Feminist Theory

Feminist Theory

-Cinema is taken by feminist critics to be a cultural practice representing myths about women and femininity. 

-Negative impose on the female viewer.

-Early feminist criticism was directed at stereotypes in Hollywood films.

The look 

-within the film the male characters direct their look towards the female - the spectator is made to identify with the male as the camera films from the optical view of the male.

3 levels of cinematic gaze  

Mulvey also said that physiologically female characters combine seduction with castration.

Monstrous Babies 

Alien; Ripley is female, the alien is female, the iconography is female, the nest and tunnels reminiscent of a womb and fallopian tubes. 

Rosemary’s Baby 

Carrie; carrie begins to suffer hallucinations and terrifying visions when she reaches puberty and starts her period. The iconography of blood is repeated throughout the film.