The title of this post is only referencing my current state of hunger. That is not what I am here to talk about. I wanted to wrap up some of my thoughts on Laura Mulvey’s essay, since I just wrote a paper that related the essay to my video project. I made the video I just made for French Film and Narrative Strategies, but it REALLY relates to everything I’ve been doing: photography and painting. It is about my exploration of the body, and the questions I have about my “love of looking.” So here are some quotes from my paper:
“As I watched women in movies, I was made uncomfortable by their sex appeal, but at the same time, I wanted to be them. I studied them, how they hypnotized men, and how they used their bodies to gain power.”
I continue to relate this to different essays. The first is Linda Williams’ “Film Body: An Implantation of Perversions.” Williams discusses in detail early film maker Eadweard Muybridge who documented the human form to study movement. In his films, he categorized people by men, women, and children, and when doing this, he projected his preconceived ideas about femininity.
“Even more erotic was the frequent footage of a woman covering and uncovering her body. Showing a woman in bed created a narrative reason for her to cover her nudity…As William states, since we at one point see the garments on the woman, this “only calls attention to her nudity all the more.””
” My goal in investigating the female form was to erase certain connotations we have, and to ignore the stereotypes that have been placed on women in film.”
I continue to relate this to the public’s love of realism, and then narcissism:
This “realism” is simply an illusion for people who desire a body different from their own. Is it our wish to dream an “imaginary” life, or is this just another form of narcissism, as we desire to relate every human form and its surroundings to our own?”
I then tie in Laura Mulvey and her argument of the “constitution of the ego.”
“She explains that we invent ideals for ourselves as a child when we look at our own image in the mirror for the first time. We imagine our mirror image “to be more complete, more perfect than [we] experience in [our] own body… Stars in films provide an outlet for our fantasies, and they “impersonate the ordinary.””
I go on to talk about our sexual instincts that are played out while we watch film (which Mulvey talks about), and then I explain more about my project:
“I hoped that by removing her identity (by never filming her face, and by never creating a clear setting) that I could separate her from any erotic context. I hoped to capture a more truthful realism. I didn’t direct her movements, and I let her body move as it naturally would.”
“As I filmed, I became fixated by her sensuality, and when editing the footage together, I chose images that best explored her female form.”
I am very happy with the way my video turned out. It is not completely similar to my photography project, since we witness her body moving on film, (This create more sensuality) and the form wasn’t abstracted quite as much as it was in the photos. Thus, it was impossible to completely erase sexual connotations with the form. It’s better this way, since we really get a sense of her femininity in the film, but at the same time, she doesn’t feel exploited.
My photos are different, since they do move more into abstraction, and they start to give the body a completely different meaning. Hmmmm….
That’s all for now. I’m tired, and I’m still hungry!
Bon Nuit,
Zoe
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