Notes from 'Dreamcatcher'

• Didn't try to make anyone all good or all bad - didn't oversimplify
• Didn't cut out problematic things characters said eg ex pimp saying he didn't regret his life
• Begins with inner city streets of chicago - gritty dark run down, contrasts with blue pink sunset over skyscrapers - underbelly, beautiful on the outside
• recurring motif of Brenda looking into mirror and applying make up/eyelashes/weave
• Brenda seems so strong then in one emotional scene near the end she reveals how emotional and fragile she still is
• Brenda as link between different stories, different aspects/sides to prostitution
• Brenda asked documentary maker to come and raise awareness
• All girls in the school club had been raped
• Platform to speak out
• Crying behind camera
• Just documentary maker and sound recordist - quiet, easy to get along with
• when getting permission from contributor gave documentary maker's details back and said would keep in touch

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema Notes

from Laura Mulvey's article in Screen

• film plays on sexual difference
• sexual difference controls images, spectacle and 'erotic ways of looking'
• patriarchal society unconsciously influencing film form

Phallocentrism 1. Relating to or reflecting a perspective that is predominantly or exclusively male.

2. Dominated or controlled by men: a phallocentric society.

phallogocentrism is a neologism coined by Jacques Derrida to refer to the privileging of the masculine (phallus) in the construction of meaning

Laura Mulvey asserts that it:

• 'depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to the world'
• a woman's 'lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic presence, it is her desire to make good the lack that the phallus signifies'
• a woman 'first symbolises the castration threat by her real absence of a penis and thereby raises her child into the symbolic'
• her child is the 'signifier of her own desire to possess a penis'
• 'women then stand as a symbol in patriarchal culture for the male other'
• men can 'live out their phantasies and obsessions... by imposing them on the silent image of a woman, tied to her place as a bearer of meaning, not a maker of meaning'

• 'Destruction of pleasure is a radical weapon'
• hollywood is skilled at manipulating visual pleasure
• 'mainstream film coded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order'

The cinema offers many pleasures: 

1. Scopophilia - looking itself is a source of pleasure, 'erotic base for pleasure in looking at another person as an object' 'pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight'
2. 'producing for [the audience] a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic phantasy'
3. conditions of screening and narrative conventions give the spectator the illusion of looking in on a private world'
4. develops scopophilia in a narcissistic sense - child imagines mirror image to be more complete than actual body according to Jacques Lacan, 'misrecognition as superior projects this body outside itself as an ideal ego', ;the cinema has structures of fascination strong enough to allow temporary loss of ego while simultaneously reinforcing the ego'
5. hence pleasure can also come from 'identification with the image seen'

How this is affected by gender: 

• pleasure in looking has always been split between male/active and female/passive'
• women have a 'traditionally exhibitionist role' where they're 'simultaneously looked at and displayed'
• 'the determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure'
• women's appearance is strongly coded with to be looked-at-ness
• 'she holds the look, plays to and signifies male desire'
• 'her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line'
• traditionally the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: for characters with story and for audience
• 'according to the principles of the ruling ideology... the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual identification. Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like'
• 'as the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto tht of his like'
• 'the controlling male gaze within the screen scene'

Summary:

'The image of a woman as (passive) raw material for the (active) gaze of the man'

'woman as representation signifies castration inducing fetishistic or voyeuristic mechanisms to circumvent her threat'

'the satisfaction, the pleasure and privilege of the 'invisible guest''

From 'Feminist Film Studies'

• 'Acentral imaging' understanding character and situation represented and reacting to the thought of it
• 'Central imaging' adopting view and mental state of character

Women's Film

• Doane divides women's film into maternal melodrama (seperation and return), love story (female desire recognised then thwarted), paranoid gothic film (associate female spectator with fear) and medical discourse film (female body as site of disease, submission to male medical control) - all constructing masochistic female spectator
• Basinger - films can be double-voiced, provide female viewres with escape/release then say they shouldn't want it and that its wrong,  but can also offer temporary sense of liberation
• Linda williams sees three body genres - sex/porn, violence/horror, emotion/women's film
• Female friendship films - nearly also positvie about relationship but stopped after Thelma and Louise - had been sentimental portrayals of woman adjusting to fit existing social structure
• Normally produced by men, but was inspired by feminist notions of sisterhood
• Literary adaptation of female novelists helped - often focused on sisterly relations of the past
• Chick flick core elements: femaale empowerment, solidarity amongst women, consumerism, fairy tale elements, old fashioned sentimentality
• Convey notion that women can have it all but renewed acceptance of traditional feminity
• most fall into makeover catergory - change identity and self confidence and enables romance
• Sexual reawakening of women in middle age
• show women's triumph over patriarchy whilst retaining their traditional femininity
• Don't address gender roles, complexities of real women's lives

Lesbian Film Theory and Criticism

• Link between portrayals of lesbians and female bonding - Jackie Stacey - homoerotic component to films about woman's obsession with other women
• Homoerotically charged relationships in films reflect that between female viewer and female star
• Fascination with the idealized other
• female spectator positioned in regard to female bonding which represents intimacy involves both identification and desire

Avant Garde and Documentary making

• In 1970s feminist avant-garde separate form previous male one started
• Early avante-garde filmmakers were all male apart from Germaine Dulac and Maya Deren
• Became seen as a place where women could challenge mainstream images but many male avant-garde films were misogynistic eg un chien andalou
• women seldom reach highest level of directorial pantheon
• Female experimentalist work often challenge avant-garde traditions
• Caught between radical aestithicism and allegiance to women's movements demands for realistic portrayals of women's activities and activism
• realism creates passive spectators from a modernist perspective as it presents a story as truth or reality
• make female characters more than an element of plot space
• often interrogate female body as a cultural and linguistic sign - not just visual image but a subject of inquiry
• destroting pleasure derived from identification, narrative involvement and eroticization of femininity
• 
  

The Actress

• star actress 'construction, a product of culture... prefabricated by men' Gaines
• Denigrate female star's acting ability in contrast to male stars
• work actress puts into her appearance never seen as a skill
• men more likely to be seen as highly trained or skilled rather than succeeding because of their natural talent or physical attractiveness
• emphasis on training and professionalism for men helps them retain roles as grow older - harder for women to transfer from acting to directing and producing
• female stars often shown as having careers managed or launched by powerful male directors or producers
• female actresses more commonly seen as celebrities
• celebrity status allows to continue despite bad performances or lower box office

Feminist Film Studies and Race:

• Classical feminism criticised for ignoring African American and Third World Women - prompted many post colonial critics many of whom were white feminists
• psychoanalysis prompted focus on one kind of oppression - also Freud's theories are not necessarily universal
• Much of postcolonial criticism has been male-dominated so doesn't focus on women's experience of it
• black men led to accept idealized images of their oppressors and to internalize racist notions of their own superiority
• Edward Said's notion of Orientalism - West thinks of the east as th antithesis of everything western men like to think that they are
• Eastern men characterized as weak feminized inferior and welcoming of western domination - Homi K. Bhabba explored how inferiorizing stereotypes used to justify western conquest and domination of the third world
• White racism structuring colonized people's experience of themselves
• Women of colour might see white western women as complicit in their oppression
• Women of colour may feel patriarchy is another learned behaviour from their White male oppressors not natural to their community - challenge to the concept of universal patriarchy
• Doane - white women and black men both embody castration for white male and black female is double threat so is virtually eliminated from the screen or with promiscuous hyper-sexual primitiveness that connects her to natural landscape
• Modleski - WoC shown in stereotypical images that reduce them to their biological functions or as surrogates for white women
• Kaplan - western imperialist gaze, unquestioned sense of white male superiority
• bell hooks - during slavery black people forbidden to look, black male gaze adopts white male structures and takes as its object white women. Black female spectatorship is more subversive due to the erasure of black womanhood from screen, black women not allowed to look or to be looked at, only serving to validate white supremacy
• Lola Young - using pychoanalsis to look at how issues of power control and subjugation have been mapped onto the black female body, white feminists' advocation of abortion and deconstruction of family unit ignores that Black women see family as a source of strength in a hostile world
• Trinh T Minh-Ha - there isn't an authentic postcolonial identity because third world women's sense of self is sahped by fragmentation, hybridity and in-betweeness

The Woman Auteur

• Pantheon of great directors doesn't have any women
• Alice Guy-Blanche directed the first feature film

How are women represented in the first 100 pages of Dracula?

Bram Stoker explores Victorian values and fears through his representation of women in Dracula, showing both harlots and housewives to warn of the potential dangers that women could pose if they forget their rightful place in society.

The first woman who is allowed to speak in the novel is ‘a cheery-looking elderly woman in the usual peasant dress’, who is maternal and kind. Similarly Mina is presented as motherly and caring, the epitome of the ‘angle in the house’ through her care for Lucy and the old fisherman, and both Mina and the Old Woman ask many questions of those they want to care for, with the ‘old lady’ asking Johnathan if he ‘know(s) what day it is’ and Mina asking Mr Swales whether all the ‘tombstones can be wrong’. Both women show interest in men who are vulnerable, with Jonathan about to go to Dracula’s castle and Mr Swales being a hundred year old fisherman who dies a few pages later, fulfilling their traditional roles of caring for and showing interest in the menfolk around them. The ways in which the two women do so is very different, with the old Lady ignoring Jonathan’s wishes and giving him a crucifix for his ‘mother’s sake’ connoting an universal instinct to protect in women, while Mina asks questions of Mr Swales, making him feel valued. This maternal instinct stands in stark contrast with Dracula’s three brides, who despite being his brides have no children, and Stoker presents them as being the incarnation of all evil. Stoker uses the sound of a ‘half-smothered child’ to ignite righteous anger and horror within his readership, with the word ‘child’ connoting all that is innocent and pure whilst also emphasizing the unnaturalness of the brides as they are anti-maternal and inhuman. The difference between the care and love shown by the human, motherly characters and the uncaring beastial vampire characters perhaps indicates that Stoker feels that if women are not conforming to their traditional roles of care-givers  they are not human, and the rejection of their maternal instinct is the worst crime they could possibly commit, and the role of mother and child bearer is a god given one – anything else is a perversion of nature.

Stoker goes on to further represent women who deviate from Victorian ideas of sexuality as terrifying and inhuman. This is represented primarily through Dracula’s vampire brides, whose constant ‘hard soulless laughter’ as they are about to suck Jonathan’s blood and as they are pulled back by Dracula mark them out as unwomanly, with the word ‘hard’ highlighting their complete oppositeness to Mina and Lucy’s softness, and their ‘laughter’ could perhaps connote a link between violence and love, or a fetish, both of which would be appalling ideas to the Victorians. The fact they have power over Jonathan initially would also have been frightening, and the ‘hard sharp dents of two sharp teeth’ are not only scary because he is about to be bitten, but also because they could be an image of penetration. The reversal of females penetrating males sets them up as powerful sexual women, and the fact that Jonathan is ‘waiting’ makes him the passive one where it would normally be the female. This could perhaps relate to Freud’s theory of castration anxiety as the male is not penetrating the female, and this could suggest female dominance, and a reversal of what the Victorians saw as the natural order. The fact that there are three brides also emphasizes their dominance as they gang up on Jonathan, however he is completely passive and doesn’t try to fight them off, with the fact that he is in a ‘languorous ecstasy’ perhaps suggesting that he welcomes this, or could hark back to the biblical story of original sin, with the female corrupting the innocent male. Furthermore, the fact that Dracula ‘grasps’ and ‘draws’ one of the brides neck back could indicate the need for punishment of these sexual women, and that a male figure must intervene and put them back in their place, using violence if he has to. Stoker leaves no room for sympathy with the brides despite the fact they are obviously not loved by Dracula, because they feed on a child they are presented as cruel, animalistic and the antithesis of all that is good, suggesting that if women are allowed to be powerful, especially sexually, the consequences will be catastrophic.

Stoker’s representation of women with sexual desires as whores would be very familiar to his Victorian audience, and he foreshadows both Lucy’s and Mina’s experiences with Dracula through their interactions with males, with Lucy wishing that she could ‘marry three men’ and Mina ‘open(ing) her arms unthinkingly’ to Arthur Holmwood. That Lucy wishes she could marry three men makes  her a polygamist foreshadows later on in the book where she receives the blood of four different men, three of whom are not her fiancé, and the fact that she never marries Arthur is perhaps why Stoker allows her to be fully turned into a vampire, while married Mina is saved and doesn’t receive any blood transfusions which Arthur says feel like marriage. Perhaps this is also why Mina is forced to drink Dracula’s blood, and it could be argued that Dracula is fulfilling Lucy’s repressed desires that she has already expressed. That Lucy wants ‘three husbands’ could also reflect Dracula’s ‘three brides’, suggesting that perhaps Lucy was ripe for corruption, and the fact that she is so ‘sweet’ and ‘pretty’ could perhaps make it even more terrifying that she has such suppressed desires underneath. Also if blood transfusions are a metaphor for sex as above, then Lucy effectively is a whore as she shares the blood of four men and has her blood sucked by Dracula, in which case she deserves punishment and perhaps this is why she dies. The fact that women’s sexual desires should be suppressed is also shown through the pure monstrosity of the three brides, as their freedom has made them ‘cruel’ and ‘soulless’, with Bram Stoker issuing a clear warning that women should continue to suppress any impure desires.

Through Stoker’s contrast of whores and motherly figures, he illustrates Victorian fears of female sexuality, depicting the sexually free brides as terrifying and monstrous, whilst Mina and the Old Lady are presented sympathetically. Lucy is perhaps the bridge between the two categories, for whilst she is ‘sweet’ she also has suppressed desires of polygamy, so perhaps Stoker’s representation of Lucy is a warning to maintain the status quo, and the male dominance over women is necessary to preserve social order and Victorian morality.