the gaze

SLIH clip from r pieto on Vimeo.

from the website www.pietothemediaecologist.wordpress.com

This short clip from Billy Wilder’s film Some Like It Hot (1959) illustrates some of the contradictions that exist within the male gaze in Classic Hollywood Cinema. We see the introduction of Marilyn Monroe’s character, Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, as Joe/Josephine (Tony Curtis) and Jerry/Geraldine/Daphne (Jack Lemmon) watch her entrance.

On one level this clip can be read as articulating the male gaze. The film’s mise-en-scène constructs Sugar’s image in a highly erotic way; she wears tight fitting clothes accented with feathers and fur, which among other things, signify sensuality. Monroe’s performance accents her walk and facial expressions, thus heightening her sexuality. The corresponding music is a kind of Dixieland/stripper motif that aurally corroborates her image. Sugar’s eroticism even affects inanimate objects, as evidenced by the train in the scene which appears to be aroused, in a sense, by Sugar’s intense sexuality. The train’s brakes shoot out a burst of steam as if to grab her as she passes by.

The sequence also follows Mulvey’s assertion that the gaze works through three channels: the male characters in the film; the camera; and the male viewers. First, the Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon characters gaze at Sugar as she walks by. The editing in the scene reproduces the gaze in their eyeline match as they watch Sugar walk by. Secondly the camera frames Sugar in a precise and specific way. We see Sugar’s face in medium close-up, then a cut to Joe and Jerry, then a cut to a medium close-up of Sugar’s derrière. Here the camera and the male characters are in perfect harmony to reproduce Sugar as an object to be looked at by men. And thirdly, from all this we can assume that the film’s construction of the male gaze is situating male viewers within the audience to take up this viewing position.

Here with this discussion of camerawork we can plainly see one of the strengths of Mulvey’s thinking on the male gaze. We could write off this particular style of camera work used with Sugar as just standard Hollywood cinematic practice. Indeed, it is standard film practice in Classic Hollywood; however, this specific camerawork is almost exclusively reserved for female characters. If we do a little thought experiment and try to imagine John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart or Clark Gable shot in this manner, we can see Mulvey’s insight. Male actors were seldom, if ever, shot with this set up. Imagine John Wayne entering a scene shot like Sugar’s entrance; first with a medium close up of his face and then cut to a medium close up of his derrière? According to Mulvey, this is because the male characters can seldom be eroticized in the same way as female characters. Male characters can be handsome and dashing, but the camera can seldom frame them to be erotic objects of the male gaze as the above scene does with Marilyn Monroe.

key points

• articulating the male gaze
• what she is wearing, tight fitted clothing\
• her walk and facial expressions, heightening her sexuality
• the train being an object and recognising her sexuality and shooting out steam
• Mulvey's 3 channels

1. the male characters in the film
2. the camera
3. the male viewers

• how the camera views sugar

This is only part of the information on the site

need to look more in to the clip