who framed her

WHO FRAMED HER

GENDER IDENTIFICATION IN CINEMA

AUTHOR

Dr.Nivedhitha Devadas

“FRAMED” is a term used by “Women’s Liberation Demonstration” on August 26, 1970 at New York City. “Eve was framed” was the slogan of that day. This analysis is about how woman is framed in Cinema.

Woman is framed in films, public & private spaces, secret spaces, and intraspace. What is framing? “Adam framed Eve in the Garden of Eden” woman says. Eden is a beautiful Garden with every thing fulfilled. The same way Cinema is a fulfilled art. It is called the seventh art, which inheritances all the other six arts architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, music and poetry. In this art, cinema, woman is framed for beauty to be admired. This study is to identify the one who framed her.

Framing in film language, is the way the visual elements are arranged. Picture making is not about arranging beautiful pictures but it is about arranging appropriate pictures. “The pictures you choose and arrange are expressing your point of view; how you have interpreted a situation; what you want to say about it.” - Millerson, 1987.  ‘‘The way in which subjects and objects are framed within a shot produces specific readings” -  Hayward, 2004. Women have always been framed for a specific reading, that means, women is framed as man's desire.

Woman is the center of attraction in all the cinemas. “The way men view women and the way women view themselves and others is imbalance”, argues Mulvey. The audience is forced to view the text from the perceptiveness of heterosexual male. The films focus on woman's images and the events that happen to them are portrayed at a man's angle of view. As audiences view the film with voyeurism and fetishism becoming onlookers of their life. Mulvey says this can lead to two effects: objectification and narcissistic identification. Voyeurism involves turning the represented figure into a fetish so it becomes increasingly beautiful but more objectified.

“Gaze” the debate around what Mulvey called ‘the male gaze’ is of central importance to contemporary film studies. What happens to the female spectator? And how does she derive pleasure? For these questions Mulvey says that she must either identify with the passive, fetish position of the female character on screen (a position of displeasure, her lack of a penis signifying the threat of castration) or, if she is to derive pleasure, she must assume a male position (a masculine third person) (Hayward 2004). This is really a mind set or spectator’s framing of Cinema

Laura Mulvey’s ground-breaking essay is Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, 1975. In her essay, she examined how the women are looked at, from male point of view within the film and the spectator who identifies with the male character or protagonist. She describes this process of viewing as pleasure of scopophilia. Feminist film critics examined Hollywood cinema for their male-centered point-of-view or framing the objectification of women.

The filmmakers are fans and fanatics who want to gain name, fame and wealth through the exposure of women in a saleable way. Apart from all these aspects cinema is man’s pride to show his creative knowledge about beautifying women. When cinema went into the hands of   businessman the attraction of the cinema is woman's body and how it is framed for beauty. (You can see in all Raj Kapoor’s Hindi films the mother character is also exposed with big and sexy boobs).  I use the word framing instead of composition because composing is to project the facts of an image. Composition of the society is socialization, composition of nature is civilization, composition of words is poetry, prose, drama and dialogue, composition of relative musical notes is music, and composition of hands and body gestures rhythmically to the tune is dance. But framing is different, in that it involves the mindset of the person who frames the image or images, the concept, the narration.

 Many kind of fetishism are exploited in the films like breast fetishism (often close-up of the breasts are shown with jiggling movement, breast profile uncovered and top angle shot of breasts’ cleavage, slow motion in showing breast shakes and hip jerks); aquaphilia fetishism (showing women as swimming or in swimming suits, introduction of the character in the rain, waterfalls, river, sea etc to emphasis the body contour, foot fetishism (close shots of feet, buying and wearing anklets, tickling and handling); spandex fetishism (women wearing shiny stretch  dress, navel fetishism (close shots of navel - handling  in different ways, by running a top on the navel region, making egg omelet, massaging, wearing an ornament, painting on navel etc); stripping fetishism (dress removal shots and expanding of this action through various cuts); and tickling fetishism (through a play or game). These are the common kind of fetishism that is used in almost all commercial films showing romantic scenes. For this, a well-built woman with proper shape, good shining fair skin texture without any blemishes are chosen. Not only the visuals but also the sounds were chosen to be beautiful, attractive and erotic. It is very obvious that the parts that are helpful in provoking the sex desire within man, are highly exposed in all angles. Men have framed cinema where women are from the patriarchal perspective that is reflected in every aspect of life and it also reflects in films.

The Cinema framed by men reflects the thoughts what the patriarchal society framed woman in this society.

Aristotle defines that women are naturally lacking in intelligence and rationality. Their bodies lack the necessary warmth that makes for human intelligence.

Being natural fools, women do not deserve to be citizens who participate in public affairs (Geetha, 2006 ).

Manu, author of the Dharmashastra, argues that at the moment of creation itself, women are allotted the habit of lying, sitting around, with an indiscriminate love for ornaments, and qualities such anger, meanness, treachery and bad conduct.

Islam too believes that men were created to rule over and manages the lives and affairs of women.

The Christian Bible Genesis tells that God created Man in his image, while woman was created as an after thought, from Adam’s rib.

The Cinema narration framed man always to upper level than the woman.

In most of the cinema the hero comes to save the heroine, or save the country or to save the society. This is a very successful and great formula, which is practiced by commercial films in many countries. The filmmakers as patriarch consciously or unconsciously and orchestrates the male oriented stories.

The narration of Cinema is framed from narration of text that existed in the patriarchal society.

Happily lived for ever - The End - full stop. Almost all the fairy tales that is written for the children has a closed structure promising to end the story with “happily lived for ever”.  Very popular fairy tales “snow white”, “beauty and the beast”, “princess and the frog" are patriarch in nature. In all these three tales the females were put under test. Snow white is gifted to the Prince who saves the country from a magical crises, beast becomes handsome Prince when a few drops of sincere tears of love falls on the beast, and frog becomes Prince when a Princess kisses the frog with love. Making a woman to love a beast and a frog very sincerely and appreciating the gestures is very patriarchal in nature.

The silver screen is the man's imaginary castle where he screens women, as he would love to look at her. On the screen the man (the spectator) creates her as a mother, as a daughter, as a friend, as a call girl, as a lover etc. After that he looks at her, sights her, glares her, stares at her, gaze at her, glance at her, glimpse her, peep at her etc. Men frame mainly by his emotions, actions and reactions. The intelligence of men, politics of men, philosophy of men, perspective of men turns to Oedipus complex. His lover in the frame is a lover to the character but at the same time she is exhibited to the spectator as a gaze - a beloved whore. It is a mysterious truth to know that a lover and a whore are in a single image. In cinema the female protagonist are portrayed as virgin and as whore; we can call it two in one. It is a concept of the virginity persists in a whore. This is a typical framing of woman in cinema.    

In today’s cinema dream girls are very popular, highly hailed, and pampered by the public. Most of the films of today survive only due to their appearance. Dream girls get themselves involved not only in the film industry but also in many public activities. The film industry is empowered, public activities are empowered by glamorizing a girl, and thereby the woman is dis-empowered. They market the picture, market themselves and also market the character they portray. Cinema not only objectifies woman but also gives the license for the male audience to contemplate a woman as sex object in the day as well as in the night dreams.

And the interesting fact is that the dream girls are very sensitive to realize that they are tarnished in the mind of many men. It is a pleasure for those who enjoy being an attractive woman. This dream implements vanity in woman’s life that leads being supplementary of beauty. This supplementary of beauty is framed to impress the man who is firmly rooted with vanity. Battistelli 1929 explains vanity has been conceptualized on one extreme as originating sexual struggle.

The concept of creating a dream girl for the dream world is only for men, a woman doesn’t have the right (sociological ethics) to dream about a man. In Hindu mythology, Renuka. Wife of a saint named Jamathagni, is a woman of chastity and virgin. She has the power of making pot out of raw mud, with that she used to bring water to her husband for his prayer rituals. One day while doing so on a river bank she happened to see the reflection of Indira the God of beauty on the water and admires him; the next minute she loses her chastity and was not able to carry water in pot which is made out of raw mud. The husband who was waiting for her understands the happenings, becomes very angry and asks his son to cut off the head of Renuka. Such was the punishment a woman had to undergo for admiring another man. Since this social or moral practices encouraged by the patriarchal society, the concept of dream boys has not become very popular. Psychologically, what a woman expects from men are so many other aspects (being a protector, an achiever, a warrior, a professional, a performer and very recently a spiritual man). Their dream is not much on flesh related like men. It is an everlasting pride for woman. Our man made cinema still maintains the narration of mainstream cinema with this concept.

Our constitutional culture itself perpetuates inequality of women before law along with the social and political factors responsible for the subordination of women (Jaising and Wolfe 2006). In the essay “The Ignoble Servility of Pati Parmeshwar: Towards Equality for Women,” Jaising and Wolfe argue that women are treated like animals in reality but in the Constitution of India and before the law, they are given a good position. Jaising and Wolfe argue that Indian constitution is male chauvinist and treats woman in different manner and women servility and survival are polar opposites. Until equality is understood in a feminist perspective, the jurisprudence of the Indian Constitution will continue to be male. This leads the Indian cinema is in favor of male officers or a team of male board members to censor the cinema. They are the men who approve the framed production of men. The important information about the Indian Government National award comity for cinema is either ignorant or innocent about the framing of eves in the silver screen. 

With respect to the film world, film inventors, film producers, film makers, film theorists, film critics, film technicians, film fans, film spectators are mostly men and it is a male dominated film world. Women are seen as sex object and to satisfy a man’s pleasure. As a sex object they should look attractive and beautiful. So cinema is highly gender based.

Film Inventors, during the ancient age, Ptolemy of Alexandria wrote on the laws of reflection and phenomenon of persistence of vision during which existed in130AD. In1500 Leonardo Da Vinci articulated the camera obscure in his painting, the ‘dark room’ inside the room viewers can see a projected image of the sunlit world outside, got through a petite hole. I would like to inform you a single person did not invent that cinema. Over a period of time, every portion of cinema was invented by many personalities of different times. Men invented the most basic and very essential inventions. The pre-history of cinematography begins in the year 1832 with Plateau’s Phenakisticope and Stampfer’s stroboscope. Joseph   Antoine Ferdinand Plateau’s published   his first research on persistence of vision in 1829. In 1836 he established the laws of stroboscopic effect. He also created a device proving the illusion of movement. William George Horner invented Zootrope in 1834. Emile Reynaud invented Praxinoscope. Magic lantern by Father Althanasius Kircher. This is the forerunner of the cinema projector. E. G. Robertson invented phantasmagoria-Magic Lantern. Panoramawas invented by Robert Barker in 1792. Daguerre invented the Diorama. Dr.John Ayrton at Paris invented Thaumatrope in1825. Nicephore Niepce and Parisian painter Louis Jacques Mand`e Daguerre during 1831 and 1835 founded a procedure which yielded clear picture on a silver copper plate. Robert Paul, British pioneer of the motion picture, invented a cine-camera and also devised a projector in 1895, which was called as Theatrograph. William Henry Fox Talbot invented many positive prints on silver- chloride paper. Edward Muybridge he put his photographs together into a moving picture. The success of this series pictures was international. Photograghy Gun- Chronophotography (Strip Films) – Rifle shaped camera is the first portable motion picture camera designed by the physiologist E. J. Marey ‘chronophotographic’ camera using rolls of paper film instead of glass plates, which took a series of forty pictures. He succeeded in taking up to a hundred pictures a second. Marey’s camera was portable. George Eastman, an American is the promoter of roll film and he invented the Kodak in 1888. Very soon the Edison’s kinetoscope, is the advanced cinematographic apparatus, an individual viewing system, which is a form of peepshow. He invented gramophone and perforated his film stripes with four holes per frame, the frames kept equidistance and kept moving smoothly. Edison’s perforations set the standard of size for film, which has remained the norm (Ceram). Till today all kind of technical advancements are made mostly by men with very less contributions towards the technical advancement by female inventors.

Prominent and world famous Filmmakers: The first film, “workers leaving the factory”  was shown by Lumiere brothers on December 28, 1895 at Grand Café, Paris for one franc to 35 members. The first projected photographic picture, the Lumiere cinematograph combined cine camera, printer and projector. D.W.Griffith (The Birth of the Nation- Classical Hollywood Narrative style) who founded the grammar of filmaking popularly known as Father of world cinema, Edwin S. Porter, George Melies (A trip to the Moon- Mise-en-scene),Sergei Eisenstein ( Battleship Potempkin-montage theory), Robert wiene (The cabinet of Dr. Caligari-Expressionistic film) Orson Welles (complex and alternative narrative structure), Alfred Hitch cock (Murder Mystery genre), Ingmar Bergman,  Charlie Chaplin (slapstick and satirical comedy), Satyajit Ray(Indian new wave), David Lean epic style),Cecil B.DeMille (biblical dramas), Robert Flaherty ( father of realistic Documentary), Abel Gance (Impressionistic film style-Napolean), Lui Buneul and Sarvador Dali (An andalusian Dog- french surrealistic film),   Akira Kuosawa, Vittorio-de-Sice (Italian Neo realism), FrancoisTruffaut , Jean-Luc- Godard,  Fredrico Fellini (French New wave), Fritz Lang (terror of technological society), Frank Capra, John ford, Howard Hawks, John Huston, Spiel Berg etc (Sinyard 1985) are all males. Most of the commercial makers and knowingly or unknowingly have been framing women from males view point.

Film Theorists: Great classical film theorists are of two categories, one those who believe in formalism and the others those who believe in realism. Eisenstein, Podovkin, Christian Metz, Hugo Munsterberg, Rodolf Arheim, BelaBelaz are formalists and Andre Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer are realists. All those film theorists did not have any consideration about feminist’s film but only during the post structural period postmodern period, feminist film theory came into existence.

Christian Metz explains Spectator as  ‘Spectator-fish taking in everything with their eyes, nothing with their bodies: the institution of cinema requires a silent, motionless spectator, a vacant spectator at once happy, acrobatically hooked up to himself by the invisible thread of sight. And to make the audience seated, females are used as sex objects and that too very attractive object’.

References:

Andrew, Dudley. The Major Film Theories: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.

Ceram, C.W. Archeology of the cinema. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965.

Geetha, V. Theorizing Feminism, Calcutta: Stree, 2006.

Hayward, Susan. Key Concepts in Cinema Studies, London and New York: Routledge, 2004.

Jaising, Indira, and Andrea Wolfe. “The ‘Ignoble Servility’ of Pati Parameshwar.” Brinda Bose, ed. Gender and Censorship. New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2006.

Metz, Christian. Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. Translated by Michael Taylor. New York: Oxford  University Press, 1974.

Millerson,Gerald. ‘Video Production Handbook’. London, Focal press: 1987.

Mulvey, L. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen, vol, 16 , no.3, 1975.