{"id":204,"date":"2019-01-27T22:30:52","date_gmt":"2019-01-28T03:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/?p=204"},"modified":"2019-01-27T22:30:52","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T03:30:52","slug":"the-male-gaze-and-cultural-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/2019\/01\/27\/the-male-gaze-and-cultural-anxiety\/","title":{"rendered":"The Male Gaze and Cultural Anxiety"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Head Full of Ghosts<\/em> was able to cram a whole lot of theoretical concepts about the male gaze into one paragraph of text on \u201cKaren\u2019s\u201d blog post on page 95. Laura Mulvey, author of \u201cVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,\u201d believes that there is \u201cerotic pleasure in looking at another person as object,\u201d which can begin to explain much of the filmic choices regarding Regan\u2019s treatment in The Exorcist<\/em>. As soon as Regan starts exhibiting symptoms, she is continually in rooms where she is surrounded by men while sedated or tied down. In one scene in the hospital, Regan\u2019s hospital gown is pulled down to her chest, emphasizing her pubescent state as she is experimented on by male doctors. There is another shot of her being sedated by male doctors and a shot fixes the audience\u2019s gaze upon them as if we were looking from Regan\u2019s point of view and we see her being crowded and overwhelmed by men as she cries out for her mother. We see Regan powerless as men hold her down, emphasizing how both they and the camera consider her an object.<\/p>\n

Mulvey expands on this: \u201cthere are three different looks associated with cinema: that of the camera as it records the pro-filmic event, that of the audience as it watches the final product, and that of the characters at each other within the screen illusion.\u201d The men on screen, the camera, and then we the audience all participate in objectifying Regan, which is what Nancy accuses viewers of The Possession<\/em> of doing as well. When the person watching the screen is a woman, she still partakes in the male gaze, but internalizes the cinematic message of how men view women, further objectifying herself. As John Berger says, \u201cmen dream of women, women dream of themselves being dreamt of.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the in-text narrator is a woman, the author of the novel is a man, writing about how \u201cNancy\u201d perceives the male gaze which depicted her sister. Similar to Regan masturbating with a cross, Marjorie\u2019s masturbation scene (both in the novel and in the description of the show turn \u201cthe represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous\u201d (Mulvey). How does Tremblay\u2019s self-awareness of the tropes surrounding (young) female sexuality mitigate the fact that these scenes still invoke the anxieties our society feels towards girls who are not asexual beings?<\/p>\n

There are probably hundreds of articles and think pieces about how The Exorcist<\/em> functions as screen onto which we project our fears of female sexuality, yet the ending, as Nancy notes, is inherently conservative. Two white men save Regan, and there are other horror films that deal with female sexuality as monstrosity in ways which does not necessarily reinforce the image of white men as savior and conversion therapist (Jennifer\u2019s Body, Ginger Snaps, The Craft<\/em>). I hope Tremblay\u2019s awareness of these tropes mean that this novel will not end similarly to The Exorcist<\/em>.<\/p>\n

While reading Nancy\u2019s blog post, I was struck by Tremblay\u2019s choice to write about a television show, rather than either make one or write the novel without it. There is an inherent loss when writing about the cinema, just as there is an inherent loss when filming the written. As Edward Branigan reminds us: \u201cthe analyst must recognize that the very fact of talking about narration requires re-presentation of it by verbal or other means which my capture only some of its features,\u201d therefore diluting the intended effect. Perhaps what matters more is Nancy\u2019s reaction to the show\u2014if we want the visual, we should watch The Exorcist<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Head Full of Ghosts was able to cram a whole lot of theoretical concepts about the male gaze into one paragraph of text on \u201cKaren\u2019s\u201d blog post on page 95. Laura Mulvey, author of \u201cVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,\u201d believes that there is \u201cerotic pleasure in looking at another person as object,\u201d which can …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-c"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paB9Ga-3i","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions\/205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/death19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}