FILM THEORY: The Male Gaze, The Female Gaze, and Florence Pugh
When approaching this month's blog, I was feeling uninspired and, quite frankly, a little lost on what to cover. With the movie industry barely starting to get back on its feet, not much is coming out in terms of movies until later this year. And any topics I wanted to pull from my list of ideas was just not fitting. So I decided to pull from a film and societal theory over a movie and it's analysis...
Okay: when I was on social media last week, I saw a lot of controversy over the gatekeeping of Florence Pugh and the recent release of Black Widow (for those who don't know what gatekeeping is, Google defines it as the "activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something"). I'm sure some of you are like "Why does a fully capable actress need to be gate-kept? And why are people actively trying to do that in the first place?" Well, the story goes that many people who saw Black Widow this past week (mainly men) have never seen or heard of Florence Pugh before this movie. This caused a lot of these men to start making comments about Florence Pugh online, mainly commenting on the attractiveness of her physical appearance (she has gotten the nickname "Blondie"). To many people (90% of who are women) who have known and loved Florence Pugh for a long time (including moi), this was upsetting. So other women online start making statements about Miss Flo, saying how she will be gate-kept and not be flung into the arms of straight men. So now I think is the perfect time, in all my feminist glory, to address the topic I could write an entire thesis on: the female gaze vs the male gaze in film and television.
To explain it quickly, "the male gaze" is defined as this: women in the media are often through the lens of a heterosexual male and, therefore, are usually seen as passive objects for men. This came from the realization that up until very recently, men were the only directorial voices in the film industry and therefore, no matter who is viewing the film, you are seeing it through the eyes of a heterosexual male.
What has this caused? Literally every foul objectification of women under the sun. You have sexualized female heroes like Harley Quinn and Catwoman; you have objectification in the topic of pedophilia like American Beauty and The Crush; you have female stereotypes like the dumb sexy blonde vs the brunette weird girl; you have a HUGE lack of any female protagonists (much less ones who actually act like a normal human being) ; and, possibly the most degrading of all, you have females with plot lines centered merely around how they can make themselves more attractive for a male.
Okay, yes I know, that was a lot to unpack. But it's true! Like everything in this world, media was created for men, by men... And we're all just ploys to help them get along.
For everyone reading this: I want you to take a second and think about three movies you like. They don't have to be your favorite, but think about three movies that you've seen multiple times that you enjoy watching. Now answer any of these questions: Who directed that movie? Were they a male or a female? When was it made? What gender is the protagonist of the movie? What is the plot of the movie in one sentence? Does it pass the Bechdel test (Are there two female characters? Do they talk to each other? And do they talk to each other about something besides a man?)? Somewhere in those answers, there must be a kink, where a man probably put his grubby little fingers in it.
Now think of some of the most popular movies and directors of all time. Can you name one movie with a female protagonist that's sole purpose and plot line doesn't revolve around a man? Breakfast at Tiffany's? The Silence of the Lambs? But still in those movies, Holly Golightly ends up with Paul, and Clarice is surrounded with sexual suspicion from Hannibal Lecter.
So why do we think this is the case? Well, to be fair, for most of human existence, females were thought to be second level citizens whose sole purpose is to serve a man and have his babies. And when the feminist movements became popular in the early 60s, men just turned women in the media into sexual objects, regardless of age or marital status or cultural background or genetics or, most importantly, consent. If you didn't look like Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn, you would never be able to be thought of as pretty or sexy.
So now let's contrast that with the female gaze. The female gaze is the exact opposite of the male gaze: it is how women often portray other males and females in the media. It challenges the male gaze in a way that we didn't know it needed to be challenged. When I first saw the movie Ladybird or Marie Antoinette, I didn't always know why I felt more of a connection with these movies over other well renowned movies like The Godfather or Psycho. Once I started doing research into those movies and realizing that women were the ones with the main voices on those projects, it was a game changer. I realized I was seeing someone I could relate to accurately portrayed on screen. I was seeing young women with goals and aspirations and struggles that weren't completely centered around how they looked or what a man would think about them. I saw MEN portrayed in the ways that I found attractive (Timothée Chalamet as Laurie Lawrence is my fictional soulmate... Ms. Greta, you spoke to my heart when you directed him like that). In these movies, I wasn't having body expectations or male dominance shoved down my throat: I saw men and women being given equal screen time and, arguably more importantly, equal care into their character depth and humanity.
Now maybe this is just horrifically skewed because I'm a girl (so I naturally have a bias), but frankly (and maybe it's my god complex shining through), I don't think that's the case. I think the fact that our society has been driven so deep into the patriarchy makes women think that anytime we request even a sliver of respect or equality, we think we're being selfish and taking too much. But, ya know, regardless of whether it's selfish or not, it's what we deserve; we deserve a voice. Plus, if we're going to dismantle the patriarchy, we need to start with something that will affect everyone. We consume so much social media and film and television and op-eds and Youtube everyday that if we can start bridging the gap of unequal gender representation, it will eventually spread out and start to affect everything else in our lives.
It won't be an easy task though. In 2019, only 10% of females were directors in Hollywood. TEN PERCENT. And, think about it: that statistic is not even three years old. We are only at the very start of holding men accountable for their continued skewed perception and expectations of women and their lifestyles along with getting more females behind the scenes to make creative and meaningful media to normalize the female gaze in our culture.
So how does this connect back to Florence Pugh? Well, with the very scarce options us women have to female-gaze media, we hold the people who represent us the way the majority of females want to be represented in said media very near and dear to our hearts. And seeing men A- only appreciate or recognize Florence Pugh because of her presence in the MCU and not because of female driven media and B- dehumanizing her by calling her "Blondie" and only showing interest in her because of her physical attractiveness in the movie is disappointing. It's another example of how men (and more specifically the patriarchy) ruins EVERYTHING.
Women love Florence Pugh because of her brilliant acting, her feminist interpretations in her characters, her lovely Instagram cooking shows, and how she gracefully challenges the normalized beauty standard. She represents how everyone woman wishes she could be perceived. And when men call her "the hot chic from Black Widow", they offend all of us. You (men) bring us back to square one. You (men) have 90% of everything in society working in your favor. So can you PLEASE leave our feminist beauties like Miss Flo untouched from your destructive minds? Unless, of course, you want to lead the revolution to equally balance the female and male gaze media...
But I'm sure once I said the word feminist about five paragraphs ago, you probably stopped reading this blog post...
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