Monday, May 12, 2008
A new wave of films shows a fresh element in filmmaking: The sexualization of the male actor by the female director.
Mar 22, 2000 | It's no great revelation that the film industry has always worshipped -- and objectified -- women. Female sexuality in particular, refracted through the lens of a male-dominated medium, has undergone several curious transformations.
There have been goddesses like Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Louise Brooks, who embodied sexual power through regal haughtiness and disdain; wisecracking tomboy princesses like Barbara Stanwyck, Lauren Bacall and Katharine Hepburn, who were luminous women with soft hair and strong chins and mouths that spit out a barrage of sharp-tongued witticisms; and kittens like Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, who filled out the hard edges with voluptuous curves and exchanged wit for bewilderment. There have been long-limbed, silken-haired 1960s sexual adventurers, delicately sensitive '70s waifs, '80s power bitches and quirky but vulnerable '90s girls (portrayed almost exclusively by Winona Ryder).
In an industry that has traditionally functioned almost entirely as an outlet for the creative visions of male directors, writers and producers, what the stereotypes have illustrated is the way men (at least moviemaking men) see women. And the way they've seen them, traditionally, has been with a potent mixture of adoration, lust, loathing and fear. Yet the much-maligned "male gaze" of film-theory legend has already gotten more than its share of play. What has been woefully absent is any discussion of the female gaze.
Few female directors have been given the opportunity to bring their representations of women to the screen, let alone their idealized, fantasy versions of men. Since 1922, only two women have been nominated for an Oscar in directing. Neither won. A few directors, such as Yvonne Rainer, have been able to make a name for themselves in the world of avant-garde and experimental film; others, such as Elaine May, who in the '70s directed "Mikey and Nicky," still one of the most powerful -- and underrated -- films of the decade, seemed fated to enjoy their successes in obscurity. In Europe, Agnes Varda, Claire Denis and Lina Wertmuller have been making solid and intelligent films for years. In America, female directors have been largely ignored.
But in the mid-1980s, when a wave of low-budget independent films made moviemaking more accessible to Hollywood outsiders, a handful of women began projecting complex and interesting female characters onto the screen. Allison Anders, Lisa Krueger and Mary Harron all made films that explored the female experience with honest and fresh female protagonists. Tamra Davis, Kathryn Bigelow, Amy Heckerling and Mimi Leder crashed the boy-dominated party of mainstream comedy, action and horror. And let's not forget Barbra Streisand, Penny Marshall, Jodie Foster and Diane Keaton, who made the transition from actresses to directors and have given us a series of sweetly sentimental blockbusters.
But the new crop of female-fronted releases goes beyond the proto-feminist "about women, by women" model. The films of Kimberly Peirce, Krueger, Harron, Jane Campion, Denis and newcomer Sofia Coppola -- all of which are premiering soon or currently in release -- don't fall under the feather-soft rubric of the typical "woman's picture," nor do they shy away from raw depictions of sexuality or violence. This new wave shows the beginnings of a kind of inversion, a fresh element in filmmaking and in the cultural psyche in general: The female gaze has finally hit the big screen. Suddenly, we can discern the sexualization of the male actor by the female director.
Campion has always been a master of exposing both the subtle carnality and the startling innocence that lurk beneath the surface of her male stars. In both "The Piano" and the recently released "Holy Smoke" she finds her muse in Harvey Keitel, whose particular brand of beautiful ugliness exemplifies a stormy, visceral sexuality -- the "fire under the surface" of which Campion is so enamored. Some of her best male imagery is defined by a sort of "King Kong" idealization: the untamed brute with a soft heart for the right woman. Another element of Campion's representation is the recurrence of men easily manipulated by the women in their lives (the baffled boyfriend in "Sweetie," Sam Neill's brutish husband in "The Piano"). In "Holy Smoke," Campion continues this theme, with Keitel's cult deprogrammer becoming programmed himself by Kate Winslet, brainwashed not by rhetoric but by her eager and delicious voluptuousness. For Campion, men are as malleable as clay.
Get Salon in your mailbox!