Giving Laura Mulvey Her Due

Jezebel linked to Stanley Fish's NYT Opinion piece about Kim Novak asking "Does Kim Novak get ignored by film critics because she was "the object of voyeuristic male gaze" in the '50s?" I clicked through thinking that Fish's piece was going to be some kind of reclaiming of Novak, lauding her as an actress in her own right and not just a pretty face steered around by powerful directors. (And in answer to Jezebel's question: Kim Novak is hardly ignored by film theory and criticism and when she is discussed, its usually only in the context of the male gaze. Please, Ladies.)

Fish's Op Ed "Giving Kim Novak Her Due" is a pretty tribute to a beautiful actress, a star who put up with more than her fair share of bullying through her career at the hands of Hitchcock, Preminger, Wilder, some of Hollywood's most famous auteurs. I agree that in the company of cinematic authors of that caliber, history never quite includes Novak as a driving force in the landmark films in which she stars. Nevertheless, upon finishing Fish's article I am left with but one screaming, rage-filled thought: "Holy crap! Did I just read an article about Kim Novak and the male gaze written in two-thousand-and-freaking-eight with not one single mention of Laura Mulvey?????" I mean, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema is such a primary text in Film Theory (not just Feminist Film Theory), I resist even summarizing it in a blog. However, I know that one person's seminal text is another's petty diversion, as academic fields and interests vary. (This exemption does not apply to the NYT, however.) In a nutshell, Mulvey uses psychoanalytic theory (Freud, Lacan) to equate the camera's view with the desirous male gaze, consequently the cinematic spectator's gaze becomes aligned with the male gaze. I'm a little to riled up right now to really discuss it in full, maybe later when I've taken the rage down a few notches I'll have a more thoughtful analysis of Mulvey v. Fish. Nevertheless, Fish's summation "[Novak] was something that has gone out of fashion and even become suspect in an era of feminist strictures: she was the object of a voyeuristic male gaze..." both flagrantly talks around Mulvey and blames her (without naming names) for the destruction of Novak's celebrity and the type of woman she portrayed on the screen. But wasn't that entirely the point? I'm all for nostalgia but why should a woman movie goer with her wits about her be complacent in worshiping an actress as a "glittering something beheld from afar." Mulvey set out to change that for women, and in turn put spectatorship into question for all audience members who watch through the eyes of a camera lens who aren't heterosexual white and male.

image above from Masters of Media. More hilarious smartypants jokes there.