Oppressive Texts, Resisting Readers and the Gendered Spectator: The New Aesthetics

Author(s): Mary Devereaux

Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , Autumn, 1990, Vol. 48, No. 4,
Feminism and Traditional Aesthetics (Autumn, 1990), pp. 337-347
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics

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 MARY DEVEREAUX

Oppressive Texts, Resisting Readers

and the Gendered Spectator: The New Aesthetics

At the heart of recent feminist theorizing about
art is the claim that various forms of represen-
tation-painting, photography, film-assume a
"male gaze." The notion of the gaze has both a
literal and a figurative component. Narrowly
construed, it refers to actual looking. Broadly,
or more metaphorically, it refers to a way of
thinking about, and acting in, the world.
In literal terms, the gaze is male when men do
the looking. Men look both as spectators and as
characters within works. In figurative terms, to
say that the gaze is male refers to a way of seeing
which takes women as its object. In this broad
sense, the gaze is male whenever it directs itself
at, and takes pleasure in, women, where women
function as erotic objects. The feminist claim is
that most art, most of the time, places women in
this position. In Laura Mulvey's words, man is
the bearer of the gaze, woman its object. '
Feminist theory, like many other theories,
takes as one of its basic tenets that no vision, not
even artistic vision, is neutral vision. All vision is
colored by the "spectacles" through which we
see the world. The notion that all seeing is "a
way of seeing" contrasts sharply with the tradi-
tional realist assumption that observation can be
cleanly separated from interpretation, at least
under certain ideally specified conditions. In
part, feminism can be understood as reiterating a
familiar, but still important, objection to the naive
notion of the innocent eye. As E.H. Gombrich
convincingly argues, observation is never inno-
cent. In his words, "whenever we receive a visualtorial of the film journal, Camera Obscura,
impression, we react by docketing it, filing it,
grouping it in one way or another, even if the
impression is only that of an inkblot or a fin-
gerprint. ... [T]he postulate of an unbiased eye
demands the impossible. "2 Observation is always
conditioned by perspective and expectation.
Yet, the feminist claim that our representations
inscribe a male gaze involves more than a denial
of the eye's innocence. It involves asserting the
central role that gender plays in formulating those
expectations. Feminism insists, moreover, that
these expectations are disproportionately affected
by male needs, beliefs and desires. Both men and
women have learned to see the world through
male eyes. So, for example, women throughout
their lives expend enormous amounts of time and
energy and money making themselves "beauti-
ful." In undertaking this costly process, women
judge themselves according to internalized stan-
dards of what is pleasing to men. As Sandra
Bartly observes, adolescent girls "learn to ap-
praise themselves as they are shortly to be ap-
praised." In this sense, the eyes are female, but
the gaze is male.3
Feminism objects to seeing the world "through
male eyes." It equates the male gaze with patri-
archy. Patriarchy defines a social system "marked
by the supremacy of the father and the legal
dependence of wives and children. "4 Under such
a system, women depend not only for status and
privilege, but for their very identity, upon men.
The assumption is that this arrangement op-
presses women. It also, as both feminist and
non-feminists have argued, oppresses men, al-
though not necessarily in the same way as it
oppresses women.
This oppression occurs at the symbolic as well
as the material level. Women, as the first edi-
announced, "are oppressed not only economi-
cally and politically, but also in the very forms of
reasoning, signifying and symbolical exchange
of our culture. "5 Thus, to take a familiar but
powerful example, in English "he" functions as
the unmarked term, "she" as the marked term.

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 48:4 Fall 1990

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338 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

"His" attributes define all humanity (i.e., "man- for the feminist investigation of how gender
kind"); "hers" define only women. The higher enters the exchange with the text.9
priority assigned to male attributes passes unno- What is original to feminism is the linkage of
ticed because our language, like our thinking, art with sexual politics. Issues of sexual politics
equates "male" gender with "gender neutral." lie at the center of current academic debate in
Art, as another form of symbolical exchange, English Departments, Film Studies programs
also participates in this oppression. In both its and feminist theory groups. Aesthetics, at least
high and low forms, feminist theorists argue, art in America, has been slower to notice or respond
inscribes "a masculinist discourse" which we to this debate. Although an occasional feminist
learn to reproduce in our everyday lives. Femi- paper has appeared on the program at the annual
nism here draws on the insight that art both American Society for Aesthetics meetings, The
reflects the conditions of life and helps to estab- Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism has prior
lish and maintain them. The male gaze inscribed to this writing never published a work of femi-
in art triggers women's "deep-seated inclination nist theory. This omission is even more surpris-
to adapt herself to the male viewpoint."6 Indeed, ing given that philosophers from Plato to Nelson
the very history of art "is to be understood as a Goodman have been preoccupied with issues of
series of representational practices which actively representation-an issue that feminism, from an-
produce definitions of sexual difference and con- other direction, centrally addresses.
tribute to the present configuration of sexual This lack of attention to issues transforming
politics and power relations. "7 the discussion of art in other disciplines is fre-
For this reason, much of feminist theorizing quently attributed to a difference in vocabulary.
about art is critical in tone. From its perspective, Feminist theory has its roots in Foucault and
the artistic canon is androcentric, and hence, Lacan, not in Plato, Aristotle and Kant. Con-
politically repressive. As one writer puts it, fronted with talk of "mirror stages," "voyeur-
"For a woman, then, books do not necessarily ism," and "difference," practioners of tradi-
spell salvation."8 Briefly summarized, the femi- tional aesthetics may feel trapped by the jargon
nist critique of representation rests on the equa- of a foreign discourse, one not bound by rules
tion: the medium = male = patriarchal their own training insists upon. Stanley Cavell
oppressive. describes the experience of reading these works
Some will greet this equation as exaggerated, as involving a different set of satisfactions.'0
even absurd. The idea that art is political or Whatever the promise of these satisfactions, some
ideologically charged contradicts the deeply held will maintain, it is difficult not to lose patience
belief that art speaks to and for all human beings. with contemporary writers whose texts demand
Socrates's charges against the poets notwithstand- the exegetical labors normally reserved for the
ing, the Western European tradition character- dead and the "truly great."
izes art as liberating, enlightening, uplifting. On this account, feminist theory remains mar-
Art's effects are positive, the experiences it offers ginalized due both to its difficulty and unfamil-
intrinsically valuable. In categorizing art with iarity. But this explanation does not, I think, tell
other forms of patriarchal oppression, feminism the whole story. Regular readers of the Journal
rejects the division of art and politics basic to have no doubt noticed the growing number of
Anglo-American aesthetics. articles dealing with the latest developments
The implications of this rejection are impor- in literary theory (the work of Stanley Fish,
tant and far-reaching. In dividing the artworld Jacques Derrida, Mikhail Bakhtin), hermeneu-
into male and female, feminism irrevocably links tics (Hans-Georg Gadamer) and the philosophy
the production and consumption of art with is- of language (Donald Davidson). In each of these
sues of power and control. Outside the Anglo- cases, vocabulary and methodology pose for-
American paradigm, this linkage is not new. The midable challenges. Not every reader will find
Marxist tradition in aesthetics has long placed such challenges worth the time or effort. But
the concept of power at the center of the discus- clearly, in aesthetics, as in philosophy generally,
sion of art. Marxism's emphasis on "the multi- difficulty alone never warrants exclusion.
plicity of social forces and practices ... at work The reason feminist theory has so long re-
in the reading of any text" lays the groundwork mained unmentioned lies deeper, I think. At stake

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 Devereaux Oppressive
in the feminist debate are deeply entrenched
assumptions about the universal value of art and
aesthetic experience. The overthrow of these
assumptions-linchpins of aesthetic theory since
Kant-constitutes what art historian Linda Noch-
lin describes as a paradigm shift.11 The new
paradigm is a feminist paradigm and what we
face is a conceptual revolution. If I am right,
then the deeper explanation for the lack of atten-
tion to feminism lies in the natural resistance of
those suddenly faced with the overthrow of an
entrenched way of thinking.
As recent developments in the philosophy of
science and ethics highlight, aesthetics cannot
simply "add on" feminist theory as it might add
new works by Goodman, Arthur Danto or George
Dickie. To take feminism seriously involves re-
thinking our basic concepts and recasting the
history of the discipline. And that requires more
than adding women's names to the canonical list
of great philosophers.
The requirement that we engage in such radi-
cal rethinking may seem burdensome and un-
necessary. It is helpful to the self-esteem of
women or to women who are feminists. But what
of those who do not fit into either of these two
categories? What, they may wonder, do they
have to gain from feminist aesthetics?
In part to answer such questions, I want in the
next section to return tofthe notion of the male men. At the level of the film-maker, then, men
gaze. In examining this key feminist notion more
carefully, I hope to make clear the intrinsic inter-
est of this approach to aesthetics and to suggest
why its concerns merit serious consideration.
To this end, I want to investigate how gendered
vision works in one specific representational
practice, namely film. Film is a natural choice for
such a study because it is a medium so fundamen-
tally built around the activity of looking. It is
also, not surprisingly, the medium where the
male gaze has been most extensively discussed.
The relationship of gender and cinematic vision
is extremely complicated. A complete analysis of
this topic would require several hundred pages. In
what follows, I focus on two key claims, namely,
that in cinema the gaze is male and that the
cinematic text is a male text. I seek to make clear
how these claims should be understood and then
to situate them philosophically. In confining my-
self to what I take to be the core claims of this de-
bate, I will of necessity leave aside many im-
portant, but internal, issues in film theory.
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Text 339
II
Despite the extensive literature which refers to
and relies upon it, the concept of the male gaze
remains difficult to understand. It is so in part
because, as noted above, the male gaze refers
both to literal and metaphorical vision. A further
difficulty in understanding the male gaze arises
from the failure to distinguish three different
gazes: that of film-maker, the characters within
the film and the spectator. With each of these
gazes, literal and figurative seeing interact in a
variety of ways.
In the first case, that of the film-maker, some-
one looks through the viewfinder of a camera,
someone (often the same person) looks at the
rushes after the day's shooting and someone
looks at the film's final cut. This person may be
male, but need not be. Women, too, make movies
and have done so since the early days of the
medium (e.g., Maya Deren, Dorothy Artner,
Leni Riefenstahl).
What does it mean then to say that at this level
the gaze is male? It means that despite the pres-
ence of women directors and screenwriters, the
institutions of film-making remain largely popu-
lated by men. Not all films have male authors,
but whoever makes movies must work nonethe-
less within a system owned and operated by
do not always do the looking, but they generally
control who does. The male gaze is not always
male, but it is always male-dominated.
By male-dominated, feminist theorists mean
male-gendered, not simply possessed of male
anatomy. A key move distinguishes sex from
gender. A child is born sexed; through education
and experience, it acquires gender. On this ac-
count, education and experience create the par-
ticular way of seeing which the term, "the male
gaze, " describes. Male institutional control thus
refers not to the anatomy of film world person-
nel, which includes both men and women, but to
the way film, however authored, contributes to
the hegemony of men over women.
From a feminist point of view, this control
matters because it "builds in" a preference for
a particular type of film, i.e., one which posi-
tions women in ways consistent with patriarchal
assumptions. Movies promote a way of seeing
which takes man as subject, woman as object.
Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex puts the
 340 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

point succinctly. "Representation of the world, mentary film. Attention to the Hollywood film
like the world itself, is the work of men; they arose naturally from the broad popularity and
describe it from their own point of view, which profound influence which this tradition exer-
they confuse with absolute truth." 12 cised on American cultural life.
As de Beauvoir explains, women, unlike men, Feminism initially attacked the Hollywood
do not learn to describe the world from their own film for its patriarchal content. Early feminist
point of view. As the "other," woman learns to works such as Molly Haskell's From Reverence
submerge or renounce her subjectivity. She finds to Rape examined how the portraits of the Good
her identity in the subjectivity of the men to Girl, the Vamp and the Dutiful Wife presented
whom she is attached (father, husband, lover). so forcefully in westerns, detective films and
In the eyes of men, she finds her identity as the melodramas reinforced a cultural mythology.'3
object of men's desire. In film after film, that mythology defined the
In arguing that cinema, too, assigns woman value of women as their value to men. The good
this position, feminist theory links the male con- girl was a dutiful daughter who preserved herself
trol of film institutions with a patriarchal way of (i.e., her virginity) for the right man "to take"
seeing. At this point it should be clear that in from her. The bad girl, in contrast, flaunts her
attempting to describe the literal gaze of the sexuality indiscriminately, "losing" her virginity
film-maker, the question of whether men or wom- or "giving it away."
en do the looking is not at root the issue. The real Haskell's broadly sociological approach under-
issue centers on whether, whoever stands behind stood movies to tell the same stories we heard
the camera, a patriarchal way of seeing the outside the theatre. In the movies, as in life,
world prevails. The discussion of the literal gaze good girls were rewarded, bad girls punished.
thus very quickly becomes a discussion of the Any alternative point of view, one which might
figurative gaze. tell a different tale or the same tale differently,
I do not want to deny the heuristic usefulness was effectively excluded. Put in the strongest
of talking about "literal" looking in film. Some- terms, the charge was that the Hollywood film
one does look through the lens of the camera, "belonged to patriarchy."14 This commitment
and film-going is irrefutably a visual experi- need not be intentional. Nor need it be confined
ence. Moreover, the medium itself offers a range to the works of male directors. Yet, as an institu-
of devices for representing what characters on tion, cinema, like television, was held to partici-
screen themselves see, e.g., the long sequences pate in and help to perpetuate a system of social
in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo in which we see organization which assigns power and privilege
what the protagonist, Scottie, sees as he follows by gender.
Madeleine. Admittedly, not all films perpetuate patriarchy.
A deeper and more damaging objection to the Individual films may resist this arrangement. The
literal/figurative distinction emerges from the strong-headed heroines typically played by Kath-
feminist claim that literal seeing is always already arine Hepburn, Lauren Bacall and Bette Davis
figurative. Men-like women-do not simply do not conform to this stereotype, nor do films
look. Their looking-where and when they do it such as Howard Hawks's His Girl Friday. As
and at what-mimics a particular way of think- feminist critics themselves have demonstrated,
ing about and acting in the world. So under- the films of Hollywood evidence more variation
stood, seeing never escapes a way of seeing. and internal tension than a charge of monolithic
How then does the figurative way of seeing patriarchy allows.
deemed "male" translate to the screen? How are In speaking of Hollywood film as "belonging
women represented from the male point of view? to patriarchy," something more subtle is at work
And, with what effect on the spectator? To answer than overt stereotyping. At the simplest level,
these questions requires shifting our attention Haskell and others had maintained, film rein-
from the film-maker's gaze to the manipulation forced women's dependence on men. As noted
of the gaze within film. At the textual level, above, women on screen regularly won their
feminism has focused most directly on the story happiness in the service of others (Griffith's
films of Hollywood as opposed to the interna- Dear One, Marion as the amiable spouse in
tional art cinema, experimental film or docu- Shane). When they depart from societal norms,

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 Devereaux Oppressive Text 341

as Hepburn's high-level diplomat does in Woman all before the steady, often adoring, gaze of an
of the Year, they are revealed to be cold-hearted implied spectator. Frequently, female perfor-
and in need of "re-education." Tess learns from mance plays a role in the plot, as when Vivian
her husband Sam to place work second to com- sings for Marlowe and the audience at Eddie
panionate time with spouse and the duties of Mars's nightclub. But whether playing fictional
parenting. Those who refuse this role, find them-characters who sing and dance before an audi-
selves alone and lonely (e.g., Tess's Aunt Ellen). ence or not, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe,
Those who opt for illicit instead of married love, Ingrid Bergman and other female "stars," per-
end up dead (e.g., Marion in Psycho, Alex in form for the camera. As Stanley Cavell has
Fatal Attraction). pointed out, in photographing beautiful women,
Thus, as Mary Ann Doane argues, at a more the cinema has found one of the subjects most
complex level, the Hollywood film functions as congenial to it. But "congenial" here means the
"a recuperative strategy" designed to return the congeniality of men making films for men.
wayward woman to the fold. 15 This return oper- The male controlled institutions of film-mak-
ates both within the narrative and externally, in ing thus place women on screen in a particular
the narrative's effect on its female audience. In- position. As eroticized objects, women are dou-
ternally, the Hollywood narrative typically charts bly victimized. As Ann Kaplan argues, "Men do
the course by which a woman in a non-normative not simply look; their gaze carries with it the
role cedes her control to a man. 16 The happy power of action and possession that is lacking in
ending in which Tess returns to Sam serves the female gaze. Women receive and return a
externally to "recuperate" wayward members of gaze, but cannot act upon it." 18
the female audience as well. The message is that To be fully operative as a mechanism of op-
for a woman, unlike for a man, the satisfactions pression the male gaze depends upon a second
of solitude, work, or adventure cannot compare condition. Not only must looking come with
to those of caring for husband and children. some "back-up"-physical, economic, social-
The classic Hollywood film reinforces this "being looked at" must activate some level of
message stylistically by confining the spectator to female narcissism. Women themselves must not
the point of view of the narrative hero. In Taniabe indifferent to the gaze turned upon them; they
Modleski's words, "the film spectator apparently must have internalized a certain assignment of
has no choice but to identify with the male positions. 19
protagonist, who exerts an active, controlling It is this disequilibrium in power which makes
gaze over a passive female object." By "stress- the male gaze different from what some have
ing the man's point of view throughout," the called a female, or gender-neutral, gaze. Con-
Hollywood film thus negates the female char- sider the oft-cited cases where men serve as the
acter's view. 17 object of the gaze, as in the recent spate of Rich-
Stressing the male protagonist's point of view ard Gere movies (Breathless, American Gigolo).
need not involve confining us consistently to his Despite the "role reversal," the harm which men
visual field. The one well-known experiment suffer in occupying the role of the "looked at"
which confined us consistently to the first-per- does not equal that of their female counterparts.
son visual field of a character, Robert Mont- The relationship of oppressed to oppressor de-
gomery's The Lady in the Lake, failed miserably pends upon more than "being looked at."
to convey that character's figurative point of To understand what more is involved, it is
view. We saw what he saw, but we didn't feel useful to make a three-part distinction between
what he felt. More typical narrative films, such objectification, dehumanization and debasement.
as The Big Sleep, alternate between what the
protagonist sees and what other characters see. It is one thing to make something an object of one's
Hawks gives us not only Marlowe looking at gaze ... Recalling the main tenet of the intentionality
Vivian but Vivian looking at Marlowe. The gaze thesis: all consciousness is consciousness of It is
is thus not directly that of the protagonist. another thing to dehumanize the object in a process of
Nevertheless, within the Hollywood film there aestheticization; it is yet another thing to debase the
is a long tradition of women performing for the object through subsequent mental or bodily activity or
camera. Women sing, dance, dress and undress, judgment. 20

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342 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
Within this framework, to say that the gaze
objectifies means no more than that it takes an
object. So defined, the filmic male gaze is no
more objectifying than any other nor does objec-
tification constitute oppression. Similarly, dehu-
manization, in this special sense, is not neces-
sarily oppressive. Dehumanization, defined here,
means simply treating people as objects of aes-
thetic contemplation. Neither of these claims
need imply the third, namely, that I have in
action or judgement devalued the worth of those
upon whom my gaze is directed. While aesthet-
icization may lead to debasement, it need not.
Thus, it is only debasement which by itself con-
stitutes oppression.
Given these distinctions, male characters, like
their female counterparts, may be objectified or
even, as in the case of Richard Gere, aestheticized
(or eroticized). They may also be portrayed in
demeaning or "less than fully human" ways.
They are not, however, debased in the larger
sense of the word. Men are not debased in this
sense because men, as men, do not lack power
and status off-screen. Thus, debasement requires
more than occupying a particular position on
screen.
In the case of the female star, her secondary
position occurs not only on screen but also off.
Aestheticization may not in itself be harmful,
nevertheless, the Hollywood film reflects and
encourages the cultural proclivity to treat the
female body and the female self only as objects
of aesthetic contemplation. Thus, insofar as it
treats women as less than fully human, the film
industry helps to lower the esteem and value
granted to women in the culture. While, as I
have argued, movie-making and movie-watch-
ing cannot be held solely responsible for the
debasement of women, feminist theory rightly
emphasizes the connection between how we rep-
resent our lives and lived experience itself.
In turning, finally, to the effect of the film text
on its spectators, I want first to consider the
means by which gender bias remains hidden. To
adapt de Beauvoir's words, the Hollywood film
presents its telling as "absolute truth." It de-
pends for its effect upon creating a narrative
illusion. The film story must unfold transpar-
ently, as though happening before our very eyes.
It is crucial to such film-making that it proceed
without calling attention to itself as a story. In
this, the stylistic conventions of Hollywood fol-
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low those of the 19th century realist novel. For a
film to acknowledge its status as a story or
fiction admits a point of view, a place from
which its story gets told. Devices such as God-
ard's use of stop-action and words written across
the screen aim to resist narrative illusionism.
They announce the film as a film, as a fiction, a
construct.21
For many feminists, as for many Marxists, the
narrative illusion central to the classic Hollywood
film is politically compromised. The Hollywood
film typically fosters strong character identifica-
tion and full absorption in the action. This ab-
sorption in turn is believed to encourage viewer
passivity. At its worst, warned Max Horkheimer
and Theodor Adorno, such film-making under-
mines individual autonomy. It renders its audi-
ence a "mass" easily manipulated in the interests
of the status quo. If Horkheimer and Adorno are
correct, both male and female spectators are ren-
dered passive by the experience of film-going.
The seamless narrative which presents its story
as "absolute truth" thus ironically encourages
the passivity of both male and female spectators.
In calling for active reading to replace this
passivity, the feminist critique of the Hollywood
film here parallels Brecht's critique of Aristo-
telian drama. Both denounce what they see as
efforts to elicit the passive empathy of the spec-
tator; both ask for art to break the narrative
illusion. However, feminist theory goes beyond
Brecht's analysis to examine how identification
differs in male and female spectators. Gender is
asserted to play a key role in eliciting the empa-
thy and identification typical of narrative film.
The analysis of film's effects on the spectator
brings us to the third and, I would argue, most
important site at which the male gaze operates.
In developing a theory of spectatorship, feminist
theory moves beyond its initial concern with
film content and style to explore the mecha-
nisms of viewing. To the question "how does
film represent women?" it adds the question
"what sources of satisfaction do these represen-
tations of women offer the spectator?" At what
many now call its second stage, feminist film
theory shifts attention from the literary critical
and sociological reading of individual films to
the more broadly theoretical project of describ-
ing the unconscious mechanisms involved in
watching movies. 22
Primary among these mechanisms is voyeur-
 Devereaux Oppressive
istic pleasure. On this view, enormously influ-
ential among film theorists, spectators derive
erotic pleasure through the opportunities for
looking which the cinema affords. As Christian
Metz argues in The Imaginary Signifier (1975),
the darkened theatre, the absence of the object
viewed, and its inability to return the gaze all
contribute to the idea that film viewing con-
stitutes unauthorized looking.23 From its early
association with the Nickelodeon, the motion
picture has come to function as a metaphor for
the illicit activity of the voyeur, as Alfred Hitch-
cock's 1954 film, Rear Window, illustrates. Lest
one miss the point, Hitchcock makes L.B. Jef-
fries-an inveterate voyeur-a photographer. 24
The question of how film plays to our already
existing desires, fantasies, and fears received
one of its most influential treatments in Laura
Mulvey's now classic, "Visual Pleasure and Nar-
rative Cinema." Mulvey begins from the prem-
ise that film reflects the psychical obsessions of
the society which produces it. In making this
assumption, Mulvey, like other second wave the-
orists, draws heavily on psychoanalysis, partic-
ularly Freud and Lacan. She sets out to analyze
the characteristic sources of pleasure and un-
pleasure offered by the cinema.
Narrative cinema, by which she means nar-
rative in the unself-conscious mode described
above, provides the spectator with two sources
of pleasure. First, it provides what Freud calls
"scopophilic" pleasure, the pleasure of viewing
another as an erotic object. As we saw above,
this pleasure characteristically takes the form of
looking at women. In film after film, women
function both as erotic objects for characters
within the movie, as Vivian does for Marlowe,
and as erotic objects for the spectator in the
movie-house, as Lauren Bacall does for us. Thus,
women's presence on screen presupposes the ap-
preciative glance of a male spectator.
Men, in contrast, only rarely function as erot-
icized objects for female (or male) spectators.
Men, Mulvey points out, feel uncomfortable in
such a role. Neither the ruling assumptions of all spectators are not similarly positioned, i.e.,
patriarchy "nor the psychical structures that backthat factors such as gender have a role to play in
it up" encourage the male "to gaze at his exhibi-
tionist like."25 Instead, man's role is to function
as the locus of narrative action. His role, on
screen as off, involves shooting the bad guys and
blazing the trails. The male movie star attracts
our admiration and respect by his deeds. We are
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Text 343
encouraged to identify with him, to imagine our-
selves doing what he does.
In Freudian terms, the male functions as an
"ego-ideal," not as an object of erotic desire.
The possibility of identifying with this ego-ideal
offers the spectator a second, contrasting source
of pleasure, i.e., the pleasure of identifying with
the characters projected on screen. Since, on
Mulvey's analysis, it is the male hero who makes
things happen and controls them, we typically
identify with him. Thus, the spectator's gaze is
male in two senses, both in its direction at wom-
en as objects of erotic fascination and in its
identification with the male protagonist. The
division of male and female roles on screen
mimics traditional gender roles: women func-
tioning as the passive objects of the viewer's
gaze; men functioning as the active subjects of
the viewer's imagination.
In playing to our existing desires, fantasies and
fears, film also offers what Mulvey calls unplea-
sure. In the patriarchal unconscious, woman repre-
sents the threat of castration. This threat the Hol-
lywood film typically meets in one of two ways. It
may contain the threat posed by the mystery and
fearsomeness of women by domesticating them,
typically through marriage (e.g., Notorious), or,
more drastically, by killing them off, as in Fatal
Attraction. Alternatively, the threat may be de-
nied altogether by elevating the woman to the
status of a fetish. In the latter case, the woman
becomes reassuring instead of dangerous.26
To summarize, then, the male gaze refers to
three interlocking forms of control. With respect
to the film-maker, it refers to male control of the
practices of film-making. This control leads, at
the level of the film text, to a product whose
content and style inscribe the patriarchal uncon-
scious of the culture at large. Lastly, these de-
vices position the male or female audience mem-
ber to find in film a way of seeing which calms
our fears and satisfies our desires.
This is a provocative account of film spectator-
ship. To ask who is doing the looking assumes
structuring-maybe even in constituting-what
we see. Mulvey's original analysis, however,
leaves the female spectator with no active view-
ing position except to identify with the male
protagonist. In identifying with the women on
screen, the female spectator aligns herself with
344 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

the female-as-object.27 More However, as recent feminist

ory rightly inquires how this account explains
the pleasure which women derive from going to
the movies. As Ann Kaplan has asked, is the
female spectator's pleasure, like the man's, the
pleasure of looking at women, the masochistic
pleasure of enjoying objectification, or the sa-
distic pleasure of identifying with the men who
oppress her?28
In "Afterthoughts on Visual Pleasure and Nar-
it evolves, feminist the-
film theory, like
feminist theory more generally, has increasingly
recognized the necessity to move beyond a sim-
ple binary analysis of gender. In articulating the
inter-connections between gender and other vari-
ables, such as sexual orientation, race, and class,
feminism serves to fine-tune our understanding
of art and its effects upon us.
III

rative Cinema," Mulvey herself proposes, more

positively, that identification with the male allows What general conclusions can we draw from this
the female spectator to revert, at least imagina- analysis of the male gaze? That film works to
tively, to the active independence of what Freud reinforce societal norms? That it is male? That
termed the female child's "early masculine peri- film, like art generally, may be harmful to wom-
od." In this "tomboy" phase, she takes pleasure en? Such conclusions are now common in film
in a freedom that correct femininity will later studies. As noted earlier, we find similar argu-
repress. 29 ments in older, more entrenched, fields such as
In moving beyond the static model of active literature and art history. As a body of theory,
male/passive female, current theories of spec- feminism has succeeded in placing the question
tatorship acknowledge women's resistance to the of gender squarely on the agenda of contem-
position assigned to them in patriarchal culture. porary literary and artistic theory. As I sug-
There remains, however, a tendency to speak of gested earlier, this new agenda has unsettling
the female spectator. In so doing, feminist film consequences for traditional aesthetics. The new
theory assumes all women share the same aims agenda seeks not only to have us surrender cer-
and aspirations, and that they come to the film tain long-standing assumptions, but to replace
text similarly equipped. To make this assumption them with a whole new way of thinking about art
overlooks important differences between women and our relationship to it. I want to conclude
of color and white women, rich and poor, women therefore by sketching briefly some of these
and feminists and different varieties of feminists. changes and raising several questions for us to
Similarly, feminist theories of spectatorship consider.
speak of the male spectator as though all men's First, feminism asks us to replace the concep-
gazes are male. Since, in feminist terms, the tion of the artwork as an autonomous object-
male gaze is not only sexist, but heterosexist, a thing of beauty and a joy forever-with a
might we not also ask for an account of how the messier conception of art. On the new view, the
male gaze operates when the spectator is not artwork moves from an autonomous realm of
heterosexual? In either case, can the charac- value to the everyday realm of social and politi-
terization of the male gaze as "totally active" be cal praxis. It gains a history which overflows the
sustained? Moreover, isn't the assumed activity former bounds of "art history." Who makes art
and control of the male spectator at odds with the and what type of art gets made depend, we
widespread notion that the Hollywood film mono- learn, on the interaction of the artworld with
lithically encourages a form of passive specta- other worlds.
torship? Equating the male gaze with the active In drawing our attention to culture in the
gaze ignores the passive element involved in broadest sense, feminism relies on an alterna-
looking at movies. The male spectator, whatever tive, European view of art. In this, feminism
his real political and social power, cannot inter- constitutes part of a larger movement away from
act with the on-screen woman. She appears, but"autonomous" aesthetics. Even within Anglo-
is physically absent. American aesthetics, the old paradigm no longer
My point here is that part of what makes holds the place it once did. Our understanding of
feminist theory interesting and powerful is its representation, of the pleasures and powers of
attention to factors which affect how we see and art, and of spectatorship have been immeasura-
respond to texts. Gender is one of these factors. bly enriched by the expanded context in which

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 Devereaux Oppressive Text 345

we now look at art. Yet, in this enlarged context, "we." Describing existing artistic traditions as
how does a concept of the "aesthetic," if by that uniformly enlightening and liberating ignores
we mean the purely aesthetic, function? Is the those for whom the authority of those traditions
discipline of aesthetics possible apart from soci- is unquestionably problematic. Do the coming
ology, cultural studies, identity politics? of age stories of Holden Caulfield and David
Second, feminism proposes that we re-exam- Copperfield affect adolescent girls in the same
ine art's claim to speak for all of us. Does art way as adolescent boys? And if not, what sig-
speak in a gender-neutral voice or does it priv- nificance does this difference make? Are the
ilege some experiences and ways of seeing over pleasures of art invariant or do factors such as
others? Traditional aesthetics inherits from Aris- class, race and gender play a role in defining
totle belief in a universal human condition of those very pleasures?
which art, at least great art, speaks. Fourthly, feminism alters the characterization
Feminism challenges the adequacy of the clas- of reading or viewing as neutral activities. Like
sic, Aristotelian model not only with respect to hermeneutics and reader-response theories, it
the Hollywood film (which some might argue is seeks to explain how the social and historical
not great enough to qualify as "great" art), but placement of the spectator affects the meaning
with respect to all art. The films of Sergei Eisen- derived from the text. Meaning is no longer
stein and Jean Renoir, like the plays of Shake- determined exclusively by the text. Aside from
speare, all speak in "particular" voices. On the emphasizing the social and historical context in
new view, the artwork, like the generic pronoun, which interpretation occurs, feminism breaks
speaks for "mankind," but mankind includes new ground in demonstrating how texts them-
only some of us. selves "assume" a particular reader through nar-
To question art's autonomy and universality, rative and stylistic devices. The best of feminist
need not imply that these artworks are without theorizing executes this demonstration through a
value-quite the contrary-although their value careful analysis of texts.
may differ from what we once supposed. Noth- As a theory of readership, however, what justi-
ing in feminist theory precludes ranking Henry fies feminism in assigning "the woman reader"
James a more important novelist than Jane Aus- a central place in the analysis of texts? If it is
ten or Alice Walker a greater writer than John meaningful to think in terms of "the woman
Steinbeck. reader," then why not in terms of "the lesbian
In making these evaluative rankings, feminism reader,"30 "the adolescent reader," "the ideal
does insist, however, that we acknowledge the cri- reader," "the under-educated reader?" Are all
teria used in defining "important" and "great." of these categories equally important, and
Does "great" mean the forcefully written or the according to what theoretical or political cri-
spare, the heartfelt or the coolly reasoned, the teria?
typical or the innovative? When is a text force- Lastly, feminist theory, like other post-struc-
fully written and who decides? Feminism offers turalist theories, endeavors to make the unnoticed
a framework from within which we may-indeed, noticed. It adopts from the Frankfurt School the
should-raise such questions. Only when we ex- belief that the informed spectator is a more criti-
plicitly acknowledge the criteria used in making cal spectator, and the critical spectator is one less
these judgments do we create space for compet- likely to be victimized by the text.
ing criteria. A call for critical reading is unlikely to meet
In denying that artworks or the criteria we use any resistance among aestheticians. But what of
to judge them are value-neutral, feminism also the claim that art may not be good for us?-At
urges a third proposal. We are asked to reconsider the very least, not all art and not for all of us. In
our relationship to established artistic traditions. adopting a politics of art, feminist theory con-
The canon, still heralded by some as a reservoir fronts Anglo-American aesthetics head-on. It
for the best of human thinking, is accused of replaces reverence for art with skepticism. It
excluding and silencing women (among other asks that we be willing to rethink what we value
groups). At the very least, feminism requires that and the reasons we value it.
we rethink our relationship to the artistic tradi- In suggesting that this challenge deserves seri-
tion in terms which do not assume a monolithic ous consideration, I might be understood to

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346 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

claim that all traditional aesthetics is useless, man correctly argues, women don't make better,
that the accomplishments of the last century are less "patriarchal" films simply because they are
a chimera. This is not my intent. My intent is in- women, "as if the female psyche finds textual
stead to describe the cognitive dissonance which resonances unavailable to the male psyche."
marks the current situation in aesthetics. If femi- The required transformation of film depends not
nism constitutes a new paradigm, then we may upon some female essence, but upon a con-
wish to ponder how far the old model of aesthetics sciously adopted political perspective.32
and the new are commensurable. Is traditional Adopting such a perspective has resulted in
aesthetics contingently or necessarily associated interesting films by Mulvey, Sally Potter, Lizzie
with patriarchy? Can the "gender-neutral" aes- Borden, Barbara Hammer and others. These
thetics of the traditional model be reformed or films strive in a variety of ways to disrupt or
must it be rejected? rework the narrative conventions of the dominant
Aside from these theoretical issues, feminism cinema. Sally Potter's Thriller, for example, re-
raises several practical issues which demand tells the story of La Boheme. In Potter'sfilm noir
attention. If art contributes to the disequilibrium version of the doomed love affair, Mimi investi-
in power between the sexes, then what should we gates her own death. Her voice-over and the
do? Should we simply quit going to the movies? fragmented narrative through which her story
In raising such questions feminist theory re- unfolds resist the character identification and
turns us to the Socratic tradition which urges narrative closure typical of traditional narrative.
caution in the face of art's power. Socrates fol- Films such as Thriller critique the dominant
lowed that warning with a call for censorship. modes of cinematic representation by privileg-
With this suggestion, however, many feminists ing heterogeneity and multiplicity of meaning.
would not agree. Feminism confronts the an- In this, these films aim to free the spectator to
cient problem of art's potential for harm with engage more actively with the text. Other films,
two other, far more promising, strategies. Nei- such as those of Barbara Hammer, seek alter-
ther appears to have occurred to Socrates. I want natives to the forms of cinematic pleasure pro-
therefore to conclude by looking very briefly at vided by the glossy images of the professional
these solutions. photographer. The range and variety of feminist
film-making far exceeds what I can survey here.
IV
However, these films are seen primarily in film
The first proposed solution consists in a call for courses and private film societies. Thus, despite
a new type of art. Some feminists, Claire John- their importance in providing an alternative tra-
son for example, have proposed the creation of a dition, their influence on mainstream audiences
counter-cinema to compete with the mainstream and film-practices is limited.
Hollywood cinema.31 This strategy, like estab- The second feminist strategy consists in de-
lishing public radio and television stations, aims veloping methods of dealing with existing texts.
to offer an alternative to the usual fare. This strategy is variously described as re-read-
The suggestion to create an alternative art ing, as reading against the grain, or as "re-
might please Socrates. It would allow him to vision." It involves active readership, where I
replace Homer's epics with his own, more philo- mean reading in the broad sense to include both
sophically informed, tales. This so-called revi- visual and written texts. These strategies have in
sion of the canon would meet the Socratic objec- common the aim of critique and reappropria-
tions to art whose content and form encouraged tion. Thus, they do what good criticism always
a weakening of the requisite moral virtues. does. But more than this, they involve learning
Creating new artistic traditions provides an to see through what Kuhn calls a "new pair of
alternative to the passive reception of dominant spectacles."33 This new pair of spectacles pro-
traditions. This strategy is most often described vides an education not in what to think but how.
as creating a female voice or female gaze. It Reading against the grain is a strategy designed
allows women to write their own texts, their own by out of power groups to counterbalance the
history. Achieving such a "female gaze" requires dominant textual traditions by offering alter-
more than simply providing women with access native interpretations of works within those tra-
to the means of film-making. As Diane Wald- ditions.

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 Devereaux Oppressive Text 347

Feminism in this sense offers a unique critical 10. Stanley Cavell, In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of
Skepticism and Romanticism, (University of Chicago, 1988),
perspective. It provides resistance, and an alter-
p. 131.
native to, the male gaze. Admittedly, just as the 11. Linda Nochlin, Women, Art, and Power and Other
male gaze involves a distinct political position, so Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), p. 146.
too the feminist perspective "cannot be regarded 12. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. and ed.
H.M. Parshley (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 134.
as politically neutral."34 Yet, as a way of seeing,
13. Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape: The Treat-
it importantly differs from its male counterpart in
ment of Women in the Movies (Harmondsworth: Penguin
acknowledging itself as a way of seeing. Books, 1974).
The possibility of such textual strategies is polit- 14. E. Deidre Pribram, ed., Female Spectators: Looking
ically important not only for feminists but for at Film and Television (New York: Verso, 1988), p. 1.
15. See Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire: The
others concerned with "neutralizing" the effects of
Woman 's Film of the 1940s (Indiana University Press, 1987),
certain artworks or forms of art within a cultural ch. 2.
setting committed to the protection of free speech. 16. Mary Beth Haralovich, cited in Annette Kuhn, Wom-
Reading "against the grain" offers an alternative to en s Pictures: Feminism and the Cinema (London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), p. 34.
the passive readership which censorship assumes,
17. Tania Modleski, The Women Who Knew Too Much:
and in its paternalism, encourages.
Hitchcock and Feminist Theory (New York: Methuen, 1988),
As an interpretative strategy, it opens to all of p. 73.
us-male and female-the possibility of finding 18. E. Ann Kaplan, "Is the Gaze Male?" in Women and
our own way through the text. For various histor-Values: Readings in Recent Feminist Philosophy, ed. Mar-
ilyn Pearsall (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing,
ical and cultural reasons, feminism looks more
1986), p. 231.
optimistically than did Socrates on the capacity 19. The idea that women's oppression depends upon the
of each of us to find that way. Yet, producing fulfillment of both of these conditions I owe to a conversa-
new forms of art and reading against the grain of tion with Tim Gould.
the old will not by themselves topple the existing 20. l owe this tripartite distinction to Lydia Goehr's helpful
commentary on an earlier version of this paper. Her comments
gender hierarchy. For that, women must also
were presented at The American Society for Aesthetics, East-
have power off-screen. ern Division Meeting, State College, Pa., March 16, 1990.
21. Interestingly, what is termed the "new" Hollywood
MARY DEVEREAUX cinema has adopted some of the techniques and self-con-
scious strategies of the international art cinema.
Department of Philosophy
22. This division of feminist film theory into first and
Bucknell University
second stages can be found, for example, in Lapsley and
Lewisburg, PA 17837 Westlake, Film Theory, p. 25. The same division emerges
less explicitly in Claire Johnson, "Women's Cinema as
Counter-Cinema" in Movies and Methods, ed. Bill Nichols
1. Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cin- (University of California Press, 1976), pp. 209-215.
ema" in Film Theory and Criticism, 3rd ed., eds., Gerald 23. Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier in Film The-
Mast and Marshall Cohen (Oxford University Press, 1985), ory and Criticism, 3rd ed., eds. Gerald Mast and Marshall
pp. 803-816. Cohen (Oxford University Press, 1985), p 799-801.
2. E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psy- 24. See Modleski's chapter on Rear Window for a discus-
chology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University sion of the film's critical reception.
Press, 1960), pp. 297-298. 25. Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,"
3. Sandra Bartky, "Women, Bodies and Power: A Re- p. 810.
search Agenda for Philosophy, " APA Newsletter on Philoso- 26. Ibid., p. 811.
phy and Feminism 89 (1989), p. 79. 27. Pribram, Female Spectators, pp. 1-2.
4. Websters New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA: 28. Kaplan, "Is the Gaze Male?", p. 252.
G & C Merriam, 1980), p. 833. 29. Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (Indiana
5. Robert Lapsley and Michael Westlake, Film Theory: University Press, 1989), p. 37.
An Introduction (Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 23. 30. Jean E. Kennard, "Ourself Behind Ourself: A Theory
6. Elizabeth A. Flynn and Patrocinio P. Schweickart, for Lesbian Readers" in Gender and Reading, p. 63.
eds., Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and 31. Johnson, "Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema."
Contexts (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. xix. 32. Diane Waldman, "Film Theory and the Gendered
7. Griselda Pollock, Vision and Difference, (New York: Spectator: The Female or the Feminist Reader?" Camera
Routledge, 1988), p. 11. Obscura 18 (1988), p. 81.
8. Patrocinio Schweickart, "Toward a Feminist Theory 33. Kuhn, Women s Pictures, p. 70.
of Reading" in Gender and Reading, p. 4 1. 34. Ibid.
9. Lapsley and Westlake, Film Theory, p. 59.

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