Revisiting the gaze in films by two women directors

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is an intervention in a debate within film studies over the concept of the “gaze”. Under the influence of 1960s and 1970s “apparatus” theory and particularly feminist thinkers of film like Laura Mulvey, the gaze has long been considered a key element in the consolidation of dominant ideology, particularly regarding the construction of gender identities. However, since the 1990s certain thinkers – namely Joan Copjec and Todd McGowan – have argued that this notion of the gaze relies upon a misinterpretation of Lacan. This essay – the first to take up this revision of gaze theory in Spanish film studies – offers a close reading of two experimental films directed by female directors from different generations, historical moments and countries. It proposes a gaze that, rather than focusing a unified point of view as in traditional perspective, is more subversive when considered as an incidental element within the frame, as a spectatorial side-on glance that disrupts the workings of ideology, leading to a fragmentation of the subject. It argues that particular attention should be paid to the organization of the filmic frame, to mise-en-scène, in preference to the kind of defamiliarization favored by Mulvey.