Maggie Braine

Maggie Braine

Professor Jonathan Rattner

FILM 201: Film Theory

April 26, 2010

The cinematic visual is extremely powerful and extremely pleasurable. However, cinematic viewing can also be very objectifying, gendered and gendering. Feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey, used psychoanalytic theory to analyze how the male spectator and patriarchal society construct a female identity on film. She argued that female characters are ruled by male desire and project an appearance that is “coded for strong visual and erotic impact (Mulvey 713).” In her book Fetishism and Curiosity, Mulvey observed how during the American commodity boom of the 1950s, industries, including those of Hollywood, marketed a representation of female sexuality that was tailored exclusively to the tastes of men. Mulvey wrote, “the new discourse of marketed sexuality and the new discourse of commodity consumption were articulated together [in cinema] (Mulvey 40).” In the 1950s comedy, The Seven Year Itch, Mulvey’s theories come to life as the overly sexualized female character is denied human agency. With the use of different cinematic devices such as the close-up, Technicolor and a duet of high and low camera angles, Marilyn Monroe’s nameless character in The Seven Year Itch is subjected to fetishization and paraded in front of the male gaze, turning her into an eroticized feminine object. While a case can be made that her dumb-blonde persona contributes to the Girl’s objectification, this paper will examine how the different cinematic mechanisms Mulvey discusses affect the male spectator and the creation of a feminine identity.

In her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema and book Fetishism and Curiosity, Mulvey explored how “the visual is central to subjectivity (Mulvey 712).” Discussing such psychoanalytic concepts as ‘the gaze’, phallocentrism, fetishism and scopofilia, Mulvey sought to define how sexual difference controls the visual. ‘The gaze’ is a form of voyeuristic pleasure and a fantasy of control that puts the male spectator in an active position of power. The female character on screen, unaware of the male spectator watching her, is put on display as a passive sexualized object with no authority to look back at the male. Putting the female on display emphasizes sexual difference, which in turn “assuages the threat of castration (Mulvey 718).” This threat of castration derives from Sigmund Freud’s castration complex, which explores how masculinity is constituted: ‘the gaze’ accentuates the female’s lack of male genitalia as she is put on display (with the phallus often symbolizing power), which emphasizes gender inequality and allows the male spectator to embody the masculine ideal. Essentially ‘the gaze’ transforms the feminine character into an object of reassurance.

In The Seven Year Itch, Monroe’s hyper-feminine form is displayed in front of the male gaze, objectifying her as a passive erotic spectacle. Monroe’s body is isolated for the male spectator and flaunted with exploitive camera angles so as to make her sexuality less threatening. However it also reminds the male spectator that even though Marilyn has child-like mannerisms and is completely oblivious of her sexuality, she has the body of a woman. For example, her very first appearance in the film isn’t even of her face; it’s her hourglass silhouette in the curtained front door. Here, the male spectator gazes at the shadow of her body (objectifying her) while she is unable to stare back. This is also an example of how the director Billy Wilder utilized the iconography of Monroe (her physical beauty) for the purpose of pleasing the male spectator with a recognizable sexual figure. As Mulvey once stated herself, “Marilyn Monroe’s image [was] an emblem of perfectly eroticized features that could be recognized immediately in a reduced form (Mulvey 47).” In another scene, Marilyn walks upstairs to her apartment in a tight satin ensemble. Even though the main male character, Richard Sherman played by Tom Ewell, is lustily staring at her backside as she exits, the panned out camera angle captures Marilyn’s figure from the perspective of the viewer. With her back to the camera, she can’t gaze back, making her a sexualized, vulnerable object. The male gaze is also expressed when Marilyn appears on television in the film during her Dazzle Dent Toothpaste commercial, taking away her power to gaze back at the male spectator and forcing her to remain passive.

To make her stand out to the viewer, director Billy Wilder played with a three-point lighting system, Technicolor and a combination of high and low angle shots to highlight aspects of Marilyn’s physical appearance and emphasize her presence on screen. While Marilyn’s platinum blonde hair, blue eyes, red lips and revealing costumes already make her stand out on screen, the use of Technicolor makes the jewel-tones pop, while the three-point lighting system enhances this effect. These two visual effects draw the attention to her physical appearance and give her the look of a doll, an object. Wilder used a duet of high and low angle shots to create the appearance of a stage (or even a dollhouse). By using these shot angles and, for the most part, filming most scenes indoors to paint the illusion and depth of a theatrical stage, Wilder placed all of the audience’s attention on the actors themselves. The use of Cinemascope widened the screen and emphasized this creative approach. Creating the illusion of a stage emphasized the idea of voyeurism and ‘the gaze’ because it is as if we aren’t just looking through at life through a cinematic medium but also through a theatrical medium. Since Wilder relied less on creative editing devices and dramatic camerawork, the vitality and suggestiveness of Marilyn’s performance gains greater significance and draws more attention to her figure in the space.

Mulvey’s concept of fetishism is another mode of turning a woman into a reassuring rather than hazardous sexual object for the male spectator. “By building up the physical beauty of the object,” writes Mulvey, “transforming it into something satisfying in itself,” it creates a substitution that is a “complete disavowal of castration (Mulvey 716).” In film, Mulvey believes that the use of the close-up on the face or other anatomical part of a female character demonstrates this cinematic fetishism, which portrays the female as a sexual object. In Fetishism and Curiosity, Mulvey mentions Jean Baudrillard’s etymological analysis of the word fetish and how it relates to fetishism of the female form. She states, the word ‘fetish’ stems from “the Latin factitius… meaning ‘to paint, to adorn, to embellish’, and afeite, meaning ‘preparation, ornamentation, cosmetics’. He suggests that this etymology implies a homology between the fetishized figure of bodily beauty and the fetishism of the commodity. Both are constructed (Mulvey 47).” Essentially, this fetishism of Marilyn’s figure and beauty turns her into an object, a commodity. With America experiencing a commodity boom after WWII, Marilyn Monroe became a commodity herself on and off screen by exploiting her female sexuality and physique. The Seven Year Itch uses fetishistic close-ups of Marilyn’s body to transform her into just another commodity item like those mentioned throughout the film, such as Dazzle Dent toothpaste and US Camera.

In The Seven Year Itch, close-up shots of Marilyn’s different body parts demonstrate fetishism and objectification of the female form. Similar to ‘the gaze’, fetishism doesn’t allow the woman to look back at the male spectator: they must be passive, while the male actively dominates and controls them. For example during one scene in the film, there is an entire moment devoted to Marilyn’s bare legs when she is hiding behind the armchair while Richard answers the door. When her legs peek out from the side of the chair, the camera zooms in on them as she delicately picks up her stilettos with her red-polished toes. Another example is the famous scene where Monroe stands atop a subway grate in a white breezy empire-waist dress. As the train zooms by underground, the camera closes in on her bare legs as a draft blows up her dress. The camera cuts back and forth to Marilyn giggling as she stares into the distance, which makes this fetishism a voyeuristic pleasure for the male spectator because Marilyn is gazing aimlessly straight ahead with no idea of the spectator’s focus down below. This accentuation of body parts subordinates Marilyn’s character and reasserts a sense of control and power.

Although the Hayes Production Code restricted what could be shown on screen, Wilder was actually able to address sexuality directly under the context of fantasy. With the utilization of dream-sequences and a low-light sequence, viewers were able to recognize when moments of fantasy occured. When the audience is signaled that the activity in a scene is not really happening, it allowed Wilder to test boundaries. For example, in the scene where Richard imagines himself playing the Rachmaninoff concerto, Marilyn takes on a much more serious sexual demeanor. Dressed in a black and orange floor length glistening gown and smoking a cigarette, Marilyn seductively grabs herself, so taken by the Rachmaninoff piece and aggressively kisses Richard. By using fantasy sequences, Wilder was not only about to demonstrate aggressive sexuality without overstepping Production Code boundaries, but he also was able to make the male spectator feel like he was Richard Sherman and able to attain a woman like Marilyn. Using dream-sequence and fantasy places the male spectator in the mind of the male protagonist, making the fantasy his fantasy and the reality his reality.

‘The gaze’ is an expression of male power. In most industries and areas of society, society’s hegemonic gender norms give men positions of authority and privilege over women. The film audience is no exception. Films, as Laura Mulvey declared, are shot to please the male spectator and meet the needs of the male ego. ‘The gaze’, in fact, is constructed during production with different camera angles, lighting and costuming. ‘The gaze’ is utilized for the effects of transforming women into reassuring objects in an intimate relation to the spectator.” In The Seven Year Itch, Marilyn Monroe’s character’s femininity is constructed based on masculine ideals. Visuality plays an integral role in this construction and manipulation of femininity as “a decorative layer, which conceals a non-identity (Mulvey 721).” For example, Technicolor, close-ups, creating the illusion of a stage with the use of high/low camera angle are devices used to place the male spectator in the position to actively dominate and objectify the passive female. Women are denied pleasure in cinema, while men control and dominate this pleasure sphere. Although some argue that films today, such as those in the romantic comedy genre, are shot more for the pleasure of women, it should be questioned whether this is the case or if women accept the constructions of femininity projected on screen. Although on the surface, things look very different in cinema, the values and ideals captured in the celluloid are arguably very much the same as those in the 1950s.