The Research on the Gaze Theory and Feminist Film

Abstract

Feminism is a social theory and political movement created and initiated to end sexism, sexual exploitation, discrimination, oppression and to promote equality for the sexual class, focusing on the analysis of gender inequality and the promotion of the rights, interests, and issues of the sexual underclass in addition to the critique of social relations. Feminist film theory grew out of the feminist movement, critiquing the stereotypical images of women portrayed in the classic cinema while also exploring how to reproduce female subjectivity and desire in film. Taking two films, Malèna and Portrait of a Lady on Fire as research subjects, this paper explicates Laura Mulvey's opinions on Freudian psychoanalytic theory as well as Lacanian mirror theory through the ideas presented in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, contrasts the equality of the male gaze and the gaze under her lens, summarises the recent characteristics of women's film production today: the female figure becomes the subject of the film narrative through the story of women's growth; the narrative of the relationship between female figures breaks the patriarchal order, and explores the role of female consciousness in feminist cinematography.