The Objectified and Commodified Woman in Film and Cinema

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the signified)(Mulvey 44). As a feminist, Mulvey finds film to be disparaging in the sense that visual pleasure is gendered, and that, the pleasure experienced is predominantly male. She notes how in main stream film men have been known to advance the story, to make things happen and to be placed in active roles while their female counterparts are put as passive objects of desire for men in both the story and in the audience and do not allow them to be desiring sexual subjects in their own right. Mulvey says woman is "tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning" (Mulvey 44) and when the woman does not live up to that tradition of the "bearer" she is ridiculed and said to be dangerous like Gilda in the noir film Gilda. Such women who defy the patriarchal set of standards are deemed to be threats that need to be put under control by men, the makers of meaning and thus the voyeuristic approach. Women are made to feel guilt for being independent. Women cannot set ...

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looking, but also goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect" (Mulvey 46). The above arguments ring true in the film Gilda where Gilda is constantly objectified by the use of lighting. The male producer concentrates the lighting on her body and not her face and thus we the audience find ourselves glued to her lower body. The lighting down plays the importance of her face and draws its audience to the most important body parts of the female. In this film, Gilda is shown as an irrational, object of desire and the viewer, (even the female) gets to live the male experience through Johnny, the rational male character. Such films reinforce the objectification of women ...

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