17 thoughts on “Reading Questions Set 5

  1. Oliver Sutro

    “The sound of her own body throbbing becomes the click of the camera… a sensation of throbbing in the clitoris.” How can the writer tell what the author or director meant or even inadvertently meant? Where are the boundaries of psychoanalysis? Can anything be labeled a static truth within feminist and gender studies?

  2. Oliver Sutro

    What is Hitchcock trying to convey with diehard relationship between Ms. Danvers and the late Mrs. De Winter? Does Ms. Danvers actually have a “sexual attachment to the dead woman?” or is Hitchcock just using this relationship to build drama and suspense?

  3. Amelia Furlong

    On Doane:

    Doane says, quite boldly: “In tracing the absence of the woman, the camera inscribes its own presence in the film as phallic substitute – the pen which writes the feminine body.” She then goes on to say that the absence of women in some scenes is perpetrating a type of film that can be about a woman but “no longer requires even her physical presence.” But isn’t there something to be said for artistic license? Isn’t the fact that the woman is not always in the scene just mean that the director is showing a different character’s thoughts/emotions, and is perhaps being artistic in their telling? Why does Doane allow nothing to be narrative/poetic storytelling, and everything to be sexist?

  4. Maria Macaya

    Modlesky explains that “Rebecca” is a film meant to appeal to women. Women identify with the main character and her feelings of inadequacy. She then continues to say that the film is meant to make the audience (mostly women) feel uncomftrouble and cringe with embarassment for the main character. Mulvey states how other films (not targeted to women) empower and identify the male viewer with the male protagonist’s courage etc. Doesn’t this undermine the feminist purpose of the film? Since this female protagonist undermines women’s security while the male protagonist empowers men?

    Doane argues that “female desire is linked to the fixation and stability of a spetacle refusing the temporal dimension, while male desire is more fully implicated with the defining characteristic of the cinema image – movement”. This difference in sexual desires mirror the male’s ability to move freely in space and the women’s struggle and inability to do so. Does this mean that a character reflects the sexual desire of a viewer of the same sex? Is this the reason why women are only spectacles on films? Because films are able to satify the male desire (of movement) but not the female’s?

  5. Eleanor Krause

    The end of the reading claims that feminism compromises identity, even to the extent in which it stole from Hitchcock’s identity. Why is it considered that feminism subverts identity in males (as they watch the film they experience the “transvestite” connection with the female character) as well as females? Is this idea supporting Mulvey’s argument that women repress their masculinity to become feminine?

    The Mary Ann Doane article establishes that female characters desire the attention of the male gaze and endeavor to obtain it. But what about the men acquiring the female gaze? You don’t see the male character working in any manner to be looked at by the women, though he clearly enjoys being adored by her. If he aimed to acquire the female’s gaze would he be objectifying himself and in doing so undermine his power over her?

  6. Rajsavi Anand

    In Caught and Rebecca, Mary Anne Doane states: “the camera inscribes its own presence in the film as a phallic substitute–the pen which writes the feminine body.” Doesn’t the camera also create/write the male body/person in the movie? I find it hard to believe that the one controlling the camera is a sign of patriarchy as Maxim in Rebecca is shown as a confused, uncomfortable, and a man with raging temper. According to Mary Anne Doane, the female desire is portrayed by the stationary camera view. On the other hand the male desire is of the moving picture. Is Doane saying that by creating the stationary view of the women, the male gaze is in play even though this a women’s film intended for a women spectatorship?

    In Modelski article, she states various times that the women’s role in the film is always as a mother in some sense. The unnamed protagonist is fighting the influence of the mother figure who is first Rebecca and eventually Mrs. Danvers. By calling Maxim the father, the unnamed protagonist is lowered in the movie to childhood. If Maxim is this father, and the girl becomes the mother, doesn’t this further make it so that the women is controlled by the husband? In other words why does the female always have to fall into a marriage role instead of being independent and strong?

  7. Bryanna Kleber

    Caught and Rebecca:
    “In Rebecca, there is a scene late in the film which exemplifies the very felt presence of the woman who is absent thought the movie…” In this scene, viewers are watching from the perspective of an inanimate character, Rebecca. And Rebecca, albeit dead, is in control of both the main female character and the main male character the entire film. In the film, is Rebecca the recipient of any gaze? We know she’s meant to be there, but no physical body is representing her. Is she moving around freely, unrestricted?

    Modelski:
    Producers of “women’s films” aimed to attract a large female audience. Selznick “believed his production of Rebecca would appeal especially to women, whom he expected to identify strongly with the main character.” However, Joan Fontaine’s character isn’t exactly a character most women could easily identify with. Rebecca is a twisted, dark Cinderella story that isn’t often experienced. Why would Selznick argue that people could “strongly” identify with her? And, why not make a character that a much broader women audience can relate with?

  8. Joyce Ma

    In “Caught and Rebecca,” Mary Ann Doane, quotes Freud in pointing out that “negation..is also affirmation.” Does that imply that despite all efforts to try to subjectify the female roles in cinema, the opposite effect will always occur? To subjectify a female character, one must also objectify her?

    Towards the closing of “The Women Who Knew Too Much,” Modleski addresses the problem of the male spectator’s dislike for identifying with a woman who had “profound identity problems.” Why is it so important for one to have a solid identity or to associate ourselves with one category such as just masculine or just feminine? Why can’t we be both?

  9. Amelia Furlong

    On Modleski:
    Modleski makes a great point about the contrasting image of femme fatale versus domesticated housewife that women think men want, and how the heroine in Rebecca loses her identity as she tries to find what Maxim desires. Then we discover it is the heroine’s lack of sexuality, her non-threatening “innocence”, that appeals to Maxim. Mulvey spent a lot of time condemning the male gaze, and rightly so, but after reading Modleski’s article, isn’t it even more frustrating to see the “good woman” portrayed as the one that lacks sexuality? Maxim never looks at her with that subjugating male gaze, but isn’t it even worse that a non-sexually threatening woman is the “better” one, when this just upholds that idea of castration anxiety? And while Modleski argues that a man never controls the women in this film because Rebecca is never seen, isn’t Maxim’s control of the heroine into a less sexual person also a reversal to the patriarchal structure?

  10. Avery Rain

    Modleski speaks about Rebecca’s categorization as a women’s film, and talks about contrasting it to “men’s films,” such as film noir. Can a film comfortably allow simultaneous identification of male and female spectators with main characters of their respective genders? Does it have to be either a women’s film or a men’s film? (Men’s films seem to be, by default, everything not classified as a women’s film.)

    When addressing the projection scene of Rebecca, Doane addresses the female protagonist’s frustration at entering the situation with the hope of being the spectacle, and then being forced to be the spectator. I could see how this might be frustrating emotionally, because she dressed up for him and he is ignoring, or even ridiculing her effort. In terms of the actual looking that occurs, however, she is still a spectacle of Maxim’s in the projected recording. Is it that, rather than wanting to be the spectacle, she wants not to be the spectator in the situation? Her status as a spectacle is maintained.

  11. Laura Hendricksen

    About the conclusion of Mary Ann Doane’s article : « the image of an absent woman as the delayed mirror image of a female spectator who is herself only virtual »…

    Does Rebecca’s absence throughout the movie really symbolize the absence of a female spectator? Or is her absence symbolic of the fact that she is unable to represent herself as well as her gender, and is always described through the opinions of others and never has her own mouthpiece?

  12. Alexander Griffiths

    Is the way in which Fontaine’s character is omitted a name, key to understanding male voyeurism? Is she omitted a name so to give the audience the image that she does not exist and is merely an object to look at and that audience members can view her against her will?

    The article argues that “that feminine element in the textual body that is inassimilable by patriarchal culture and cannot be “vomited out” despite Hitchcocks desire to remove the feminine. Therefore is the male gaze within Rebecca actually women embracing the male gaze as their own, especially as the film is directed at female viewers alone? Why would Hitchcock want to vomit out the feminine and alienate his audience?

  13. Amethyst Tate

    Doane discusses how women’s films such as “Caught” and “Rebecca” had an intended female audience and that female spectators could either accept the image or repudiate it. However, she does not discuss race at all, though access to Hollywood cinema was denied to black women which would certainly impact how they engage with central characters in these films. Who are black female viewers expected to empathize with without a black presence in these classic Hollywood films? Is the black female viewer in a more powerful position because she is not expected to identify with the white central character and therefore can simply find pleasure in viewing the film, or is she powerless because she wants to identify with a character but cannot identify with the white female protagonist?

    Modleski states that the absence of Rebecca in the film “may be seen as a spoof of the system, an elaborate sort of castration joke, with its flaunting of absence and lack.” However, as the intended audience was primarily female, what about the possibility that Hitchcock never showed Rebecca as a way of establishing power over women by controlling what they see on the screen? By not seeing Rebecca, the female spectators would not be able to identify with her, since it is through the gaze that we are able to identify with a character. Could this have been Hitchcock’s intention, since Rebecca was a female who exercised power through challenging patriarchal norms and therefore men did not want women to have the opportunity to see her and in effect identify with or be influenced by her character?

  14. Laura Hendricksen

    In Rebecca, the main female protagonist seems to be completely objectified and still, the movie was meant to appeal (and certainly did) to a female audience.
    That said, how can the female viewer identify with a character who isn’t actually identifiable as she desperately strives to find her own identity throughout the plot?
    Moreover, Modleski states that « Rebecca is an intolerable figure precisely because she revels in her own multiplicity ». How is it that Rebecca’s plurality appear to us as intolerable and that the female viewer sides with the weak and objectified woman, rather than the strong one who controls and even fools men? What does the female viewer actually expects, what ego ideal is she looking for?

  15. Anna Gallagher

    Selznick wrote to Hitchcock that “the tiny things that indicate her nervousness and her self-consciousness… are all so brilliant in the book that every woman who has read it had adored the girl and understood her psychology.” There is a big difference between “adoring” this “heroine” (is this the right word for her?) and “understanding her psychology.” Though we may understand or sympathize with her, can modern female viewers ‘adore’ the protagonist despite constant lack of self-confidence or sense of identity? What about modern male viewers? Do they experience the ‘transvestite’ phenomenon with an unnamed protagonist who is, according to Modleski, a “vacuous self?”

    “A crucial unresolved issue here is the very possibility of constructing a ‘female spectator,’ given the cinema’s appeal to (male) voyeurism and fetishism” (Doane). If the libido is neutral in regards to sex according to Mulvey and Frued, then why can’t cinema appeal to FEMALE voyeurism and fetishism (and not just paranoia, masochism, etc.)? Is filmic language coded so that only males can experience erotic pleasure from watching films (even so-called “women’s films”)? Does the need for a female viewer’s sexuality to “undergo a constant process of transformation… look[ing] as if she were a man with the phallic power of the gaze, at a woman who would attract that gaze in order to be that woman” adversely affect her potential “visual pleasure?”

  16. Rosalind Downer

    Modelski notes that the character who plays the second Mrs Winter is never given a name. Does this not act as the ‘tip of the iceberg’ for this patriarchal, gender-biased film in which the female protagonist holds absolutely no identity of her own?She is depicted throughout struggling to fit within any of her roles, be it secretary, wife, or companion. What does this say about the film in general? Is it supposed to be extremely derogitory about women, or is this just a difference because of the era in which it was created?

    Mary Anne Doane comments on the fact that the nameless female protagonist “enters the cinema in the hope of becoing a spectacle…but is relegated to the posistion of spectator” which is really interesting because it says so much about the representation of femininity in the film. Why is she so unequal? This is the first screening in which we have seen the protagonist being depicted as ‘pathetic’. What point is being made here?

  17. Luke Martinez

    Does the movement of the camera in the scene in the cottage as DeWinter recounts the story of Rebecca’s death serve as a phallic substitute? In what ways can this be seen as an “artificial” male gaze if the object of the gaze is not able to be seen?

    If sexuality and knowledge are mutually exclusive traits for women in the Gothic film, where does the character Rebecca fit in? Is she able to have sexuality without actually appearing in the film?

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