are different.
Good to know...
“…it presents the apparently rare films in which women do have agency, namely ones directed by Menkes.“
Self serving much? Thanks for preventing from wasting my time, Althouse!
So the “male gaze” is the evolutionary fact that most men are attracted to females visually? Phew…glad we got that straightened out!
The audience member is the active viewer, so everything in the film is the object for its watchers. I think the subject/object division is confusing and distracting.
What matters is whether this is a good thing for any given viewer to be watching. For me as a viewer, I might not like a movie full of images created to delight heterosexual male viewers. It's not giving me something that it's giving them, but it might still be worth watching, if it has other value.
Obviously, there are different kinds of delight that can be offered. Some are exalted and some degraded. But that's all quite complicated. It's simple-minded to forbid "the male gaze."
That said, I would watch this documentary. But it's in theaters. I'm not going to a theater to see this.
That looks hilarious. I love feminist film critics/ film-makers. They make the funniest stuff. Stop pointing the camera at women. No one but woman hating sex perverts want to see them.
You need to go back to Hollywood's "golden age" to see strong female roles.
Well, yeah. Feminism is about making things better for women. In principle, all women. But in practice, feminists.
Male gays? Hard pass.
Err, pass.
"Obviously, there are different kinds of delight that can be offered. Some are exalted and some degraded."
I don't find that obvious. Not saying it isn't true, but.
"That man has missed something who has never left a brothel at sunrise feeling like throwing himself into the river out of pure disgust."
Gustave Flaubert
The Pro-Choice ethical religion denies women and men's dignity and agency, and reduces human life to negotiable ("colored", class) commodities.
That said, women, men, and "our Posterity" are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus.
I watched a little of the trailer. Didn't bother to listen, who needs to hear an unattractive woman talking about the problem of attractive women? But it is rather interesting to consider, that those brief flashes of highly sexualized female bodies probably affect me very differently than they affect Althouse. Can a man and a woman even watch the same movie?
"male gaze" oh FFS give me a break. Men look at women because they find women beautiful and sexually attractive. Some women resent being looked at...until they are old and men don't look. Also, it is all about the wrong sort of man staring.
Confessing that all I've read is the post. me: oh, sounds like Adam Curtis repurposed from the definition. Now going to look at the clip and see if I'm right.
Just watched the trailer. It's not as interesting and is more explicit than what I had imagined.
Very effective at making sexual display offputting, though. I bet viewers will get an earful if they seek an eyeful. I'm not their market.
Why would an artist bemoan other art and not just make great art to prove his point? Perhaps he knows his limits?
Great artists do, others criticize.
One time around 1990, my band was the opening act at a club up in Portland. We were off the stage by 10, and we decided to go to the strip club next door. We had a chick singer, who was also the lead guitarist's girlfriend, and she said she would come along. I don't think we had expected this, but no objection suggested itself, so we found ourselves sitting at a front table, accompanied by a good-looking, stylishly-dressed blonde, watching another woman get completely naked. This was unsettling, not only to us, but to the other men in the place, even before the two women began discussing the way the performance was affecting the men. No one could be sure where this was going. I would not say that it was unpleasant, it was thrilling in a way, but it was hard to know how to respond to two attractive women, one well-known to me and the other stark naked and displaying herself, discussing the male reaction to her display in amused and rather clinical fashion. Suddenly we were the show. There is a female gaze, and it can be powerful.
"I'm not going to a theater to see this."
Not with Meade, anyway.
via mulvey and creed, if the camera moves subjectively, is edited, and you are entertained that's male gaze regardless of who is behind/in front of the camera. almost no escaping it.
why not create a new movie label/rating? NC-Male only
That way, instead of crying about the patriarchy and "The male gaze", women and those men who burst into tears at "Sexism" can just avoid the films altoghter.
And shut up.
'For me as a viewer, I might not like a movie full of images created to delight heterosexual male viewers.'
Which is precisely why heterosexual men don't like watching movies chock full of gay this and trans that.
It is evolutionarily off-putting.
I'm not seeing big box office in theaters. Small screen streaming or dvd with remote, on the other hand. . . .
Headline needs more *alleged*. *Alleged* patriarchal ways of seeing. *Allegedly* dominated the history of cinema.
Women will never be truly free until all men are blind
"Phantom Thread"?
I know I'm pretty much out of it, but did I miss something?
Lili Von Shtupp was unavailable for comment.
Just watched Spock's Brain. Suggested PHD thesis:
Go-Go boots and Sexism: Star Trek and patriarchical SF male brain.
"Phantom Thread" and "Do the Right Thing" are beloved movies? Who knew? I guess they recently supplanted "It's A Wonderful Life" and "The Sound of Music". That's why it important to read the NYT to stay up on these things.....I think the male gaze has more to do with the reptilian brain or the id or whatever than with a patriarchal society. There are several million years of evolution urging you to look at naked pretty girls and a couple of decades of feminists preaching against it. The reptilian brain definitely has the advantage in this contest.
Without the male gaze none of us would be here.
Teenage girls drooling over the latest boy band kinda complicates the conclusions she's drawn. Men and women chase after each other, hard to get too worked up over that -- or am I supposed to get all philosophical and offended by rom-coms aimed at women?
The male gaze as seen through the estrogen cloud.
"Male gays", and homonyms.
Phantom Thread's in the trailer.
Smilin' Jack said...
"Without the male gaze none of us would be here."
That's the point. Breeding must be discouraged.
Some women want to profit from the male gaze. Thousands and thousands, it seems.
Some women are viscerally offended that men take pleasure from even looking at them. They fix that problem with bon bons.
Let the women self assort. Nina is angry not that there is a male gaze, but that what she has to offer does not profit from it.
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