Cinema the Eye: Bodies, the Gaze, and the Establishment of the Spectator

Cinema is a medium that manipulates the “reality” believed by the spectator through the viewed experience. It is the manipulation of the viewed experience and intentional manipulation of film styles through the orchestration of an infinite set of choices involving camera movement, angle, décor, characteristic editing preferences and the use of sound the spectator experience. Each and every intentional use of cinematic styles creates a measured effect. This essay in particular explores the gendered gaze on the film bodies through the cinematic experience. Through the exploration of (the destruction of) aesthetics, intentional manipulation of the camera in the Camera-Stylo, and the patriarchal unconscious this essay asserts that through the sensory area of the eye or the viewed experience pushes for a reflexive spectator in the establishment of their own understanding of their human condition in a gendered society.

Through the history of cinematic production, cinema has consistently challenged the notions of how it is received, functionality, nature, and the impact it aims to achieve. According to Elssasser and Hagener, the origin of the ‘gaze,’ or the look as a fixed stare originates from notions or structures of power and domination (p.114). Through a power conscious approach in the analysis of the term ‘gaze’ in the cinematic experience, one learns that it encompasses both the historical as well as the structural dimensions of visual power relations. These relations will be further explored through theorists like Lacan, Mulvey, Astruc and Modleski.

Regardless of what gender the actor/actress, theory shows that through the historical power structures cinema as eye and the spectator gaze is always masculine. It is through a masculine gaze the “female” or feminine body is explored. This notion gives way to a deeper understanding of classic cinema – the gaze of power on the body displayed in what Elssasser and Hagener asserts as a voyeuristic nature rather than being narratively integrated. (p.98)

One of the classic examples of this notion of power, desire, and vulnerability within the power conscious structure can be identified through Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali’s Un Chien Andalou (FR 1928) where the spectator is confronted with the visual experience of a graphic assault on the eye through parallel montage and metaphor of a razor slicing a person’s eye. This is gendered through that it is a man holding open a woman’s eye. Further emphasizing a notion of masculine penetration is also understood through the notion that it is a male assaulting the eye of a woman. This notion is even further asserted through the power of gesture and framing, the hands seem to surround the frame as the hands close in from both above and below the frame clamping in the woman’s head as the fingers peel open her eyelids as the razor closes in from below. The woman is defined as passive through not only gender, but also through the notion of the eye. The eye is not only precious but a window into the world. In addition to that, is simultaneously a way to glimpse into the self. An organ of passivity. Though the above scene depicts a masculine assault a lot more can be explored through this, especially in relation to understanding the implications of the viewed experience of the spectator.

Laura Mulvey’s essay on the Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema explores exactly the notions covered within the scene of the masculine assault of a razor on a woman’s eye. Mulvey notes that the destruction of aesthetics is an extremely political and necessary means to reaching a realistic understanding of society. “The woman’s desire is subjected to her image as a bearer of the bleeding wound, she can exist only in relation to castration and cannot transcend it.” Here beauty in its exact rendering is existent under a “phallocentric order”, only the destruction of this beauty, or even more precisely “pleasure” can break way to transcend that traditional order posed by Freud which was the grounding framework of Mulvey’s theoretical exploration. Same for the eye of the woman in Un Chien Andalou, only through the breaking of the eye through the metaphoric parallel montage through the notions of clouds and the moon can the spectator react – and in this situation repulsively- to be able to reflexively reflect on their experience of “viewing”. The unconscious bodily reaction of repulsion pushes the viewer to reflect on their pleasure in the looking or their fascination with the Human Form which can be pushed or asserted even further to understanding the body that is being viewed in the process.