Celeste Oon - Core Response #2

This week, I was particularly intrigued by Hansen’s chapter about female pleasure and spectatorship. It addressed an issue that I have been grappling with for the past 1.5 years but have been unsuccessful at answering: what do we make of a so-called “female gaze”? (Is there one?) Hansen referenced Mulvey’s (1975) “Visual Pleasure,” where she famously used psychoanalysis to theorize about cinema’s penchant for voyeurism and the ways in which it is constructed for male/masculinized pleasures. Mulvey’s work is fundamental to what many know as the “male gaze.” But Hansen brings up popular critiques of feminist film theory because it has somewhat fallen short of conceptualizing the female spectator “other than in terms of an absence” (p. 263). What does an “alternative conception of visual pleasure” look like when roles are reversed (p. 264)?

I am unable to articulate a potential vision, partially because I found myself struggling with the gendered binary between voyeurism and exhibitionism, between looking and being looked at. Hansen argues that part of Valentino’s appeal is that he is both subject and object of the gaze, and his on-screen portrayal plays with ideas of dominance and submission. While fixing his gaze on the desired woman and exercising his power on her, he is also being observed by the female spectator (both diegetically and non-diegetically), and this prescribes a particular type of femininity to him. I am unsure about this direct linkage of ‘being looked at’ with femininity, however. While it makes sense to me within Mulvey’s framework which connects being watched to being controlled, I do not necessarily feel it applies to the male subject in the same way. Moreover, is the female voyeur inherently and always subversive or resistant? I am hesitant to say so, and I think an expansion of gendered/sexual orientations (e.g. woman gazing upon woman) further complicates this dynamic. Overall, I find it difficult to be constrained within this binary and its polarity.

I think what I find most challenging is thinking about these concepts of “looking” within other media forms outside of cinema. The cinematic industry, of course, imposes particular values to bodies and identities, and within this framework I can understand Mulvey and Hansen’s arguments. But I found myself wondering how ideas of spectatorship change when one is given control over the way they are portrayed. For example, some of my research examines “thirst trappers” on TikTok, many of whom are male. (Forgive me, but a lot of what I discuss this term will probably involve influencers and content creators, because my current work revolves around them.) In this case, is the appeal of the male creator located in their feminization, by allowing themselves to be looked at? While this could certainly be argued in some cases, I also think there are a number of trends and examples that display the opposite effect, and serve to reify the subject’s masculinity against the female spectator’s ‘submissive’ femininity. (This is rather niche, but consider POV TikToks where male creators assert sexual dominance over female viewers—this is sometimes done within a cosplay/roleplay setting.)

Nevertheless, what I do find promising is Hansen’s idea that Valentino’s films “advance an identification with the gaze itself; not with either source or object, but with the gaze as erotic medium which promises to transport the spectator out of the world of means and ends into the realm of passion” (pp. 268-269). After wrestling with the beginning and ends of looking, I find it interesting to consider the gaze as independent from its agents. While I think that it is impossible (and in some cases counterproductive) to do so in every instance, interrogating the gaze as an affective tool that carries ambivalent potentials allows for more orientations of complex gendered dynamics (that also transcend mediums). I think it may be useful to play with this notion to unveil the experimental and interactive relationships between stars and audiences that are unfolding across the internet now.

Truthfully, I have no conclusive thoughts; I still have much to learn and digest here. I come away from this reading with more questions than insights (and certainly not answers). I welcome any thoughts from others on the subject!