The Oppression of Women in Narrative Cinema

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The Oppression of Women in Narrative Cinema - Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady

In Laura Mulvey's essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey analyzes the human fascination of film, and how its conventions subjugate women to men. By recognizing and understanding her critical points it becomes possible to analyze the film The Portrait of a Lady theoretically from a feminist perspective. Analyzing Jane Campion's film is my task by using Mulvey's theoretical points, and in order to do so I will break down Campion's film into parts and analyze specific scenes. But first I am going to summarize Mulvey's points.

Firstly, Mulvey explores that the fondness of cinema can be understood by the scopopholic (pleasure in looking) and narcissistic nature of humans. She states that the cinema creates an illusion that the spectator is alone and is secretly looking at someone else (voyeurism). Mulvey also explains that there is a narcissistic aspect in taking pleasure of looking at others, because when the spectator recognizes other humans he also recognizes his self-image in relation to the person(s) on the screen, which is crucial to a person’s ego. This is being explained with Jacques Lacan's theory about the mirror phase. Spectators take pleasure in looking and being looked at simultaneously (2184). Secondly, Mulvey argues that movies have the purpose of serving the dominant patriarchal order (2183). Since films portray women as sexual object with the purpose of being looked at by other men. The roles between male actors and female actors are visible since the male actors are active while the female actors are passive. The men control the fantasies of the film with their gaze which the women are passive to. The displayed women does not really do anything to keep the story going, their purpose is to be enjoyed by through the male actors and the spectators looks (2186-2187). Thirdly, there are different types of looks in narrative cinema: that of the camera that records what is happening in front of it, that of the audience who are watching the completed film, and lastly that of the characters in the movie. Consequently this leads to that the movie is seen through the perspective of the male characters.

After locating Mulvey's points it becomes possible to analyze The Portrait of a Lady by applying aspects of the film through Mulvey´s conceptual model of filmmaking. In the very beginning of the film it is possible to analyze the passivity of the women by listening to their conversation about kissing, and men. This occurs while the screen is dark and none of the actors are visible, and the spectator can hear how the female characters are subjected to the actions of men, and how they reflect on their own passivity. “The best part of the kiss I think is when you see that head coming towards you and you know that you are going to get kissed”. From the very beginning the spectator can hear how the women are being passive, and simply waiting to be kissed. It seems like if the women´s involvement in the kiss is submissive to the actions of the male, which is the usual way of heterosexual interaction in movies. Another example of the subjection of women to men is audible in the same sequence of the film. “I get this really intense look in my eyes that says, I´m so mysterious and there´s so much more to me than meets the eye to find out”. This show how they as women are subjected to the gaze of men and that they are aware of it, and even like it. Once again the women find themselves in passive roles. This sequence of the movie foreshadows that the movie will have something a lot to do with heterosexual interaction and relations. It also exemplifies Mulvey's points of how traditional Hollywood cinema subjects women as sexual objects. The women in the conversation are aware of the gaze of other men, and from this point of the movie, the story will be centered on men´s view of women and how the women relate to it.

After the initial dialogue, the camera starts showing silent images of women accompanied by mesmerizing music. The women in this short sequence of the film are passive and subjected to the gaze of the spectator in the way that the women in the previous dialogue talked about being looked at by men. The silent women are spectacles to the bearers of the look (the spectator), and their only function is to be pleasurable to look at. This portion of the film also brings attention to Mulvey's statements regarding voyeurism and scopophilia. There is some kind of pleasure in looking at the human body since it is a component in the instinct of sexuality (2184). This pleasure in looking is attained in The Portrait of a Woman and especially in this scene where the spectator has the illusion of secretly observing the body of women. The bodies of the women are visible and eroticized through movements and dancing. The passiveness of the women creates a kind of mystique to them which the camera sometimes shoots without the women being aware of the camera. But there are also examples where the gaze of the camera/spectator is recognized and met by a mysterious look of the different women. This notion of the mystery of women is clearly being reproduced in the movie, and the women are objects to both the camera and the spectator.

Afterwards the camera cuts to a close up shot of the female protagonist Isabel Archer, which keeps zooming in on her eyes. Which I thought fell in to Mulvey´s description of when the beauty of a woman becomes an object that creates an erotic rapport with the spectator (2189). Right after this close up, a man comes up and tries to convince her to marry him. When the man in this sequence starts to talk to Isabel, the camera is focused on her for 30 seconds while you only hear the man talk. Isabel's beauty becomes the central point to the spectator although it is the man who moves the plot forward by talking. By filming this way the spectator can identify with the man in the scene, because when the camera later is focused on him, it is not shot straight and forward, it is shot in an angle from under and from the side. This creates the sense that you are not looking at him from Isabel's perspective. Therefore the camera controls that Isabel is always the one who is subjected to the gaze. This exemplifies Mulvey's point regarding men not being able to bear the burden of sexual objectification.

Isabel rapidly leaves the proposer because of her disinterest in marrying him. The camera subsequently starts to follow her and her movements back to her house. She walks across the lawn were couples of people are sitting and drinking coffee. Isabel's movements are being subjected to the gaze of two men on the lawn, and at one point the camera is focusing on her legs which are the point of view of a man who is lying on the lawn. In this short scene the camera follow her every movement in ways that appeal to the voyeurism within man, as well at is makes the spectator identify with the male characters. In fact throughout the movie there are many examples of how the work of the camera tries to make it feel like the viewer is watching something secretly. There are shots that are taken from and behind trees, shots from angles behind pot plants, behind a fences and stairs, and there are various more examples of this that further creates the feeling of secretly looking at someone.

Another part of the movie worth analyzing is when Isabel is having an erotic dream about the three men that proposed to her. In this scene the three men actively arouse Isabel by gazing, and by touching her while she passively lies down, and enjoys being passive. It is if she as a woman only can enjoy being the bearer of the look, but also being the one that is being touched by others. By looking at the interaction between these men and women creates a self-image of how we look at ourselves. A male spectator sees how the male characters look at women, and it is the camera that creates these looks. A female spectator sees the same thing but identifies herself with the “to-be-looked-at-ness” of the women. This recognition of oneself says a lot about how traditional Hollywood cinema is being constructed. It works to keep the patriarchal dominance intact, which is one of Mulvey's points. Men recognize themselves as active and in control of the women, while women recognize themselves as passive to the actions of men. And since humans find narcissistic pleasure in being looked at through the self-image of others, filmmakers have the possibility to reproduce these images of men and women.

This analysis of The Portrait of a Lady was roughly of the first 30 minutes of the film, a film that had much to do with the relation of how men and women look at each other and themselves. I would not go so far to say that the movie is about looking, but the previous analyzed examples of mine shows how films can be constructed to objectify women. The film served as a fine and more modern example of how traditional cinema is constructed, and by using Mulvey's essay, one could clearly find her analytical points in the movie..