How is Laura Mulvey's theory of visual pleasure and narrative cinema composed in films aimed at younger audiences like in 'Who framed Roger Rabbit' 1988 compared to films aimed at mature audiences like in 'Suicide Squad' 2016.
Plan
- Introduce films comparing
- introduce Mulvey's ideas
- Begin with Jessica Rabbits sexualisation
- Followed by Who Framed Roger Rabbits film noir roots
- Harley Quinn's sexualisation
- Fear of castration
- Feminist? using sexuality to their advantage?
Video Essay.
Script.
So, if you’re interested in learning about how Laura Mulvey's theory of visual pleasure and narrative cinema is composed in films aimed at younger audiences like in 'Who framed Roger Rabbit' 1988 compared to films aimed at mature audiences like in 'Suicide Squad' 2016 then get a snack, a drink and take a seat because we are about to begin.
Laura Mulvey states that 'The most common category of “sight” in film ... is what has come to be called The Male Gaze' which means that 'women in the media are viewed from the eyes of a heterosexual man'. There are often 3 types of the male gaze being 1, the character gaze, 2, the camera gaze and finally 3, the audience gaze. This has led to women in film being represented as passive objects that are only involved to offer visual pleasure to the male spectator, even if the female characters play a bigger role in the film they are still highly objectified to offer visual pleasure such as characters like Lara Croft and Black Widow, they are there to fight the antagonists yet are still shown in 'barely there' outfits and skin tight leather suits which are highly impractical. Mulvey says that this is because 'traditional Hollywood narrative film have trapped film makers into using certain codes and conventions that place the female in a ... passive position, making her role as erotic object extremely limiting'.
Let’s start with a character that has been created for a children’s film the character Jessica Rabbit from ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit 1988’ rated PG. So why is she so sexualised if she was made for a children’s film? The Independent suggests its ‘Thanks to those fantastical proportions, she’s both a legitimate sex symbol and the parody of one… who’s been lusted over and fetishised to the maximum’. When the audience is first introduced to Jessica Rabbit she is instantly sexualised through fragmentation as the audience only gets to see her leg in a long shot coming out from behind a curtain, the audience doesn’t see her face therefore she is dehumanised and only perceived as an object. Along with this a woman’s legs often have very strong sexual connotations which further reinforces the visual pleasure gained from how she is first introduced to the audience. Immediately after this the character gaze is used when the character Eddie is shown in a close up with his facial expressions being in awe of what he is looking at, he is indulging in scopophilia which Freud isolated ‘as one of the component instincts of sexuality’, Eddie is gaining visual pleasure from seeing Jessica Rabbit as an object of sexual gratification therefore making it okay for Jessica Rabbit to be known as a sexual object as that’s what she is first introduced as right? This isn’t just the case for Jessica Rabbit either as many cartoon characters are sexualised and ‘for years, Disney’s female characters were hyper-sexualized’.
Throughout the rest of the ‘Why don’t you do right’ scene with Jessica Rabbit the sexualisation of the cartoon character is continuously reinforced by the fact ‘women are not placed in a role where they can take control of a scene, instead they are simply put there to be observed from an objectified point of view’with the camera and character gaze proving this as well as the lighting used within the scene. Although she is putting on a show she is passive in controlling how men perceive her and how the lighting effects the way she looks especially when the lighting changes as Jessica Rabbit is walking around the room from high key to low key which focuses on the contours of her body which shouldn’t happen when looking at a 2D cartoon character as we don’t expect them to have this, showing her cartoon body in a very provocative way. However, her body proportions and contours may not be appropriate for children but have a reason for it as her creators said themselves she was designed to be ‘the ultimate male fantasy’, this can also be proven when later in the film Jessica Rabbit says in the diegetic dialogue ‘I’m not bad I’m just drawn that way’ which helps the audience gain the gratification of information as they further understand why this cartoon character is shown in such a sexualised way. The fact that she also says this further points out that a woman’s role within a film is to be passive as Laura Mulvey states that a woman’s body in media is ‘held up as a passive erotic object for the gaze of male spectators.
Jessica Rabbit may also be known as the ‘ne plus ultra of animated sex symbols’ due to the first ever viewings of Who Framed Roger Rabbit in cinema. This is because in the scene where Eddie and Jessica Rabbit is thrown out of Benny the Cab, Jessica was supposedly originally seen in a long shot flying in mid-air with the iconic costume of the red dress moving around to reveal something and little more than PG rated. It’s said that in the controversial long shot ‘her dress flies open, and a few frames could be seen showing nothing on beneath her classic garnet garment’. Although the scene has been animated so that when it was released on DVD no one would see it those who do remember the scene or are aware of it instantly associate Jessica Rabbit as a sexualised object as this clearly denotes sexual gratification to certain audiences. Along with the iconic red dress in the scene that also connotes feelings of lust and love the audience will identify Jessica Rabbit as a cartoon sex symbol.
However, another reason as to why a cartoon character in a children’s film is so sexualised is due to the fact it can be argued that ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit isn’t actually aimed at kids at all, …the story is very dark, pure 1940s film noir’ which would mean that the character Jessica Rabbit is portraying to common character archetype in Film Noir genre that is the femme fatale which fits well into her personality as she displays many characteristics and conventions that the femme fatale shows such as ‘ a few important traits: A sultry voice, voluptuousness, sex appeal’. Another common trait of the femme fatale is the ability to seduce the protagonist as the femme fatale ‘hypnotizes with her lethal beauty’. This is encoded into the film when in Eddie’s office in the diegetic dialogue Jessica Rabbit says ‘You don’t know how hard it is being a woman looking the way I do’ in long shot, to which the protagonist Eddie replies in the diegetic dialogue ‘You don’t know how hard it is being a man looking at a woman looking the way you do’ which connotes to the audience that all though Eddie is seemingly in a happy relationship he is still feeling tempted by Jessica Rabbit’s seductive powers, feeling this way is often common of film noirs protagonists when it comes to the femme fatale which further allows the audience to understand and gain the gratification of information in learning that Jessica Rabbit is a femme fatale.
So, if there is a reason to Jessica Rabbit’s sexualisation then can the same be applied to Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad 2016 rated 15? The Odyssey suggested that the reason as to why she is so sexualised is that ‘when somebody is asked to describe Harley Quinn, nine times out of ten, they go straight to the fact that they think she is hot’ which instantly connotes to others that what’s in her brain is irrelevant and that her looks is what should be focused on. Just like Jessica Rabbit, Harley Quinn’s first appearance in the film instantly connotes the idea that she is there to be sexualised regardless of the fact they are aimed at different ages, when comparing the two Harley is shown in a long shot like Jessica rabbit with the slight difference that she is shown hanging from her cell ceiling with the mise-en-scene showing her in a costume that leaves little to the imagination. Just after the character Griggs says to her in the diegetic dialogue ‘You know the rules hotness’ which allows the audience to understand that he only sees her as an object of visual pleasure instead of a criminal. Harley Quinn herself also says to Griggs ‘Play with me’ in the diegetic dialogue. This small bit of dialogue instantly sets up throughout the whole film that Harley Quinn is an object of visual and even physical pleasure to play around with, this may be because critics had ‘criticised the portrayal of Quinn as being ‘over-sexualised’ from the films first release making audiences see her as a sexual object even before they saw the film.
As the audience gets to see more of Harley Quin as the narrative develops the sexualisation of the character continues when task force X is getting ready for a fight, in this scene the audience sees all the characters preparing but not in the same way as Harley Quinn. The audience briefly sees the other characters whereas with Harley Quinn the camera and character gaze are used. A panning shot is used to follow Harley Quinn’s body as she pulls her top on in a close up, demonstrating the camera gaze that ‘suggests a sexualised way of looking that empowers men and objectifies women’, so that the audience can view her in her red underwear, although red can connote danger as she is supposed to be a dangerous character in this case it has been encoded to connotes feeling of sexual desire to the character so that the audience can gain the gratification of entertainment. Straight after this shot a cut is used to show the character gaze being used in a long shot with all the men around her staring at her as she changed, as though she is just an object to be looked at. This is extremely significant as this isn’t shown with any of the other characters and allows the audience to not feel guilty about indulging in scopophilia as the characters are also doing this and allows them to submit to the ‘desire to see the erotic’.
However, when looking at Laura Mulvey’s original essay on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema it suggests that the reason to females sexualisation in film is to relive the fear of castration from a female character that is supposed to be dangerous of which Harley Quinn most certainly is as she was originally imprisoned for being the sidekick to a major antagonist within any film involving Batman, The Joker. Laura Mulvey states that the fear of castration ends by ‘turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous’ which is the case around halfway through the film. The audience sees task force x climbing the stairs in a long shot when the realise that Harley Quinn snuck away to use the lift as she is seen in it in a long shot, while in the lift she comes across two on The Enchantresses’ henchmen. In this scene the audience gains an understanding of just how dangerous she is when a mid-shot is used of her shooting and killing one of the henchmen followed by a close up of her crushing ones skull with just one swing of a bat, in this moment she isn’t just an object of sexual gratification but rather showing off her unique quality given to her by her creators, ‘a quality rare to women in film: independence’. This causes the audience to feel engaged and gain the gratification of entertainment due to the fact that they learn more about Harley Quinn’s skills, but straight after this the supposed fear of castration is relieved as she is turned back into an object of visual pleasure as she walks out the lift. She is shown in a mid to long shot in the centre third of the screen drawing the audience’s attention to her, or more importantly one of her assets, her bum, she is no longer the badass she was portraying just seconds before but yet again an object of visual pleasure to be objectified.
But then again, the reason to Harley Quinn’s sexualisation may not be due to her being an object of the male gaze at all but rather due to the fact she ‘wears skimpy clothes because she enjoys doing so, not because she wanted guys to look at her ass’. Although the audience sees many close up of Harley Quinn’s asset’s and close ups of her applying red lipstick which has very strong connotations of sexual desire, it should also be considered that she is an empowered female that choses the way she dresses and how other perceive her due to her unique independence. Back when task force x is getting ready for a fight the audience sees a close up of Harley Quinn’s original Jester costume from ‘Batman the animated series’ that would show less skin but instead choses to wear hot pants, she is making this decision for herself, not because she wants to be viewed as an object by men. Even in the scene when Batman gave her mouth to mouth cpr to save her life in a close up she chose to turn that into a kiss, she chose to make the scene sexual, she isn’t just a sexual object for audiences to indulge in scopophilia while watching the film but rather she is ‘the strongest character in the whole movie’
Overall there may be aspects of visual pleasure and the male gaze in both children’s films and more mature films proved in the characters Jessica Rabbit and Harley Quinn, it is unfair to say that they are only there to be objectified and offer visual pleasure. Although they are sexualised their character archetypes of the femme fatale and supervillain mean that they are so much more then an object of visual pleasure but rather very empowered females. We live in a ‘new era in which the sexual power of women is acknowledged and celebrated’ rather than females just being passive objects of visual pleasure.
Bibliography
1} Who framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
2} Suicide Squad (2016)
3} Venture beat (12th August 2009) (online) Available from https://venturebeat.com (Accessed 8th January 2019)
4} Film Inquiry (27th October 2015) (online) Available from https://www.filminquiry.com/ (Accessed 8th January 2019)
5} Jill Nelmes (2003) An Introduction to Film Studies, Third edition, Representation of gender and sexuality, 29 West 35thStreet, New York, NY 10001, Page 252
6} Independent (22ndJune 2018) (online) Available from https://www.independent.co.uk/(Accessed 8thJanuary 2019)
7} Laura Mulvey (1999) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Film Theory and Criticism, 1 Introduction, A political Use of Psychoanalysis, New York, Oxford UP, Page 833
8} The Stream (6thMarch 2017) (online) Available from https://stream.org(Accessed 11thJanuary 2019)
9} Film Inquiry (27thOctober 2015) (online) Available from https://www.filminquiry.com(Accessed 11thJanuary 2019)
10}Independent (22ndJune 2018) (online) Available from https://www.independent.co.uk (Accessed 11thJanuary 2019)
11} The Guardian (22ndJune 2018) (online) Available from https://www.theguardian.com(Accessed 11thJanuary 2019)
12} CBR.com (19thMarch 2018) (online) Available from https://www.cbr.com(Accessed 11thJanuary 2019)
13} Shohini Chaudhuri (2006) Feminist Film Theorists, The Male Gaze, 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN, Page 35
14} Refinery 29 (2ndMarch 2018) (online) Available from https://www.refinery29.com(Accessed 11thJanuary 2019)
15} Medium (5thJune 2018) (online) Available from https://medium.com(Accessed 11thJanuary 2019)
16} The Odyssey (19thApril 2016) (online) Available from https://www.theodysseyonline.com(Accessed 15thJanuary 2019)
17} Evening Standard (3rdAugust 2016) (online) Available from https://www.standard.co.uk(Accessed 15thJanuary 2018)
18} The Conversation (5thJanuary 2016) (online) Available from https://theconversation.com(Accessed 15thJanuary 2019)
19} Jill Nelmes (2003) An Introduction to Film Studies, Third edition, Representation of gender and sexuality, 29 West 35thStreet, New York, NY 10001, Page 251
20} Laura Mulvey (1999) Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Film Theory and Criticism, III Women as the image, men as the barer of the look, New York, Oxford UP, Page 840
21} The Odyssey (17thOctober 2016) (online) Available from https://www.theodysseyonline.com(Accessed 16thJanuary 2019)
22} Independent (3rdAugust 2016) (online) Available from https://www.independent.co.uk(Accessed 16thJanuary 2019)
23} The Odyssey (16thAugust 2016) (online) available from https://www.theodysseyonline.com(Accessed 16thJanuary 2019)
24} Huffington Post (29thOctober 2015) (online) Available from https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk(Accessed 16thJanuary 2019)
25} The Stream (6th march 2017) (online) available from https://stream.org (accessed 16th January 2019)
25} The Stream (6th march 2017) (online) available from https://stream.org (accessed 16th January 2019)
Evaluation of video essay and research.
One strength of my video essay is that when trying to explain the shots I was talking about I was able to show the exact shots in the video to further explain my point, particularly when showing Jessica Rabbit’s and Harley Quinn’s first appearance in the two films. This is a strength as it allowed me to develop the point I was making further of how they are introduced and to help further support the point. This is also a strength as it allowed me to develop my textual analysis of the scenes in a much stronger way as I was able to perfectly show what point I was talking about e.g. the long shot of Jessica Rabbit’s leg appearing from being a curtain in a long shot, by doing this I could add more detail as to what I was explaining.
Another strength is that by only focusing on two films while looking at visual pleasure and narrative cinema I was able to go into more detailed research on the films rather than a quick, brief overview of a wide range of films. This is a strength as it allowed me to be more specific in my points such as when finding out that Jessica Rabbit was designed to be a male fantasy or that Harley Quinn enjoys wearing little outfits for her own enjoyment. This also allowed me to gain a deeper understanding into why certain codes and conventions were encoded into the films to give of the effect that the creators wanted such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit representing a 1940s film noir. I was able to understand more as to why the films had encoded certain messages and visual pleasures into the films.
However, a weakness of my video essay is that the audio isn’t always at the same sound level therefore making it slightly irritating to listen to as some people may have to keep changing the volume. This is a weakness as I was unable to record most of the audio on a microphone therefore having to settle for a standard iPhone recording for audio which meant that I wasn’t always able to match the sound. Although you can understand what the audio is saying it could have been made much clearer by using a microphone which I would chose to use if I ever have to redo this or create something similar.
Another positive of my video essay is that I was able to reference Laura Mulvey’s original essay on Visual Pleasure and Narrative cinema in order to further develop my understanding of the sexualisation of women in film, such as gaining I better understanding of the fear of castration. By referencing Laura Mulvey’s original essay I was able to improve the reliability on the points I was making when talking about the visual pleasure shown in film and how it is composed in certain scenes for the audience to indulge in scopophilia.
A final weakness of my research is that I was unable to find many books that involve visual pleasure and narrative cinema or the male gaze that wasn’t just Laura Mulvey’s’ original essay which meant that I relied heaving on website sources. Although I tried to find the most credible sources such as articles from news websites and by searching through Google Scholar I didn’t have as many academic sources which could have further improved my research and helped me develop a greater understanding into the sexualisation of women in film.
Overall, I feel that my research and video essay is effective in showing how visual pleasure is composed in films that are aimed at different ages such as in Who Framed Roger rabbit and Suicide squad. I was able to effectively demonstrate the exact shots I was analysing as well as using a wide range of sources to develop my understanding as to why certain parts of the mise-en-scene are encoded into a film to offer visual pleasure to an audience. If I was to re do this is would try and use more sources like books but feel that it was still highly effective due to a wide range of sources along with detailed analysis of scenes within the films.
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