Politics and the Psyche: Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and Film Theory

Explorations in Film Theory: Selected Essays from "Cin-Tracts." by Ron Burnett;

Psychoanalysis and Cultural Theory: Thresholds by James Donald; Breaking the Frame: Film
Language and the Experience of Limits by Inez Hedges; His Other Half: Men Looking at
Women through Art by Wendy Lesser; Indiscretions: Avant-Garde Film, Video, and
Feminism by Patricia Mellencamp; Close Encounters: Film, Feminism, and Science Fi ...
Review by: Richard W. McCormick
Signs, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 173-187
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Politicsand the Psyche:

Feminism,Psychoanalysis,
and FilmTheory
Richard

W. McCormick

Works reviewed
Burnett,Ron, ed. Explorationsin Film Theory:Selected Essays from
"Cine-Tracts."Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1991.
Donald, James, ed. Psychoanalysisand Cultural Theory: Thresholds.
New York:St. Martin'sPress, 1991.
Hedges,Inez.Breakingthe Frame:FilmLanguageand the Experienceof
Limits. Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1991.
Lesser,Wendy.His Other Half: Men Looking at WomenthroughArt.
Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversityPress, 1991.
Mellencamp,Patricia.Indiscretions:Avant-GardeFilm, Video,and Feminism. Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1990.
Penley,Constance,ElizabethLyon, Lynn Spigel, and Janet Bergstrom,
eds. Close Encounters:Film, Feminism,and ScienceFiction. Minneapolis: Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1991.
Rodowick,D[avid].N[orman].The Difficultyof Difference:Psychoanalysis, SexualDifference,and FilmTheory.New York:Routledge,1991.
Williams,Linda.Hard Core:Power,Pleasure,and the "Frenzyof the Visible."Berkeleyand Los Angeles:Universityof CaliforniaPress,1989.

T H E FI R ST H A L F of the 1970s, certain British feminists

interested in film-most notably Laura Mulvey and Claire
Johnston-took the position that in spite (or because)of psychoanalytical theory's male bias, it could be used as a tool to critique
patriarchy,and such critics (each in her own way) began to apply

IN

Permissionto reprinta review essay printedin this section may be obtained only from the author.

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psychoanalytical insights to feminist ends in their analysis of patriarchal

cinema.' Thus was born what has become the dominant school of feminist film criticism, one that still employs psychoanalytical film theory
and that has been very influential upon film criticism in general. This
success has nonetheless been a mixed blessing, according to Patricia Mellencamp, because it has been accompanied by a watering-down of the
feminist politics that originally informed this type of film criticism: "The
radical impetus of Johnston's and Mulvey's work, with real linkages to
the politics of the women's movement in Britain in the 1970s, and real
opposition to humanistic literary criticism, has almost vanished in the
United States. Split from life, void of political commitment, the insights
of these critics have become generic truisms" (Mellencamp, 157).
These polemical remarks about what has happened to feminist film
theory since it first emerged in the 1970s are found in Mellencamp's 1990

book Indiscretions:Avant-GardeFilm, Video,and Feminism.Writingof

how Mulvey's insights especially had been turned by "virtuous scholars"
into a "formulaic 'system' " applied to countless films, Mellencamp argues that this depoliticization suggests "the pitfalls of ignoring context,
including personal political experience, and specificity." Her apt conclusion: "Without history, pure, eternal theory can be abstracted; the descent
into cliched platitudes is not far behind" (Mellencamp, 157). As someone
who herself participated in the development of feminist film criticism in
the United States, Mellencamp has a special claim to being upset by such
developments. By no means, however, is she calling for all of feminist film
theory to be discarded; rather,she warns that to ignore politics and history
is to produce criticism that is not really feminist. Nor is she arguing that
Mulvey's use of psychoanalysis led inevitably to depoliticization. She emphasizes the original political value of Mulvey's 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema": it brought sexual difference into theoretical
discussions about film in a way that could not be ignored.
Mulvey's essay stimulated many responses, and it is still being cited
and discussed in a number of recent books, including most of those being
reviewed here. This essay alone has had a great impact on subsequent
film theory, feminist and otherwise. Mulvey maintained that the "classical" narrative cinema was the result of a system of "male looks" or
"gazes." These gazes were not limited to those within the fiction film
itself; they were part of its material production in the studio and its
reception by spectators in the cinema as well. Camera work and editing
1 See Claire
Johnston's "Towards a Feminist Film Practice: Some Theses" (1976) in
Movies and Methods, ed. Bill Nichols (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 2:315-27, and Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," which has often been anthologized, among other places in a recent collection of Mulvey's essays written between 1971 and 1986; Visual and Other Pleasures
(Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1989), 14-26.

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directthe fetishistic-voyeuristic
gazes of the male spectatorat the image
of the female body onscreen,while the narrativeallows him narcissistic
identificationwith the active male protagonistwho eventuallycomes to
dominateboth the narrativeand the woman within the narrativewhom
the protagonist(and spectator)desires.This systemis gearedto the psychic needs of the male (heterosexual)spectator,mobilizinghis desirefor
the female while neutralizingthe threatof castrationthat woman symbolizes for him.
The conceptof the male gaze as Mulveydevelopedit has becomeaxiomaticin much academicfilm criticism.But such institutionalization
can
itselfbe a problemfromthe perspectiveof feministpolitics,as Mellencamp
articulatesin the quoteabove.In any case,manyof the conceptsof psychoanalyticalfilmtheory(feministandotherwise)haveincreasinglybeenquestioned. By the late 1980s, "positionsentrenchedduringthe 1970s were
asJamesDonaldwritesin thepreface
becomingmorefluidandself-critical,"
to the volume of essays he edited, Psychoanalysisand CulturalTheory:
Thresholds.He refersnot only to feministfilmtheory,but to filmtheoryin
general,especiallyin that potent mix of semiotics,JacquesLacan'spoststructuralistrevisionof psychoanalysis,and Louis Althusser'sconceptof
ideologythat becameso dominantin the 1970s. Someof the most famous
criticsto makeuse of theseinfluencesin developingfilmtheoryduringthe
1970s wereStephenHeath,ChristianMetz, and feministslike Mulveyand
Johnston.2In the 1980s certainaspectsof thatbodyof theorywereincreasinglyquestioned.Althusser'scomparisonof ideologywith the unconscious
was productive-that is, the idea that a society's ideology remainedinvisible to the unreflectivecitizen whose worldview it determined,in a
fashion similarto the way the unconsciousremainedhidden from the
ordinaryawarenessof the individualwhose life it shaped. But the tendencyactuallyto equateideologywith the unconsciouswas increasingly
seen as problematic.Anotherobject of criticismwas the binarismassociated with Lacan,but also any rigid, binaryassumptionsabout sexual
difference;what was perceivedas the drift toward a formalismisolated
from politics in much subsequentfilm theory of this type has also been
attacked.Such formalismis what Mellencampcriticizes.3
Beforelooking at the revisionsand new directionsof the late 1980s,
however,one ought to (re)examinesome of the most significantessaysin
filmtheorywrittenfromthe mid-1970sthroughthe early 1980s. A num2
Stephen Heath is a British critic who was associated in the 1970s with the British
film journal Screen, which introduced the English-speaking world to the work being
done in France by theorists such as Althusser and Lacan. Like Heath, Laura Mulvey and
Claire Johnston also published important essays in Screen. Christian Metz is a French
film theorist whose approach shifted from structuralist semiotics in the 1960s to a psychoanalytical approach influenced by Lacan in the 1970s.
3 This is a criticism that has been endorsed
by Mulvey, too (see her introduction to
Visual and Other Pleasures, vi-xv).

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ber of them are contained in a new volume edited by Ron Burnett,

CineExplorationsin Film Theory:SelectedEssaysfrom "Cine-Tracts."
Tractswas a Canadianjournalthat publishedseventeenissues between
1976 and 1983 underBurnett'sgeneraleditorship.Feministfilm theorist
KajaSilvermanassertsin her forewordto Explorationsin Film Theory
that Cine-Tractsplayed a role comparableto that of the British film
journalScreen,the journalthat helped introduceLacanianand Althusserianideasinto Anglo-Americanfilmcriticism(Screenwas also a journal
in whichHeath,Mulvey,andJohnstonoften published).Silvermanwrites
that Cine-Tractswas "aheadof almost all of its Americancounterparts"
(Burnett,vii-iii).
Burnettstresseshow the "feministvoice in film theory reverberates
throughout"this book, which contains pioneeringessays by Mellencamp, Mary Ann Doane, LindaWilliams,JudithMayne, and Teresade
Lauretis(Burnett,xix).4 The section of the book called "Psychoanalyis of special interest. In it Doane analyzes
sis/Feminism/Identification"
and comparesMetz and Mulvey and identifiesa problemarea for feminist film theory,an area that includesthe female spectatorignored by
Mulveyand the "woman'sfilm"that was marketedto addressthat spectator.(Doanehas gone on to examinethis subjectin her 1987 book The
Desire to Desire.) Williams investigatesthe fetishizationof the female
body already evident in "primitivecinema" (meaning cinema before
about 1910) and evenin its immediate"prehistory"(i.e., in photographic
studiesof movementbeforethe cinema'sinventionaround1895). What
these essaysdemonstrate-as do many of the essays in other sectionsof
the book, like Mayne's excellentpiece on Vertovand de Lauretis'spolitical historyof Italiansemiotics-is that generalizationsabout the formulaic and apoliticalnatureof this traditionof film theory are not accurate,at least when measuredagainsta numberof pioneeringcritics.
Like Explorationsin Film Theory,the book Psychoanalysisand Cultural Theoryis a compilationof essays dealingprimarilywith film theory; it might be labeled a series of reexplorationson the topic. The
volumegrew out of a seriesof talks in 1987 at the Instituteof ContemporaryArtsin London.One of the centralrevisionsin this book (argued
persuasivelyboth by ElizabethCowie and RobertYoung)is the assertion
4 The Linda Williams
essay forms the basis of a chapter in her 1989 book Hard
Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible," reviewed in this essay; the Judith
Mayne essay actually appears in an updated version excerpted from her book Kino and
the Woman Question: Feminism and the Soviet Silent Film (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1989). The Teresa de Lauretis piece looks ahead to her critique of French
semiology in Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984); and Mary Ann Doane's essay in a sense maps out the project on female spectatorship and the "woman's film" that led to her book The Desire to Desire:
The Woman's Film of the 1940s (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).

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that Althusser'sequationof ideologywith the unconsciouswas an error,

as were the resultingattemptsby film theoriststo developa psychoanalytical model of the cinema that functioned as theory of ideology as
well.
Whereasfrom the volume'stitle one would assumethat both psychoanalysis and cultural theory undergo rethinking,it is mostly cultural
theorythat is questioned.Thereis much less questioningof psychoanalysis, especiallyof the Lacaniansort, in this book.5In his introductionto
the volume, editor James Donald's insistenceon the split between subjectivityand the social realm seems to reinstatesome old dichotomies
particularlysuspect to feminists (reason/emotion,mind/body,political/
personal).Indeed,his argumentsrun counterto the projectde Lauretis
considersinherentin feminism'spropositionthat the personalis political:
the need "to reconceptualizethe relations that bind the social to the
But becausethe elevenessaysof the book stakeout complex
subjective."6
positions on such relations,they are relevantto those interestedin the
feministprojectas de Lauretisformulatesit.
Parveen Adams's piece is particularlyfascinating; she returns to
Freud'sessay "A ChildIs BeingBeaten"to demonstratethat at least one
of Freud'stheoriesof fixed sexual differencedoes not work: that based
on identificationand object choice, which maintainsthat the "normal"
male should identifywith ("active")"masculinity"and choose a ("passive") "feminine"object of desire;vice versa for the "normal"female.
Adamsshows that these terms-femininity, masculinity,passivity,activity, and even identificationand object choice-are associatedin Freud's
essaywith oscillationand not fixity.That is, thesetermsdo not represent
fixed poles but ends of a spectrumacross which there is oscillation, or
constantmovementback and forth.Thereforeany attemptto establisha
systemof fixed sexual identitiesbased on these argumentsof Freudis in
error.
RobertYoungdiscussesthe relationof psychoanalysisto politicaltheories of culture.He developsthe critiqueof Althusserin this volumeand
extends it to FredricJameson,assertingthat analysesthat more or less
equate the state with the psyche are "paranoid."Marxismwill always
havetroublewith psychoanalysisand with the split subjectit reveals,he
arguespersuasively,as long as it clings to the "Cartesianinside/outside
dichotomy" (Donald, 149). But psychoanalysisalso poses a harsh dilemma for feminists, accordingto Young: they must either accept its
5 This is in contrast to much American film theory of the 1980s (especially feminist
work), in which a move away from Lacan and a return to Freud have been noted. See,
e.g., Judith Mayne, "Feminist Film Theory and Women at the Movies," Profession 87
(1987): 14-19, esp. 16.
6 de
Lauretis, 56.

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insights and give up the female subject (for there is no unified subject),
thus becoming "postfeminist"; or they must reject psychoanalysis and
embrace "essentialism." It seems to me that Young is making the same
mistake he finds in the Althusserian model: confusing the subject conceived in political terms (the "subject" of ideology, or the subject of
feminism-i.e., women) with subjectivity as understood in psychic terms.
And however fragmented the psyche may be, however problematic its
relation to sexed bodies (and it has above all been feminists who have
fought against women's identities being defined in any reductive relation
to their biology), there is nonetheless a lot of obvious oppression and
violence that falls specifically on female bodies in this world. While this
is not the only oppression going on in the world, it is indisputably real
and widespread and is something to which political analysis and struggle
can and should be devoted. And to label this "essentialism" is absurd,
unless all political activity organized around material concerns is essentialist.
The essay in this volume I like the best is by none other than Laura
Mulvey, who reexamines the Oedipus myth. Her feminist rereading of the
ultimate patriarchal myth is both political and utopian. She finds something in the myth that she can use both to subvert its patriarchal ideology
and to empower women: the "transformative power of telling one's own
story." She writes that by this kind of appropriation of myth and storytelling "feminist consciousness can affect the discourse of patriarchy and
upset the polarisation between masculinity and femininity that keeps its
order in place" (Donald, 48).
Mulvey's statement is one that D. N. Rodowick would strongly endorse, although a good portion of his book The Difficulty of Difference:
Psychoanalysis, Sexual Difference, and Film Theory is devoted to a critique of Mulvey's earlier positions and the theoretical work they motivated. Rodowick's dense, rigorous, and ultimately persuasive readings of
Freud demonstrate that psychoanalysis has been misread by film theory,
especially in developing the concepts of identification, spectatorship, and
sexual difference. Rodowick praises the historical analysis and ideological critique in the writings of the feminist critics he discusses-especially
Mulvey, Doane, and Williams-but his basic critical gesture is to return
to Freud to show how everyone has basically misread him. This made me
initially skeptical, but in the end I found myself in sympathy with his
interpretation of Freud, for it is compatible with, and potentially useful
to, feminism. His point is that film critics have read Freud on sexual
difference in a very rigid and binary fashion, in a sense reinforcing the
"binary machines" of Western thought that for him are the common
enemy. His position is thus similar to that Mulvey stated in the 1983

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piece "Changes:Thoughts on Myth, Narrative,and HistoricalExperience,"her own critiqueof "VisualPleasureand NarrativeCinema."7

The Freudto which Rodowick returnsis a thinkermuch more ambivalentabout sexual differencethan Freud'sfamousquotationequating
biology and destinywould seemto imply.He stressesthat thereis always
a contradictionbetweenthe "phylogenetic,"anthropologicalFreud,who
uphelddifferencesbetweenthe sexes in allegianceto the patriarchalideology of his era, and the "ontogenetic"Freud,who argued(undermining
that ideology in spite of his "other self") that no essentialrelationship,
free of contradiction,could be establishedbetweenbiology and psychic
identity(sexualor otherwise).Rodowick'sanalysisof "A Child Is Being
Beaten"is very similarto the one in the ParveenAdamsessay discussed
above; he demonstratesthe mutabilityof sexual identification-again,
there is no "fixed"sexual identity,and the oscillationbetween"masculinity" and "femininity"ultimatelymeans nothing about biological sex
but, rather,is movementin both directionsalong a spectrumwhose two
endshavebeengenderedby (oppressive)socialconventions.8Hencein his
first chapterhe criticizesMulvey'sfamous 1975 essay for its rigid constructionof a malespectatorand in his secondand thirdchaptershe finds
faultwith Doane (in The Desire to Desire)and Williams(in a 1984 essay
on Stella Dallas) for their attemptsto specify a female spectatoressentially differentfroma malespectator.9His argumentis thus in some ways
reminiscentof the position Youngtakes in Psychoanalysisand Cultural
Theory,but thereis an importantdifference.ForRodowicksubjectivity's
independencefrom "chromosomecount, hormonalbalances,or types of
genitalia"does not at all mean the end of social action or feministpolitics. Subjectivity's"divorce"is not from the social, but from biology;
Rodowickemphasizesthat subjectivityis indeeddeterminedsociallyand
historically(Rodowick, 140).
WhereasThe Difficultyof Differenceis at its best in its rigorousand
dense psychoanalyticalinterrogationof film theory, Close Encounters:
Film, Feminism,and ScienceFiction, is primarilya seriesof attemptsto
apply film theory-and historicalanalysis-to a varietyof refreshingly
noncanonicaltexts: sciencefictionfilms and televisionshows. In a 1990
review of some books on feminist film theory for the Nation, Martha
Geverused ConstancePenleyand CameraObscura,the journalPenley
7

In Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures, 159-76.

Here he takes a position similar to that of much recent feminist work on cinematic
identification, positions summarized already in Mayne's 1987 essay "Feminist Film Theory 9and Women at the Movies," 16.
The Williams essay is titled "'Something Else Besides a Mother': Stella Dallas and
the Maternal Melodrama" and appeared in Cinema Journal 24, no. 1 (1984): 2-27.
8

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helped found in 1976, to exemplify the most academic and least political
form of feminist film theory.10 But such characterizations are entirely
inappropriate for this book, which has been edited by Penley and other
Camera Obscura editors: Elisabeth Lyon, Lynn Spigel, and Janet Bergstrom. Indeed, among the volume's best contributions are articles by
Penley, Spigel, and Bergstrom.
The book is an expanded version of a special issue of Camera
Obscura that appeared in 1986 on the topic of "Science Fiction and
Sexual Difference." It deals not with the "classical cinema," but rather
with very nonclassical texts, ranging from an Arnold Schwarzenegger
film to the writings of "Star Trek" fans to late nineteenth-century
French literary science fiction; common to all these essays is a concern
with sexual difference and the political significance of its portrayal in
science fiction, where it is almost always destabilizing. The essays are
informed by psychoanalytical theory, to be sure, but the volume's strong
point is the historical contextualization of the textual and psychosexual
dynamics in these films and television shows, which are analyzed against
the background of recent developments within American capitalism
and/or older traditions within Western patriarchal thinking on modernity and gender.
Most of the essays in the volume are quite convincing in their historical as well as textual analysis, and fascinating in their incisive-but not
condescending-look at popular culture. Vivian Sobchack traces changes
in the depiction of masculinity through a number of science fiction, horror, and "family melodrama" films of the 1970s and early 1980s, demonstrating among other things the rise of the innocent "man-child" as
Hollywood's answer to the crisis of American patriarchy we call the
"Vietnam syndrome." This man-child is an imaginary solution that
works best in science fiction, which became somewhat of a privileged
genre during those years. Bergstrom's discussion of "Androids and Androgyny" includes a perceptive analysis of the political stakes around
androgyny in fashion and science fiction; Penley explores what she calls
"critical dystopias" among popular science fiction films often trashed by
those academic critics who still cling to the high art/mass culture dichotomy. The volume's problematization of that tired dichotomy is one of its
most welcome gestures, enhanced by essays added to the original special
issue. Henry Jenkins analyzes the mostly female phenomenon of "fan
writing" about the cult TV show "Star Trek": fans rewrite and thereby
appropriate an original "text" consisting of 79 (often sexist) episodes
made in the 1960s. Spigel discusses the "fantastic sit-com" of the mid1960s, emphasizing the critical potential inherent in a genre that satirized
10 Martha

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the consumerismand genderroles of the suburban"nuclearfamily"by

defamiliarizingit in fantastic-and absurd-ways.
One problem I have with Inez Hedges's Breakingthe Frame:Film
Languageand the Experienceof Limitsis preciselyits upholdingof the
high art/massculturedichotomy.This is an accessibleand well-written
book, to which the author brings a wide knowledge of Frenchliterature and cinema and an obvious love of art cinema in general (mostly
Europeanart cinema, but the Japanesedirector Kenji Mizoguchi and
some American directors are also discussed). Hedges knows a great
deal of French theory about literature and film; she also has read
Anglo-Americanfilm theory, especially that written by feminists. She
often cites critics such as Roland Barthes, Metz, Heath, Mulvey,
Doane, and de Lauretis,but she uses them at times to supportinterpretations that seem at odds with the aims of those writers-as, for
example, in the service of the romantic-existentialisthumanism that
characterizesthe readings of Bertolucci,Wenders,Altman, and Coppola in her second chapter.In generalmuch of her book seems to be in
allegianceto the dated projectof showing that film can be as much of
a "high art" as literature.
This is not to say that the connectionsHedgesconstantlymakesto Europeanliteraryand art historyare not insightfuland instructive-this is
definitelyone of the book's strengths.Butherintroductionto the analysis
of "filmlanguage,"while veryaccessible,remainsa bit too formalisticto
be especiallyconvincing.Her longer,moresustaineddiscussionsof entire
films are much strongerthan the explanationsof variousaspectsof film
form she bases on more isolatedexamples.Especiallygood are her discussions of Zazie, The Night in Varennes, Persona, and-oddly
enough-The Wizardof Oz. The latter discussionis refreshingbecause
for the firsttime she departsfrom a somewhatdry formalanalysis(The
Wizardof Oz, of course,is an "entertainment"film whose form is thus
necessarily"bad,"i.e., not artistic)and employs a psychoanalyticalapproach to do a feministreading.
In the first two sections of her book, "Language"and "Representation," Hedges makes little referenceto feministfilm theory-and there
she comes close to falling into a romanticglorificationof "great male
"disartists,"althoughalwaysjustifiedin formalterms("self-reflexivity,"
In
the
book's
two
last
and
"Gentantiation").
sections, "Subjectivity"
der,"she refersfrequentlyto feministfilm theory.In "Subjectivity"it is
mostlyin termsof filmlanguage(e.g., how often subjectivepoint-of-view
shots are granted to female characters),with some deconstructionof
male art cinema (IngmarBergman,Woody Allen) for its use of women
charactersas stand-insfor the sufferingmale artist(althoughshe entirely
missesthe possibilityof such a readingfor PeterHandke'sLeft-Handed
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Woman). In "Gender," she uses a psychoanalytical approach on The

Wizard of Oz and E.T. Politics and (social) history play little role in her
readings based on formal analysis or those based on a psychoanalytical
approach. And for all her sincere interest in the representation of female
subjectivity, she does not spend much time on films by women; she discusses films by Agnes Varda and Marguerite Duras but nothing by a
younger generation of directors more influenced by feminism and less
interested in "art cinema."11
Works by women directors or authors get even less attention in Wendy
Lesser's His Other Half: Men Looking at Women through Art, neglect
that is only logical, given the subtitle. This too is a very accessible book,
and in many ways it is written and argued in a more compelling way than
Hedges's book, but many readers will be annoyed by its mostly gratuitous swipes at feminism. It is not really an attack on feminism-indeed,
if it really engaged in a debate over positions taken by feminist cultural
critics about the representation of women, the male gaze, identification
within or across gender boundaries, and so on, feminists would need to
take it more seriously. Instead it is a series of "intuitive" close readings,
often quite good, of a nicely eclectic group of texts-novels (by Charles
Dickens, Henry James, Peter Handke), poetry (by Randall Jarell), paintings (by Edgar Degas), photographs (by Cecil Beaton), and films (by
Alfred Hitchcock, Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder, King Vidor). This is
combined with a smattering of psychoanalysis (focusing on D. W. Winnicott, mostly, with some reference to a very pragmatic version of
Lacan)-and the occasional swipes at feminism and feminist criticism, of
which Hedges has a rather reductive, monolithic, and not particularly
well informed conception. (She also has no use for "historicism," which
for her apparently means dealing with works in a chronological order.)
One of her main points in defending works by male artists against
charges of misogyny is that these men often use female characters to
express their "female selves" (their "other halves"). This is actually very
close to one basic feminist criticism of such characters: these fictional
women have little to do with real women but, rather, are projections
related to male psychic obsessions. The mere mention of this criticism
does not necessarily prove Lesser's argument wrong, but it is odd that she
does not even bother to consider it. Still, the readings in which she
stresses cross-gender identification, for instance, in her discussion of the
gay male fashion photographer Cecil Beaton, are among her best. Her
1 In a note (156, n. 7), Hedges does mention The Virgin Machine, a 1988 film by
the West Germans Monika Treut and Elfi Mikesch, but what about the Belgian Chantal
Akerman, or any of the many other women who were already making films in the
1970s? Many of their films would seem to merit attention by Hedges if cinematic attempts to represent female subjectivity are of serious concern.

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persuasive interpretation of Henry James might have been even better had
she explored more the implications of his "homoerotic inclinations"
(Lesser, 95) for the analysis of identification and object choice in his
novels.
She makes some reference to the now somewhat contested concept of
a male gaze, but she does not appear to be interested in refuting the idea,
because she never discusses it in any depth. Her discussion of voyeurism
in connection with Degas's nudes is more sustained, but she can only
refute feminists who accuse Degas of voyeurism by limiting the concept
to the special case in which the point of view from which a female image
is seen is clearly marked as voyeuristic. There is no discussion at all of the
invisible voyeurism that is the hallmark of "classical realism" in literature
and the visual arts.
Two of the three chapters concerned with film are devoted to female
film actors who somehow transcended the individual films in which they
acted, whose performances cannot be ascribed only to the skill of the men
who directed them: Marilyn Monroe (whose "transcendence" was
mostly tragic) and Barbara Stanwyck (whose obvious achievements seem
to me undermined by Lesser's notion of her as a "mother" going from
film to film instructing male characters). In the chapter on Stanwyck,
Lesser does debate a number of feminist critics who have written on Stella
Dallas. She quotes Mary Ann Doane in particular at some length-but
she does not appear to understand what Doane's project is. There is
much that I like in Lesser's reading of this film, but it is not as different
from Linda Williams's as she implies. Lesser is right that the film privileges identification with Stella's perspective more than with that of any of
the other characters. But Lesser's own, fierce identification with Stella, as
sensitive as it makes her reading of the film, is ultimately limiting; it
makes her try to recuperate the film's ending somehow as Stella's
victory-thus, oddly enough, she ends up making light of Stella's sacrifice, as well as of the ugly class and gender politics that determine it.
Lesser always dismisses politics; this is one major way in which her
reading does differ from Williams's, as well as one reason she apparently
misses the point of what Doane is trying to do.
In her book Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the
Visible," Linda Williams also deals with "works" almost exclusively by
men: film pornography, for the most part a clearly misogynistic phenomenon. She too takes issue with many assumptions of feminist film theory,
but Williams does this from a position of great knowledge about that
theory and from a clearly feminist perspective. The result is a fascinating
and compelling (if at times disturbing) study that is instructive not only
about pornography but also about various other forms of popular culture
(romance novels, film musicals, "slasher" films), as well as about the
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relevanceof psychoanalysisand Marxismfor feministfilm theory.(Her

explicationof "fetishism"in both Marxist and in Freudianterms is in
itself very useful.)
Williamsalso addressesthe debate among feministsabout pornography.This is not the mainpoint of her book, but she does take a position,
siding with what she calls "anticensorship"feministsand against "antipornography"feminists.Sheclaimsthat the lattergroupassertsa much
too simplisticrelation betweensocial reality and cinematicrepresentation. She stresses that it is necessaryto struggle against real acts of
violence against women and the realityof women's broadersocial oppression;agitationagainstthe depictionof such phenomenain film is in
her opinionproblematic,especiallyif it leads to allianceswith conservative political forces that are not interestedin social equalityfor women
but in policing depiction of sexuality that might threaten traditional
norms.Williamsfindsa troublingconvergencebetweenthe Meese Commission and some antipornographyfeminists in the representationof
women as essentiallypassivevictims,becausesuch an image is so useful
to traditionalistconservativeswho feel that (patriarchal)society must
"protect"women (Williams,20-21).
But Williamshas no intention of glorifyingpornography;her main
projectis to demystifyit. She examinesthe historyand functionof cinematic pornography,limiting herself to the "mainstream"traditionof
pornographythat has historicallybeengearedalmostexclusivelytoward
heterosexualmales.The analysisnecessitatesa fairamountof unflinching
descriptionof pornography;she wisely chose not to use visual illustrations, for mere writtendescriptionis often sensationalenough. Pornography'slogic, however,is basicallythe same as the logic of all visual
technology: to try to show "everything."Williams, citing Foucault,
stressesthat this has at least as muchto do with dominanttendenciesin
Westernscience as with "prurience."In any case, to show everything
about sex meansabove all to show orgasm,and this is a dilemma,given
that most orgasmsoccur "out of sight,"betweenbodies. One cinematic
solution has been the fetishized shot of the penis ejaculatingoutside
ratherthan inside its bearer'ssexual partner:in the jargonof the business, this is the "money shot."This is a ratherobvious departurefrom
"normal"sex (and indeed, one reason conservativesattack pornography). It is also a solution that ultimatelyfails: while it does make male
sexualorgasmvisible(apartfromthe female),the problemof "showing"
the femaleorgasmbecomesall the more obvious. And it is this problem,
Williamsargues,that becomesthe obsessionof heterosexualporn-not
only becausefemaleorgasmeludeseasy visual "proof,"but becausethe
commercialporn featurethat emergedin the 1970s was differentfrom
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acterizedby an exclusivelymale address,the formermade some attempt

to addressheterosexualcouples.In the beginningthis attemptto address
women had little effect on the pervasivemisogynyof most films, but as
the 1970s went on, and especiallyin the 1980s, therewere some obvious
attemptsat a more equitabledepiction of female pleasure,includinga
decline in the ejaculatingpenises heterosexualmen apparentlyliked to
watch so much.12
While she has no illusionsabout the limits of even this more "equitable" pornography,Williamsconcludesthat pornographyis much more
ambivalentand complex than she initiallyanticipated."AsI probedthe
sexual politics of works usuallyviewedas inimicalto women, I beganto
see that the more discoursesof sexuality that there are, the more the
hierarchiesgoverningsuch oppositionsas male/female,sadist/masochist,
active/passive,and subject/objectbeganto breakdown" (Williams,273).
Similarly,her own "revision"of feministfilm theory is a critiqueof the
maintenanceof these binarismsin earlierfeministfilmcriticism.Shecites
de Lauretisand TaniaModleskiin supportof recentfeministfilm theory
that has "shiftedto a model of bisexuality,of more fluid movementson
the part of both male and femalespectatorsthat 'alternate'. . . between
masculineand feminine identifications"(Williams,206). But she also
echoes Modleski in warningthat such "theoriesof spectatorialbisexuality" must not be "consideredapartfrom largerrelationsof power"in
which "bisexualspectators"aretreateddifferentlydependingon whether
they are male or female (Williams,206).13
Largerrelationsof power are of special concern in PatriciaMellencamp'sIndiscretions;she often makesreferenceto the conservativepolitics of the 1980s in her discussionof cinematicand theoreticaltrends.As
Williams'sbook is not just about pornography,so Mellencamp'sbook is
even less limited to its main subject, avant-garde and feministexperimentalfilm and video-although it is an excellentand very accessible introductionto suchgenerallydifficulttexts. Mellencamptracesthe
history of the American cinematic avant-garde(the male-dominated
"New AmericanCinema"that emergedin the early1960s, epitomizedby
filmmakerslike Michael Snow and Stan Brakhage-but whose origins
Mellencamplocatesin the work of Maya Derenin the 1940s), the rise of
experimentalvideo (in the work of Nam June Paik, Ant Farm,Cecilia
Condit), as well as the emergenceof experimentalfilm and video allied
12 Another
developmentwas the formationof FemmeProductions,a groupof
women in the porn industryproducingporn addressedto (straight)women.Williams
also mentionsthe emergenceof pornographyby and for lesbians,but this is beyondthe
scope of her book, as is gay male pornography.
13 Williamscites Modleski,The WomenWho KnewToo Much:Hitchcockand Feminist Theory(New York:Methuen,1988), 12; and de Lauretis,142-43.

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with Anglo-American feminism (she focuses especially on films by

Yvonne Rainer and Sally Potter). In addition, she engages in the complicated and ambitious project of contextualizing these developments in film
and video against political and theoretical developments of the last
twenty years, which explains why this book is filled with fascinating
digressions/meditations (at one point Mellencamp even talks of "riffs")
on the politics of the 1960s and the 1980s, on postmodernism, modernism, mass culture, television, French theory, psychoanalysis, film theory,
and of course feminist theory (especially by Mulvey, de Lauretis, and
Meaghan Morris). In general this attempt to bring political and theoretical debates together with discussions of avant-garde film and video
works well; each area sheds light on the others.
The book would be valuable simply for Mellencamp's discussion of
the postmodernism debate, including her response to Andreas Huyssen,
her critique of Jameson, her situation of the avant-garde within the modernism/postmodernism debate, and her problematization of the high culture/mass culture dichotomy. She makes the point that the cinematic
avant-garde, for all its romantic cult of the (male) artist, was at least
initially formed in opposition both to the Hollywood narrative cinema
and to the European art cinema, which always remained primarily a
narrative cinema. Ultimately she is an advocate for experimental work by
women like Potter and Rainer who are informed by and in dialogue with
feminism and film theory-a dialogue that is often playful but always
political. "The real avant-garde move would be, at last, to centrally include women. If told from their point of view, even the desired dream
girls and imaginary women would tell very different stories-which
might just be mayhem" (Mellencamp, 213).
Above all Mellencamp values filmmaking-and theory-that retains a
political edge (her critique of upwardly mobile academic careerism in the
1980s is amusing and all too accurate). As for psychoanalysis, she has
more use for what she calls Freudian theory's "both/and" as opposed to
the "either/or" binarism of Lacan. This wariness of binarism combined
with her insistence on the political summarizes her critique of psychoanalytical film theory, feminist and otherwise: "When either the oedipal
structure of romanticism or the binary logic of feminist sexual difference
is repeated and conserved beyond its useful or political context, a gradual
reduction of thought does occur" (Mellencamp, 208).
In many of the books reviewed here, great attention is paid to the
kinds of political concerns Martha Gever found lacking in psychoanalytically based film criticism; many of the authors attempt to revise film
theory precisely to overcome any formulaic rigidity that might make it
less sensitive to specific textual and political realities. But Gever's most
serious charge is that feminist film criticism of the psychoanalytical
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school rarely"addressessubjects(in both sensesof the word)that arenot

white and fundamentallyheterosexual."'4The new stresson the fundamentalbisexualityof spectatorshipdoes open space for nonheterosexual
subjectpositions, but it remainsmostly theoreticalin these books. Mellencampdefinitelydiscussesfeministtexts that are not heterosexual;she
also mentionsthe limitsof white, middle-classfeministfilmcriticism,but
this remainsrelativelymarginalto her discussion.Psychoanalyticalfilm
theory and criticismhas indeed been limited in the way most Western
intellectualendeavorshave been: a narrow focus on the psychic, social,
and culturalhistory of the West-a history not merelydefinedfor too
long in patriarchal(and middle-class)terms,but one that can havelittle
to say about the experiencesof people of non-Europeanorigins.Nonetheless there is potential for psychoanalyticalmethods when they are
employedas many feministsalreadyuse them: as political tools to analyze the constitutionof subjectivitywithin the context of largerpower
relationsin a particularculture-and not as an orthodox systemdeploying a Greek myth to symbolizea timelesspsychic order imperviousto
political and culturaldifferences.
Departmentof German
Universityof Minnesota

14

Gever, 172.

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