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Talk:Feminist film theory

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reverse shot
Is it the case that feminisit film critics often argue that shot reverse shot forces the viewer to align him- or herself with the point of view of the protagonist? If so, I would argue that the critics making that charge are definitely overstating the case. I think anyone who's had more than a few discussions about any controversial topic should know that you can not force anyone to understand anything; people are too much like horses before the proverbial stream. So I'd have to argue that this technique encourages identification with the protagonist, but that the viewer can always balk at such identification, as do these feminist critics. I believe the difference is significant, because a feminist criticism of being forced to think anything would belie the notion of self-empowerment through consciousness-raising, which is certainly one of the main tenets of feminist philosophy. Koyaanis Qatsi

I think part of the part of the point of this criticism is that feminist critics, and those who think like them, are the only ones who balk at such identification. Others don't realise that such a subtle guidance is being made. The heavy issue is that it is the norm, the default situation, for films to contain the male gaze, and no one realises it. Feminist film criticism seeks to point out that there is a very definate subversion going on in the majority of film. (Think of that). A 'female gaze' is virtually non-existent. Unfortunately, I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I think that's the gist of what's going on. -Tubby

Stumbled onto this page, I'm a film theory professor. You're both right. The problem is that there is not one feminist film theory, it is a body of theories that have continued to develop since the early 1970s, and could even be traced back to the early 1920s. Within that body of theory, there are particular individuals who did seem to contend, contra qatsi, that the spectator was forced into a particular alignment. Forced is not quite the right word, because the spectator didn't even know it was happening, it was the natural attitude. Nevertheless, other theorists came to a greater appreciate the diversity of ways of looking, and increasingly questioned the possibility of coming up with a monolithic account of the gaze. Now there's a tension, because while you want to acknowledge individual agency and difference, you're still left with some substantive differences in the way gender is portrayed and seen that need to be conceptualized (the old question of freedom vs determinism). - (sorry, don't know how to sign) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.14.118.111 (talk) 06:38, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Women screenwriters category up for discussion
Thought people interested in this article might like to know that Category:Women screenwriters is being considered for deletion. — scribbling  woman  02:27, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Why is this an article
can anybody tell me --86.138.127.211 04:43, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand your question. Are you genuinely suggesting this should be merged with another article, or just trolling? —Preceding unsigned comment added by PansiesForThoughts (talk • contribs) 14:34, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is a crucial component of academic film theory since its origin in the early 1970s and, even if it has been proven wrong in some aspects, is absolutely foundational to the discipline.

The gaze and the female spectator
In order for women to be equally represented in the workplace, women must be portrayed as men are: as lacking sexual objectification. This section pushes way too much POV. Arguing that men are not sexually objectified in film is ludicrous. JCDenton2052 (talk) 17:19, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

 * Quote the whole sentence: "She argues that in order for women to be equally represented in the workplace, women must be portrayed as men are: as lacking sexual objectification." It's irrelevant whether she's right or wrong; the important thing is whether that is a correct paraphrase of her argument. If there are no specific examples of POV that are not contained within a report on the opinion of a source, the tag should be removed. --Anarchangel23 (talk) 01:13, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

 * Unless anyone raises any objections in the next few days, I'm going to remove the POV tag on this section. --Anarchangel23 (talk) 07:53, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

The POV tag is misguided. You should only be paraphrasing the major early proponents - frankly, Mulvey is enough, since she's the central figure, although Kaja Silverman's elaboration of "suture" was also very important. More recent reforumations can be found in Clover's Men, Women and Chainsaws and Linda William's work on pornography and spectatorship.

Contradiction
"Mulvey identifies three "looks" or perspectives that occur in film to sexually objectify women. The first is the perspective of the male character on screen and how he perceives the female character. The second is the perspective of the audience as they see the female character on screen. The third "look" joins the first two looks together: it is the male audience member's perspective of the male character in the film." The previous statement is from this article...and then we have this statement from Laura Mulvey's article (the author of "visual pleasure and narrative cinema"): "The first "look" refers to the camera as it records the actual events of the film. The second "look" describes the nearly voyeuristic act of the audience as one engages in watching the film itself. Lastly, the third "look" refers to the characters that interact with one another throughout the film." Now this second statement is backed by this reference: ^ a b c Laura Mulvey (1975). "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". Screen 16(3): 6–18. Online version. So i assume it to be the correct, but in any case this article needs some revision. rayhole45 —Preceding undated comment was added at 04:08, 4 November 2008 (UTC).
 * Then make the change and add the source. --Anarchangel23 (talk) 07:55, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Hard to understand
I'm having some serious difficulty understanding the content of this article. I think it should perhaps be rewritten so it can be in a manner easier for a layperson to understand. --OGoncho (talk) 10:23, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The original article is hard to understand unless you're a feminist theorist :( SarahStierch (talk) 05:06, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Then it should be changed. This article makes no sense to me. I have no idea what the feminists are proposing. Eliminating women from film to remove male superiority? --Youngdrake (talk) 20:09, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Metz Quote
What is the purpose of the Christian Metz quote? Seems unrelated to the rest of the article or the subject matter. Epeeist smudge (talk) 08:01, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

One subject under key themes header
The Key Themes header feels loaded without any further subdivision beyond "the gave and the female spectator". This subject also includes influential essays, people, and ideas but they are all presented together without further organization.

Also, should some of the readings mentioned also be cited under "further readings"?

Kathryn Wohlpart (talk) 17:58, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

General Editing Needed
This article contains a lot of really good points that are important to both the feminism and film critic community, but does anyone else feel that the current format and style could benefit from some editing? Just from a quick read over, I felt that the flow sounded more like a student's research paper than a Wikipedia article. Before I make any major changes I wanted to run it past the talk page in case anybody has some input. I think this article could benefit from some sentence-level editing of the current content to increase clarity. I also think the content should be divided into more user-friendly subheadings so that readers can quickly get the information they need. Most of these things have been mentioned in previous talk-page posts, but since I haven't seen any changes made I thought I'd go ahead and take on the challenge over the next couple of weeks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MadelineGrace17 (talk • contribs) 22:29, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Is matrixial theory truly revolutionary?
I haven't read feminist film theory in many, many years, but I have to wonder if Bracha L. Ettinger matrixial theory truly "revolutionized feminist film theory." Is this an overstatement? Does this claim need to be rewritten to reflect a NPOV? I'm not trolling, I'm just asking. --Jeremy Butler (talk) 23:33, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:29, 9 June 2019 (UTC)
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Wiki Education assignment: CMN2160A
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title: Talk:Feminist film theory


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Formalist film theory

Formalist film theory is an approach to film theory that is focused on the formal or technical elements of a film: i.e., the lighting, scoring, sound and set design, use of color, shot composition, and editing. This approach was proposed by Hugo Münsterberg, Rudolf Arnheim, Sergei Eisenstein, and Béla Balázs. Today, formalist film theory is a recognized approach in film studies.

Overview
Formalism considers the synthesis of the multiple elements of film production, and the effects, emotional and intellectual, of that synthesis and of the individual elements. For example, a formalist views standard Hollywood "continuity editing" for how it creates a comforting effect and non-continuity or how jump cut editing becomes disconcerting.

A formalist considers the synthesis of several elements, such as editing, shot composition, and music. The shoot-out that ends Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western Dollars Trilogy is an example of how these elements work together to produce a formalist effect: the shot selection goes from very wide to very close and tense; the length of shots decreases as the sequence progresses towards its end; the music builds. All of these elements, in combination rather than individually, create tension.

Formalism incorporates ideological and auteurist branches of criticism. In both these cases, the common denominator for formalist criticism is style. Ideologues focus on how socio-economic pressures create a particular style, and auteurists on how auteurs put their own stamp on the material. Formalism is concerned with style and how the film communicates ideas, emotions, and themes rather than on the themes of a work itself.

Formalism in ideological approaches
People argue that when using an ideological approach, the style or 'language' of these films is directly affected by social, economic, and political pressures. It is this branch of criticism that gives us categories such as the classical Hollywood cinema, the American independent movement, the new queer cinema, and the French, German, and Czech new waves.

Two examples of ideological interpretations that are related to formalism are the classical Hollywood cinema and film noir.

Classical Hollywood cinema
Classical Hollywood cinema uses a style referred to as the institutional mode of representation: continuity editing, massive coverage, three-point lighting, "mood" music, and dissolves. The socio-economic ideological explanation for this is style involves Hollywood's desire to monetarily profit and appeal to ticket-buyers.

Film noir
Film noir, which was given its name by Nino Frank, is marked by lower production values, darker images, under lighting, location shooting, and general nihilism: this is because during the war and post-war years filmmakers and filmgoers tended to have a pessimistic outlook. Also, the German Expressionists immigrated to America and brought their stylized lighting effects and disillusionment due to the war to American soil.

Formalism in auteur theory
While the ideological approach is concerned with broad movements and the effects of the world around the filmmaker, the auteur theory celebrates the individual and how their personal decisions, thoughts, and style manifest themselves in the material.

This branch of criticism, begun by François Truffaut and the other young film critics writing for Cahiers du Cinéma, was created for two reasons.

First, the auteur theory was created to redeem the art of film itself. By arguing that films had auteurs, or authors, Truffaut sought to make films and their directors as accepted as art forms, such as literature, music, and painting. Each of these art forms is concerned with a sole creative force: the author of a novel, the composer of a piece of music, or the painter of a fresco. By elevating the director, and not the screenwriter, to the same importance as novelists, composers, or painters, the auteur theory is able to free the cinema from being discredited as a lesser art form.

Secondly, the auteur theory sought to redeem filmmakers who were looked down upon by mainstream film critics. This theory argues that genre filmmakers and low-budget B-movies are equally important as the prestige pictures given more press and legitimacy in countries such as France and the United States. According to Truffaut's theory, auteurs took moldable material such as a thriller, a pulpy action film, or a romance and, through their style, made the pieces their own.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Formalist film theory


text:
Film theory

Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the academic discipline of film or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formal essential attributes of motion pictures; and that now provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to reality, the other arts, individual viewers, and society at large. Film theory is not to be confused with general film criticism, or film history, though these three disciplines interrelate.

Although some branches of film theory are derived from linguistics and literary theory, it also originated and overlaps with the philosophy of film.

Early theory, before 1945
French philosopher Henri Bergson's Matter and Memory (1896) anticipated the development of film theory during the birth of cinema in the early twentieth century. Bergson commented on the need for new ways of thinking about movement, and coined the terms "the movement-image" and "the time-image". However, in his 1906 essay L'illusion cinématographique (in L'évolution créatrice; English: The cinematic illusion) he rejects film as an example of what he had in mind. Nonetheless, decades later, in Cinéma I and Cinema II (1983–1985), the philosopher Gilles Deleuze took Matter and Memory as the basis of his philosophy of film and revisited Bergson's concepts, combining them with the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce. Early film theory arose in the silent era and was mostly concerned with defining the crucial elements of the medium. Ricciotto Canudo was an early Italian film theoretician who saw cinema as "plastic art in motion", and gave cinema the label "the Sixth Art", later changed to "the Seventh Art".

In 1915, Vachel Lindsay wrote a book on film, followed a year later by Hugo Münsterberg. Lindsay argued that films could be classified into three categories: action films, intimate films, as well as films of splendour. According to him, the action film was sculpture-in-motion, while the intimate film was painting-in-motion, and splendour film architecture-in-motion. He also argued against the contemporary notion of calling films photoplays and seen as filmed versions of theatre, instead seeing film with camera-born opportunities. He also described cinema as hieroglyphic in the sense of containing symbols in its images. He believed this visuality gave film the potential for universal accessibility. Münsterberg in turn noted the analogies between cinematic techniques and certain mental processes. For example, he compared the close-up to the mind paying attention. The flashback, in turn, was similar to remembering. This was later followed by the formalism of Rudolf Arnheim, who studied how techniques influenced film as art.

Among early French theorists, Germaine Dulac brought the concept of impressionism to film by describing cinema that explored the malleability of the border between internal experience and external reality, for example through superimposition. Surrealism also had an influence on early French film culture. The term photogénie was important to both, having been brought to use by Louis Delluc in 1919 and becoming widespread in its usage to capture the unique power of cinema. Jean Epstein noted how filming gives a "personality" or a "spirit" to objects while also being able to reveal "the untrue, the unreal, the 'surreal'". This was similar to defamiliarization used by avant-garde artists to recreate the world. He saw the close-up as the essence of photogénie. Béla Balázs also praised the close-up for similar reasons. Arnheim also believed defamiliarization to be a critical element of film.

After the Russian Revolution, a chaotic situation in the country also created a sense of excitement at new possibilities. This gave rise to montage theory in the work of Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein. After the establishment of the Moscow Film School, Lev Kuleshov set up a workshop to study the formal structure of film, focusing on editing as "the essence of cinematography". This produced findings on the Kuleshov effect. Editing was also associated with the foundational Marxist concept of dialectical materialism. To this end, Eisenstein claimed that "montage is conflict". Eisenstein's theories were focused on montage having the ability create meaning transcending the sum of its parts with a thematic effect in a way that ideograms turned graphics into abstract symbols. Multiple scenes could work to produce themes (tonal montage), while multiple themes could create even higher levels of meaning (intellectual montage). Vertov in turn focused on developing Kino-Pravda, film truth, and the Kino-Eye, which he claimed showed a deeper truth than could be seen with the naked eye.

Later theory, after 1945
In the years after World War II, the French film critic and theorist André Bazin argued that film's essence lay in its ability to mechanically reproduce reality, not in its difference from reality. This had followed the rise of poetic realism in French cinema in the 1930's. He believed that the purpose of art is to preserve reality, even famously claiming that "The photographic image is the object itself". Based on this, he advocated for the use of long takes and deep focus, to reveal the structural depth of reality and finding meaning objectively in images. This was soon followed by the rise of Italian neorealism. Siegfried Kracauer was also notable for arguing that realism is the most important function of cinema.

The Auteur theory derived from the approach of critic and filmmaker Alexandre Astruc, among others, and was originally developed in articles in Cahiers du Cinéma, a film journal that had been co-founded by Bazin. François Truffaut issued auteurism's manifestos in two Cahiers essays: "Une certaine tendance du cinéma français" (January 1954) and "Ali Baba et la 'Politique des auteurs'" (February 1955). His approach was brought to American criticism by Andrew Sarris in 1962. The auteur theory was based on films depicting the directors' own worldviews and impressions of the subject matter, by varying lighting, camerawork, staging, editing, and so on. Georges Sadoul deemed a film's putative "author" potentially even an actor, but a film indeed collaborative. Aljean Harmetz cited major control even by film executives. David Kipen's view of screenwriter as indeed main author is termed Schreiber theory.

In the 1960s and 1970s, film theory took up residence in academia importing concepts from established disciplines like psychoanalysis, gender studies, anthropology, literary theory, semiotics and linguisticsas advanced by scholars such as Christian Metz. However, not until the late 1980s or early 1990s did film theory per se achieve much prominence in American universities by displacing the prevailing humanistic, auteur theory that had dominated cinema studies and which had been focused on the practical elements of film writing, production, editing and criticism. American scholar David Bordwell has spoken against many prominent developments in film theory since the 1970s. He uses the derogatory term "SLAB theory" to refer to film studies based on the ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, and Roland Barthes. Instead, Bordwell promotes what he describes as "neoformalism" (a revival of formalist film theory).

During the 1990s the digital revolution in image technologies has influenced film theory in various ways. There has been a refocus onto celluloid film's ability to capture an "indexical" image of a moment in time by theorists like Mary Ann Doane, Philip Rosen and Laura Mulvey who was informed by psychoanalysis. From a psychoanalytical perspective, after the Lacanian notion of "the Real", Slavoj Žižek offered new aspects of "the gaze" extensively used in contemporary film analysis. From the 1990s onward the Matrixial theory of artist and psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger revolutionized feminist film theory. Her concept The Matrixial Gaze, that has established a feminine gaze and has articulated its differences from the phallic gaze and its relation to feminine as well as maternal specificities and potentialities of "coemergence", offering a critique of Sigmund Freud's and Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis, is extensively used in analysis of films by female authors, like Chantal Akerman, as well as by male authors, like Pedro Almodovar. The matrixial gaze offers the female the position of a subject, not of an object, of the gaze, while deconstructing the structure of the subject itself, and offers border-time, border-space and a possibility for compassion and witnessing. Ettinger's notions articulate the links between aesthetics, ethics and trauma. There has also been a historical revisiting of early cinema screenings, practices and spectatorship modes by writers Tom Gunning, Miriam Hansen and Yuri Tsivian.

In Critical Cinema: Beyond the Theory of Practice (2011), Clive Meyer suggests that 'cinema is a different experience to watching a film at home or in an art gallery', and argues for film theorists to re-engage the specificity of philosophical concepts for cinema as a medium distinct from others.

Specific theories of film
• Apparatus theory

• Auteur theory

• Cognitive film theory

• Feminist theory

• Genre studies

• Linguistic film theory

• Marxist film theory

• Psychoanalytic film theory

• Queer theory

• Schreiber theory

• Screen theory

• Structuralist film theory

title: Film theory