Movie clip from Orlando

Turning the Gaze Around and Orlando

Much space has been devoted within film criticism to the idea of `the gaze', specifically the male gaze. The text which initiated the discourse, and according to some the authoritative text, is Laura Mulvey's `Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'. Written in 1973 the article is still, almost 25 years later, heavily quoted and referred to in matters dealing with the representation of women (and gender) within cinematic language. Although I believe Mulvey's findings were accurate and valid when the article was written I find it difficult, considering the present situation of film, to grant Mulvey's description of mainstream film universal validity. Using the 1993 production Orlando , directed by Sally Potter and based on the novel by Virginia Woolf, I will attempt to demonstrate that not only is a female gaze viable and active within mainstream cinema, but that its existence within popular culture is necessary in order to bring about the changes Mulvey so rightly decreed as essential to the representation of women.

Mulvey's thesis states that visual pleasure in mainstream cinema derives from and reproduces a structure of male looking and female "to-be-looked-at-ness" (whereby the spectator is invited to identify with a male gaze at an objectified female) which replicates the structure of unequal power relations between men and women. This pleasure, she concludes, must be disrupted in order to facilitate a feminist cinema. I think it is important to note that the term `female gaze' does not necessarily mean a `feminist gaze'. The question of differences between women are a reminder that when arguing the case for a feminist gaze and an effective feminist intervention in mainstream culture it is prudent to consider just who is looking at whom. At the same time, sex does not guarantee the gaze to be female. Many women, particularly those who gained initial acceptance into mainstream texts did so by presenting still the male gaze- a patriarchal perspective. Therefore being a woman producing texts does not guarantee a feminist gaze nor does being a woman ensure a homogeneous female gaze. Black women, older women, younger women, working-class women, and lesbians are just a few of the marginalized groups whose dissenting voices have felt a need to fight for a place within Western feminist discourse. Age, Ethnicity, sexuality and class determine the female gaze as much as sex does. Mulvey maintains a heterosexist perspective by assuming a heterosexual male protagonist and a heterosexual male spectator. What happens if the protagonist is a woman? There exists a range of female looks: where does lesbian desire fit in within her theory? It can only be theorised as `masculine'.1 In privileging gender as the category which structures perspective, psychoanalytic criticism such as Mulvey's tends to depoliticise other power relations in our society- most notably those of class, ethnicity and generation. A feminist analysis can perhaps afford autonomy in terms of its interest in gender but not, Marshment and Gamman would suggest, if is produces a theory which cannot relate gender inequality to other structures of social inequality.2 Politics of power underlie feminism- differences between women give the lie to any claim for a single female, or even feminist, subjectivity. Radical texts, like Mulvey's, do suffer from an element of pessimism: brilliant at uncovering our oppression and rewriting women into the history of creativity they have, for the most part, effectively remained alternative, outside the mainstream. I think it is fair to assume that these texts, whether in print or on celluloid (both to which Mulvey has greatly contributed), have remained on the fringe and therefore have not contributed as greatly as they could have to altering the position of women within society; most of which consumes and thus receives their entertainment and information form mainstream texts. Marshment and Gamman feel that we feel cannot afford to dismiss the popular by always positioning ourselves outside it.3 They express interest in how feminists can intervene in the mainstream to make our meanings part of `commonsense'- or rather to convert commonsense into `good sense' for it is from popular culture that women (and most men) are offered the culture's dominant definitions of themselves. It seems crucial to explore the possibilities and pitfalls of intervention in popular forms in order to find ways of making feminist meanings a part of our pleasures. Ann Kaplan's observation that because all dominant images are basically male constructs it is therefore impossible to know what the feminine might be outside of male constructs4 is an insightful and legitimate perspective however, aspects of female autonomy and control have found expression in popular genres that have conventionally featured male protagonists without falling into a simple reversal of gender roles. I believe Orlando to be exemplary of this.

Mulvey argues that mainstream film, and the conventions within which it has consciously evolved, portray a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic fantasy.5 Here Potter begins her break with the traditions Mulvey decrees almost uncontested. Within the first two minutes of Orlando, Orlando makes visual contact with the camera and directly addresses the audience who is watching the film. Mulvey later continues and furthers her theory on voyeurism by discussing the moral ambiguities the audience experiences by looking in.6 Because Orlando looks directly into the camera and at the audience he/she acknowledges and recognises them- actually engages them through address- thus dispelling any unease that could arise in the act of voyeurism since the possibility of voyeurism is cast out as soon as Orlando establishes contact with the audience. Similar to documentary filmmaking, the acknowledged material existence of the recording process adds a dimension of "truth" to the finished product.

Mulvey continues that the presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation. Anticipating a situation, Mulvey argues that the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification.7 Potter refutes both of these notions. Orlando, once transformed from male to female, not only works with the development of the story line but takes it further and deeper than it has gone prior to the sexual transformation. The actual change of sex brings into play issues that had not even been considered prior to the event. When Orlando attends the tea party, in the company of Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, she experiences misogyny for the first time; this experience essentially sets the tone for the rest of the film, not only developing the story line but carrying it. Regarding the inability of the male figure to bear the burden of sexual objectification Shelmerdine, Orlando's ultimate love interest and father of her child, not only bears the objectification but submits to it. As late as 1985 Rosalind Coward concurs with Mulvey in that she suggests that because the male body is not seen as desirable, men remain in control of desire and the activity of looking8 . Not only is Shelmerdine seen as desirable but Orlando controls the desire and thus the activity of looking. It is difficult to disagree with Suzanne Moore who states that after years of women complaining about the objectification of their bodies we find ourselves confronted with male bodies on display and that these images appeal to us precisely because they offer us the possibility of an active female gaze.9 The camera lingers over Shelmerdine in a way normally reserved for women. The love scene [Quicktime movie, 450K] [MPEG movie, 175K] between he and Orlando is extremely interesting in that the role each character plays would be reserved for the other sex according to Mulvey's definition of mainstream cinema. Orlando observes and caresses Shelmerdine in a manner which is fully of her own doing and desire. At one point she sits up in the bed and stares at him- the point of view of the camera becomes an overhead, medium close-up of his face from Orlando's perspective. He is being watched and expresses himself (slightly nervous, shifting eyes, slight blush, and finally a nervous smile) in a way typically reserved for the objectified woman. Orlando is not simply a passive character- she speaks female desire, she looks back. Potter again breaks with Mulvey's dictates in order to bring across her (female) point of view.

Mulvey continues her theory by expounding upon Hitchcock's liberal use of subjective camera from the point of view of the male protagonist to draw the spectators deeply into his position. Potter also uses subjective camera but from the point of view of both male and female (since her protagonist transforms from one to the other) thus drawing us into both positions (though I will later argue what Woolf and Potter argue that both positions are really one and the same). The narrative is woven around what Orlando sees- regardless of sex. The audience follows the growth of his/her obsessions and despairs precisely from his/her point of view.

Considering that Potter presents both the so-called female and male Orlando perspective I feel it important to raise a question that Margaret Marshment asks in `Substantial Women'.10 Should we aim to appropriate the definitions and qualities assigned to man or should we concentrate on presenting a re-evaluation of existing definitions of femininity? (and masculinity). It has been argued that the potentially progressive representation of female strength is negated by the idealisation of femininity; Orlando (and Shelmerdine) idealise neither femininity or masculinity. They themselves ask the same question Marshment asks. After meeting and riding to Orlando's house (the horse being conducted by Orlando with Shelmerdine behind her holding her waist) the following dialogue takes place:

Orlando: Say if I were a man...'

Shelmerdine: Say if I were a woman...'

O: I may choose not to fight in battles, for freedom won by death is not worth having.

S: I may choose not to sacrifice my life caring for my children or my children's children or to drown in the milk of female kindness, but instead, say to go abroad.

The resistance of women to patriarchy is a struggle against a form of power that causes individuals to conceive of themselves in a limited and limiting way.11 Because of this it is important to engage with the idea of difference within the category of woman. Acknowledging that forms of difference exist within the category of the subject `woman' suggests that we should take a fresh look at the operation of conventional feminist discourse, in particular its reluctance to deal with the question of female power. We cannot divide women into two neat categories, for there are no solid boundaries between the feminist and the feminine subject, the female and the feminist gaze. At the same time we cannot assume that the female gaze is produced simply because women are behind the camera or because the main characters are women: the female gaze is a conditioning of culture- not a product of biology. But the mere existence of texts which present a gaze other than the male does challenge Mulvey's thesis about the ubiquitous male gaze of mainstream cinema. To decide that in the dominant media the look is always already structured as male is to cordon women off from using the medium and the dominant format of expression- fictional narrative. More dangerously it isolates us further into the spaces society has deemed us worthy of and confined us to. As Marshment asserts- to deny even the possibility of effective feminist intervention in mainstream forms sounds suspiciously like a counsel of defeat.12 Disrupt rather than assume dominance Lorraine Gamman suggests. The encoding of feminist meaning through mise-en-scene seems to offer a far more practical route for feminist intervention. Disturbances of dominant meanings must occur in the mainstream- the results may not be free of contradictions but they will perhaps encourage shifts in regimes of representation and thus notions about women. The mixing of genres, the merging of fiction and non-fiction, pastiche and parody, could well be used by feminists to `subvert' dominant meanings about women in popular culture. Radical print and film texts have allowed new ideas to develop and exist- their contribution and importance is unquestionable. However these texts have not and will not cross over into the mainstream in their original format. Certainly alternative ways to gaze can be expressed in marginalized cinema but this marginalization will and of itself marginalize whatever alternatives it will present. New meanings, in order to affect the established order, can and must be produced within existing genres.13 Some feminist filmmakers have argued against intervention in the mainstream, suggesting that only `tendentious' texts have revolutionary potential, and that these alone will help wrest socially constructed phenomena from that stamp of familiarity which protects them from our grasp. Mulvey's suggestion that the avant-garde is a more suitable site for radical intervention is derived from her belief that mainstream cinema is so structured by the male gaze that it is unable to accommodate images of women without fetishism. Her views are a little out of focus in a time when mainstream genres use the sort of multiple narrative techniques than ten years ago were restricted to independent filmmaking.14

Women must be encouraged to use the mainstream to infiltrate these ideas of representation into society. The situation for women intellectuals and artists is already difficult enough without women discouraging their own participation in popular culture. Women cannot expect to be acknowledged as equals in society if they insist upon functioning and expressing their most worthy and urgent needs and demands at the margins. We must not impose marginalization upon ourselves: the rest of society already does that for us. There seems to exist two main strategies of challenge to sexist representation of gender: first those aiming to show how much more like men women really are, in comparison with sexist stereotyping of women as different and inferior, and second, those which defy masculinist criteria, representing masculine behaviour and characteristics negatively, and feminine ones positively.15 Orlando is not represented within the categories of either conventional femininity or masculinity but within both : "Same person, no difference at all- just a different sex". Virginia Woolf hypothesised that we're all born simply as human beings who are then shaped one way or the other, masculine or feminine, and that mostly it's how we're perceived by others that makes the difference, rather than what we are.16 Potter's film, for all its divergences from the book, is essentially faithful to Virginia Woolf's vision: through Orlando, Woolf and Potter attempt a new regime of representation which endeavours to redefine, or even abolish, gender boundaries and structures. I believe the status quo has been negotiated to take account of women looking, on and off the screen, providing a less narrow range of stereotypes that existed in the mainstream when Mulvey wrote her paper. Faith must be placed in a new generation of filmmakers to only widen the points of view of and about women. The camera and/or the format is not the sculptor of passive femininity, but the person behind the camera. To quote Potter: "It's, in a way, time for women to take up our inheritance, an inheritance of a different kind. That's why the daughter is, at the end [of the film], playing with a little movie camera."17

2 Ibid, 7.

3 Ibid, 7.

4 Ann Kaplan, Is the Gaze Male-? Women and Film- Both Sides of the Camera (New York: Methuen, 1983)

5 Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema: Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), 17.

6 Ibid, 25.

7 Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema: Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), 19, 20.

8 Rosalind Coward, Female Desires: How they are Sought, Bought and Packaged (New York: Grove Press, 1985), 230.

9 Suzanne Moore, "Here's Looking at You, Kid!," The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture, Ed. Lorraine Gamman and Margaret Marshment (Seattle, The Real Comet Press, 1989), 44.

10 Margaret Marshment, "Substantial Women," The Female Gaze, Women as Viewers of Popular Culture, Ed. Lorraine Gamman and Margaret Marshment (Seattle, The Real Comet Press, 1989), 27.

11 Shelagh Young, "Feminism and the Politics of Power," The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture, Ed. Lorraine Gamman and Margaret Marshment (Seattle: The Real Comet Press, 1989), 183.

12 Margaret Marshment, "Substantial Women,": The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture, Ed. Lorraine Gamman and Margaret Marshment (Seattle: The Real Comet Press, 1989), 28.

13 Lorraine Gamman, "Watching the Detectives: The Enigma of the Female Gaze,": Ibid, 22.

14 Lorraine Gamman, "Watching the Detectives: The Enigma of the Female Gaze," The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture, Ed. Lorraine Gamman and Margaret Marshment (Seattle: The Real Comet Press, 1989), 24.

15 Margaret Marshment, "Substantial Women," Ibid, 28.

16Pat Dowell, "Demystifying Traditional Notions of Gender-An Interview with Sally Potter," Cineaste [England], n.d., n.p., 16.

17 Sally Potter, Cineaste [England], n.d., n.p., 17.