Returning the Gaze, Reclaiming What is Ours. Arts Essay

Returning the Gaze, Reclaiming What is Ours
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December 3, 2019
Looking at females as objects and as lower beings as compared to men has been ingrained not just in film, not just in art, but in society itself. Living in a patriarchal world has strongly influenced, if not dictated, how we see things in general.
In essence, this is what Laura Mulvey (1975) calls the “male gaze.” This is the view that everyone, including both male and female, gazes at the world based on a heterosexual male’s point of view. Films, as much as everything else, have not escaped this view. Basked in the man-made glory bestowed upon males, the representation of women has been compromised and degraded time and time again, reducing the female body as a mere spectacle. As much as Mulvey argues about the all-encompassing male gaze that leads us to shape or mold an identity, utilizing both the film characters’ and the filmmaker’s point of view can contribute greatly in somehow reflect the view, wherein both the viewers are subjected to the look.
There are different looks that happen in the cinema (de Lauretis 1987, 98). These looks are 1) the camera’s gaze at the actors, and 2) the look of the characters at each other and at the other elements of the story. These two use the male gaze wherein the aesthetic expression puts emphasis on the male character’s power over the sexualized female character. The third gaze is the audience’s gaze on the film. For de Lauretis, as the viewers watch the film from the eyes of a male author, there is an impression that the audience will also manifest a male-centric look. (Ibid.)
However, returning the gaze to the spectators may push them into the place of the oppressed, challenging their previously held notions about the truths they know and their identity itself.
To elaborate, the films Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) by director Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Reassemblage: From the Firelight to the Screen (1983) by director Trinh T. Minh-ha provide a few good examples of how the male gaze is challenged and how a different identity-building may take place. Despite flipping the view, the male gaze isn’t completely eliminated.
The Gaze: Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
The film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder goes beyond the seemingly forbidden love of Emmi, a 60-year old widowed cleaner and Ali, a Moroccan mechanic in his late thirties, to highlight both racism and the underlying neo-Nazi phase of Germany at that time. The film does not mainly project the camera’s gaze to forward the meaning and intention of the film itself. Here, the (oppressive) gaze mostly comes from the characters of the film itself.
At the start of the film, medium to long shots and the pauses in frames control the gaze of both the characters of the film, the gaze of the camera itself and the gaze of the viewers to establish the alienation which is first directed at Emmi as she enters an Arabic bar. As Emmi enters the bar, she is met by judgmental looks from both young women and foreign men from across the room. These stares sufficiently signify that she is an outsider in this group. What is important to note here is that after the aggressive stares at Emmi, the shot shifts to Emmi’s point of view, making the film viewers an unwanted target for the stares as well.
This scene demonstrates the seeming reversal of the gaze wherein both the protagonist and the viewer feel objectified by the gaze. Involving the viewers as part of the objectified makes them somehow part of the struggle of the protagonist. It also makes the viewers seemingly helpless in the see of stares, unable to direct the piercing point of view elsewhere.
Typically, most films make the viewers in control of the gaze, especially with the aid of the camera’s point of view. With familiar images of women being in distress under a monster or a goon, for instance, the perspective usually takes the side of the oppressor and not just a mere bystander. As such, the male gaze is perpetuated. But in Fassbinder’s film, both the protagonist and the viewer seem to be rendered helpless by both the characters of the film, the camera shot and angle.
Another example that shows how viewers are not the holders of the controlling gaze is when both Emmi and Ali’s neighbors and friends turn their gaze towards them in disgust. First as being an “unusual” couple because of the clear difference in age, and second, as being an “unnatural” because of the racial mix and the judgment passed on people of color and of a different race. The gaze implied here not just forms the identity given by the characters of the film towards the protagonists Emmi and Ali. It is also a microcosm of the societal norms at that time. To give context, the further disgust towards Ali emanates from immigrants, especially people of color, looked down upon by capitalists who made money from their cheap labor (Chaudhuri 2013, 695-696). Although some may not want to see the picture as it is, they are forced upon it by these characters. In the words of Shohini Chaudhuri (2013), the look of the neighbors reminds us that “…we are not in control of what we see, nor do we have privileged access to Ali and Emmi’s intimacy” (p.710).
Another way to look at fighting or reflecting this dominant gaze is how Emmi and Ali held hands despite knowing that they are in plain view of despising neighbors. Showing a sort of defiance to societal norms of what Chaudhuri called “exhibitionism,” he further explained that this makes the “…blurs the binary distinctions between the subjects and the object of the look; we are neither subjects nor objects but both at the same time” (Ibid., 702). Reiterating the aforementioned point, both the characters and the viewers are subject to the gaze.
On the contrary, a point to be acknowledged is that although there may be different opposing views in the film such as the film characters’ view, the camera’s view, and the viewers’ perspective that would somehow dilute the male gaze, this is not to say that the male gaze or the oppressive gaze has vanished. It is just being returned to the previous holders of the gaze. To argue, even though one might say that the male gaze has shifted when Emmi’s co-workers and the bartender ogle at Ali’s body, this doesn’t do much if a woman had tak...