Aoife Ashmore explores the pervasiveness of the “male gaze” in cinema and the importance of women’s stories being told by women.
Everyone with an internet connection and a social media presence will have surely heard the term "male gaze" by now. The online space is currently filled with young women rejecting this spectre and encouraging others to do the same. You may not know, however, this term was coined by film critic Laura Mulvey. This might seem an odd origin point until you read a typical review by a male critic of a movie made by women about women. Mulvey outlines how film is executed entirely from the male perspective in her 1975 piece “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. She explains how female characters and stories are portrayed through this framing, leaving them lacking depth and voice.
In a review of Die My Love, WBUR film critic Sean Burns writes that the film is “somewhat misleadingly being sold as an issue drama about postpartum depression, but it’s really more of a morbid comedy about how everyday life is enough to drive anybody insane.” The recently released drama follows main character Grace through her rocky relationship and experiences with motherhood. The film is inescapably about postpartum depression so much so that interviews of star Jennifer Lawrence and director Lynne Ramsay highlight this topic.
Burns’ quote reflects the expanding reach of cinema to include female issues and the accompanying confusion from male critics as they discover they actually relate to female characters and their struggles. Regardless, it is undeniable: Grace is not driven mad by gender-neutral experiences. Apologies to Sean; I do not mean to single him out. It might console him to know (as I am sure he is invested in my personal analysis) that one is not necessarily a raging misogynist for writing like this. A good sociologist knows that this is not solely how structural discrimination persists.
It might console him to know (as I am sure he is invested in my personal analysis) that one is not necessarily a raging misogynist for writing like this. A good sociologist knows that this is not solely how structural discrimination persists.
Die My Love was written mostly by female writers and directed by a woman. The film is also loosely based on a book written by female author Ariana Harwicz. This gives context about how the film largely succeeds in avoiding the omnipresent male gaze. The setting of an isolated shack in rural Montana feels fitting for this purpose; here we are sheltered with Grace. Despite the feral nature of her character, she does not lack the tenderness of the archetypal mother or the socialised sensitivity expected of a woman; she combs her mothers-in-law's hair, she ties her sick father-in-law's shoes and promises him that she will never leave her baby to cry.
The film is a recent example of the growing trend in cinema of nuanced stories written and produced by women about women’s lives. In this case, the experience of motherhood, previously neglected, has shifted from being a shallow plot point in a script to a subject explored in depth.
Burn’s quote is a reminder that today’s critics were incubated in a male dominated sphere. If you peruse any list of the greatest movies of all time, you might see some titles that include female characters, but few (if any) that centre solely on their particular experiences. To label a film like Die My Love a female “issue drama” is to effectively reduce its scope – according to film history – and this intuitively clashes with the obvious mastery of the movie itself. Similarly in publishing, “women’s fiction” is a title that implicitly limits and cheapens; one that seems necessary to shed if an author wishes to write a respected novel.
Of course, women have always been involved in film and its production, but recent movies about women are becoming more mainstream; not excluded or confined to arthouse productions with limited funding. The “expansion” of popular cinema is an active process that includes greater depiction of motherhood and women’s lived experiences. Many groups have been excluded from the history of film making this change.