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This review of various feminist film theory discusses the contradictions and similarities between five of the most well known feminist film theorists Tania Modleski, Teresa de Lauretis, Mary Ann Doane, and Christine Gledhill. Theories include discussions of the women's film as genre and a feminist view of subjectivity. One question raised in the review is the contradiction between how women appear in film and how they appear and operate in reality. This dichotomy is partially explained by the absence of women, on screen and during the process, and the resulting loss of identification with women on screen. The images of women in film becomes oppressive. Hitchcock manages to close the gap between women in reality and women in film by portraying them less like objects and more like subjects.
tagged feminsit film subjectivity theory by terwilig ...on 02-DEC-08
This article argues that psychoanalysis is unable to properly theorize women's subjectivity and desire and posits instead that female subjectivity can be defined without the burden of sexual differences. Rather than look at feminist film theory through the narrow terms of psychoanalysis such as repression, subjectivity, and passive desires it should be looked in terms of genealogy. By looking at feminist film theory as stylistic changes over time and as themes in many films, feminist theory is not restricted to irrelevant psychoanalytic terminology.
While this article discusses films of the 1940's, many of its concepts can be applied to Blackmail. In essence, the film is an illustration of Alice's anxieties towards sex, love, and marriage. The moment she tries to deviate from the norm of seeing her steady, but dull, boyfriend, she becomes the victim of an attempted rape. By stabbing the portrait of the jester in the studio, she refuses the shame that Crewe and the jester as society want to force upon her. What on the surface seems a cautionary tale actually serves as a manifesto for Alice's right to be sexual and not feel any shame.
tagged 1940's feminist film gothic psychoanalysis theory by terwilig ...on 02-DEC-08
Call#: Van Pelt Library QA76.9.C66 D54 1999
Aside from the introduction and general tidbits taken from the book, I think Lev Manovich’s essay, “What is Digital Cinema?” provides the greatest information and opinions for my paper topic. This essay examines how tracing the filmic image change from “traditional” film to digital technology allows for a formation of the logic of the digital moving image. This fits in well with my paper because I want to compare older screen technologies (film and TV) with newer image methods of production; Manovich’s thesis thus provides me with at least one argument through which I can examine my own views on differences in old and new filmic screen images. Manovich also provides some background information on what he considers “digital media” to be, including its evolution from multimedia and thus its distance from traditional cinematic realism. But, his main example, that of the CD-ROM, is slightly outdated and not as useful to my direct purposes – therefore, I plan on using newer examples from more recent sources in my paper.
tagged Digital_Cinema Digital_Media Film Screen Theory by knewbold ...on 13-MAR-07
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1997.C352 P65 2005
Essay Number Ten: On the Argument of Casablanca and the Meaning of the Third Rick by Kenneth De Luca
The appeal of Casablanca is unmistakable. Popular amongst men and women of all ages, Casablanca is frequently listed as the second greatest film of all time. What makes this film so universally popular that it can still garners passionate fans amongst generations that can not even remember World War II, the studio system, or even Bogart and Bergman? It is this question that Political Philosophy Comes To Rick’s: Casablanca and American Civic Culture tries to answer with a series of relevant scholarly essays. The tenth essay (written by Kenneth De Luca) is of particular interest to the analysis of the legendary film. This essay reflects on the relationship between Rick’s character and the ideals of America. According to this essay, Rick’s character maintains modern American appeal because he represents the personification of Jeffersonian individualism. Rick is a man who needs to be free to the point where he can actually be moral and even beautiful. By making the ultimate sacrifice of love, Rick achieves personal autonomy and also freedom from the overwhelming guilt of having done the morally wrong thing. De Luca states that Americans find this sacrifice seductive because it represents a combination of seemingly irreconcilable freedoms – freedom to satisfy self interest and freedom to be directed by some higher purpose. This essay is important to the study of Casablanca because it shows the noncommercial / non-studio system aspects of Casablanca overwhelming popularity.
""In imaging female subjectivity and addressing the spectator as female, feminist filmmakers have created films which transform and innovate cinematic codes and conventions." Smelik switches the focus of feminist discourse from spectator to filmmaker. Unwilling to revive the auteur theory, which she considers to be elitist and phallocentric, she nevertheless investigates the works of such filmmakers as Sander, Campion, Treut, and Adlon and discovers ways in which they subvert traditional cinematic subjectivity, affect, and modes of representation. Smelik's arguments are, of course, deeply rooted in the feminist theory of Lacan, Mulvey, Silverman, Kaplan, Irigaray, et al., but she also includes such figures as Eisenstein and Barthes. She does not privilege any particular theory but uses whatever works for the particular filmmaker she is dealing with. Her choice of films is as refreshing as her method: one is too used to reading about the same feminist films in book after book. Smelik's knowledge of the field is encyclopedic, and her analyses are consistently persuasive. This welcome addition to the ongoing feminist discourse is recommended for upper-division undergraduates through faculty." (Choice, February 1999)