Gina Marchetti writes:
“Some critics blameNomadlandfor not directly addressing race, labour, immigration, or partisan politics on screen. Despite a conscious effort not to be political, Nomadlandstill invites critical contemplation of these very issues”. Using examples from the formal and narrative elements in the film, explain how Zhao still manages to invite critical contemplation of at least ONE issue such as race, immigration, labour, capitalism, or gender.
Bill Nichols outlines how we can analyse documentaries to determine how they differ from other kinds of films. He refers to different angles of analysis, including institutions, practitioners, texts (films and videos), and audience (22). Choosetwoof these and deploy them in an analysis ofThe Gleaners and I.
492 P A R T 5 Reactions: Readin$ and Writing about Film I 3.32 And God Created Woman (1957). Brigitte Bardot's character exemplifies what Laura Mulvey calls woman's "to-be-looked- at-nessl' t 3"33 The Devil ls a Woman (1935). Marlene Dietrich's image invites the viewer's fetishistic gaze, according to feminist theorist Laura Mulvey. Theories of Gender and Sexuality The poststructuralist concern with spectator- ship and subjectivity remains abstract if spectatorship is generalized and the nature ofsubjectivity is not questioned. Psychoana- lytic theory revolves around the issues of de- sire and identiflcation. These issues and the questions of gender and sexuality to which they are related soon became key to film the- ory's exploration of how subjectivity is en- gaged by and constructed in cinema. Feminist Film Theory Feminism began to have wide social and intellectual culrency during the 1970s' Commentators point out that the female image is treated differently from the male image in fllm-as well as in advertising, pornography, and painting [figure 13.32]. The objectification of the female image seems to solicit a possessive male gaze or female identiflcation. In film theory feminist critics note, the spectator is envi- sioned in a similarly gendered way. "Is the Gaze Male?" asks E. Ann Kaplan in an essay of that title, noting that vision is often associated with ownership and power in our culture. British theorist and filmmaker Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," published in Screen in 1975, is one of the most important essays in con- temporary film theory. Arguing that psychoanalysis offers a compelling account of how the difference between the sexes is culturally internalized and valued, Mulvey observes that the glamorous and desirable female image in film is also a potentially threatening vision of difference, or otherness, for male viewers. Hollywood films repeat a pattern of visual mastery of the woman as "Other" by attributing the on- Screen $aze to a male character who can cover for the camera's voyeurism-its ca- pacity for looking without being seen-and stand in for the male viewer. Film narratives also tend to domesticate or otherwise tame the woman, Mulvey shows, offering analyses of A]fred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) and Rear Window (1954)' whose stories are driven by voyeurism and female makeovers. In another primary example, Mulvey uses the psychosexual concept of fetishism to explain the effect of the elaborately controlled presentation of Marlene Dietrich's image in the films of Josef von Sternberg [rigure 1 3.3 3]. In Freudian theory, fetishism is a denial of, by way of overcompensation for, female lack, with "lack" defined as difference from masculinity, or castration. Although generations of students have resisted Mulvey's emphasis on such questionable psychoana- lfiic concepts as castration, most have also agreed with her formulation of the standard dichotomy in Hollywood fllm: "woman as image / man as bearer of the look." Mulvey's essay is polemical: she champions "a political use of psychoanalysis" and a new kind of filmmaking that would "free the look of the camera into its materiality in time and space" so that it could not be ignored through assimilation to the viewer's or characters' perspective. In their film Riddles of the Reading about Film; Critical Theories and Methods i CHApTER I3 493 Sphiw (1977), Mulvey and Peter Wollen use 360-degree pans, with the camera posi- tioned at about waist level, to emulate the circularity of a young mother's rhythms of work and to avoid objectifuing her body in a centered, still image [figure 13.34]. The fllm deliberately sets out to destroy conven- tional visual pleasure and narrative satisfac- tion. Like many theorists of this period, Mulvey and Wollen believed that making spectators think about what they were seeing was the first step toward a critical perspective. Building on Mulvey's provocative argu- ment, other feminist critics raise the question of female spectatorship. If narrative cinema so successfully positions the viewer to take up a male gaze, why are women historically often the most enthusiastic film viewers? One way to approach this question is to consider films produced with a female au- dience in mind. During Hollywood's heyday, women's pictures featured female stars who had a strong appeal to women, such as Bette Davis and Joan crawford. At flrst glance, women's pleasure in these fllms seems self-defeating because what these heroines do best is suffer. However, feminists argue that a film like Now, voyager (1942) enables female spectators to explore their own dissatisfaction with their lives by fantasizing a more fulfilling version of that existence. The movie shows Davis as a dowdy spinster taking control of her life-through psychoanalytic treatment and new clothes! In this way, the contradictions of women's situations are revealed, while no satisfactory solutions are posited. Perhaps no easy solutions exist, the films imply' Today's commercial films aimed at women are not that different from those of the 1940s. Diuine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) reveals similar contra- dictions to Now, voyager: mother-daughter bonds are both destructive and primary. Many feminist critics argue that women's pleasure in these complicated, mixed- message movies should be taken seriously. Because film is a mass medium, it will never radically challenge existing power relations, but if it speaks to women's dilem- mas, it is doing more than much official culture does. Sometimes filmmakers suc- ceed in evoking these emotions and mass culfural traditions in more reflexive and satis[ring ways, such as in Pedro Almoddvar's revisiting of maternal melodramas in All about My Mother (1999) and Voluer (zOOO) [ftgure 13.iS]. still other feminist scholars turn to the work of past women filmmakers. The political and aesthetic options and strategies of contemporary feminist filmmakers- 13.34 Riddles of the Sphinx (1977). Laura Mulvey puts her own theories about images of women into practice in a film made with Peter Wollen. from Kathryn Bigelow in the United States, Ann Hui in Hong Kong, and Mdrta Mdsz6ros in Hungary-differ greatly from those of Matilde Landeta, a Mexican direc- tor working in the 1940s, or Larisa She- pitko, a Soviet filmmaker of the 1950s. (See our discussion of American women film- makers in Chapter 12.) Nevertheless, there are important continuities and common questions to ask about the conditions under which these women work, the sources that inspire them, and the cinematic languages they draw on and develop. Overall, femi- nism has had more of an impact on the I 3.3 5 Volver (200G). Pedro Almod6var revisits the maternal melodrama to empower female characters. 494 P A R T 5 Reactions: Reading and Writing about Film VIEWING CUE Describe the interrelated issues of gender representation and gendered spectatorship in a film you viewed recently. relatively young discipline of film theory than on many more established ones. Arguably, gender in film cannot be ignored. As Mulvey's work sug$ests, cinema- certainly entertainment film but also the avant-$arde-depends on the stylized im- ages of women for its appeal. Moreover, the cinema, because it is part of the fabric of daily life, necessarily comments on the everyday, private sphere. In the private sphere, women's role is pervasive, if sometimes undervalued. Feminism's signifl- cant inroads in fllm theory have laid the $roundwork for related, though not always parallel, critiques of cinema's deployment of sexuality, race, and national identity. Lesbian and Gay Film Studies Feminist and psychoanalytic theory stress that unconscious processes of desire and identification are at play when we go to the movies. Our everyday ways of talking about stars and fllms acknowledge how strong the element of fantasy is in our viewing. Despite the sexist historical legacy of psychoanalysis, many fem- inists find its focus on subjectivity, gender, and sexuality very useful. Like cinema itself, however, psychoanalysis historically concentrates on heterosexual scenar- ios (such as the Oedipus complex) and pathologizes gays and lesbians (as cases of "arrested development," for example). Lesbian and gay film theory critiques and supplements feminist approaches that use psychoanalysis. Accordin$ to this the- ory, films allow for more flexible ways of seeing and experiencing visual pleas- ure than are accounted for by the binary opposites of male versus female, seeing versus seen, and being versus desiring that are the basis of Mulvey's influential model of spectatorship. The gender of a member of the audience need not correspond with that of the character he or she flnds most absorbing or most alluring. Marlene Dietrich, Mulvey's example of a "fetish" or mask for male desire, cross-dressed for son$s in many films and even kissed a woman on the lips in her flrst American movie, Morocco (tSf O) lflgure I 3.36i. Dietrich's gender bending is more than theoretical. Her onscreen style borrows directly from the fashions of the lesbian and gay sub- culture of Weimar-era Germany, where her career began. Dietrich thus appealed on many different levels to lesbian and gay viewels, as wel\ as to heterosexua\ women and men. In fact, this multiplicity could be seen more generally as a key to cin- ema's mass appeal. Although movies tend to conform to the dominant values of a societ5r-in this case, to het- erosexuality as the norm-they also make unconscious appeals to our fantasies, which may not be as conform- ist; anyone may identiflr with or desire a character of either gender in a particular movie. Moreover, fllms Ieave room for viewers' own interpretations and appro- priations, such as when fan writers continue the adven- tures of particular mainstream characters or celebrities and share them on the Internet. Spectators positioned a- the margins, such as gay men and lesbians, often "reai against the grain" for cues of performance or mise-en- sctne that suggest a different story t}lan the one onscreen, one with more relevance to their lives. An interest in stars may extend beyond any particular film they are cast in and ignore those films' required romantic out- comes. For example, Dietrich's and Jodie Foster's strong IB.IG Morocco(1930). Lesbian and gaytheorists interpretMartene images have historically appealed to lesbian viewers' Dietrich-here kissing a woman-in a different way than feminist treorrst Lesbian and gay portrayals in and responses to the cin- Laura Mulvey does in her influential essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative ema constitute one of many areas that have demanded Cinemai' fresh concepts in fllm theory' someTitle Chapter 2 How Do Documentaries Differ from Other Types of Film? WORKING OUT A DEFINIT ION “Documentary” can be no more easily defined than “love” or “culture.” Its meaning cannot be reduced to a dictionary definition in the way that “tem- perature” or “table salt” can be. Its definition is not self-contained in the way that the definition of “table salt” is contained by saying that it is a chemical compound made up of one atom of sodium and one of chlorine (NaCl).The definition of “documentary” is always relational or comparative. Just as love takes on meaning in contrast to indifference or hate, and culture takes on meaning in contrast to barbarism or chaos, documentary takes on mean- ing in contrast to fiction film or experimental and avant-garde film. Were documentary a reproduction of reality, these problems would be far less acute.