WOMAN AS IMAGE, MAN AS BEARER OF THE LOOK

Woman As Image, Man As Bearer Of The Look

Woman as Image, Man As Bearer of the Look

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in the search has been split between active / male and passive / female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy on 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 it can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ing. The woman appears as a sexual object is the thread of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups of the stripe-tease, from Ziegfeld to Busby Berkeley, maintains the look, play and signifies male desire. Incorporate perfectly matched film spectacle and narrative. (Note, however, how the musical numbers and singing and dancing break the flow of the diegesis. ) The presence of women is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, however, her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of contemplation erotic. This alien presence then has to be integrated into cohesion with the narrative.

An active / passive heterosexual division of labor also has controlled the narrative structure. In accordance with the principles of the dominant ideology and the psychic structures that support it, the male figure can not bear the burden of sexual objectification. The man refuses to look at his exhibitionist like. Therefore the split between spectacle and narrative supports the man's role as an active transmission of the story, making things happen. The man controls the film fantasy and also appears as the representative of power in a broader sense: as the bearer of the gaze of the viewer, the transfer of behind the screen to neutralize extradiegetic tendencies represented by woman as spectacle. This is possible through the processes set in motion by structuring the film around a main controlling figure with whom the viewer can identify. As the viewer identifies with the main male lead, which casts its gaze on that of his fellows, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic gaze, therefore gives a satisfying sense of omnipotence. glamorous movie star features a male are thus not those of the erotic gaze, but the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego conceived in the initial moment of recognition in the mirror. The character of the story can make things happen and control events better than the subject / spectator, like the image in the mirror was more in control of motor coordination. In contrast to the woman as icon, the active male figure (the ego ideal of the identification process) demands a three-dimensional space corresponding to the recognition in the mirror, in which the alienated subjects internalized their own representation of this imaginary existence. It is a figure in a ...