I hope you have read the Mulvey article fully. I want you to choose one of the following quotes and respond to the quote using a 5-minute scene in Mildred Pierce. Your response should be at least 3 paragraphs and should include specific examples and another quote from the article to back up your statements. Be thorough. This is due Friday, 1/6.
Statement #1:
"In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness...This alien presence [of woman] then has to be integrated into cohesion with the narrative. As Budd Boetticher has put it: 'What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.'"
Statement #2:
"An active/passive heterosexual division of labour has similarly controlled narrative structure. According to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures that back it up, the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification. Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like. Hence the split between spectacle and narrative supports the man's role as the active one of forwarding the story, making things happen. The man controls the film phantasy and also emerges as the representative of power in a further sense: as the bearer of the look of the spectator, transferring it behind the screen to neutralise the extra-diegetic tendencies represented by woman as spectacle. This is made possible through the processes set in motion by structuring the film around a main controlling figure with whom the spectator can identify."
Although Mildred Pierce has been described as a "woman's film" and is centered around a female character, male gaze is still highly prevalent in the film, and the male characters are generally the ones who are "forwarding the story, [and] making things happen" as Laura Mulvey states in her essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Mildred Pierce is a film which acts as if it is giving empowerment to its lead character, when in reality, it is just using her as a tool to advance the plot and motivate male characters as in so many other films.
ReplyDeleteThe scene which epitomizes this begins at 48:20. Mildred is shown working in her restaurant to get it ready for its eventual opening, but the camera in an obvious example of male gaze, only displays her legs, thus eroticizing her. Later in the scene, Mildred is on a beach with Monte Beragon. Both are seen in bathing suits, but Mildred's form is focused on and followed throughout the shots, whereas Beragon's semi-nudity is viewed casually by the audience and is only looked at when necessary. This exhibitionism of Mildred reinforces Mulvey's statement that "the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification." While Beragon's semi-nudity is seen by the audience just as Mildred's is, Mildred's body is given prominence by the camera and is shown through a male gaze to the audience, as the camera follows her exclusively.
As well, the male characters in the film are the ones who end up really getting things done in the film, even if the audience is supposed to feel that this is Mildred's role. While Mildred's initiative is what gets her restaurant business started, Wally and Monte's financial backings are what seems to really get the business going, and their aid is only really fueled by their almost obsessive relationships with her. Additionally, whenever Mildred starts to find happiness on her own, something else comes to destroy it quickly. For example, her restaurant business ends up ruining her already weak relationship with her daughter. Finally, while Mildred's story and narration are what drives the film, the detective work of the male detectives is ultimately what solves the film's murder mystery. The film tries to portray Mildred as a strong and independent woman, but ends up falling back into conventional gender roles, wherein she needs to rely on men to solve her problems, and male gaze to "circumvent her threat" to the audience.
In relation to quote number one, Mildred Piece seems to challenge the ‘world ordered by sexual imbalance’ and where the woman ‘has not the slightest importance’. This is not a ‘typical’ movie where the women are dependent on the men (passive). Mildred makes a transition in the film a ‘passive female’ to an ‘active female’. This becomes quite evident in the scene when she tells Bert to leave.
ReplyDeleteWhen we are first introduced to this ‘passive’ Mildred she is shot with a white dress and complimentary lighting on her face to give an angelic look. The camera does not cut from one shot to another, but stays with her in one continuous shot. This represents how she moves all the time and does multiple chores around the house and does not take any breaks. She is constantly working. There is another shot of the picture of her daughters. This becomes quite large on screen and shows the significances of them to Mildred. Vita is bigger because she is older, but it represents that she is a more important character than Kay, and more powerful. Once Bert is home and on the couch, Mildred is now smaller on the screen than when she was in the kitchen before Bert arrived. This represents the power that he has over her, and the power that most men had over women during the time. Mildred is smaller, because Bert does not acknowledge all she does and seems to try to undermine her. Mildred becomes bigger in the screen when she gets the dress for Vita in the mail; this is because she is pleased with herself and hoping to please Vita. Mildred feels confident and happy with this purchase. The world mentioned in this quote where the man ‘projects [his] phantasy on to the female’ is challenged at this moment in the film. Bert wants to provide for his family and be needed, not have a wife that can stand on her own. His phantasy cannot be projected onto Mildred. There is a power struggle between the two, which is evident when the two are in the same shot and are the same height, but Bert’s facial lighting is darker than Mildred’s. This gives him a more menacing look and reveals his disapproval and anger that he cannot provide for his family and that his wife is not just a ‘pretty little face’. The quote reveals also that ‘women are simultaneously looked at and displayed’, but Mildred is not that woman. She seemed that way with her white dress and bright facial lighting to make her seem innocent and just ‘a pretty little face’, but now she has some darker shadows on her face and body. This reveals her annoyance with Bert, she will not just be looked at, but she wants to be heard, but Bert does not want to hear her.
Once Mildred is back in the kitchen Bert is smaller on screen. Now the tables have turned, Bert is more vulnerable which is evident due to his size on screen. This could be a sexist thing how women only belong in the kitchen and how they are more powerful in the kitchen. The next shot has Bert looking down at Mildred, trying to show off his dominance. His facial lighting is more shadowed to represent his determinedness to be ‘the man’ and also he is taller than her, he looks down at her, she looks up to him. An unexpected thing happens next; she cuts him off and shows her dominance. She turns her back on him and has some shadows on her face similar to his. She is more in the foreground than he is which represents that she has more of the power now. Bert tries one last time to assert his dominance over her and telling her that she cannot survive without him. There is a cut to an angelic look of Mildred with her face lit beautifully and brightly, her eyes glistening with tears, but she is shot with a close up. She has more power than he does, because she kicks him out at this point, but it also exaggerates her vulnerability, because she will not have money to get by in luxury. There is a cut to a shot of Bert, but he is not as big, because he realizes that he has no power to challenge her. The next shot has both of them in shot, but they are the same size which shows that they are both equally vulnerable and hurt by this decision. Mildred turns her back on Bert and stays in the foreground while Bert turns around and goes further into the background. This represents that she is keeping her power and Bert loses his power. Mildred then goes further into the background, but in the kitchen. This represents her losing power. She tries to seem strong, but this is killing her inside.
ReplyDeleteThis one scene breaks the ‘rules’ of the world that the quote speaks of. Mildred is an active female, not a passive one. Bert tries to be active, but Mildred overpowers him up and makes him passive. She does not conform to Bert’s phantasy and she is not just ‘a pretty little face’ that is looked at or displayed. She is the most important in this film and drives the narrative forward while the men take the place of the stereotypical woman and just provoke the her and her decisions. One thing that makes Mildred stand out from this unbalanced world is that the fact that she is not ‘a[n] erotic object for the characters within the story’, but an independent woman who is active, hardworking, and acts like a man.
As if a sardonic parody of its era’s feminist zeitgeist, or perhaps simply confused in the presentation of its own message, Mildred Pierce “remains the most insulting Hollywood depiction of mid-century American womanhood.” Although its protagonist is a proud, independent woman living by her own means, the film seems to objurgate her chosen role and advocate the woman’s embrace of traditional housewifery; or if not that, at least present the wrongness of the feminist pursuit of independence and call for a return to a conventional patriarchal relationship. By this aesthetic, women are objectified in the film despite their ostensible individuality-though on the surface Mildred Pierce seems to deprecate the male treatment of female characters, on a deeper level one understands that every male’s patronizing flirting is glorified, presented as playful, innocuous, even his right. So through a gauze of subversion, Mildred Pierce is actually an assertive masculine call for women to learn their place.
ReplyDeleteThe male audience identifies with the male characters on-screen because of the cinema’s “structure of fascination strong enough to allow temporary loss of ego while simultaneously reinforcing the ego.” Essentially, the male viewer loses himself in the character on screen, enjoying the character’s own pleasure vicariously because he identifies with that which he recognizes in himself. Paradoxically, he is simultaneously separated from the erotic identity of the object on the screen, receiving a voyeuristic pleasure from mere observance of another. The female character, as the “other,” is the bearer of the look, bearing the symbolic power of the phallus because she lacks her own and because she exists and is defined in relation to the penis, that is, her lack of a penis, and thus affirms the symbolic power and dominance of the phallus.
It is exactly this that is manifested one half hour into Mildred Pierce. As Wally flirts with Mildred, the male viewer identifies with Wally, receives the pleasure of his own private observance of Mildred, and the significance of the phallus is affirmed by the viewers’ relation to Mildred. Thus, Mildred exists in the purest objectification.
The camera introduces Wally in an aggrandizing low-angle shot. As he sits down, a shadow falls across his face, making him look shadowy, menacing, while Mildred looks innocent and vulnerable as lights diffuses across her own countenance. By the male viewer’s identification with Wally, he feels himself in a position of power and relishes his observance of Mildred’s weakness because it represents the contrast that gives the phallus meaning. Additionally, Mildred’s primness, the continual gentle lighting of her face, the light and modest robe she pulls ever tighter around her, and her determined rejection of Wally’s advances give her a sense of confined sexuality-her unattainable affection is what gives her worth, what distinguishes her as Virgin rather than Whore, and ironically, what makes her an effective erotic object of the male viewer’s scopophilia.
Mildred Pierce, a film that on a surface level is about a strong, independent woman fighting against a bevy of sinister characters (including a self centered daughter and a betraying and unlovable husband), is ironically an incredibly sexist and offensive film that reinforces male dominance in cinema. This can be seen in the very characterization of Mildred versus the other characters on screen - Mildred is consistently put in focus and lit in a way that sexualizes her appearance. Mildred is exhibited in a way that, for the viewer, subconsciously reinforces the stereotypes of women in '40's cinema, with the director "transferring it behind the screen to neutralise the extra-diegetic tendencies represented by woman as spectacle".
ReplyDeleteThis is proven in a scene in which Mildred is presented alongside her black housekeeper (an offensive caricature herself). Mildred wears a flattering outfit while working, while the housekeeper wears a frumpy robe. The housekeeper comments on Mildred's success as a beautiful, skinny woman before commenting negatively on her own appearance. This, combined with the disparity in lighting (Mildred is given a flattering, moderate light that makes her appear beautiful and almost holy, whereas the housekeeper gets a dim light that makes her appearance even worse) is what shows the audience that Mildred is the main character of the film - although she is a progressive, working class woman, she is sexualized and made to look beautiful by the male filmmakers.
"The presence of woman is an indispensible element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line..." writes Mulvey. This rather deceitfully salacious scene in Mildred Pierce proves this - though Mildred is intended to be a working class woman, the kind of woman not portrayed in movies of the time, she is still sexualized and made to be the "beautiful" star of the film, rendering her as "spectacle" rather than realistic character, by "the bearer of the look of the spectator" (the filmmaker).