4.15.2006
Women's Pictures (Film and Media Studies)
Title
Kuhn, Annette. Women's Pictures: Feminism and Cinema. London: Routledge, 1982.
Field
Film and Media Studies
Summary
This book is about feminism and cinema - don't you love when books are about what their subtitle says they are about? Anyway, some terms. Cinema "is understood here in its broadest sense to embrace the various aspects of the institutions historically surrounding production, distribution and exhibition of films of different types...This definition also takes in the actual products of the institutions - the films themselves - and, very importantly, the conditions and character of the production and reception of films...I will define 'feminism' very broadly as a set of political practices founded in analyses of the social/historical position of women as subordinated, oppressed or exploited either within dominant modes of production...and/or by the social relations of patriarchy or male domination." (4) Kuhn describes the problems of authoriship and feminism - it calls into question authenticity, intentionality and how we defined a feminine film or a feminist film. Through a structuralist understanding of language Kuhn posits that feminine films do exist and do matter. "If signification and representation are seen as processes of meaning production, and if it is accepted that notions of femine language and feminine writing may describe a specific relationship to representation, then the feminine can be seen as a subject position, a place which the use - or the subject - of language can occupy in relation to language." (12) The feminine must challenge dominant structures of relationship between texts and recipients. Feminine texts become feminine through relationships, therefore they are not fixed - that relationship is reading. Feminist texts have preferred readings that challenge the dominant. But still: "if it is accepted that meaning does not reside purely within the text itself, that it is not something locked within the text waiting for a reader in order to be liberated, but is itself to some degree an independent product or outcome of reading, then it becomes impossible to consider feminism in terms of fixed textual attributes, whether they be of 'form' or of 'content', let alone in terms of whether or not producers intended to put them there."(16) Kuhn examines dominant cinema, the re-reading of dominant cinema towards feminist ends and the possibilities of alternative cinema. She looks at dominant cinema as a economic and social institution, shaped historically and not fixed. She looks at the formal analysis of films that move towards a particular understanding of women that must be put in their proper place for the proper movement/closure of the film - it does not always succeed, of course. The technology of cinema addresses the audience (this is why it is cinema) draws them into a belief of narrative coherence. Kuhn follows a Lacanian psychoanalytic analysis of cinema and holds the unconscious in a priviledged space as that which we must have in order to have subjectivity (and language) and that "it operates its own forms of rhetoric."(49) She discusses cinematic address and the difference between discours and histoire (tense and address). She also discusses suture and the role the subject-viewer plays in the process of continually supplying the text with a subject for enunciation.Kuhn uses this as a backdrop to discuss Mulvey's critique of apparatus theory (Metz and Baudry) and the centrality of the look and the masculinization of the unconscious. Kuhn starts the next section of her book on feminist critical interventions into dominant film with a short history of the field, affirming feminism's task to make the invisible visible and also validating the school of feminist textual analysis and feminist psychoanalytic film theory (with their drawbacks of course, the formalism of both is a problem but that can be rectified by careful historical/analytical work). Kuhn looks at films like Psycho and how male spectatorship is naturalized - of course looking at how things are naturalized (using textual (psycho)analysis) denaturalizes. Kuhn asserts that while these textual analyses are important, they must be coupled with material and historical analysis - she performs this through a discussion of pornography. Finally, Kuhn discusses possibilities for a feminist cinema and its relationship to realism. She discusses New Hollywood Cinema and women's films - "whatever positive identifications it offers to those who choose to make them, new women's cinema cannot in the final instance deal in any direct way with the questions which feminism poses for cinematic representation."(140) Kuhn discusses Socialist realism, which does allow for the representation of different kinds of women, but still is within the dominant paradigm. She has more positive outlook for direct cinema and documentary, but the apparent triumph of transparency and authenticity must not be taken without critique. Kuhn defines countercinema "as film practice which works against and challenges dominant cinema, usually at the levels of both signifiers and signifieds."(157) She discusses two types, deconstructive cinema which aims to unsettle the spectator through a departure from formal conventions and films that may also be read as deconstructive, but also specifically offer new and different kinds of representations of women through a concern with feminine language. "If deconstructive cinema sets up the possibility of an active spectator-text relation around a specific set of signifieds, and if feminine cinematic writing offers an openness of address in combination with matters of expression in relation to which spectators may situate themselves as women and/or as feminists, then clearly a feminist countercinema is not simply a matter of texts or 'form plus content'. In different ways and in varying degrees, the moment and conditions of reception of films are also crucial." (177) Finally, Kuhn addresses the production, distribution and exhibition of countercinema
Keyword
Representation, Tendency, Feminism, Cinema, Feminine, Relationship, Reading, Tendentiousness, Language
Other Notes
"Second, the notion of the subject in process consequently suggests that subjectivity is not always nor necessarily cohesive, unitary or final. There is in fact an argument that ideology is definable as exactly the process whereby human subjectivity takes on the outward appearance of wholeness and unity, and furthermore that-in relation to cinema-one of the central ideological operations of dominant cinema is precisely the positioning of the viewing subject as apparently unitary."(47)
Other QE Works Cited
Barthes, R. S/Z (Narrative)
Barthes, R. Image Music Text (Narrative)
Mulvey, L. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (Film and Media Studies)
Kuhn, Annette. Women's Pictures: Feminism and Cinema. London: Routledge, 1982.
Field
Film and Media Studies
Summary
This book is about feminism and cinema - don't you love when books are about what their subtitle says they are about? Anyway, some terms. Cinema "is understood here in its broadest sense to embrace the various aspects of the institutions historically surrounding production, distribution and exhibition of films of different types...This definition also takes in the actual products of the institutions - the films themselves - and, very importantly, the conditions and character of the production and reception of films...I will define 'feminism' very broadly as a set of political practices founded in analyses of the social/historical position of women as subordinated, oppressed or exploited either within dominant modes of production...and/or by the social relations of patriarchy or male domination." (4) Kuhn describes the problems of authoriship and feminism - it calls into question authenticity, intentionality and how we defined a feminine film or a feminist film. Through a structuralist understanding of language Kuhn posits that feminine films do exist and do matter. "If signification and representation are seen as processes of meaning production, and if it is accepted that notions of femine language and feminine writing may describe a specific relationship to representation, then the feminine can be seen as a subject position, a place which the use - or the subject - of language can occupy in relation to language." (12) The feminine must challenge dominant structures of relationship between texts and recipients. Feminine texts become feminine through relationships, therefore they are not fixed - that relationship is reading. Feminist texts have preferred readings that challenge the dominant. But still: "if it is accepted that meaning does not reside purely within the text itself, that it is not something locked within the text waiting for a reader in order to be liberated, but is itself to some degree an independent product or outcome of reading, then it becomes impossible to consider feminism in terms of fixed textual attributes, whether they be of 'form' or of 'content', let alone in terms of whether or not producers intended to put them there."(16) Kuhn examines dominant cinema, the re-reading of dominant cinema towards feminist ends and the possibilities of alternative cinema. She looks at dominant cinema as a economic and social institution, shaped historically and not fixed. She looks at the formal analysis of films that move towards a particular understanding of women that must be put in their proper place for the proper movement/closure of the film - it does not always succeed, of course. The technology of cinema addresses the audience (this is why it is cinema) draws them into a belief of narrative coherence. Kuhn follows a Lacanian psychoanalytic analysis of cinema and holds the unconscious in a priviledged space as that which we must have in order to have subjectivity (and language) and that "it operates its own forms of rhetoric."(49) She discusses cinematic address and the difference between discours and histoire (tense and address). She also discusses suture and the role the subject-viewer plays in the process of continually supplying the text with a subject for enunciation.Kuhn uses this as a backdrop to discuss Mulvey's critique of apparatus theory (Metz and Baudry) and the centrality of the look and the masculinization of the unconscious. Kuhn starts the next section of her book on feminist critical interventions into dominant film with a short history of the field, affirming feminism's task to make the invisible visible and also validating the school of feminist textual analysis and feminist psychoanalytic film theory (with their drawbacks of course, the formalism of both is a problem but that can be rectified by careful historical/analytical work). Kuhn looks at films like Psycho and how male spectatorship is naturalized - of course looking at how things are naturalized (using textual (psycho)analysis) denaturalizes. Kuhn asserts that while these textual analyses are important, they must be coupled with material and historical analysis - she performs this through a discussion of pornography. Finally, Kuhn discusses possibilities for a feminist cinema and its relationship to realism. She discusses New Hollywood Cinema and women's films - "whatever positive identifications it offers to those who choose to make them, new women's cinema cannot in the final instance deal in any direct way with the questions which feminism poses for cinematic representation."(140) Kuhn discusses Socialist realism, which does allow for the representation of different kinds of women, but still is within the dominant paradigm. She has more positive outlook for direct cinema and documentary, but the apparent triumph of transparency and authenticity must not be taken without critique. Kuhn defines countercinema "as film practice which works against and challenges dominant cinema, usually at the levels of both signifiers and signifieds."(157) She discusses two types, deconstructive cinema which aims to unsettle the spectator through a departure from formal conventions and films that may also be read as deconstructive, but also specifically offer new and different kinds of representations of women through a concern with feminine language. "If deconstructive cinema sets up the possibility of an active spectator-text relation around a specific set of signifieds, and if feminine cinematic writing offers an openness of address in combination with matters of expression in relation to which spectators may situate themselves as women and/or as feminists, then clearly a feminist countercinema is not simply a matter of texts or 'form plus content'. In different ways and in varying degrees, the moment and conditions of reception of films are also crucial." (177) Finally, Kuhn addresses the production, distribution and exhibition of countercinema
Keyword
Representation, Tendency, Feminism, Cinema, Feminine, Relationship, Reading, Tendentiousness, Language
Other Notes
"Second, the notion of the subject in process consequently suggests that subjectivity is not always nor necessarily cohesive, unitary or final. There is in fact an argument that ideology is definable as exactly the process whereby human subjectivity takes on the outward appearance of wholeness and unity, and furthermore that-in relation to cinema-one of the central ideological operations of dominant cinema is precisely the positioning of the viewing subject as apparently unitary."(47)
Other QE Works Cited
Barthes, R. S/Z (Narrative)
Barthes, R. Image Music Text (Narrative)
Mulvey, L. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (Film and Media Studies)
# posted by SMRT : 5:30 PM
