Gilad Padva, Nurit Buchweitz (Eds.) - Sensational Pleasures in Cinema, Literature and Visual Culture - The Phallic Eye-Palgrave Macmillan UK (2014) PDF

Sensational Pleasures in Cinema, Literature
and Visual Culture
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Sensational Pleasures in
Cinema, Literature and
Visual Culture
The Phallic Eye
Edited by
Gilad Padva
Tel Aviv University, Israel
and
Nurit Buchweitz
Beit Berl College, Israel
Selection, introduction and editorial matter © Gilad Padva and Nurit
Buchweitz 2014
Individual chapters © Contributors 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-36363-3
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First published 2014 by
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Notes on Contributors ix
Introduction
The Phallic: “An Object of Terror and Delight” 1
Gilad Padva and Nurit Buchweitz
Part I Forbidden Spectatorship and Visceral Imageries
1 The Unpardoned Gaze: Forbidden Erotic Vision
in Greek Mythology 21
Rachel Gottesman
2 The Haptic Eye: On Nan Goldin’s Scopophilia 35
Lorraine Dumenil
3 The Peepshow and the Voyeuse: Colette’s Challenge
to the Male Gaze 50
Marion Krauthaker-Ringa
4 The Monstrous Non-heteronormative Formed
by the Male Gaze 62
Matthew Martin
5 Bearing Witness to the Unbearable: Ethics and
the Phallic Gaze in Irréversible 74
Kathleen Scott
Part II Phallic and Anti-Phallic Fantasies
6 Transcendental Gazes: Pornographic Images of
Transmasculinity 91
Finn Jackson Ballard
7 “Look Closer”: Sam Mendes’s Visions of
White Men 104
Ruth Heholt
8 Between the Joy of the Woman Castrator and
the Silence of the Woman Victim: Following
the Exhibition The Uncanny XX 115
Sigal Barkai
v
vi Contents
9 Zack Snyder’s Impossible Gaze: The Fantasy of

“Looked-at-ness” Manifested in Sucker Punch (2011) 127
Alexander Sergeant
10 In-Between Complicity and Subversion:
D. M. Thomas’s Charlotte or A Reflection of/on
“Pornographic” Literature and Society 140
Fanny Delnieppe
Part III Bleeding Masculinities
11 “There’s No Losing It”: Disability and Voyeurism
in Rear Window and Vertigo 157
Laura Christiansen
12 The Vaginal Apocalypse: Phallic Trauma and
the End of the World in Romeo is Bleeding 169
James D. Stone
13 Ambiguous Exposures: Gender-Bending Muscles of
the 1930s Physique Photographs of Tony Sansone
and Sports Photographs of Babe Didrikson 180
Jacqueline Brady
14 Reframing Gender and Visual Pleasure: New Signifying
Practices in Contemporary Cinema 195
Frances Pheasant-Kelly
Part IV Surveillance and Big Brothers
15 Voyeurism and Surveillance: A Cinematic
and Visual Affair 215
Meera Perampalam
16 Thrust and Probe: The Phallic Blade,
The Physician and the Voyeuristic Pleasures
of Violent Penetration 231
Brenda S. Gardenour Walter
Part V Gaps and Cracks
17 Seeing Red: The Female Body and the Body of
the Text in Hitchcock’s Marnie 245
Inbar Shaham
18 Pictura in Arcana: The Traumatic Real as
In/visible Crack 258
Lysane Fauvel
Contents vii
19 The Female Body in Frederick Sandys’s Paintings, or

The Sublimation of Desire 277
Virginie Thomas
Index 289
Acknowledgements
Broadening the perspectives on phallic imperatives and their cultural

manifestations, as much as sophisticated subversions of patriarchal
dichotomies in contemporary cinema, literature, art and popular com-
munications, is a stimulating mission. We are most grateful to the
contributors for their illuminating knowledge, originality and intellec-
tual passion. Thanks for the opportunity to learn so much about new,
exciting directions and trends in the global research of spectatorship,
sexualities and diverse sensational pleasures.
We would like to thank our colleagues Dr Eitan Ginsburg, Dr Tovi
Bibring and Dr Sigal Barkai from the Sapir Forum for Cultural Studies for
providing us a lively platform for initial debate about phallic eyes and
sights in contemporary film and literature.
We are particularly thankful to the Research Authority at Beit Berl
Academic College in Israel for supporting the editing of this book. We
are grateful to Dr Anat Stavans and Ronit Yedid-Zion from Beit Berl, and
so many thanks to our devoted English editor Naomi Paz.
We are very grateful to our dear and inspiring colleagues and
friends who encourage our cultural research: Professor Amos Hoffman,
Professor Nurit Gutman, Professor Dafna Lemish, Professor Akiba
Cohen, Professor Jerome Bourdon, Professor Henry Unger, Professor
Moshe Zuckermann, Dr Elisabetta Gierlli, Avi Siksik, Dr Einat Baram-
Eshel, Dr Hanna Livnat, Dr Avivit Agam-Dali, Orit Dan, Sabrina Unger,
Sara Varga, Dikla Kepten, Dr Miri Talmon, Neta Ziskind, Dr David Levin,
Dr Liat Steier-Livni, Dr Yael Munk, Boris Maftsir, Dr Roni Halpern, Dr
Tal Dekel, Liviu Carmely, Inbar Cooper, Dr Orna Ben-Nathan, Dr Yael
Maurer, Tal Haasz and Noa Sivan. We are most grateful to our beloved
families.
Our gratitude is to Felicity Plester and Chris Penfold from Palgrave
Macmillan, and Manavalan BhuvanaRaj, for their insightful guidance
and encouragement.
Finally, we are thankful for this opportunity to work with each other.
As co-editors, we enjoyed each other’s intellectual investment, determi-
nation, collegiality, friendship and sense of humour.
viii
Notes on Contributors
Finn Jackson Ballard is a Berlin-based historian and queer porn per-

former who completed his PhD in Film and Television Studies at the
University of Warwick in 2012.
Sigal Barkai is Head of Curation Studies at Seminar Hakibutzim College

in Israel. She is an artist, art curator, art educator and a researcher of
young contemporary art. She has held six solo exhibitions and partici-
pated in group shows throughout Israel. Dr Barkai publishes articles in
academic journals and art magazines dealing with masculinity, feminism,
cultural interpretation and contemporary Israeli art. In 2011 she was
appointed national supervisor of visual art studies at the Israeli Ministry
of Education.
Jacqueline Brady is Assistant Professor of English at Kingsborough

Community College (CUNY). Her research focuses on gender and fit-
ness in the United States, and her book-manuscript Minding Muscle: The
Technologies of Bodybuilding from the Turn-of-the-Century Machine-Man to the
New Millenium’s Ultragirl is a cultural history of bodybuilding. Her essays
on bodybuilding have appeared in The Journal of Gender and Sexuality,
Recovering the Black Female Body: Self Representations by African American
Women (edited by Bennett and Dickerson) and My Life at the Gym:
Feminist Perspectives on Community through the Body (edited by Malin).
Nurit Buchweitz is Senior Lecturer of Comparative Literature and Chair

of the Academic Council of the Faculty of Culture and Society at Beit Berl
Academic College in Israel. Dr Buchweitz’s research focuses on postmod-
ern poetics and theory, Michel Houellebecq’s prose, children and youth
literature and late-modernist Israeli poetry. She is the author of Permit
to Pass: Generation Shift, Meir Wiezeltier and the Poetry of the 1960s (in
Hebrew) and co-editor of In Other[s] Words: Studies in Hebrew and Arabic
Literature (in Hebrew).
Laura Christiansen is a supplemental instructor and Master’s candi-

date in the Media Culture Department at the College of Staten Island
(CUNY). Her Master’s thesis analyses the drag representations of wom-
anhood present in the “Shit Girls Say” YouTube genre, in the context of
new media theories and the specific cultural moment of the Americas
ix
x Notes on Contributors
in 2011. Her research interests include representation, new media, the

musical genre and, of course, Hitchcock.
Fanny Delnieppe holds a Master’s degree from the University of Kent,

UK, and a PhD from the University of Avignon, France, where she now
teaches. Her doctoral thesis, which she defended in 2011, focuses on
meta-fiction in the ultra-contemporary British novel. She is particularly
interested in politically committed literature and works on the relation-
ship that contemporary fiction negotiates with the world and on the
ways it explores to question and subvert the ideological tenets that
underpin today’s globalized consumer society. She has written articles
on Jeanette Winterson and D. M. Thomas.
Lorraine Dumenil is Senior Lecturer at University Paris Sorbonne-Paris 3.

Her research mainly focuses on 10th-century French literature and
visual arts, and she also engages with cross-cultural and cross-media
issues. She is currently working on the affective dimension of aesthetics
reception in both literature and the visual arts, such as Nan Goldin’s
slideshows.
Lysane Fauvel is Professor of Philosophy at Southwestern University.

Her background in the history of philosophy and proficiency in several
languages benefit her current interdisciplinary focus in various con-
temporary fields including feminism, phenomenology, psychoanalysis
and poststructuralism. Her recent research interests focus on issues of
identity formation and discursive systems of gender formation, leading
her to an interest in film theory and queer politics and especially issues
of performativity and spectatorship.
Rachel Gottesman is a historian of the Greek world and has a special

interest in ancient mythology. She holds a postdoctoral research fel-
lowship in the Department of General History and the Department of
Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa. Her PhD dissertation,
conducted at Tel Aviv University and awarded in 2012, offers a spatial
analysis of Greek mythology. Her research interests include ancient
Greek history, Greek mythology and religion, Mediterranean studies
and spatiality in the Ancient world. Her article “The wanderings of
Io: Spatial readings in Greek mythology” will be published later this
year in METIS.
Ruth Heholt is Senior Lecturer in English at Falmouth University. Her

PhD focused on the conception of the normal, white middle-class men
and the heterosexual nuclear family. It examined the marginalization
Notes on Contributors xi
of the normal and its hegemonic repositioning as a choice rather than

an imperative. Since then she has retained her interest in masculinity,
but also branched out into research into the gothic, the ghostly and the
supernatural.
Marion Krauthaker-Ringa is Lecturer in French at the University of

Sunderland (UK). Originally from France, she pursued her postgraduate
studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway, where she com-
pleted a Master’s on female characters in Edna O’Brien’s fiction, a Master’s
on femininity in the work of Henri Troyat and a PhD on gender identi-
ties in the long 19th century. She specializes in gender studies, 19th- and
20th-century literature, autobiography and autofiction, and genetic
criticism. She has published articles in these fields and a monograph on
gender identity in the works of George Sand and Colette (2011).
Matthew Martin is a member of the adjunct faculty at both Sonoma

State University and Santa Rosa Junior College. The focus of his work
is on queer of colour critiques and American gothic literature and film.
He is the co-founder and former editor of the graduate student scholarly
journal Burning Daylight.
Gilad Padva is a film and media scholar who focuses on New Queer
Cinema, popular culture, visual communications, pop music, philosophy,
body politics, sexualities and men’s studies. Dr Padva is the author of
Queer Nostalgia in Cinema and Pop Culture (2014), and he publishes exten-
sively in international academic journals, international collections, and
international encyclopedias. He currently works for the Communication
Department at Tel Aviv University, the Open University of Israel, Beit Berl
Academic College and WIZO Haifa Academic College.
Meera Perampalam is currently a PhD candidate in Film Studies at

Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. Her thesis, supervised by Laurent
Jullier, examines surveillance cameras and their influence on narrative
films from the 1990s to the present. Her main research interests are based
on visual studies: aesthetics, formal and technical history, social anthro-
pology, narrative studies in film and visual culture.
Frances Pheasant-Kelly is an MA Award Leader and Senior Lecturer

in Film Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. Her research
centres on fantasy, 9/11, abjection and space, which form the basis for
two recent books: Abject Spaces in American Cinema: Institutions, Identity
and Psychoanalysis in Film (2013) and Fantasy Film Post 9/11 (2013).
Other recent publications include “Institutional Settings, Identity and
xii Notes on Contributors
Insanity: Abject Spaces in Shutter Island” in New Review of Film and

Television (2012); “Bewitching, Abject, Uncanny: Other Spaces in the
Harry Potter Films” in C. Hallett and P. Huey (eds) J.K. Rowling: Harry
Potter (New Casebooks) (2012); and “The Ecstasy of Chaos: Mediations of
9/11, Terrorism and Traumatic Memory in The Dark Knight”, Journal of
War and Culture Studies (2011).
Kathleen Scott is a PhD candidate in Film Studies at the University of

St Andrews. Her research focuses on spectators’ ethical and political
engagement with suffering female bodies in contemporary American
and European cinemas. She is particularly interested in haptic and
feminist film theories, as well as the film-philosophies of Gilles Deleuze
and Jean-Luc Nancy.
Alexander Sergeant is a doctoral candidate at King’s College, London.
He is currently completing his dissertation on the history and specta-
torship of the Hollywood fantasy genre (research supported by the UK
Arts and Humanities Research Council). His broader research interests
include various aspects of film theory, psychoanalysis, film philosophy
and popular Hollywood cinema.
Inbar Shaham teaches courses in film history, film language and film
genres at the Open University of Israel. She recently completed her doc-
toral dissertation on “The Structure of Repetition in Filmic Texts: From
Communicational Exigency to Poetic Device” at The Shirley and Leslie
Porter School of Cultural Studies, Tel Aviv University.
James D. Stone is Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinematic

Arts at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. He teaches several
courses in film history, including “International Horror Film”, “Alfred
Hitchcock” and “Teen Rebels”. His primary interests are in American
culture, British cinema, apocalyptic imagery and gender studies. He
has published articles in Radical History Review and Akademic Kvarter.
Most recently, he contributed an essay on Jessie Matthews to The
Transnationalism of American Culture: Literature, Film, and Music (2012).
Virginie Thomas is a teacher of English working in Chambéry, France.

Her doctoral dissertation examines the representation of woman in the
Arthurian translations in British poetry and Pre-Raphaelite painting.
She is an associate member of Cemra (Grenoble 3 University) and has
published two articles: “Les Représentations du corps de la femme dans
Idylls of the King de Lord Alfred Tennyson”, Cahiers du GRAAT en ligne
Notes on Contributors xiii
n° 5.2, and “La Chevelure des femmes arthuriennes dans la peinture des
préraphaélites”, Le Lien, la rupture. Université de Savoie, 2007.
Brenda S. Gardenour Walter is Assistant Professor of History at the

Saint Louis College of Pharmacy. Her current research examines the use
and abuse of Aristotelian discourse in the medieval world, the devel-
opment of medicine as a language of authority, and the continued
influence of both on the deeper structures of modern mentalities, par-
ticularly those linked with the horror genre from gothic literature and
modern cinema to digital gaming.
Introduction
The Phallic: “An Object of
Terror and Delight”1
Gilad Padva and Nurit Buchweitz
Guy Debord notes in The Society of Spectacle that since the spectacle’s
job is to cause a world that is no longer directly perceptible to be seen
via different specialized mediations, “it is inevitable that it should
elevate the human sense of sight to the special place once occupied by
touch; the most abstract of senses, and the most easily deceived, sight is
naturally the most readily adaptable to present-day society’s generalized
abstraction” (p. 17).
Consumer society in the age of late-capitalism and postmodernism
consumer is a society in which everything is visible, viewed from every-
where, from all screens – television, computer, cellular, billboards. The eye
gazes at everything. It captures all sights. This new omnipresent visibility
exposes the formerly invisible, including images that had long been con-
sidered as social deformation. There is nothing that cannot be visualized.
Nothing remains in the shadow. Objects and phenomena that used to be
obscene, ob-scena (in Latin, “off stage”) are now dramatically exhibited on
stage as a scene of activity controlled by the public view. Images of death,
disease, secretion, sex and violence, in particular, are now displayed and
marketed for mass consumption. Such overt representation of sex and
violence not only characterizes the postmodernist media and arts but also
demonstrates the individual’s desire to expose and reveal everything: a
desire that is magnified by the new media, which enable the spectator to
transform the intimate into the public.
This enhanced visibility and passionate spectatorship derive from the
liberation of consciousness and the legitimization of alternative lifestyles.
This is the era of exuberant, vibrant exposure of the marginal, the hidden,
the secretive. It is also an exposure of the hegemonic arena and its politi-
cal, cultural, economic and social oppressions. Moreover, it is a society
where the image replaces reality, where appearances are real as the Real is
1
2 Gilad Padva and Nurit Buchweitz
unattainable (Žižek 1999). The exposed and displayed reality, mediated by

voracious visual media, is shocking, exploitive and emancipating. Reality
is staged, played, replayed and displayed in front of our eyes. We stare at
our and others’ dramatized lives, simultaneously terrified and fascinated.
This is the age of The Phallic Eye, a multi-dimensional and powerful
metaphor that is primarily associated with the harsh exposure of sex and
violence in the patriarchal environment of the symbolic order. The sym-
bolic order is the entirety of ubiquitous representations, images, symbols,
words, which are part of an organizing system. The symbolic is essentially
the linguistic structure, a cultural realm that presents itself as nature. Entry
into a phallic symbolic order, in particular, is inextricably linked to the
child’s recognition of gender difference. Jacques Lacan (1989 [1966]) claims
that the phallus “as signifier gives the ratio of desire” (p. 319) and “the
phallus is the privileged signifier of that mark in which the role of the
logos is joined with the advent of desire” (ibid., p. 318). Hence, the eager
Phallic Eye, as a manifestation of the symbolic order, embodies a mascu-
linist desiring spectatorship, strongly connected to the glorification of the
phallogocentric regime.
Penile representation of obscene and bacchanalian pleasures
Susan Bordo (1999) distinguishes between the (biological) penis and

the (cultural) phallus in visual terms: “The phallus is the penis that
takes one’s breath away – not merely because of length or thickness
(qualities that might be sexually exciting but not necessarily command
respect, as we’ve seen),” she notes, “but because of its majesty. Those
who gaze upon it immediately feel themselves to be its subjects. That’s
the way phallus worship began in ancient Egypt” (p. 87). The tension
between the penis and the phallus is problematized by Joseph Maguire
(1993), however, who distinguishes four different sociological types of
penises: (1) the disciplined penis which is submissive and controlled in a
self-policed body; (2) the mirroring penis, which represents excitement,
anxiety, and failure; (3) the dominating penis, which is a physical sign
and an icon of subordinating others, especially women; and (4) the com-
municative penis that integrates the aesthetic and the sublime and prob-
lematizes the relations of size, race and sexual activity. Hereby, there is
no single penis (and there is no single phallus either).
Although psychoanalysis considers the phallus as representing power,
the phallus itself has no universal material sign, and the closest signifier
is the penis, given male social dominance. Hence, Toby Miller (2001)
claims that the penis fails to live up to this responsibility: “It is not as
Introduction 3
powerful as the phallus,” he notes. “At the same time, its unsuitability
as a signifier, and the taboo on its public emergence, is said to meta-
phorize phallic power” (p. 245). Miller adds that suppression of penile
representations is generally attributed in psychoanalytic cultural theory
to castration anxiety and the formation of the superego. “When the
penis appears, foregrounding its sex,” he notes, “it becomes paradoxi-
cally difficult to know in this discourse, because it fails to conceal its
true nature” (p. 245).
The Phallic Eye primarily refers, however, to the privileging of the mas-
culine in the construction of meaning. Further, the Phallic Eye is under-
stood here as a metonymy for the societal disposition that accompanies
the sensational and the abominable and often displays pornographic
sights for the insatiable eye of its individuals. The sensational and the
pornographic are inextricably connected to the society of consumers,2
to the commercialized simulacra, to the post-human and to the crisis of
the self. The gaze today, examined from feminist, postcolonial and queer
perspectives, is critically connoted to voyeurism and exploitation.
In her analysis of the contradiction at the heart of staring, Rosemarie
Garland-Thomson (2009) notes: “The extraordinary excites but alarms
us; the ordinary assures but bores us. We want surprise, but perhaps
even more we want to tame that pleasurable astonishment, to domes-
ticate the strange sight into something so common as to be unnoticea-
ble” (p. 19). In this sense, the Phallic Eye could be perceived as practiced
consumerism, in which the phallus is not only a gendered attribute of
the patriarchal regime but also embodies a culture industry ruled by the
capitalist system and its commercial tactics.
Garland-Thomson emphasizes that this ocular gesture of dominance
acts out the gendered asymmetries of patriarchy, as it proliferates in insti-
tutionalized cultural forms such as films, beauty contests, advertising,
striptease routines, and fashion shows. “Laden with sexual desire,
predation, voyeurism, intimidation, and entitlement,” she contends,
“the male gaze often achieves the prolonged intensity of staring.
Nonetheless, cultural narratives about romantic love, feminine beauty,
and heterosexual or homosexual desire can obscure the male gaze’s
endorsement of gender dominance” (p. 41).
According to Slavoj Žižek (2007), postmodernism is mainly about
exposing the obscene object, “displaying the object directly, allowing it
to make visible its own indifferent and arbitrary character” (p. 41) and
it shows “the thing itself as the incarnated, materialized emptiness” (ibid.,
p. 43). Hence, the visual pleasure derives from indifference, alienation,
impotence and perhaps even entropy. It is the bored look of inhabitants
of the society of spectacle who have seen it all and are no longer in a
position of emotive or cognitive involvement.
Since the Phallic Eye can only expose the abominable emptiness,
its images are met with apathy and indifference stemming from a per-
manent and fatal injury to the human mechanism. In this manner,
the Phallic Eye, with its penchant for spectacular imageries and over-
dramatized sensations reflects and encourages a reduction of meaning,
annulment of sense, lack of sublimation, repression of the truth and the
dismantling of myths.
The Phallic Eye also echoes George Bataille’s image of the devasta-
tive eye which yearns for the dark, the indecent and the obscene.
According to Bataille, this is the only way to provoke the bourgeois
social constraints. It is an enthusiastic, bacchanalian emancipation that
challenges the prudent imperatives. The Phallic Eye necessitates trans-
gression. The Bataillean eye is a metaphor for the searching gaze that
exposes the obscene and displays it on stage – sur scène. It is an attempt
to transgress, to reach the obscene real, the abominable, in order to
transgress the borders of sight and vision and oppressive constraints.
Bataille’s journey in Story of the Eye (L’histoire de l’oeil) (1928) is a quest
to reconnoitre the limits of identity and erotica.
Zooming as sadistic and masturbatory practice
In prevalent, formulaic cinemas, which are mostly patriarchal and

heterocentric, the penetrative phallus is symbolically demonstrated
by the very act of the camera zoom. The zoom is a useful instrument
for creating sensational pleasures based on voyeurism, enabling the
viewer to examine the forbidden, the transgressive and the extraordi-
nary. The act of zooming is carried out on a linear, fixed route that is
been worked back and forth. Zooming is significantly a phallic practice.
Through his identification with the spasms of zooming in and out of
the objectified body, the (male) spectator imitates sexual intercourse. It
is an optical mechanism of penetrating, staring and entering, breaking
and moving in and out of the forcefully exposed body, scene, scenery,
sin and obscene. In this manner, zooming is a masculinistic script that
is being constantly written and overwritten, a structured exposure with
its own particular satisfactions and climaxes. It is a sadistic, invasive act
of subordination, dominance, surveillance and obscenity, a spectacular
bacchanalia centred on the extended, erected gaze. The mechanical act
of zooming in and out can also be perceived as a masturbatory practice,
simulating (and stimulating) the consuming Phallic Eye of the beholder.
Introduction 5
Notably, zooming makes the remote accessible. It is a visual device

which extends the human eye and elaborates its optical abilities. Zooming
is a spectacle of becoming closer, a dramatic reduction of the distance
between the viewer and the viewed. Zooming signifies and practices the
desire for intimate relationship or attachment with the gazed object. In
this respect, zooming integrates intimacy and intimidation, creating a
paradoxical situation in which one is eager to possess the desired object,
to consume and conquer it, to make it permeable and be merged with it
at the same time.
Zooming is primarily based on the hierarchal relationship between the
powerful and the powerless, the staring and the stared, the measuring
and the measured, the aroused and the arousing, the evaluating and the
evaluated, the inquirer and the inquired, the requiring and the required.
Zooming is thus a unidirectional process in which the zoomed object
cannot look back at the viewer. Rather, the zoomed object is being looked
at involuntarily, forcefully instrumentalized by the controlling gaze, visu-
ally manipulated by the viewer, and doomed to satisfy the viewer’s needs.
Notably, zooming overcomes limitations of physical, cultural,
emotional and social distances. When zooming is used by press pho-
tographers, in particular, it is often involved with transgressing cultural
norms, legal restrictions, moral values, psychological inhibitions and
social sublimations. Such manipulative exposure essentially contradicts
privacy and discretion. Zooming is an intrusion that is primarily com-
mitted to powerful examination of the object by turning the covert into
the overt, and it expropriates private lives, territories, bodies, motions
and emotions. Zooming is thus often a violent act. It violates one’s
privacy and confidentiality, a mechanical staring that deepens the gaze
on another’s body and environment without their permission. In this
respect, zooming is significantly exploitive.
In mainstream cinema, in particular, the female character is typically
designed to function as a direct object of and for the Phallic Eye of
the implied (hetero)male spectator, who exploits the female image as
an object of sexual stimulation. Consequently, as Laura Mulvey main-
tained in “Narrative Cinema and Visual Pleasure” (1975), the female
character often embodies elements of passivity and subordination,
designed as to-be-looked-at-ness by the patriarchal subjectivity. According
to Mulvey’s Freudian analysis – which highly reflects a binaric and
rigid gender distinction – the sadistic male gaze penetrates the female
image in order to fulfil its scopophilic desire. The male voyeur separates
himself from the female image, and hence objectifies and fetishizes the
(masochistic) woman on screen as the desired Other. This assumed male
spectator identifies with the male character, however, and experiences

a somewhat narcissistic pleasure from his admiration for the male pro-
tagonist, in his possession of the desired female character.
Mulvey’s groundbreaking theorization of the cinematic dichotomy
between the male viewer and the viewed female character has since
been challenged by both straight and queer, male and female thinkers
who theorize the pleasure of the presumably straight female viewer and
her relationship with both the male and female protagonists, and the
multi-layered identifications of queer spectators with their same-sex
cinematic protagonists projected on screen.
Narcissistic pleasure and queer maternal relationship
Occasionally, the camera itself assumes a frontal position analogous to

that of the spectators in the cinema, pretending to articulate their point
of view. “This camera position,” as Gertrud Koch (1985) notes, serves to
present performances of female stars, song and dance numbers addressed
to both the spectator and the male protagonist of the narrative. “Even
as such performances momentarily acknowledge the scopic economy
of the addressee,” Koch adds, “they nevertheless mediate the allegedly
collective view of the camera with that of the male spectator in the film,
thus suturing the spectator into the film from an inescapably masculine-
voyeuristic position” (p. 142). Koch notes that only in rare moments is
the woman granted a comparably orchestrated look at the man as the
object of desire, when a male star is presented to the spectator in a com-
parable constellation – “a constellation which, however only reverses
and thus reproduces the subject/object dichotomy of the dominant dis-
course” (Koch 1985, pp. 142–143). Hence, mainstream cinema engages
in and contributes to the wider patriarchal equation of masculinity with
phallic agency and control through a strategic process of male “despecu-
larization” and female “hyperspecularizaion” (Farmer 2000, p. 210).
In her chapter, “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema’ Inspired by Duel in the Sun” (1981), Mulvey suggests that the
female viewer needs to employ a sort of “transvestist” tactic that will
enable her to enjoy the (patriarchal) film by oscillating between female
and male positions.
In Mulvey’s eyes, nonetheless, the male cinematic character is typi-
cally designed for identification with the male viewer, as the male spec-
tator’s imago, his more perfect, complete and powerful ideal ego than the
“real man”. The male image is imbued accordingly with characteristic
elements of potency and active prowess (Neale 1983, p. 8).
Introduction 7
Gay viewers, however, experience both a narcissistic pleasure of iden-

tification and a scopophilic pleasure of same-sex voyeurism. Brett Farmer
(2000) suggests that cinematic spectatorship acts as a potential site for the
repetition of those forms of maternal identification central to the organi-
zation of (certain) gay male fantasmatic scenarios (p. 168). Although
such association between gayness and maternal identification somewhat
echoes the (stereo)typical articulation of a gay man as “mamma’s boy,”
Farmer finds this association useful for an alternative theorization of the
particular relationship between gays and cinema in a somewhat sub-
versive, non-patriarchal way. “By watching Hollywood films from the
mother’s past, the gay spectator can ‘recall’ in fantasy a structure of desire
from the history of the mother’s existence that predates his own,” he
explains, “taking up her position within this structure and, through an act
of identification, making this position his own” (p. 171). Farmer links gay
viewers’ maternal identification and popular gay camp reading of gender
as performative masquerade, arguing that gay spectators recognize and
celebrate the potentials for gender disorganization offered by the “exces-
sive” stylization of certain female stars’ performances of sexual differences
(ibid., p. 172). In his view, “the much vaunted cult of the adored female
star among gay men becomes readable in this context as another configu-
ration of gay male fantasies of matrocentrism” (ibid.).
Whereas Farmer perceives the gay viewer as doubly-positioned, as
concomitantly the voyeur and the (matrocentric?) identifier, Teresa de
Lauretis (1994), in her theorization of lesbian spectatorship, notes that
female protagonists can effectively mediate spectatorial identification for
lesbian viewers, functioning as bearers of the look and subjects of desire,
acting “as a two-way mirror admitting the spectator into their particular
fantasy” (p. 91). Further, by rearticulating fantasy, masquerade, and
voyeurism in lesbian terms, a film fan constructs “a lesbian subject as the
subject of its fantasy” (ibid., p. 142). In her analysis of the film She Must
Be Seeing Things, de Lauretis contends that “it does not merely represent a
fantasy but marks it as such, recasting and reframing it, working through
it, to address the spectator in a lesbian subject-position” (ibid.).
Koch (1985), however, explains that in her critique of classical
Hollywood film, Mulvey proceeds from the observation that the legend-
ary female figures on the screen – “the Vamps, the glamourous stars, the
beauties idealized to the point of grandiosity – are nothing but substi-
tutes for the lack, elevated fetish-bearers who succeed in satisfying the
scopic needs of the male spectator in offering up to his view what does
not exist: the phallus” (p. 142). Alternatively, gay, lesbian and gender-
bending attitudes towards spectatorship – which highly inspire many of
the chapters in this collection – attempt to challenge the highly phallic

character of the viewing mechanism theorized by Mulvey, and, par-
ticularly, subvert the dichotomous distinctions between viewer-viewed;
masculinity-femininity; activity-passivity, etc.
The haptic visibility of a hardcore reality
What about voluntary self-exposure, for example? Is this merely nar-

cissistic exhibitionism; or, rather, an effective way to improve the
public image of subaltern groups? Kader Attia’s video artwork La Piste
d’Atterrissage (The Landing Strip) (2000–2002), for example, problema-
tizes the presence of the Phallic Eye. This work comprises a series of
photographs of the North-African transgender community in Paris.
Attia presents life-size portraits of members of the community who
mostly work as prostitutes. They are documented at home, when they
dress in women’s clothing, wear heavy make-up and conceal their male
genitalia in order to perform their womanhood. These pictures expose
the liminal character of gender performativity and embrace alternative,
liberating identifications. On the one hand, this can be perceived as
a photographic freak show that satisfies voyeuristic pleasures; on the
other hand, it is a compassionate, sympathetic portrayal of a (trans)
sexual minority which is oppressed and neglected by the heterocentric
society. Significantly, Attia’s work ends with the powerful images of a
Parisian demonstration in support of these transgender individuals. The
signs carried by the demonstrators read: “In Algeria are executed, in
France are excluded!” In visualizing this group and its transformation,
the artist practically encourages inclusion and greater understanding of
transgender individuals who are often victimized by the phallic regime
and its rigid gender distinctions. Here, the dramatic gaze promotes com-
passion and multiculturalism.
The complexity of the Phallic Eye is also reexamined by Henry Giroux
(2006) who recounts the story of the 14-year-old Afro-American boy,
Emmet Till, who was tortured, mutilated and killed in 1953 by white
racists in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman:
Determined to make visible the horribly mangled face and twisted

body of the child as an expression of racial hatred and killing, Mamie
Till, the boy’s mother, insisted that the coffin […] be left open for
four long days. While mainstream news organizations ignored the
horrifying image, Jet magazine published an unedited photo of Till’s
face taken while he lay in his coffin […] The Jet photos not only
Introduction 9
made visible the violent effects of the racial state; they also fueled
massive public anger, especially among blacks, and helped to launch
the Civil Rights Movement. (Giroux 2006, pp. 1–2)
Giroux’s analysis considers this haptic visibility of the tortured boy as an

emancipating counterpraxis that challenges evil forces. Although such
imagery can be criticized as too terrifying and even unbearable, it does
depict a hardcore reality, a social obscenity that is not to be ignored or
obscured. In this sense, the Phallic Eye contests the cliché and other ene-
mies of habitual thought. Gilles Deleuze (2005) calls attention to the fact
that our visual surrounding is suffused with such clichés: “We are besieged
by photographs that are illustrations, by newspapers that are narrations,
by cinema images, by television images. There are psychical clichés just
as there are physical clichés – ready-made perceptions, memories, phan-
tasms” (p. 71). Further, this eye is an implement of de-automatization, of
“the fight against clichés” (p. 73), opposing a homogeneous perception
of reality and embracing pluralism. In contrast to automatic identifica-
tions, generalizations, superficial plenitudes and false unities, here the
Phallic Eye confronts bigoted clichés.
Interdisciplinary exposure of the Phallic Eye
In the same spirit, Sensational Pleasures in Cinema, Literature and Visual

Culture: The Phallic Eye examines the multidimensional Phallic Eye as a
human, mechanical, artistic, photographic and literal eye. The nature
of this collection is clearly interdisciplinary. Our interdisciplinary scope
is inspired by the growing interdisciplinary research, particularly in cul-
tural studies. We believe that interdisciplinary cooperation capitalizes on
a variety of perspectives and practices that each discipline offers in quest
of providing creative solutions to multifaceted problems. As Stephanie
M. Reich and Jennifer A. Reich (2006) note, interdisciplinary work may
be informed and facilitated by efforts to promote multiculturalism. They
explain that multiculturalism, i.e. the belief that all groups are of equal
value and that no group should dominate, “has grown out of an increas-
ingly diverse society that requires more thoughtful policies and practices
that allow all members to thrive” (Reich and Reich 2006, p. 53).
As Moti Nissani (1997) contends in his defence of interdisciplinary
knowledge and research, creativity often requires interdisciplinary knowl-
edge, particularly in regard to some worthwhile topics of research which
fall in the interstices among the traditional disciplines. Nissani adds that
many intellectual, social, and practical problems require interdisciplinary
approaches, and interdisciplinary knowledge and research serve to

remind us of the unity-of-knowledge ideal.
Significantly, interdisciplinarians not only enjoy greater flexibility
in their research, according to Nissani, but also treat themselves to the
intellectual equivalent of travelling in new lands, and they may help
breach communication gaps in the modern academy. In this way, these
researchers help to mobilize its enormous intellectual resources in the
cause of greater social rationality and justice. And we certainly agree
with Nissani that by bridging fragmented disciplines, interdisciplinar-
ians might also play a role in the defence of academic freedom.
In this spirit, Sensational Pleasures in Cinema, Literature and Visual
Culture: The Phallic Eye begins with a part titled Forbidden Spectatorship
and Visceral Imageries, accentuates the clandestine gaze along with
voyeurism and the (im)possibility of to-be-looked-at-ness. In this part,
Rachel Gottesman in her chapter “The unpardoned gaze: forbidden
erotic vision in Greek mythology” studies Classical myths that engage
with voyeurism and forbidden scopophilia between humans and gods.
Gottesman focuses on the myths of Actaeon and the myth of the young
Teiresias. Both myths share an unusual structure cantered on a human
being who sinfully gazes upon a deity, and voyeurism presented as a
sexual activity. Gottesman investigates the difference between the gaze
of the gods and that of humans, the status of voyeurism and anticipated
punishment for scopophilia.
Lorrain Dumenil analyses “The ‘desire awoken by the images’: on
Nan Goldin’s Scopophilia,” focusing on Goldin’s 2010 installation, a
25-minute-long slide show of over 400 photographs. Dumenil examines
the relations between scopophilia and voyeurism and reads Scopophilia
as revealing the deep nature of Goldin’s artistic pretext, which is the
pure desire to look at human bodies, real or represented, and to estab-
lish an interpersonal relationship with them.
Marion Krauthaker, in her chapter “The Peepshow and the Voyeuse:
Colette’s Challenge to Patriarchy and the Male Gaze” analyses the 1932
novel The Pure and the Impure as a text that depolarizes binaries and
liberates marginalized sexualities. Krauthaker argues that such psycho-
sexual positions anticipate modern gender theories. Colette’s voyeuse,
the female homodeigetic narrator who acts like the shutters of a peep-
show box, constitutes an avant-garde denunciation of the patriarchal
gaze, as well as a statement against heteronormativity.
Matthew Martin focuses on the male gaze in cinema that has not
only distorted the majority’s views on the queer experience but has also
denied the queer community’s ability to develop a sense of self and
Introduction 11
place within the larger culture. In his chapter “The monstrous nonhet-
eronormative: a queer positioning within American horror films by the
male gaze,” he examines horror films that feature monstrous represen-
tations of heteronormativity, particularly The Exorcist (William Friedkin,
USA 1973) and The Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz, USA 1986). Martin
reworks the concepts of the monstrous feminine and the abject in order
to explain the way in which the mutilation and distortion of the female
body eradicates female presence.
Kathleen Scott, in her chapter “Bearing witness to the unbearable:
the ethics of the gaze in Irréversible,” examines the violent assault on
the bodies of both characters and spectators in the New Extremist film
Irréversible (Gaspar Noé, France 2002). Scott explains how in employing
haptic visuality, Irréversible allows spectators to experience the violent
and shocking imagery as non-cognitive events of phenomenal thought,
rather than becoming engaged with the film narrative solely on the
cognitive level of identification. Such spectatorial experience of visceral
imagery, according to Scott, offers an access to a sensual ethics that is
constituted through bodies rather than the disembodied rational mind.
The second part in this book, which is devoted to Phallic and Anti-
Phallic Fantasies, revises phallocentrism as the core of the symbolic
order and questions its misgivings and ramifications. In this part, Finn
Ballard’s chapter “Pornographic Images of Transmasculinity” investigates
the development of the representation of transmasculinities in fiction
film, in cinematic and photographic queer pornography and in erotic
self-portraiture on the Internet. Ballard describes his own experiences in
the community of transmasculine artists and performers. In particular, he
addresses the issue of transmasculine visibility and its social and political
ramifications, and examines Alley of the Tranny Boys (Christopher Lee, USA
1998) and Trannywood Pictures films like Cubbyholes: Trans Men in Action
(2008) and Rec Room (2002).
Ruth Heholt’s chapter, “‘Look Closer’: Sam Mendes’ visions of white
men,” examines the gaze that is being re-turned to white men and the
nuclear family. Heholt suggests that the white gaze that disempowered
the marginalized for so long now works in a different way, particularly
when it applies to white men. In her analysis of Sam Mendes’ films
American Beauty (USA 1999), Revolutionary Road (USA-UK 2008) and
Away We Go (USA-UK 2009), she argues that the gaze that individualizes
the white, normative, middle-class men in the films ostensibly allows
them to disappear as (privileged) white men.
In the chapter “Between the Joy of the Woman Castrator and the Silence
of the Woman Victim: Following the Exhibition The Uncanny XX,” Sigal
Barkai attempts to capture a specific form of Freud’s the Uncanny: the

feminine uncanny. Barkai, an artist and curator, analyzes the relation-
ship between phallus anxiety and a collective, archaic experience shared
by women. She focuses on a particular art exhibition and its artists’
creative process and the transfiguration of individual gender and sexual
experiences.
Alexander Sergeant’s “Zack Snyder’s impossible gaze: problematizing
‘looked-at-ness’ in the fantasy of Sucker Punch,” examines the film Sucker
Punch (USA-Canada 2011) and shows the impossibility of looked-at-
ness, the impossibility of the spectators’ subconscious desire to impose
their self over the impossible bodies on screen. As such, the women are
not dominated by a male gaze, as Mulvey argued, but rather function as
the dominating force. The male gaze itself is obliterated by the screen’s
showcased impossibility.
Fanny Delnieppe’s chapter “In-between complicity and subversion:
D. M. Thomas’s Charlotte, or, a reflection of/on ‘pornographic’ literature
and society,” discusses pornography and authorship, focusing on the
2000 neo-Victorian novel Charlotte that rewrites Charlotte Brontë’s Jane
Eyre. Delnieppe reads the pornographic dimension of Thomas’s text as
reflecting on a world devoid of a belief system and ethics, haunted by
the irrepressible drive to exposure. Charlotte both takes part in and con-
stitutes an indictment of, a decadent literature which desacralizes the
Victorian canon in order to pander to the reader’s voyeuristic interests.
At the same time, it relates to the reader’s politically correct expecta-
tions, as it is complicit with, and critical of, a postmodern society.
The third part in this book Bleeding Masculinities, explores the
vulnerability and potentiality of the gendered gaze. In this part, Laura
Christiansen’s chapter “‘There’s no losing it’: disability and voyeurism
in Rear Window and Vertigo” offers a new reading of Hitchcock’s mas-
terpieces. She compares the relationship between physical disability
and public voyeurism in Rear Window (USA 1954) and the relation-
ship between mental disability and personal voyeurism in Vertigo
(USA 1958). Christiansen maintains that Hitchcock’s preoccupation
with voyeurism anticipated 21st-century life, in which surveillance has
become prevalent and Internet voyeurism supplants the act of neigh-
bourhood spying.
James Stone, in his chapter “Phallic trauma and the end of the world in
Romeo is Bleeding,” reads Peter Medak’s Romeo Is Bleeding (UK-USA 1993)
as a campy reimaging of gender relations. Stone examines the interplay
between the male protagonist, a paragon of patriarchal authority but also
a committed voyeur, and the female protagonist, who repeatedly assaults
Introduction 13
the embodiments and symbols of phallic power. In particular, Stone

researches the cinematic interplay of gazes that mocks the male gaze and
allows the triumph of the female gaze that appropriates the phallus.
Jacqueline Brady, in her chapter “Ambiguous exposures: gender bend-
ing muscles in the 1930s physique photographs of Tony Sansone and
sports photographs of Babe Didrikson” examines the unconventional
and gender-bending bodies photographed for physique magazine in
North America in the 1930s. Brady focuses on the effeminate depic-
tions of the muscular male body of Sansone and the abject androgynous
image of Babe Didrikson. She analyses these spectacular bodies as dis-
rupting the gender binarism and as alternative cultural forms.
Frances E. Pheasant-Kelly’s chapter “Reframing gender and visual
pleasure: new signifying practices in contemporary cinema” criticizes
Mulvey’s formulation of the indispensible to-be-looked-at-ness and sets out
to reframe the latter’s notion of visual pleasure by indentifying new prac-
tices in the signification of gender and the gendered gaze. Pheasant-Kelly
examines films that introduce gender-neutral techniques of representing
and looking at the female body (Sam Mendes’s 1993 film American Beauty
and Karyn Kusama’s 2000 film Girlfight) and films that sexually objectify
the male body, including by other male characters, and offer it seduc-
tively for spectator consumption (Martin Campbell’s 2006 film Casino
Royale and David Fincher’s 1999 film Fight Club).
The fourth part in this book, Surveillance and Big Brothers, addresses
more recent aspects of the Phallic Eye as a constitutive element in the new
media, digital devices, and interactive user feedback. In this part, Meera
Perampalam suggests that voyeurism and surveillance are intimately
connected incontemporary society, which is close to Michel Foucault’s
Disciplinary Society. In today’s society, a postmodern visual “surveillance
culture” employs video surveillance images which are produced by indis-
creet eye that encroaches on our daily lives. This new way of watching
the other and ourselves is revealed when security cameras take the place
of conventional film and TV cameras. This new sort of images, penetrat-
ing the inviolable, is analysed by Perampalam in regard to surveillance
aesthetics and narratives in the film Sliver (1993), the movie and TV show
Look (2007, 2010), the film LSD: Love, Sex aurDhoka (2010) and the music
video Outside (1998).
In “Thrust and probe: serial murder medicine and the voyeuristic
pleasures of violent penetration,” Brenda S. Gardenour claims that the
appetite for voyeurism, in particular the penetration of soft and assail-
able bodies by steel blades, is revealed in the continuing obsession
with serial killers, both fictional and real, and their representations in
film and television. Gardenour reads horror films such as Peeping Tom
(Michael Powell, UK 1960), Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978), The Last
Horror Movie (Julian Richards, UK 2003), and medicalized horror films,
e.g. Saw VI (Kevin Greutert, Canada-USA-UK-Australia 2009) and Dead
Ringers (David Cronenberg, Canada-USA 1988), as well as works of medi-
cal pornography in order to delineate the scope and origin of our scopo-
philia of the subjective and subjected body.
The fifth part in this book, Gaps and Cracks, is centred on the
Traumatic Real, the object that cannot be represented in the symbolic
order and cannot be reached unless traumatically. In this part, Inbar
Shaham’s “Seeing Red: The Female Body and the Body of the Text in
Hitchcock’s Marnie” suggests that a puzzling question in this film remains
unanswered: if the sight of red objects causes Marnie’s hysterical paralysis,
then what about her monthly encounters with the red blood which
originates her trauma? Shaham notes that this film’s detective plot hides
indications of the tabooed menstrual blood. Hitchcock’s indirect refer-
ences to the profane, intimidating and envied aspects of this physiological
phenomenon are perceived in Marnie as part of its gothic imagery. By cast-
ing Mark, Marnie’s domineering husband, as a self-appointed sleuth in a
gothic detective tale, however, Hitchcock addresses the limitations of the
Phallic Eye. With all its power and privileges, the Phallic Eye’s fetishistic
inclinations obscure its view.
In “Pictura in Arcana: the Traumatic Real as in/visible crack,” Lysane
Fauvel analyses three paintings of reclining naked women, all of which
have a certain focus on the genitalia: Rembrandt’s Danaë (1636–1646),
Courbet’s The origin of the world (1866), and Velázquez’s Venus at Her
Mirror (1644–1648). The analysis employs the Traumatic Real, the in/vis-
ible and the distinction between glance and gaze. Fauvel analyzes these
paintings’ function as a ruse for the spectator, since while they “cap-
ture,” or even “imprison” his gaze, what appears to occur in them (each
in its own separate way) is the displacement of the Real itself, which
cannot ever be represented.
Virginie Thomas’s chapter, “The female body in Frederick Sandys’s
paintings,” engages with gender in the Victorian artistic discourse.
Thomas analyses the British painter’s representation of female sensu-
ality in a series of paintings of mythological figures, including Medea
(1866–1868), Helen of Troy (1867) and Vivien (1863). Thomas stresses
that the majority of these sensual female figures are represented with
their gazes turned away. She reads this as offered to the Phallic Eye of
the viewer in order to exempt him from turning aside his gaze, and to
allow him to yield unmolested to his scopophilia. Thomas discusses the
Introduction 15
Victorian gender discourse that warns men against lethal female influ-
ence and the artist’s attempt to sublimate the male viewer’s erotic drive.
These five parts of Sensational Pleasures in Cinema, Literature and Visual
Culture: The Phallic Eye offer different, intriguing perspectives on the
materialization of the Phallic Eye in mediated spectacles, spectatorships,
surveillance and resistance in cinema, literature, mythology, photogra-
phy, arts and erotic entertainment. As Margaret Lee Zoreda (1997) warns,
“culture is a ﬂuid phenomenon that is difﬁcult to enclose within neat
boundaries” (p. 1), and, as Mikhail Bakhtin (1989) proposes, “growth and
dialogical enrichment occurs in the border zone between cultures, disci-
plines, eras, subjects, and so forth” (p. 345).
Indeed, the diverse 19 chapters in this collection expose the perilous
beauty and pain of diverse cultural, subcultural and countercultural
border zones. They reflect a variety of perspectives, approaches and
methodologies: from theoretical chapters to close reading and analysis
of particular visual and literal texts; from retrospective evaluations of
cultural phenomena to deep personal insights and investments that
can almost be read as pieces of life writing. These chapters colourfully
expose the intellectual and corporeal politics of the gaze, aestheticized
desires, unruly visual pleasures and stimulating countercultural trans-
gressions. They all manifest a true cultural desire. As Reich and Reich
(2006) suggest, cultural desire is primarily the wish to engage in the pro-
cess of becoming culturally aware, knowledgeable, skilful, and familiar
with cultural encounters (p. 55). “Applied to interdisciplinary work,”
they add, “it is the desire and motivation to develop the tools needed
to work collaboratively with other disciplines” (ibid.).
We are grateful to the distinguished contributors for their cultural
desire and intellectual passion. We hope that our readers will enjoy their
inspiring, passionate and often surprising chapters as much as we have
done. In the age of the Phallic Eye, our only advice to our readers is to
be good. Otherwise, one should be careful of the Phallic Eye …
Notes
1. The statement “An object of terror and delight” is a quotation from Fanny
Hill: Or, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland (1749). Fanny Hill
describes her young lover’s enormous phallus thus: “[…] I saw, with won-
der and surprise, what” not the play thing of a boy, not the weapon of a
man, but a Maypole, of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been
observed, it must have belonged to a young giant. Yet I could not, without
pleasure, behold, and even venture to feel, such a length, such a breadth of
animated ivory! perfectly well turned and fashioned, the proud stiffness of
which distented its skin, whose smooth polish and velvet softness might vie
with that of the most delicate of our sex, and whose exquisite whiteness was
not a little set off by a sprout of black curling hair round the root: through
the jetty springs of which the fair skin shewed as in a fine evening you may
have remarked the clear light through the branchwork of distant trees over-
topping the summit of a hill: then the broad of blueish-casted incarnate of
the head, and blue serpentines of its veins, altogether composed the most
striking assemblage of figure and colours in nature. In short, it stood an object
of terror and delight” (Cleland 2008, p. 38).
2. These terms are not identical. Bauman uses the latter.
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Filmography
Alley of the Tranny Boys. Dirs. C. Lee and J. Zapata. Perf. Angel and Guy. LeeC,
1998.
American Beauty. Dir. S. Mendes. Perf. K. Spacey, A. Bening and T. Birch. DreamWorks,
1999.
Away We Go. Dir. S. Mendes. Perf. J. Krasinski, M. Rudolph and A. Janney.
Focus Features/Edward Saxon Productions (ESP)/Big Beach Films/Neal Street
Productions/Twins Financing, 2009.
The Bourne Identity. Dir. D. Liman. Perf. F. Potente, M. Damon and C. CooPerf.
Universal Pictures/Kennedy-Marshall Company/Hypnotic/Kalima Productions/
Stillking Films, 2002.
The Bourne Supremacy. Dir. P. Greengrass. Perf. M. Damon, F. Potente and J. Allen.
Universal Pictures/Motion Picture THETA Productionsgesellschaft/Kennedy-
Marshall Company/Ludlum Entertainment/Hypnotic, 2004.
The Bourne Ultimatum. Dir. P. Greengrass. Perf. M. Damon, É. Ramírez and J.
Allen. Universal Pictures/Motion Picture BETA Producktionsgesellschaft/
Kennedy-Marshall Company/Ludlum Entertainment/Bourne Again, 2007.
Casino Royale. Dir. M. Campbell. Perf. D. Craig, E. Green and J. Dench.
Columbia Pictures/Eon Productions/Casino Royale Productions/Stillking
Films/Babelsberg Film/Danjak/United Artists, 2006.
Cubbyholes: Trans Men in Action. Dirs. C. Pierce, P. Warren and M. Van Helsing.
Perf. I. Foxe, D. Hardlove, I. Sparks, M. Van Helsing, M. Davis and CJ Cockburn.
T-Wood Pictures, 2008.
Dead Ringers. Dir. D. Cronenberg. Perf. J. Irons, G. Bujold and H. von Palleske.
Morgan Creek Productions/Téléfilm Canada/Mantle Clinic II, 1988.
The Exorcist. Dir. W. Friedkin. Perf. E. Burstyn, M. von Sydow and L. Blair. Warner
Bros./Hoya Productions, 1973.
Fight Club. Dir. D. Fincher. Perf. B. Pitt, E. Noton and H. Bonham Carter. Fox 2000
Pictures/regency Enterprises/Linson Films/Atman Entertainment/Knickerbocker
Films/Taurus Film, USA 1999.
Halloween. Dir. J. Carpenter. Perf. D. Pleasence, J. Lee Curtis and T. Moran.
Compass International Pictures/Falcon International Productions, 1978.
Irréversible. Dir. G. Noé. Perf. M. Bellucci, V. Cassel and A. Dupontel. 120 Films/
Eskwad/Grandpierre/Les Cinémas de la Zone/Nord-Ouest Productions/
Rossignon/StudioCanal, 2002.
The Last Horror Movie. Dir. J. Richards. Perf. K. Howarth, M. Stevenson and
A. Beamish. Prolific Films/Snakehair Productions, 2003.
The Little Shop of Horrors. Dir. F. Oz. Perf. R. Moranis, E. Greene and V. Gardenia.
Geffen Company, 1986.
Marnie. Dir. A. Hitchcock. Perf. T. Hedren, S. Connery and D. Baker. Universal
Pictures, 1964.
Panic Room. Dir. D. Fincher. Perf. J. Foster, K. Stewart and F. Whitaker. Columbia
Pictures Corporation/Hofflund-Polone/Indelible Pictures, 2002.
Peeping Tom. Dir. M. Powell. Perf. K. Böhm, A. Massey and M. Shearer. Michael
Powell, 1960.
Rear Window. Dir. A. Hitchcock. Perf. J. Stewart, G. Kelly and W. Corey. Paramount
Pictures/Patron Inc., 1954.
Rec Room 1. Dir. Trannywood Pictures. Ed. I. Sparks. Perf. D. Dash, C. MacKinsey,
Q. Valentine, J-Bird. T-Wood Pictures, 2011.
Rec Room 2. Dir. Trannywood Pictures. Ed. I. Sparks. Perf. I. Senzuri, S. Chen,
V. Hunt, T. Springs. T-Wood Pictures, 2012.
Revolutionary Road. Dir. S. Mendes. Perf. L. DiCaprio, K. Winslet and C. Fitzgerald.
DreamWorks/BBC Films/Evamere Entertainment/Neal Street Productions/
Goldcrest Pictures/Scott Rudin Productions, 2008.
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Filmed Entertainment/Working Title Films/Hilary Henkin, 1993.
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Pictures/A Bigger Boat/Saw VI Productions, 2009.
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Zweites Deutscher Fernsehen (ZDF), 1987.
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Pictures, 1993.
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Bros./Legendary Pictures/Cruel & Unusual Films/Lennox House Films, 2011.
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Pictures/Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions, 1958.
Reference artwork
Attia, Kader (2000–2002). La Piste d’Atterrissage (landing track). Diaporama/slide-
show. City Museum of Modern Art, Paris.
Part I
Forbidden Spectatorship
and Visceral Imageries
1
The Unpardoned Gaze: Forbidden
Erotic Vision in Greek Mythology
Rachel Gottesman
A long time ago, in a time when ancient gods roamed the earth, there
lived a young Greek man named Actaeon from the city of Thebes. He
was a handsome, talented and skilled hunter. One day, after a success-
ful hunt in the forest, he came by accident upon a small river pond
near a cave where to his great amazement he saw the goddess Artemis
(Latin Diana) bathing with her company of nymphs in the cool waters.
Artemis, a virgin goddess, patron of wild animals and small children,
mistress of hunting and a major deity connected with initiation rites,
noticed his forbidden gaze. First she blushed in embarrassment “as clouds
bright-tinted by the slanting sun, or purple-dyed Aurora, so appeared Diana’s
countenance when she was seen,”1 then she executed a punishment: she
turned Actaeon into a stag and set his pack of fifty dogs to hunt and
devour him.2
The Hellenistic poet Callimachus (310/305–240 BCE) who worked in
the library of Alexandria is the first poet to mention this version of the
myth.3 In other, earlier, versions Actaeon is killed for different reasons;
in some he raped Semele, the lover of Zeus and mother of Dionysus,4 in
others he boasted that he was a better hunter than the goddess Artemis,
or attempted to marry Artemis in her own sanctuary.5 Greek mythol-
ogy has much overlapping, corresponding and sometimes contradict-
ing versions to myths, which reflect both different aspects of Ancient
Greek society and methodological questions of dating and transmitting
knowledge. In the context of our investigation we can set aside other
variants of Actaeon’s myth and concentrate on the story of the disas-
trous glance at the naked goddess.
The story of Artemis and Actaeon, like many Greek myths, embodies
references to social structures and religious practices. Artemis, the twin
sister of Apollo, was the goddess of hunting and deeply connected to
21
22 Rachel Gottesman
the initiation rituals of girls. She was one of the three goddesses, along
with Athena goddess of wisdom and warfare and Hestia goddess of the
hearth, who took an oath to preserve their virginity. Artemis’s virgin-
ity was unique, for unlike the highly rationalized asexual virginity of
Athena or the symbolic one of Hestia, which reflected the invariability
of her cult, Artemis’s celibacy was highly sexualized and erotic, just like
that of a Greek maiden of a marriageable age.6 In her myths Artemis
is usually accompanied by an entourage of nymphs, corresponding to
her cult, which includes ceremonies of young girls, virgins, performing
ritual dances in honour of the goddess.7 One can therefore interpret
the myth of Actaeon as an emphasis on Artemis’s virginity, which must
be cherished and guarded at all costs, just like the virginity of a young
maiden before her marriage.
Another interpretation of the myth focuses on the rituals accompany-
ing the hunt in pre-historic societies. This is based on a thesis first intro-
duced by Walter Burkert, one of the most influential historians of Greek
religion, in his book Homo Necans. Burkert contends that hunting, as a
means of obtaining food, was a dominant influence on human evolu-
tion and cultural development (as opposed to gathering or scavenging).
The guilt incurred in the violence of the hunt was transformed into
what can be called “sacred crimes,” which through rituals of cleansing
and expiation served to unite the community. Burkert (1983: 112–113)
interprets the myth of Actaeon in this light and concludes: “Actaeon’s
death is a sacrificial ritual of the hunt, consecrated by the mistress of
the beasts (Artemis) and performed in the form that had been standard
since Paleolithic timed.”
The myth of Actaeon reveals more than just social and religious prac-
tices; it also illuminates cultural notions of visual pleasure through the
voyeurism that lies at its core. Poor Actaeon’s hunting excursion ends
with his forbidden gaze at the goddess’s nudity, a gaze that reverses and
distorts the hunt: the hunter is metamorphosed into the prey, the vic-
timizer into the victim. The severe punishment is a result of the Greek
perception of the divine. Greek mythology presents a complex and vivid
picture of the relations between humans and their gods. The gods take
human form (anthropomorphism), they are subjected to emotions such
as love, jealousy and revenge and they constantly interfere in human
affairs. There is nonetheless a clear and unambiguous line that separates
gods from humans. First and most important is the fact that humans are
mortal while gods are immortal; almost every aspect of the god-human
relationship is shaped by this basic notion (Vernant, 1991: 27–49). The
various myths telling the story of Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire
The Unpardoned Gaze 23
from Mount Olympus and gave it to humanity, are a paradigmatic

example of myths dealing with the separation between gods and mortals
and the social and ritual aspects they transmit.8 Actaeon’s transforma-
tion into a stag and his death by being torn apart by his own dogs is a
punishment for gazing at what must not be seen; for an unpermitted
gaze at a goddess transgresses the boundary between gods and mortals.
Actaeon’s gaze can therefore be seen as a means of rebellion and
supreme pride (the Greek hubris); he had challenged the cosmic order
through the power of the eye.9 The gaze laid upon the goddess, though
accidental, was by no means innocent for, as we shall see, the erotic
gaze has a unique dominating power: it possesses and subordinates the
subject. Under no condition would a powerful and vengeful goddess
such as Artemis consent to this kind of erotic possessiveness. The prob-
lem with Actaeon’s gaze was not only its erotic nature, but the under-
mining of the authoritarian order manifested in a human gaze upon a
deity. Accordingly, the punishment diminishes Actaeon’s authoritarian
status. If his direct gaze at a nude deity can be seen as an attempt to
enhance his status (from man to god), then the punishment of his
metamorphosis into a stag embodies a reduction in status and abilities
(from man to animal). Actaeon being hunted by his own dogs, which
had been his absolute subjects only a few moments before the events
took their tragic turn, symbolizes the downfall of the hero.
The notion of voyeurism as an undermining act against authority,
and its resulting punishment, has a wide and varied presence in both
ancient and modern literature. The forbidden erotic gaze has many vari-
ants in the Greek literary corpus, both mythical and other. A fascinating
example is found in The Histories, written in the 5th century BCE by
Herodotus. The Histories recounts the story of the war between Persia
and the Greek world (499–449 BCE) and is considered to be the first
historical composition. Herodotus tells us a quaint story regarding the
throne of Lydia, an ancient kingdom in Asia Minor. The tale includes
forbidden voyeurism, an undermining of majestic authority and an
unexpected punishment. It begins with King Candaules of Lydia:
This Candaules, then, fell in love with his own wife, so much so that
he believed her to be by far the most beautiful woman in the world;
and believing this, he praised her beauty beyond measure to Gyges …
who was his favourite among his bodyguard; for it was to Gyges
that he entrusted all his most important secrets. After a little while,
Candaules, doomed to misfortune, spoke to Gyges thus: “Gyges, I do
not think that you believe what I say about the beauty of my wife;
24 Rachel Gottesman
men trust their ears less than their eyes: so you must see her naked.”
Gyges protested loudly at this. “Master,” he said, “what an unsound
suggestion, that I should see my mistress naked! When a woman’s
clothes come off, she dispenses with her modesty, too. Men have long
ago made wise rules from which one ought to learn; one of these is
that one should mind one’s own business. As for me, I believe that
your queen is the most beautiful of all women, and I ask you not to
ask of me what is lawless.” Candaules’ answer: “Courage, Gyges! Do
not be afraid of me, that I say this to test you, or of my wife, that you
will have any harm from her. I will arrange it so that she shall never
know that you have seen her. I will bring you into the chamber where
she and I lie and conceal you behind the open door; and after I have
entered, my wife too will come to bed. There is a chair standing near
the entrance of the room: on this she will lay each article of her cloth-
ing as she takes it off, and you will be able to look upon her at your
leisure. Then, when she moves from the chair to the bed, turning her
back on you, be careful she does not see you going out through the
doorway.” As Gyges could not escape, he consented. Candaules, when
he judged it to be time for bed, brought Gyges into the chamber; his
wife followed presently, and when she had come in and was laying
aside her garments, Gyges saw her; when she turned her back upon
him to go to bed, he slipped from the room. The woman glimpsed him
as he went out, and perceived what her husband had done. But though
shamed, she did not cry out or let it be seen that she had perceived
anything, for she meant to punish Candaules … As soon as it was day
she called Gyges … When Gyges came, the lady addressed him thus:
“Now, Gyges, you have two ways before you; decide which you will
follow. You must either kill Candaules and take me and the throne of
Lydia for your own, or be killed yourself now without more ado; that
will prevent you seeing what you should not see. One of you must die:
either he, the contriver of this plot, or you, who have outraged all custom
by looking on me uncovered.” Gyges stood awhile astonished at this …
But when he saw that dire necessity was truly upon him either to kill
his master or himself be killed by others, he chose his own life … Thus
he made himself master of the king’s wife and sovereignty.10
Herodotus demonstrates how the erotic-voyeuristic gaze is closely con-

nected to questions of authority and power.11 Once Gyges had seen the
naked queen he had only two options: to be killed for crossing the line
between servant and master; or to realize the authority inherent in his
gaze by becoming himself the master (killing the king and taking over
both realm and queen). The conflict presented by Herodotus, like that
found in the myth of Actaeon, is more about domination and power
than about chastity and moral behaviour.
The same is true for more modern literary examples. Tess, in Thomas
Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, was raped by her master’s son Alec and
paid a grave price for her futile attempt to be accepted among the aris-
tocracy. Maslova, in Leo Tolstoy’s Resurrection, was forced into a brief
affair with her master Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhlyudov. The affair resulted
in her being fired, becoming a prostitute, framed for murder, convicted
by mistake and sent to Siberia.12 Just as in the Greek myths, it does
not make a difference that the sexual act was unwanted by the victim.
In all these cases the erotic interaction between superior and inferior
is perceived as an undermining of a traditional set of hierarchies and
dominating structures.
Another example can be found in the myth of the blinding of
Teiresias.13 The story takes place on a hot summer afternoon, when all is
silent and still in the burning heat on Mount Helicon (on the modern
island of Evia). Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare, and her beloved
nymph, Chariclo, have found relief from the heat in a cool fountain.
They disrobe and bathe in the water. Only one man is walking on the
mountain at that hour – Teiresias, the young son of Chariclo. He acci-
dentally arrives at that very place and sees that which is not to be seen.
The forbidden human gaze upon the divine nudity resolves in a cruel
punishment: Athena takes away the boy’s sight and the dazzling after-
noon becomes forever darkened. Athena, however, also pities the boy
and gives him the gift of prophecy:
For I will make him a seer to be sung of men hereafter, yea, more
excellent than any other. He shall know the birds – which is of good
omen among all the countless birds that fly and what birds are of
ill-omened flight … Also will I give him a great staff, which shall
guide his feet as he hath need, and I will give him a long term of
life. And he only, when he dies, shall walk among the dead having
understanding, honored of the great Leader of Peoples.14
Athena grants Teiresias four compensations: first and most significant is his
prophetic ability; Teiresias can now know the future and the true nature of
things. She has given him a great staff to guide his steps, a familiar attrib-
ute of the blind, which exteriorizes his disability and marks him as a blind
man. Third, Teiresias is blessed with a long life – seven generations; and
he thus becomes the mythological seer of Thebes and plays a dominant
26 Rachel Gottesman
part in the Theban mythical cycle, which includes the stories of Oedipus,
Antigone and more. Finally, the goddess bestows upon Teiresias cognitive
ability in the afterlife. The realm of the Underworld, of Hades, lies beneath
the earth; this is the place in which the souls dwell after death, dispos-
sessed of their memories, cognition and understanding. Teiresias acquires
the unique ability to retain his consciousness in the afterlife.15
Greek mythology contains many stories concerned with blindness and
the deprivation of sight and in many cases the blinding is a punishment
for sexual misdemeanour.16 King Oedipus, who ends up blinding him-
self as self-punishment for his unwitting offences (parricide and incest),
is but one such famous example.17 Tiresias’s gaze at the nude Athena
clearly belongs to the category of sex crimes. It is therefore tempting to
accept the psychoanalytic interpretation of the myth, which argues that
blinding is a symbolic castration.18 This interpretation is nonetheless
highly problematic, for the myth embodies an ambiguity: Teiresias no
doubt indeed committed a sexual offence against a deity and received
the appropriate punishment (for a crime involving forbidden sight he
was deprived of his vision), yet he also acquired the precious and rare
gift of prophecy. Was he cursed or blessed? This question remains open.
Teiresias lost his visual sight but gained a spiritual insight. The notion
that lack of sight is compensated by spiritual insight has another promi-
nent expression in Greek tradition: in the blind poet. Beginning with
Homer, who was traditionally regarded as blind, the “typical” poet was
perceived as someone who has gained the blessing of the Muses in the
cost of losing his sight.19 Homer describes a blind bard in the palace of
King Alcinous: “whom the Muse loved above all other men, and gave
him both good and evil; of his sight she deprived him, but gave him
the gift of sweet song.”20
Ariadni Gartziou-Tatti argues that in Greek tradition the gift of sweet
song is usually accompanied by deprivation of sight.21 The poet, like the
seer, possesses a specialized knowledge, inspired by the gods or Muses.
Many Greek poems begin with the poet’s summoning of the Muses: “Tell
me, O Muse, of the man of many devices,” sings Homer in the open-
ing lines of The Odyssey, and Hesiod begins his Works and Days with:
“Muses of Pieria who give glory through song, come hither.” The poet
cannot sing of the glory of heroes without the inspiration of the Muses,
just as the seer cannot prophesize without the guidance of the gods.
In both cases divine inspiration comes hand in hand with the physi-
cal condition of blindness. Poets and prophets stand in an especially
close relationship with the gods, and this is the basic reason for their
disability.22
The fundamental relation between blindness and insight is a con-

cept with many cultural references, such as reflected in Gloucester in
Shakespeare’s King Lear, who gained insight but lost his eyes; or the psy-
chic blind sister in Nicolas Roeg’s film Don’t Look Now (1973). Another
example is the tragic character of Selma Ježková, played by Björk in Lars
von Trier’s film Dancer in the Dark (2000), who slips into a trance-like
state as her sight gradually diminishes and her life becomes distressing
and distorted. The overall imagery of the blind person has a mystical
and ambiguous heritage: the person is crippled and helpless, yet can see
the true nature of things and perceive reality on a higher, purer, level.
A fascinating example of the complexity of blind imagery can be found
in the documentary film Black Sun (2000), directed by Gary Tarn. The film
follows the story of Hugues de Montalembert, an artist and filmmaker who
was blinded in a violent attack in 1978. Through creative imagery and
engaging narration by Montalembert himself, the film presents an expres-
sionist, poetic meditation both on life without vision and on the idea
of perception in general. When describing his first experiences after the
attack, he says: “It was falling into a pot of dark honey … you become like
a computer, receiving billions of tiny tiny little information and at the end
your brain builds a visual image. My brain was automatically producing
images, all the time, images – exactly like a film. I was making films in my
head.” Montalembert portrayed his blindness not as a lack of visual percep-
tion, but as an intensive and disturbing mechanism of image-making. The
blind mind, according to Montalembert, is flooded by visual images that
come from within rather than from the outside world. This is not that far
from the Greek mystical attitude towards the blind seers and poets. Unlike
Actaeon, whose authoritarian status was diminished, Teiresias’s ambiguous
punishment places him in a unique position between gods and men.
It is important to keep in mind here that within the enormous corpus
of Greek mythology the myths of both Actaeon and Teiresias are rather
exceptional, for they present a story in which a mortal gazes upon a deity.
Most Greek myths that involve eroticism begin with the gaze of a god
upon a human. Unlike the gaze of Actaeon and Teiresias, the divine erotic
gaze usually leads to sexual realization and carries no punishment for the
producer of the gaze, only for the victim. The lustful eye of the gods is
inclusive for both genders and for heterosexual and homosexual attrac-
tion alike. There are numerous examples of the divine erotic gaze within
the ancient literary corpus, and they all manifest a natural link between
the salacious gaze and the realization of desire. While the gaze of mortals
on deities is regarded as a forbidden voyeurism that must be punished,
the gaze of the gods is legitimate and leads naturally to sexual fulfilment.
28 Rachel Gottesman
Thus it is told that Zeus’s passion was aroused when he set eyes on a vari-
ety of heroines and heroes, such as the Phoenician Princess Europa, whom
he abducted from her homeland disguised as a bull; or the heroine Io from
Argos, who was transformed into a heifer in a futile attempt by Zeus to
hide her from his wife, Hera. Zeus impregnated Leda in the guise of a swan
and she bore him the fair Helen.23 Another victim was Ganymede, a Trojan
prince, “the most beautiful of mortals,”24 who was kidnapped by Zeus
in the form of an eagle to serve him as lover and cupbearer. We find the
same stories in myths of other gods: Apollo desired the nymph Daphne
and chased her until she called for the help of her father, who transformed
her into a laurel tree. Aphrodite desired the handsome Anchises and dis-
guised herself as a Phrygian princess in order to seduce him. Eos, goddess
of dawn, desired the fair Tithonus and asked her father, Zeus, to grant him
immortality; but as she forgot to ask also for eternal youth Tithonus was
doomed to grow eternally older (in fact he is probably still aging, locked
in a sealed room on Mount Olympus till this very day). The list of lustful
gods and their cruel deeds continues in numerous versions and variants.25
Almost all the myths concerned with the lust of gods for mortals
share the same five-stage structure, detailed below, as demonstrated
through the myth of Europa. Hesiod tells the story:
Zeus saw Phoenix’s daughter Europa plucking flowers together with

maidens in a meadow, and he was seized by desire for her. He came
down and changed himself into a bull whose breath was saffron-
scented. Deceiving Europa in this way he let her mount him, and
carrying her across the sea to Crete he mingled with her.26
This short description includes all five main structural motifs of the
erotic deed between gods and humans:
(1) The gaze: the divine eye falls upon a beautiful mortal man or woman.
The gaze, which fell upon the innocent Europa while gathering flow-
ers away from her safe home, generates the plot. In numerous Greek
myths the young maiden is exposed to the dangerous lustful gaze
of men/gods while wandering in nature: Europa and Persephone
gather flowers in an open field, Io roams in the meadow on her
way home and Daphne wanders in the forest, etc. The disastrous
gazes of Actaeon and Teiresias also take place in the open wilder-
ness. Descriptions that integrate motifs of wild, uninhabited nature
with forbidden erotic acts are common in both ancient and modern
literature. The wilderness is an exterritorial space in which young
girls are abandoned to the unrestrained desires of men. This motif

continues to be apparent in modern and contemporary literature: in
Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream events start to take an abnor-
mal course when the characters leave the city walls and venture
into the forest, susceptible to the manipulating desires of fairies and
spirits. Tess, in Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, is raped in the forest
outside the manor; and in Goethe’s poem Heidenröslein:
Sah ein Knab’ ein Röslein stehn, Saw a boy a little rose,
Röslein auf der Heiden, little red rose on the heath,
War so jung und morgenschön, young and lovely like the morning.
Lief er schnell es nah zu sehn, So he ran to have a close
Sah’s mit vielen Freuden. look at it, and gladly did.
Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot, Little rose, little rose,
Röslein auf der Heiden. little red rose on the heath.
Knabe sprach: “Ich breche dich, Said the boy: I will pick
Röslein auf der Heiden.” you, my red rose on the heath!
Röslein sprach: “Ich steche dich, Said the rose: I will prick
Dass du ewig denkst an mich, you and I won’t stand it,
Und ich will’s nicht leiden.” and you won’t forget me.
Röslein auf der Heiden. little red rose on the heath.
Und der wilde Knabe brach ’s And the rough boy picked the rose,
Röslein auf der Heiden. little red rose on the heath,
Röslein wehrte sich und stach, and the red rose fought and pricked,
Half ihm doch kein Weh und Ach, yet she cried and sighed in vain,
Musst es eben leiden. and had to let it happen.
Röslein auf der Heiden.27 Little red rose on the heath.
Goethe conceals a violent-erotic description beneath a naive and

childish metaphor. The rose is a pure young girl helplessly struggling
against an attacker, who violently rapes her. The childlike lyrics and
tempo hide a brutal and troubling assault, which can take place only
in the wild outdoors, where the individual is free from the controlling
restrictions of society. This motif is very common and widespread;
even Little Red Riding Hood was seduced by the big bad wolf when
venturing alone in the woods.28 The phallic-authoritarian eye is on
the loose, searching for its prey in the wild, uninhabited nature.
(2) Seduction: the deity takes action and realizes his or her desire by
varied means (seduction, abduction and disguise). Zeus’s passion
for Europa is fulfilled through his disguise as a magnificent bull.29
In spite of their mighty power the gods must use disguises, trickery
and deception in order to lure and seduce their victims. Thus Zeus
30 Rachel Gottesman
transforms into a swan (when seducing Leda), or eagle (Ganymede),

in order to approach his lovers. When struck by desire for the
Trojan Prince Anchises, Aphrodite disguises herself as a Phrygian
princess and seduces him into nearly two weeks of lovemaking. She
approaches his house and: “After her came grey wolves, fawning on
her, and grim-eyed lions, and bears, and fleet leopards … and she
was glad in heart to see them, and put desire in their breasts, so that
they all mated, two together, about the shadowy coombes.”30
When Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, ornaments and
perfumes herself in order to lure her lover, she spreads around her a
seductive spell that draws wild beasts to mate. The seductive power
of the gods is sweeping, overarching and absolute; it charms not
only the human victims but also nature itself. Once subjected to the
erotic gaze of a god, Anchises and Europa do not stand a chance.
(3) Act: the actual sexual fulfilment of the divine lust, with or without
the consent of the human subject. Greek myths relate explicitly
to sexual intercourse between gods and mortals, whether willingly
or by force. The sexual act usually results in the birth of a demi-
god child (see no.5). It is important to note that in the myths of
Actaeon and Teiresias there is no act, no sexual realization of the
gaze (and no seduction either). The sexual act is inherent in the
divine-dominating eye but absent from the mortal-submissive one.
(4) Punishment: the divine desire resolves in a tragic end for the mortals.
Europa suffers from a forced journey that ends on the island of Crete,
where Zeus marries her to the local king and installs a bronze figure
named Talos to guard her.31 Europa’s punishment for crossing the line
between mortals and gods is that of permanent exile from her home,
family and culture, followed by rape, forced marriage and constant sur-
veillance. As we have already seen, this pattern of punishment appears
over and over again: Io transforms into a heifer; Daphne into a laurel
tree; Semele, mother of Dionysus, is burned in a fire; Danaë and her
baby son Perseus are cast into the sea in a wooden chest; and Anchises
becomes crippled after bragging about sleeping with Aphrodite. As in
the case of Actaeon and Teiresias, the attempt to transgress the separa-
tion between god and mortal, even if accidently or under compulsion,
is regarded as hubris and leads to tragedy. The lustful gaze of a god-
master contains inherently both the sexual act and the punishment.
In light of all the above, it is reasonable to conclude that the pun-
ishment is a direct result of the complete domination of god over
mortal, of master over subject. It makes no difference if the sexual
act had in fact been a rape, desired solely by the god; or if the gaze
upon a nude deity was accidental and devoid of any erotic pleasure.
In both cases, as in the modern novels by Hardy and Tolstoy, the
story focuses on the sexual act between master and subject as a
manifestation of the authoritarian relationship. Greek erotic myths
are therefore not only about initiation rites and religious practices;
they also reveal fundamental cultural structures that are as relevant
to our contemporary culture as they were to the Ancient Greeks,
some two-and-a-half thousand years ago.
(5) Compensation: the intercourse between god and mortal usually led
to the birth of a hero (a demi-god). These individuals possessed a
unique status as mortals with incredible powers and abilities.32 This
was of great significance, for the heroes were regarded as founders
of great genealogies and aristocratic families. The alleged ascend-
ency from a great hero had an actual social meaning within Greek
communities. The birth of a hero was therefore regarded as worthy
compensation for the suffering that befell Europa, Io or Anchises.33
This five-stage structure differs paradigmatically from that found in

the myths of Actaeon and Teiresias, which move directly from Gaze to
Punishment. When the mortal eye looks upon a deity it is regarded as
hubris and forbidden voyeurism. The eye of a god, on the other hand,
is entitled to look on whomsoever he or she desires and to freely seek
the full realization of the sexual deed. The eye is therefore an ultimate
manifestation of authority and phallic power.
The five-stage structure presented above differs from the analysis pre-
sented by Walter Burkert as the “the girl’s tragedy.”34 Burkert argues that
myths dealing with sexual relations between gods and mortal women
echo the initiation rituals of young girls in Ancient Greece, where the girl
had to leave her family at first menstruation and only acquired full adult
status with the birth of a son. Burkert stresses the connection between the
erotic myths and the actual social and ritual life of Ancient Greek society,
a connection that has been well established.35 Nevertheless, and without
excluding Burkert’s analysis, I offer an alternative emphasis, focusing on
the paradigmatic boundary separating gods from mortals, a boundary
that when crossed eventuates in a tragic outcome for the humans. As
stated earlier, this structure is valid not only for myths relating to young
girls but also for homoerotic passion and human voyeurism of deities.
In all cases the eye has an important role as a manifestation of author-
ity. The actualization of the desire is inherent in the divine eye, which
gives the gods full access to the victim’s body and fate. The gods pos-
sess therefore the ultimate phallic eye, for their piercing gaze contains,
32 Rachel Gottesman
inherently, the act, its punishment and compensation. A human gaze

upon a deity, on the other hand, is hubris – an act of rebellion and
arrogance that tries to possess that which cannot be possessed, as if a
servant seeks to control his master. Hence the romantic myth of a god
falling in love with a mortal reveals itself as a story concerned with
domination, power and the practice of authority.
Notes
1. Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3.183–185, Trans. B. More, Cornhill Publishing,
Boston, 1922.
2. Callimachus, Hymn to Aphrodite (5) 107–166; Ovid, Metamorphose, 3. 138–252.
3. For the opinion that Callimachus invented this version of the myth, see:
Haslam 1993, 124. For a convincing analysis based on iconographic evi-
dence that leads to the conclusion that the “bath of Artemis” was an early
version, see: Lacy 1990.
4. Hesiod, fr. 217, 346; Stesichorus, fr. 236. PMG; Acusilaus, FGrH, 2. F 33;
Apollodorus, 3. 31.
5. Diodorus Siculus, 4. 81. 4–5.
6. Burkert 1985, 150. On the rule of Hestia in myth and ritual, see: Vernant
1983, 157–196.
7. For discussions on girls’ initiation rites and their echo in mythology, see:
Calame 1977; Dowden 1989; Lincoln 1979.
8. For the nature of Prometheus in myth and cult, see: Dougherty 2006.
9. For a discussion on the Greek hubris, see: Fisher 1992.
10. Herodotus, The Histories, 1. 8–12, English translation by A. D. Godley,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1920.
11. For various interpretations of the passage, see: Asheri et al. 2007, 81–84.
12. Tomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, first published in 1891; Leo Tolstoy,
Resurrection, first published in 1899.
13. Vestrheim 2002. Like many Greek myths the story of Teiresias introduces
questions involving religious and social aspects, which cannot be addressed
here. For example, the myth probably echoes an annual bathing ritual of a
sacred statue of Athena in the city of Argos, see: Morrison 2005.
14. Callimachus, Hymn to Athena, 69–82.
15. It is in the underworld that Odysseus meets the blind prophet and acquires
a new understanding of his journey, see: Homer, Odyssey, 10. 490–495,
11. 90–151. For a comprehensive discussion on the Greek underworld and
concepts of death, see: Sourvinou-Inwood 1995.
16. For an extensive list of sexual offences that ended in blinding, see: Devereux
1973.
17. Oedipus’ own explanation is different, see: Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus,
1271–1743: “No longer will you (my eyes) behold such horrors as I was suf-
fering and performing! Long enough have you looked on those whom you
ought never to have seen, having failed in the knowledge of those whom
I yearned to know – henceforth you shall be dark!”
18. Devereux 1973.
19. Buxton 1980; Létoublon, 2010, 167–180.

20. Homer, Odyssey, 8. 63–64.
21. Gartziou-Tatti 2010.
22. Buxton 1980.
23. Euripides, Helen, 16–22. and Iphigenia in Aulis, 794–800. (cf. Euripides,
Orestes, 1385–1387). Other versions tell us that Helen is the daughter of
Nemesis. On her flight from Zeus, Nemesis transforms herself into different
animals, finally into a goose, which is impregnated by Zeus in the guise of a
swan. Leda finds the egg born to Nemesis and raises Helen, who hatches out
of the egg, as her own child, see: Apollodorus, 10. 6–7; Sappho fr. 166. Voigt).
24. Homer, Iliad, 20. 232.
25. For the complete myths and references, see: The Oxford Classical Dictionary,
3rd Ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), s.v. “Europa,” “Io,” “Leda,”
“Ganymede,” “Daphne,” “Anchises” and “Tithonus.”
26. Hesiod, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, fr. 140. MW.
27. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heidenröslein, first published in 1799.
28. For the evolution of the Little Red Riding Hood story, see: Orenstein 2002,
92–106; Zipes 1993.
29. The bull was a sacrificial animal in ancient Greece and appeared in many
Near-Eastern mythologies and rituals as a manifestation of sky gods such as
the Sumerian Sin or the Canaanite Baal, see: West 1999, 451–452.
30. The Homeric Hymen to Aphrodite, 61–74. Trans. H.G. Evelyn-White, 1914.
31. For the myth of Talos, see: Apollonius Rhodius, 4. 1638–1688.
32. For the Greek perception of heroes, see: Vernant 1983, 25–115; Burkert 1985,
203–216.
33. On the function of genealogies in ancient societies, see: Bohannan 1952,
301–315; Hunter 2005, 3; Hall 1997, 182; Fowler 1998.
34. Burkert 1979, 7.
35. Dowden 1989; Lincoln 1979, 223–235; Vidal-Naquet 1998, 58–129.
Bibliography
Asheri, D., A. Lloyd and A. Corcella (2007). A Commentary in Herodotus Books I–IV.
Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Bohannan, L. (1952). “A Genealogical Charter.” Africa: Journal of the International
African Institute 22(4): 301–315.
Burkert, W. (1979). Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual. London:
University of California Press.
———. (1983). Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual
and Myth. Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press.
———. (1985). Greek Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Buxton, R. G. A. (1980). “Blindness and Limits: Sophocles and the Logic of Myth.”
Journal of Hellenic Studies 100: 22–37.
Calame, C. (1977). Les Choeurs De Jeunes Filles En Grece Archaique. Roma: Ateneo &
Bizzarri.
Devereux, G. (1973) “The Self-Blinding of Oedipus in Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrannos.”
The Journal of Hellenic Studies 93: 36–49.
Dougherty, C. (2006). Prometheus. New York, London: Routledge.
34 Rachel Gottesman
Dowden, K. (1989). Death and the Maiden: Girls’ Initiation Rites in Greek Mythology.
London: Routledge.
Fisher, N. R. E. (1992). Hubris: A Study in the Values of Honour and Shame in Ancient
Greece. Aris & Phillips Warminster.
Fowler, R. L. (1998). “Genealogical Thinking, Hesiod’s Catalogue, and the Creation
of the Hellenes.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 44: 1–19.
Gartziou-Tatti, A. (2010). “Blindness as Punishment.” in M. Christopoulos,
E. Karakantza and O. Levaniouk (eds). Light and Darkness in Ancient Greek Myth
and Religion. Plymouth: Lexington Books: 181–192.
Hall, J. M. (1997). Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Haslam, M. W. (1993). Callimachus’ Hymns. Groningen: Egbert Forsten Publishers.
Hunter, R. L. (2005). The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and
Reconstructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lacy, L. R. (1990). “Aktaion and a Lost ‘Bath of Artemis’.” Journal of Hellenic
Studies 110: 26–42.
Létoublon, F. (2010). “To See or Not to See: Blind People and Blindness in Ancient
Greek Myths.” in M. Christopoulos, E. Karakantza and O. Levaniouk (eds).
Light and Darkness in Ancient Greek Myth and Religion. Plymouth: Lexington
Books: 167–180.
Lincoln, B. (1979). “The Rape of Persephone: A Greek Scenario of Women’s
Initiation.” The Harvard Theological Review 72(3): 223–235.
Morrison, A. D. (2005). “Sexual Ambiguity and the Identity of the Narrator in
Callimachus’ Hymn to Athena.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 48(1):
27–46.
Orenstein, C. (2002). Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Sex, Morality, and the
Evolution of a Fairy Tale. New York: Basic Books.
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. (1995). “Reading” Greek Death: To the End of the Classical
Period. New York: Oxford University Press.
Vernant, J. P. (1983). Myth and Thought among the Greeks. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
———. (1991). Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Vestrheim, G. (2002). “The Poetics of Epiphany in Callimachus’ Hymns to Apollo
and Pallas.” Eranos 100: 175–183.
Vidal-Naquet, P. (1998). The Black Hunter: Forms of Thought and Forms of Society
in the Greek World. English Translation: Szegedy-Maszak. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
West, M. L. (1999). The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry
and Myth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zipes, J. D. (1993). The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood. New York:
Routledge.
Filmography
Black Sun. Dir. G. Tarn. Perf. H. de Montalembert and L. Pherson. Passion Pictures/
Cactus Three, 2000.
Dancer in the Dark. Dir. L. von Trier. Perf. Björk, C. Deneuve and D. Morse. Zentropa
Entertainments/Trust Film Svenska/Film i Väst/Liberator Productions, 2000.
2
The Haptic Eye: On Nan
Goldin’s Scopophilia
Lorraine Dumenil
In 2010, on the occasion of the exhibition “Faces and Bodies” guest-

curated by French film, play and opera director Patrice Chéreau, the
Louvre museum commissioned a personal installation from American
photographer Nan Goldin.1 For eight months the artist was free to
wander alone in the Louvre and Orsay museums’ galleries during off-
peak hours and encouraged to take a fresh look at the paintings and
sculptures.
The result of this all-access experience was Scopophila, a 25-minute
slideshow that brought into comparison snapshots from her own
archive – many of which had never been made public before – with new
photographs of paintings and sculptures from the Louvre’s and Orsay’s
collections. After its première at the museum, the installation was on
view at the Matthew Marks Gallery (New York October 29–December
23, 2011; Los Angeles April 27–June 29, 2013). It was presented along-
side a selection of large-scale prints that were grouped into thematic
grids or displayed in a salon-style installation that paired snapshots of
Nan’s friends with photographs from portraits in the Louvre.
My contention is that this new opus, albeit half composed of pictures
from her archive, is radically different from what she has sometimes been
known to do, for example in her Stories Retold (2008), which was criti-
cized for being a re-mix/re-use of her old works for commercial purposes
and perhaps even to make up for her lack of inspiration.
If the principle of montage has always been at the core of Goldin’s
artistic practice (in the slideshows but also in the display of prints in exhi-
bitions or books2), by juxtaposing her old photographs with new ones
that she took at the Louvre, she openly confronts herself with art his-
tory, thus allowing a new comprehension of her work. Adding to this, by
calling upon “scopophilia,” a notion that derives from a psychoanalytic
35
36 Lorraine Dumenil
context and also has very specific connotations in visual studies, Nan
Goldin engages in a meta-artistic process that addressed the very nature
of her art. By provocatively placing the questions of voyeurism, exhibi-
tionism, narcissism and visual pleasure in the foreground, she reflects
upon the deep significance of her practice.
Stories of the eye: the paradoxes of scopophilia
In the narrative voice-over in which she gives an account of her journey

at the Louvre, Goldin recalls the etymology of the word “scopophilia,”
which “comes from the Greek ‘scopo’, to look and ‘philia’ brotherly
love,” and that she interprets as the “love of looking” or “looking with
love.” However, even if this understanding of the term is true on an ety-
mological level, “scopophilia” is a contradictory notion in terms of its
semantic scope. The definition given by Goldin does not coincide with
the usual meaning of the term, which addresses the pathological sexual
pleasure derived from gazing at images of the body.
The origins of the concept of “scopophilia” lie in Freudian and Lacanian
psychoanalysis. It first emerged in Anglophone psychoanalytic literature
as a translation of the Freudian notion of Schaulust. However, as Bruno
Bettelheim has shown, the way this notion was translated in James
Strachey’s Standard Edition of Freud’s Complete Psychological Works is a
betrayal of Freudian thought. The original term indeed “combines the
German word for lust, or sexual desire, with that for looking, seeing, or
contemplating” so that “a translation that would have used the word ‘lust’
which is the equivalent of the German ‘Lust’, or at least ‘pleasure’, would
have been more suitable.”3 “Scopophilia,” therefore, does not mean “love
of looking” but “pleasure” or “lust in looking,” in the sense, according to
Freud in Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis, “of both seeing and being seen, as
well as ‘curiosity’.”4 Now, gaining erotic pleasure from looking at other
people’s bodies is exactly what Goldin experienced during her promenades
in the Louvre: “The painting provoked the overwhelming feeling, it has
been described to me as scopophilia: the intense desire and the fulfil-
ment of that desire through looking.” The lexical field of sexual pleasure
runs throughout her narrative as she recalls having felt the “profound-
est feeling of ecstasy [she had] ever encountered” during this “sensuous
experience,” where the act of looking “deeply fulfilled all of the pleasure
circuits.”5 It can indeed be noticed that the masterpieces on which the
photographer’s attention lingers are often erotic scenes and naked bodies.
If all human beings share a natural drive to look (the Freudian
Schautrieb) that leads to the “pleasure in looking” (Schaulust), Freud
The Haptic Eye 37
shows that this curiosity can however degenerate into a compulsive

fixation, resulting in obsessive voyeurism. It is this perversion of the
scopic drive that is generally designated by the term “scopophilia.”
Freud himself led to this understanding when, in Three Essays on the
Theory of Sexuality, he examined sexual perversion and indicated the cir-
cumstances under which “the pleasure of looking [scopophilia] becomes
a perversion”;6 for example, when “instead of being preparatory to the
normal sexual aim” the pleasure in looking “supplants it.” Thus, by
choosing Pygmalion as a tutelary figure for her journey through the
Louvre, Goldin clearly defines herself as a “scopophiliac,” with the act
of photographing becoming a substitute for love-making. In the same
way that Pygmalion finally united himself with the marble woman he
had sculpted, Goldin dreams of the artistic act as a “form of safe sex,”7
whether it be with people she had photographed or “bodies and faces”
she had encountered in the Louvre. Moreover, it also appears that
all the mythological figures that the photographer chose as guiding
threads in her artistic wanderings through the museum have something
to do either with the scopic drive in general (Narcissus, the young boy
who fell in love with his own image and died of unrequited love; or
Tiresias, who was blinded because he saw what he should not have seen)
or with another pathological notion linked to “scopophilia.” The latter
refers to the voyeur/exhibitionist pair that Freud identified as the meta-
psychological grounding for the scopic drive and that can also result in
a deviant manifestation of sexuality, just as scopophilia does.8
While “voyeurism” implies looking without being seen as a source of
sexual pleasure, “exhibitionism” is linked to the displaying of one’s geni-
tals (or the whole naked body). Once again, what do we see in Scopophilia?
Who are the mythological figures that catch Goldin’s eye? Alongside
the story of Pygmalion, other characters from the Roman poet Ovid’s
mythological tales – which have often been represented in Western art
history – are central to her narrative, like those of Actaeon and Diana,
who constitute an utmost symbol of the voyeur/exhibitionism dynam-
ics (Actaeon happened to see Diana bathing naked while he was hunt-
ing in the woods). In the slideshow, the figure of Diana is embodied by
Valérie, a friend of Goldin whom she often photographed, at times naked
and also while engaged in sexual intercourse, for the Heartbeat series in
2001. Valérie, running naked in the forest, bathing in the river or the
sea or lying in a rumpled bed is paired, in the 2011 Scopophilia, with the
ambiguous Diana from the 16th-century School of Fontainebleau. They
both boldly stare at the onlooker, engaged in what some might consider
a voyeuristic-exhibitionist relationship.
38 Lorraine Dumenil
With Scopophilia, a work that openly focuses on the ambivalences of

the scopic drive, Goldin thus seems to accredit all the critiques that she
sometimes faces, i.e. being driven by both voyeuristic and exhibition-
ist intentions.9 It is understood that she constantly refuses both terms,
under the general explanation that, since it is her world that she is
photographing, such critiques cannot apply. In the introduction to The
Ballad of Sexual Dependency, she states that though “there is a popular
notion that the photographer is by nature a voyeur, the last one invited
to the party,” she is not “crashing”: “This is my party. This is my family,
my history.”10
However, considering her more recent works, and the openness with
which she brings up the issue, we cannot but question such a statement.
It is true that, unlike other photographers like Diane Arbus, Merry Alpern,
Kohei Yoshiyuki or even Sophie Calle,11 Nan Goldin does not belong to
the kind of photography that implies that the person taking the picture
is unseen and has photographed the subjects without their consent. It
should also be said, however, that a series like Heartbeat, which mainly
revolves around three couples being photographed in their intimacy and,
frequently, making love (2001), or the project on children that she has
been involved with for some years now, raise issues about the position
of the beholder and the nature of what is seen. Before, Goldin always
included herself in the pictures: she was documenting her life. Now it is
the life of others, her friends, their children, and Goldin herself appears
to be peripheral to the scene. The couples who expose themselves are
obviously more than willing to do so; but what about the children? Are
they in any position to consent? A recent controversy over a picture of a
little girl whose vagina was clearly exposed in the foreground highlights
this issue.
Generally speaking, we must admit that the explicit and erotic pho-
tographs of intimacy that the artist’s deeply personal relationships with
her subjects allow, consistently break down barriers between the gazer
and the object of the gaze. Adding to this, the fact that Goldin was,
for the Scopophilia series, photographing artworks raises another issue.
Paintings and sculptures are inanimate objects that cannot give their
consent like human beings might do, and yet the photographer takes
liberties with them that she would not allow herself with people. Under
her penetrating gaze the figures offer themselves, the eye lingers on a
breast, a back, hair, lips or even genitalia.
Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingre’s Odalisque and Gustave Courbet’s
Origin of the World at Orsay or the 2nd-century Roman marble The Sleeping
Hermaphrodite at the Louvre, are photographed from every possible angle,
The Haptic Eye 39
and the camera becomes a way to get closer to these representations (and
even, as is the case with the latter work, to reveal what might otherwise
escape the passer by: the penis of that delicate and feminine figure).
From this perspective, the grids, as composites that group several images
thematically in the same frame, are more than striking: entitled “Back,”
“Hair,” “Sisters” or “Odalisque,” they offer a variation on the same motif,
juxtaposing snapshots of the photographer’s friends and lovers and
details from the Louvre’s masterpieces. The following issue thus arises:
is Nan Goldin’s art not being gradually drawn towards voyeurism, now
that she focuses on objects as well as human beings? Does this recent
work not reveal the intrusion of a controlling and curious gaze that turns
people into objects of pleasure, while remaining uninvolved in their inti-
macy? The voyeur does not seek any form of exchange or relationship,
but obtains pleasure by seizing the other’s image and destroying their
physical integrity by substituting a dismembered body for the unified
image. The grids thus convey the impression that Goldin is engaged in a
process of fetishization in which she tries to fragment the bodies into bits
and pieces. Indeed, as psychoanalysis has shown, turning the represented
figure into a fetish is a way to tame its potential violence towards the
onlooker, so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous.
Chains of desire: shifting the gaze
The comprehension of “scopophilia” as a process of fetishization was

the starting point of the original account that gender studies gave
of psychoanalytic theories in a study of cinematic spectatorship. In
her seminal essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,”12 British
post-Lacanian scholar Laura Mulvey declared her intention to make
“political use” of “Scopophilia” as a notion, in order to show that, in
Hollywood films, we should learn to identify a “castration-anxiety”-
driven “male gaze” that objectifies women and denies them the status
of subjects.13 Mulvey thus states that, for the (transcendentally male)
film spectator, there are two ways of looking: voyeuristic and fetishistic.
While voyeurism involves a controlling gaze that has associations with
sadism, the fetishistic look leads to fragmentation of the female image,
who thus loses her menacing implications for the male spectator and
can then be worshipped by him.
This Lacanian-based interpretation of film theory has been highly
controversial and was criticized throughout the 1990s, especially by
female and gender studies scholars who were seeking to challenge the
homogeneous essence of the gaze as stated by Mulvey.14 Mulvey herself
40 Lorraine Dumenil
reconsidered her conception, even if she continued to maintain that, as

far as classical narrative films are concerned, there is no such thing as
a female gaze: when she acknowledged that the cinematic look is not
uniform and that one should consider the issue of the female spectator,
Mulvey persisted in considering that a female gaze would be the gaze of
a woman identifying with a phallic position.15 This led her to the search
for an oppositional film practice, and to the affirmation that only films
that would escape the patriarchal order would be freed of narrative.
These considerations on cinematic scopophilia and the potential
existence of a female gaze are of high interest for our concern.16 I shall
seek to show that even if in some of her recent works (on the Louvre’s
masterpieces, the couples making love or the children) Goldin can appear
to encompass a voyeuristic and fetishistic position (moments of intimacy
she should not be witness to – even if invited to do so; and objectifying
fragmentation of the figures), these categories have become obsolete.
We understand that her position is completely foreign to the patriarchal
order that separates the gaze into two categories: male and female.
For the ultimate issue is not the gender of the viewer (male, female, or
queer) but the way and the intentions in which the one who gazes looks
at the other: a female spectator could most certainly gaze at somebody –
male or female – in a way that embodies the voyeuristic gaze defined
by Mulvey, i.e. making the masculine sexual gaze her own to serve a
feminist purpose. Goldin, however does not substitute the traditional
male gaze for a female one. The real breakthrough that sets her free from
the “gaze theory” lies in a radical change of ideology from the usual
structuring of looks that organizes relationships between human beings.
While refusing the subject-object relation based on oppositions such
as male/female, active/passive, she advocates the encounter between
individual subjects, convinced that it is possible to view someone in
a sexualized way without automatically reducing him [or her] to an
object. Her photographs “come out of relationships, not observation,”
she says, before adding that “the instant of photographing, instead of
creating distance, is a moment of emotional connection.”17
Reconsidering her snapshots of the Louvre’s paintings and sculptures
and the grids in which she paired them with pictures of her old friends
and lovers, we may have been mistaken when we called them “fetishist”
or “voyeuristic.” As Goldin puts it, if the “desire awoken by images [was]
the project’s true starting point” it is because these artworks precisely
recalled her former relationships. During her solitary wanderings in the
museum she enjoyed a kind of privileged communion and intimacy
with the figures displayed in the masterpieces. This had an extremely
The Haptic Eye 41
positive effect on her, for it “profoundly helped [her] to get back to

work, in a deep way.”18 At the time of the commission, it had been sev-
eral years since she had stopped taking pictures, facing the evidence that
photography had after all failed to fulfil the mission she had set for it,
i.e. preserving the lives and memories of those she loves.19 In the press
release for this new opus, Goldin explained that the confrontation with
the artworks brought her back to her own archive: “Not only did I grow
to have a personal relationship with them, I began to recognize the
faces, the gestures, and the fabric of my own friends in the paintings.”
In the Louvre, she discovered a new way of building a relationship with
the figures from her past – a way that would not be nostalgic: “In the
Louvre, these memories flooded me, body and soul. I started to photo-
graph the same paintings over and over, at the same height as they are
hung.” With the help of her assistant, Fred Jagueneau, she used a ladder
to reach eye level and photographed the figures in the paintings and
sculptures as if they were human beings. The original title of the exhibi-
tion, “Love Ladders to the Louvre,” thus refers to the specific technical
device that the photographer used, while indicating the very particular
meaning of this experience for the artist, which had enabled her to
reconnect with former friends and lovers. Some of the paintings in the
Louvre that she repeatedly photographed, like the portrait of a young
orphan by Eugène Delacroix or a young girl painted by Michel Guérin,
reminded her of Siobhan, who was her partner in the early 1980s, and
made her want to dig into her archive and search for old and forgotten
pictures of the girl.
From this perspective, the grid, far from being a fetishist device, can
be seen as a tool for remembrance: by juxtaposing the backs of her
friends and lovers, indistinctly male or female, next to those of famous
artistic figures, she builds a bridge between past and present and makes
it clear that the motivation for her artistic gesture is the sheer need to
re-connect with people as well as with the dynamics of love and desire.
We are thus induced to reconsider our previous comprehension of the
metaphor of the photographic act as a substitute for love-making. “For
me,” says Goldin, “it is not a detachment to take a picture. It is a way
of touching somebody – it’s a caress.”20 she goes on to speak of her
relationship with Siobhan, the former lover with whom she was able to
reconnect thanks to the paintings in the Louvre:
That became almost a form of love-making, it was like a caress. And

she would be hurt if I didn’t photograph her. And that was part of
getting to know how close I could get to another person without
42 Lorraine Dumenil
drugs. […] Part of how we grew close was through me photographing

her – the photos were intimate and then we were. I was outside of her
and taking her picture let me in.21
Photography does not simply deal with visual images: it is related to

the dialectics of touch. Not only does Goldin disavow the logic of the
“phallic eye,” but she replaces it with another logic, that of the “haptic
eye,” which addresses the sense of touch. Bearing this in mind, it is
no coincidence if the opening image of the slideshow is a photograph
of a 16th-century painting in the Louvre, the Christian Allegory by
Jan Provost, which features at its very centre a gigantic eye crowned
by two hands. By displaying a large-scale close-up print of this eye at
the entrance to the Matthew Marks Gallery presentation of her show,
Goldin emphasizes the importance of the motif of the haptic eye in her
art. Another example of the tactile proximity that rules her relationship
towards the figures can be found in her Origin of the World grid. Initially
intended for private erotic viewing, Courbet’s painting however encour-
ages, as art historian Kelly Dennis has shown, “physical proximity over
the voyeuristic distance.”22 More erotic than pornographic, Courbet’s
Origin of the World cancels out the distanced perspective of the objecti-
fying male gaze. In her taking pictures of the painting, Goldin clearly
replicates Courbet’s intention. Her gaze is that of a lover and she offers
four subjective snapshots of the same body, in which her physical incli-
nation towards the object is obvious (some of the pictures are blurred,
one betrays the camera flash, …). Here, the compulsion to repeat is
clearly linked to the scopic drive; but rather than imposing domination
on the object of the gaze, it aims at establishing a sensual relationship
with it and thus at triggering the memory of those she loved.
The space of the gaze is rearticulated so that it becomes a space of inter-
subjective encounters. This shift is the result of a rupture with the phallic
regime of sexual difference, which implies a particular attention to the
slippery borders between genders, as can be seen in Goldin’s fascination
with the figures of the hermaphrodite and that of Tiresias, both man
and woman. However, she does not advocate a radical fusion between
persons that would take away the inter-subjective differences and erase
sexual specificity. Goldin’s aesthetics is more subtle and evokes the
“matrixial gaze” theorized by Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, who speaks
of “a transcendance of the subject/object interval which is not a fusion,
since it is based on a-priori shareability in difference.”23 Disrupting the
phallic norms of the gaze, they both produce a different position within
the sexual politics of looking, which challenges mainstream Lacanian
The Haptic Eye 43
theory and allows us to imagine what a shared affect community, freed

from the subject/object relation, could look like. The recurrence with
which Goldin has recently photographed children and women is also
understandable in that perspective of a “Matrixial Gaze” that finds in the
Womb its paradigm. Just like its opposite, the Phallus, the Womb should
not be perceived as a biological or an anatomical entity, but as a symbol;
in this case that of the “invisible feminine sexual specificity” that attests
to “the earliest processes of subjectiviation between at least two partial
subjectivities.”24 In that sense, the matrixial possibility, though emerging
from feminine studies, does not address male or female but concerns all
those interested in a co-sharing process.
The beholder’s share25
If the compulsion to look is inherent to every human being, we now

need to address spectatorial scopophilia in order to decipher the kind of
feeling that Nan Goldin’s photographs trigger in us.
The image-maker and the image-viewer’s gazes tend to blend into one
another, so that we see what the photographer saw or wanted to be rep-
resented. We see with his or her eyes. However we do not have the same
relationship with the subjects of these intimate snapshots that Goldin
had, and we often find ourselves in the position of a Peeping Tom.26
Do we draw pleasure, however, from looking at these pictures? Strangely
enough, the experience of attending Scopophilia, or any other of Goldin’s
slideshows, is not one of voyeurism. Even if we find ourselves in a dark
room, in almost cinematic conditions that encourage us to sit down and
stare, our situation is rather different from that of a film spectator. I thus
disagree with Simon Baker, who states that because Goldin’s subjects
“seem, absolutely in some cases, to have forgotten or internalized the
presence of the photographer in their most intimate activities and private
moments,” it is easy for us spectators “as the slides follow one another
and the music plays, to forget that Goldin was there at all.”27 According
to Baker, we thereby reinstate the position of voyeur. However I do not
think that we really ever forget the presence of the artist. Even if Goldin’s
approach to photography is clearly influenced by cinema, for she opens
up the medium to the narrative,28 it remains very different in terms of
reception aesthetics. As Christian Metz has noted, the film spectator iden-
tifies with “the (invisible) seeing agency of the film itself as discourse”
so that “all traces of the subject of the enunciation” are abolished and
the spectator has the impression that “he is himself that subject.”29 This
is absolutely not the case in Goldin’s slideshows. The photographed
44 Lorraine Dumenil
subjects, who seem to be perfectly at ease and often stare at us, together
with the framing of the photographs, remind us of the context of the
personal relationship in which the pictures were taken. These people let
us enter into their world – so we neither intrude nor feel like voyeurs – but
this is nonetheless surely not our party.
As a consequence, the feeling experienced by the spectator is not one
of mirror-stage-based identification that film theorists have learned to
recognize (see Metz and Mulvey30). It is more about the constitution
of an affective community: the situations, physical and mental states
evoked in the photographs deeply connect with our own stories. Goldin
has always been good at mixing the small stories with the big ones (a
recent example: Sisters, Saints and Sibyls) and her talent lies in her abil-
ity to transcend the individual towards the universal without sacrific-
ing singularities. Different as though the lives of these people might be
from ours, we recognize drives and feelings that we have all repeatedly
experienced. Through this sense of recognition we thus become part
of a community, along with the photographed subjects and the artist.
“The people and locals in my pictures are particular, specific, but I feel
the concerns I’m dealing with are universal […] the premise can be
applied to everyone; it’s about the nature of relationships.”31
If not based on identification, it appears to me that this process of rec-
ognition functions in a way that is very close to Aby Warburg’s idea of
Pathosformel (pathos formula).32 Some clear parallels can be drawn between
the Mnemosyne-Atlas, a thematically organized inventory of recurring figu-
ral patterns in the visual arts, and the Scopophilia experience. This becomes
quite obvious in the seven grids that Goldin composed for the Matthew
Marks Gallery, in which she seeks recurrences of the same motif alongside
evident formal and historical oppositions. “I don’t believe in the decisive
moment,” says Goldin. “I’m interested in the cumulative images, and how
they affect each other, the relationships between them.”33 Beyond their
visual impact, Scopophilia and Warburg’s Atlas both imply a theory of affec-
tive montage which concerns the relations between the images but also
the way they affect the spectator. The images are juxtaposed in order to
produce an emotional impact, so that the spectator, moved by these pathos
formulae, might recognize aspects of his or her own existence.
However, this collusive implication of the spectator (as opposed to a
voyeuristic distance) mainly rests, beyond the montage of the pictures,
on the very specific way the latter address the viewer. I like to think
that Goldin’s pictures contradict Michael Fried’s theories, which seek
to maintain at all costs a radical separation between the artwork and its
spectator. Employing the key-concept of “antitheatricality,” he suggests
The Haptic Eye 45
that, to be interesting and of value, an artwork should not invite the

viewer to engage with it. He thus identifies, in Thomas Ruff’s passport
pictures or in Rineke Djikstra’s portraits, in which the photographed fig-
ures clearly gaze at the spectator, a “coldness” that frustrates the viewer’s
urge to empathize.34 Goldin’s pictures, however, assert their “facingness,”
for it is only in the face-to-face encounter with the spectator that their
potential as affective pictures will be revealed. These “bodies and faces”,
which offer themselves in the Goldinian dialectics of looking, call for our
responsibility: that of facing them and respecting their singularities – and
not objectifying them; unlike the Lacanian scene in which the econom-
ics of desire always threatens to destroy the other, or the distanced artistic
perception advocated by Fried. It is also our responsibility, however, to
hear what these pictures are telling us about ourselves.
If Scopophilia is mainly about challenging certain ways of spectator-
ship and reversing the domination of the male gaze, it is interesting
to note how this series reveals the hidden obsessions of Western art
history. Driven by voyeurism, the visual focus of Western society has
always seen in art a convenient and pleasant way to satisfy its urges.
We know that, in painting, the nude was often a way to stimulate
desire in the viewer. In 2001, chief curator Régis Michel organized at
the Louvre an exhibition called Posséder et détruire: stratégies sexuelles
dans l’art d’Occident [Possess and Destroy: Sexual Strategies in Western Art],
intended as a critical anthropology of Western representation. It reor-
ganized great artistic figures according to a typology of sexual perver-
sions, and showed that “Western Art talks about sex in only one way:
violence,” and is “intrinsically misogynistic”: “men’s Art, made by men,
for men’s desire.”35
Ten years later, in the same Galleries, Nan Goldin make these inter-
rogations her own; albeit with one striking difference: through the filter
of her affective gaze she manages to free these paintings and sculptures
from the frequently phallocentrist context of production to which they
belong, and allows the figures in these works of art to gain an unex-
pected new visibility.
Notes
1. For his exhibition “Faces and Bodies,” guest-curator Patrice Chéreau took the
liberty of hanging, alongside some of the venerable institution’s masterpieces
and a number of paintings borrowed from the Orsay Museum and Pompidou
Centre, a few snapshots by Nan Goldin, thus creating an original and eclectic
exhibition that opened up the Louvre to contemporary creation. This exhibi-
tion was on view there from November 2, 2010. until January 31, 2011. and
46 Lorraine Dumenil
was accompanied by Goldin’s personal installation, which was curated by

Marie-Laure Bernadac, in charge of Contemporary Art at The Louvre.
2. See for example the juxtaposition of two pictures of Cookie and Vittorio:
“Cookie and Vittorio’s wedding: the ring, New York, 1986” and “Cookie at
Vittorio’s casket, New York, 1989.” In: S. Fletcher, N. Goldin, M. Heiferman
and M. Holborn (1996).
3. B. Bettelheim (1983), 90–91.
4. [1909] J. Strachey (1957). Mosby’s Medical Dictionary (2009) also underlines
that the term refers to “sexual pleasure derived from looking at sexually
stimulating scenes or at another person’s genitals,” i.e. “voyeurism” as well
as ”exhibitionism,” or “morbid desire to be seen.”
5. Scopophilia, press release and R. Kennedy (2011).
6. [1905] J. Strachey (1953), 157.
7. In: A. Chrisafis (2008).
8. See “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes,” in which he identifies three stages in
the scopic dynamics: looking at an activity directed towards an extraneous
object; giving up of the object; and turning of the scopic drive towards a part
of the subject’s own body. This transformation to passivity and setting up of a
new aim – that of being looked at, introduces a new subject to whom one can
display oneself in order to be looked at by him ([1915] J. Strachey (1957), 129).
9. See for instance the account that The Village Voice (2003) gave of her slide-
show Heartbeat presented in 2003. at the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York.
While acknowledging and celebrating the work’s seduction, the journalist
states “For the first time I couldn’t help wondering, What the hell is [Nan
Goldin] doing there?”
10. N. Goldin (1996), 6.
11. Sophie Calle has made a number of works that explore the artist’s voyeuristic
nature, whether following strangers or employing others to follow her. In
1981. she took a job as a chambermaid in a Venetian hotel with the inten-
tion of gathering information about its occupants. For the series “Dirty
Windows” Merry Alpern hid out to register what was happening in the hotel
in front of her windows; while in the series titled The Park, Kohei Yoshiyuki
photographed voyeurs and thus had to behave like one: “I think, in a way,
the act of taking photographs itself is voyeuristic somehow. So I may be a
voyeur, because I am a photographer.” In: Gefter, P. (2007).
12. L. Mulvey (1975).
13. It could also be stated that cinema viewing conditions facilitate the voyeur-
istic process for the viewer: “In watching films in a theater, spectators sit in
a darkened room, where they cannot be seen looking [and] characters on
screen can never really return the spectator’s gaze.” M. Sturken (2009), 51.
14. Generally speaking, these critiques were refusing both statements that there
is no such thing as a female spectator; see for example E. Ann Kaplan (1983),
who showed that the Gaze could be adopted by both male and female subjects
and that men cannot be gazed at. It is thus widely noted that since the 1980s
there has been an increasing sexualization of the male body in cinema, televi-
sion and in advertising, for the viewing pleasure of women – or men: see Steve
Neale (1983) and Michele Aaron (2007, 47), who showed that “The lesbian
spectator and/or lesbian film should provide an obvious focus for dispelling
the heterosexual assumptions integral to Mulvey’s model of spectatorship.”
The Haptic Eye 47
15. “The phantasy ‘action’ can only find expression, its only signifier for a
woman, is through the metaphor of masculinity.” L. Mulvey (1981), 15.
16. I contend that film studies dealing with spectatorship issues can eas-
ily translate, if not in photography, then at least in Nan Goldin’s par-
ticular artistic form that is the slideshow, as halfway between film and
photography.
17. In: A. Chrisafis (2008).
18. Statement by the artist.
19. See, for example, what she says about “The Cookie Mueller Portfolio”: “I
used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough.
I put together this series of pictures of Cookie from the 13 years I knew her
in order to keep her with me. In fact they show me how much I’ve lost.” In:
N. Goldin (1996), 256.
20. Nan Goldin talking with David Armstrong and Walter Keller. In: N. Goldin
(1996), 452.
21. N. Goldin (1996), 256.
22. K. Dennis (2011), 71.
23. B. Lichtenberg Ettinger (1995), 43.
24. G. Pollock (1996), 77.
25. E. Gombrich (1960).
26. As Arthur G. Danto (1996) puts it: “When she presented her slideshows in
the 70s it would be for an audience consisting of people who know or were
those whose portraits formed its content.”
27. S. Baker (2010), 209.
28. To that extent, we should mention the decisive role of music, which almost
functions as a narrative and is duplicated, in the case of Scopophilia, by Nan
Goldin’s voice-over. The narrative feeling also comes from the presence of
recurring characters to whom we become accustomed, even though they are
not involved in some kind of linear diegesis.
29. C. Metz (1985), 548.
30. In his seminal article “The Imaginary Signifier,” first published in 1975,
Christian Metz posits that the primary identification that occurs in the mir-
ror stage can be seen as the essential paradigm for the spectator’s experience.
See C. Metz (1982).
31. S. Fletcher, N. Goldin, M. Heiferman and M. Holborn (1996), 7.
32. Aby Warburg demonstrated the existence of a coded repertoire of forms that
can account for the expressivity of the pathos. He thus highlights the persis-
tence in Renaissance art of certain motifs that resort to the models provided
by Antiquity (Botticelli or Ghirlandajo, to name just two artists, turned to
motifs that had their source in the Ancients in Pagan Antiquity).
33. S. Westfall (1991).
34. M. Fried (2008).
35. R. Michel (2002), 84.
Bibliography
Aaron, M. (2007). Spectatorship. The Power of Looking On (London, New York:
Wallflower).
48 Lorraine Dumenil
Baker, S. (2010). “Up Periscope! Photography and the Surreptitious Image.” In:
S. S. Philipps (ed.). Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera (London:
Tate Pub.), 205–211.
Bettelheim, B. (1983). Freud and Man’s Soul (New York: Alfred A. Knopf).
Chrisafis, A. “Interview with Nan Goldin,” The Guardian, 22 May 2008. <http://
www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/may/22/photography.art>
Danto, A. G. “Nan Goldin’s world.” The Nation, 2 Dec.1996.
Dennis, K. (2011). Art/Porn. A History of Seeing and Touching (Oxford: Berg Publishers).
Fletcher, S., Goldin, N., Heiferman, M. and Holborn, M. (1996). The Ballad of
Sexual Dependency (New York: Aperture).
Freud, S. (1905). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. In: Strachey, J. (1953). The
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume
VII (London: Hogarth Press).
Freud, S. (1909). Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis. In: Strachey. J. (1957). The
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume
XI (London: Hogarth Press).
Freud, S. (1915). “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes.” In: Strachey, J. (1957). The
Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume XIV
(London: Hogarth Press).
Fried, M. (2008). Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before (New Haven: Yale
University Press).
Gefter, P. The New York Times Art in Review, 23 Sept. 2007.
Goldin, N. (1996). I’ll Be Your Mirror (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art).
Gombrich, E. (1960). Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial
Representation (New York: Pantheon Books).
Kaplan, E. A. (1983). Women and Films: Both Sides of the Camera (London:
Methuen).
Kennedy, R. “The Look of Love.” The New York Times 27 Oct. 2011: C1/C5.
Lichtenberg Ettinger, B. (1995). The Matrixial Gaze (Leeds: University of Leeds,
Feminist Arts and Histories Network).
Metz, C. ([1975] 1982). The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema.
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
Metz, C. (1985). “Story/Discourse: Notes on Two Kinds of Voyeurism.” In: B. Nichols
(ed.). Movies and Methods (Berkeley: University of California Press), 517–530.
Mosby’s Medical Dictionary (2009), Elsevier.
Mulvey, L. (1975). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, 3: 6–18.
inspired by Duel in the Sun.” Framework 15/16/17: 12–15.
Neale, S. (1983). “Masculinity as Spectacle’,” Screen 24, 6: 2–16.
Pollock, G. (1996). “Inscription of the Feminine.” In: Catherine De Zeghers (ed.).
Inside the Visible, An Elliptical Traverse of XXth Century Art. In, Of and From the
Feminism (Boston/Kortrijf: les éditions de la chambre), 67–87.
Michel, R. (2002). “L’art du viol.” Mouvements 20: 84–97.
Sturken, M. (2009). Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (New York/
Oxford: University Press Inc).
The Village Voice (9–15 Apr. 2003: 71).
Westfall, S. “Nan Goldin.” BOMB Magazine 37, Fall 1991. http://bombsite.com/
issues/37/articles/1476
The Haptic Eye 49
Reference artworks
Anonymous (unknown year). The Sleeping Hermaphrodite. Marble sculpture. The
Louvre Museum, Paris.
Courbet, G. (1866). Origin of the World. Oil painting. Orsay Museum, Paris.
Goldin, N. (2000–2001). Heartbeat. Slideshow. Pompidou Centre, Paris.
Goldin, N. (2004). Sisters, Saints and Sibyls. Installation view/slideshow. Matthew
Marks Gallery, New York.
Goldin, N. (2010). Scopophilia. Slideshow. The Louvre Museum, Paris.
Ingres, J.-A., D. (1814). La Grande Odalisque. Oil painting. The Louvre Museum,
Paris.
Provost, J. (1510–1515). The Christian Allegory. Oil painting. The Louvre Museum,
Paris.
3
The Peepshow and the
Voyeuse: Colette’s Challenge
to the Male Gaze
Marion Krauthaker-Ringa
The peepshow is a device that dates back to medieval times. Often

displayed by street vendors, it consisted of a wooden box with a hole
through which a paying customer peered to discover scenes depicted
through pictures or puppets, often accompanied by storytelling. In addi-
tion to their evident entertainment values, peepshows also allowed spec-
tators to learn about exotic cultures through scenes illustrating faraway
and mysterious lands, such as China or India. In the 19th century, optical
inventions like the kinetoscope (1888)1 replaced the use of static pictures
with moving images, marking a significant turning point in the depiction
and visibility of the body and its movements as entertainment. The nov-
elty of moving images and the opportunity to observe “private scenes”
fostered the emergence of an interest in hitherto secret “body practices.”
By the time the first kinetoscope parlour opened on Broadway in 1894,
it was evident that the accumulated repertory of images “appear[ed] to
have already anticipate[d] the predominantly male audience of the peep
show arcades.”2 Male-orientated entertainments, such as the dancers
Carmencita and Annabelle Moore, the contortionist Madame Berholdi,
boxing matches or hunting scenes, predominated. As peepshow arcades
spread throughout the United States and France, some parlour owners
were arrested for operating allegedly indecent kinetoscopes.3 With the
development of cinema, narrative films showing intimate scenes from
private domestic lives, including glimpses of sexual practices, were soon
being shown. Following the success of a 1901 production by Pathé called
What Is Seen Through a Keyhole, erotic film peepshows were quickly incor-
porated into the pornography industry. During the 20th century, strip
clubs, and later sex shops and lap-dancing clubs, started offering private
booths for the viewing of erotic and pornographic films.
50
The Peepshow and the Voyeuse 51
For Laura Mulvey, in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975),

“pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/
female” insofar as the “determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto
the female figure, which is styled accordingly.” She adds, “a woman dis-
played as a sexual object is the leitmotiv of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups
to striptease” (27). In the traditional peepshow, the woman constituted
the image and the man was the bearer of the look, or as Mulvey reasserted
in 1981 in “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,”
“the spectator is always masculine and the spectacle feminine.” In the
peepshow booth, with its ability to provide observation and control of
the erotic female image, the “male gaze” is pre-eminently powerful and
underpins the pillars of patriarchy, confirming the unequal relationship
between a controlling male viewer and a beheld and objectified female.
With her novel The Pure and the Impure (1932), French writer Colette
(1873–1954) produced an avant-garde denunciation of the “male gaze.”
The novel confronts and challenges patriarchy and its corresponding
heteronormativity. Colette’s narration reprocesses the components
of the peepshow in order to reverse its traditional modus operandi.
The Pure and the Impure is a hybrid novel, in which authentic facts,
autobiographical events and fiction are mingled. It is a reflection on
human relationships, social conventions, sexuality and pleasure as seen
through the eyes of its female narrator. The narrative of The Pure and
the Impure takes the form of a peepshow booth in which the patriarchal
order – traditionally “pure”– is reversed and becomes “impure.” Indeed,
Colette challenges patriarchal codes by introducing a feminine bearer of
“the gaze,” questioning male assimilation with power and switching the
traditional object of “the gaze” to marginalized sexual practices, thus
fostering an innovative “queer gaze.”
Colette’s challenge to the hegemony of the “male gaze”
In his study on exhibitionism, Garth Murdinger-Klow (2009) explains that

in clinical psychology scopophilia is defined as “the sexual interest in or
practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviours, such as
undressing, sexual activity, or other activity usually considered to be of
a private nature” (4). Mundinger also specifies that “voyeurs are typi-
cally male” (6). While sexology traces an individual’s desire for or love
of looking to early experiences and to the need to relieve sexual urges,
Colette gives no clue as to whether the narrator of The Pure and the
Impure derives any satisfaction from her observations. What she does
make clear, however, is that the narrator’s voyeurism is undertaken in
52 Marion Krauthaker-Ringa
a quasi-scholastic manner. By looking and describing, Colette offers a

social eye-opener, exposing patriarchal clichés of sexuality.
In the opening scene, the narrator (identifiable as Colette herself) is
relaxing on a Japanese mat and occupied in watching and describing
the scene around her. The “dull red glow of the shaded lights,” the
permeating “opium smoke,” the rich “Chinese embroideries” and other
exotic decorations conjure up a secret boudoir or a luxurious private
peepshow booth. Her slightly withdrawn position makes it clear that
she is not going to be the object of scrutiny herself. Her status as an
observer is further established by a man sitting beside her who asks,
“You’re here as a sightseer?” (4). Although she refuses to answer him
directly, the narrator confirms in a stream of thought that “I was in an
opium den, but not in one of those assemblies which give the spectator
a rather lasting disgust for what he sees and for his own participation
by being there. I rejoiced at this and hoped that no naked dancer of
either sex would come to disturb our devotions” (6). Her remark not
only expresses eagerness for the role of spectator-reporter she under-
takes throughout the narrative, but also explicitly likens the setting
she is in to that of a peepshow and herself to that of a peeper. Colette
makes it clear, however, that in this peepshow the usual acts will not
have a place. The “disgust” she mentions is to be read as a critique of
the “impurity” of traditional peepshows. The narration is, therefore,
strategically focalized through the eyes and thoughts of a homodiegetic
female narrator, who controls and reports images of and from the peep-
show booth. Her position of narrator gives her complete control over
the delivery of information and, as becomes apparent later in the narra-
tive, she also has the power to control the behaviour and voices of the
other characters. When given the opportunity to talk about herself, the
narrator stops the conversation short to show that it is she who controls
the narrative. For instance, when her friend Marguerite Moreno asks
questions the narrator does not wish to discuss, she “interrupt[s] her
with a gesture” (63). With this hand signal the image of the voyeur and
the ability to simply switch to a different booth is called to mind.
Linda Williams in her book Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy
of the Visible” (1999), explains that early 20th-century “stag films”4
typically introduced “voyeur characters within the narrative [who] catch
glimpses of normally hidden body parts of the opposite sex,” allowing
the film viewer to see what the voyeur sees (64). The same technique is
used in the The Pure and the Impure. The narrator observes and reports,
allowing the reader to see what she sees. The films described by Williams
present scenarios of male voyeurs observing scenes aimed at pleasing the
male viewers. In The Pure and the Impure, Colette not only innovates by
reconceiving the theme of the voyeur in literature, but also challenges
traditional practices by imagining a voyeuse and so challenges the
purely male-orientated sexual imagery of the time. Describing a circle of
gay men she spends time with in what she calls her “bachelor digs,” she
expresses her gratitude for having been accepted by them as an observer:
“They allowed me to share with them their sudden outburst of gaiety,
so shrill and revealing. They appreciated my silence, for I was faithful to
their concept of me as a nice piece of furniture and I listened to them
as if I were an expert. They got used to me, without ever allowing me
access to a real affection. No one excluded me – no one loved me” (147).
In the context in which Linda Williams dates the shy beginnings of
public discourse on sexuality by women to the 1980s, Colette’s The Pure
and the Impure is a pioneering text on sexual practices from the view-
point of women as seen by a woman. Throughout the narrative, the
female narrator presents a series of snapshots depicting non-conformist
characters, whose sexualities and gender characteristics are explored,
described and discussed.
Colette’s challenge to binary gender opposites
In his study on gender, Masculin ou féminin? (1989), Robert Stoller states

that binary gender characteristics and practices, presented as static codes
by and within patriarchal structures, change with social evolutions (30).
Half a century earlier, The Pure and the Impure had already emphasized
the need to validate thus far ignored and marginalized sexual practices.
While controlling the portrayal of a range of singular psycho-sexual posi-
tions, the narrator, the female voyeuse, explores and develops a modern
reflection on gender relationships. Whereas the traditional peepshow
reinforced compulsory heterosexuality and used the feminine as an object
of male fantasy, Colette uses it to jeopardize accepted roles and order. She
describes Charlotte (the woman who fakes orgasm), Damian (the fallen
Don Juan), and a range of male and female transvestites and lesbian and
gay couples. Through these characters, Colette depolarizes sexual binaries
and liberates so far marginalized practices. The various encounters with
these characters allows Colette to assert that the only real differences sep-
arating women and men are anatomical and that diverse sexual practices
are a response to the quest for individuality and pleasure. Colette’s narra-
tor claims the right to be considered a woman, although she lacks tradi-
tionally feminine features. Damien upsets her by suggesting she is not a
real woman: “You, a woman? Why, try as you will …” (61) She replies that
she “offered a healthy and quite female body,” (Colette 2000, 63) aware
that he believes in traditional binary gender codes, that a woman follow
her “vocation of servant.” For Colette however, biology dictates neither
the appearance nor the conduct of a woman. In French literature of the
Années Folles 1920–1929 period, only a small number of novels present
images of women that contrast with traditional views of feminine and
femininity.5 Colette is one of only a few female voices from the period
and the only female voice dealing explicitly with non-conformist sexuali-
ties. Within patriarchal structures, structures affirmed and confirmed in
the traditional peepshow, women were perceived not only as objects but
also as bearing one single and unique mode of femininity. Colette high-
lights and emphasizes that it is patriarchal pressure and the social value
attached to men that forces women to reproduce “expected femininity,”
to erase individualities and to exist in accordance with male fantasies. In
The Pure and the Impure, Colette presents what Hélène Cixous later called,
in “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1971), “the infinite richness of [women’s]
individual constitutions.” With the term “richness,” Cixous challenged
the patriarchal vision according to which all women can be equally
defined and confirmed that one “can’t talk about a female sexuality, uni-
form, homogeneous, classifiable into codes” (876).
Having described the scene of the non-conformist peepshow, the
opening chapter introduces the character of Charlotte: “Just then a
woman’s voice was raised in song, a furry, sweet, yet husky voice that
had the qualities of a hard and thick-skinned velvety peach. We were
all so charmed that we took care not to applaud or even to murmur our
praise” (6). The female voice captivating the audience in this secret den
can be understood in connection with Luce Irigaray’s (2004) idea of the
voice as a symbol of subjectivity: “Sounds, voices are not divided from
bodies … Sound waves reach us without any mediation. They are not
only what allows us to exist … a voice [is] marked by the singularity,
in particular the sexuate singularity, of the one who speaks” (139). The
second mention of Charlotte is also in reference to her voice: “… up
there, on the balcony, a woman was trying hard to delay her pleasure
and in doing so was hurrying it towards its climax and destruction, in
a rhythm at first so calm and harmonious, so marked that I involuntar-
ily beat with my head for its cadence was as perfect as its melody” (8).
Charlotte’s vocalized pleasure can be read as the affirmation of her
singularity in the face of traditional practices. Her evident and fulfilled
sexuality attracts the interest of the narrator, who engages in a lengthy
observation of Charlotte and discovers that this intriguing character
actually fakes orgasm. This “betrayal” allows Charlotte to control her
lover’s sense of masculinity, placing her in a position of domination.

“No doubt, this held Charlotte’s secret prevarication, a melodious and
merciful lie. I considered the young lover’s happiness was great when
measured by the perfect dupery of the woman who thus subtly con-
trived to give a weak and sensitive boy the very highest concept of him-
self that a man can have” (18). Charlotte’s deception leads the narrator
to describe her as a “female genius” (18). Introduced early in the narra-
tive, Charlotte is meant as a symbol of the deconstruction of patriarchal
power and is therefore the epitome of Colette’s reversed peepshow.
In her 1992 study on gender, Another Colette: The Question of Gendered
Writing, Lynne Huffer states that in Colette’s writings “gender can be
understood not as a static positionality (masculine versus feminine, system
versus excess), but as a form of address inscribed within a process that can
simultaneously construct and dismantle itself” (68). Huffer’s statement
clarifies why in The Pure and the Impure Colette’s voyeuse, the narrator,
shifts her interest to Damien, a male character. In choosing a male object of
a “female gaze” Colette is debunking the domination of masculinity within
patriarchal structures. Interestingly, Damien’s physique does not conform
to traditional codes of “expected masculinity”. The narrator examines
Damien thoroughly, describing how his “hands and feet were small, deli-
cate” and that he had “the eyes, the mouth, the body of a woman” (32). By
zooming in on Damien’s body, camera-like, and focusing on the delicacy of
his features, Colette defines him as “object,” and in so doing she questions
the traditional binary gender codes. In his 1997 book, Uneasy Pleasures:
Male as Erotic Objects, Kenneth MacKinnon maintains that “Masculinity
is continually being tested. Its borders are constantly being patrolled by
inspectors watching out for aberrations from or betrayals of masculine
ideals, as held by a particular society. Thus, men endure anxiety that they
may not come up to scratch, that their achievement of masculinity is less
than perfect” (24). The Pure and the Impure seems to anticipate Mackinnon’s
idea that apparent male domination might hide a different reality. First
introduced as a ladies man of many conquests, Damien’s power over
women is questioned. Closely examining Damien’s behaviour, the narrator
discovers that his domination of women is, in reality, a performance that
he is required to carry out. The narrator comes to believe that Damien is
condemned to seduce. His role of Don Juan, one which theoretically gives
him ascendancy over women, is one he “had to” fulfil: in fact, it’s a chore
that he had to perform. For Colette he is a victim whose “only asset was his
function” and whose “thankless and well-loved duties shut him off from
everything else” (57). The narrator compares him to a “wild beast teach-
ing her young: ‘Look. This is the way I jump, this is the way you ought to
jump.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because this is the way to jump’” (57). Just as the leap of a
wild beast is empty of any judgement, the narrator suggests that the role of
Don Juan is, in fact, an artificial construct based on no valid principle. John
Stoltenberg (1998) wrote that “as a society we sort out kids who are born
with penises and we raise them to have a life-long panic about experienc-
ing subjectively the feeling of being a real-enough man. … We construct
the meaning of manhood socially and politically through our acts; it does
not derive from our anatomy” (148). Through the transformation of the
Don Juan from predator to prey, from objectifier to object, Colette reveals
the constructed nature of gender poles. The patriarchal order in which
masculinity is assimilated with control a system considered as the norm or
as “pure” – is thus reversed.
A challenge to heteronormativity
The complex narrative of The Pure and the Impure goes further than
merely reversing traditional gender poles. As Mary Ann Doane (1992)
states in her theorization of the female spectator, “the reversal itself
remains locked within the same logic. The male stripteases, the gigolo,
both inevitably signify the mechanism of reversal itself, constituting
themselves as aberrations whose acknowledgement simply reinforces
the dominant system of aligning sexual difference with a subject/object
dichotomy” (233). What Doane suggests here is that theorizing the fem-
inine outside the barriers of dichotomies would have a much stronger
deconstructive effect on traditional codes. Imagining the feminine in
this way would allow not only a mere reversal of roles but also an oscil-
lation between a feminine and a masculine position. Since “the gaze” is
bound up with and is a conduit of social power and gender domination,
the creation of a female gazer is certainly a reversal of codes, but one
that only recreates another binary system. Colette anticipates this very
modern re-conceptualization of gender by instigating a “queer gaze,”
thus operating a real opposition to the patriarchal system.
In The Pure and the Impure Colette desexualizes her characters. When the
narrator is observing her friend Marguerite Moreno, she consciously avoids
using gendered terms; Marguerite Moreno has “strong sexless features.”
Watching her sleeping, the narrator compares her to both “Chimène and
Le Cid, closely united in the sleep of one single body,” (67) underlining
the presence and union of both female and male attributes. The narrator’s
psychological characterization is also desexualized. She asserts her andro-
gyneity, claiming “genuine mental hermaphrodism” (62). Freud (1962)
viewed what he himself called “psychic hermaphroditism” as a bisexual
disposition unique to homosexuals (8). Michel Foucault (1978) believed

it to be a neutral ability to empathize with both the masculine and the
feminine. (119–121). Either way, it is at odds with patriarchal gender
dichotomies. By defining her vision as “hermaphrodite,” Colette clearly
advocates a sexless mentality, an absence of both sexual and gender deter-
mination. The expression “mental hermaphrodism,” revolutionary at the
time, has attracted very few comments and left many critics perplexed.
The evidence of the text shows that the narrator’s declared “mental her-
maphrodism” constitutes a psychological approach or mode by which she
detaches herself from any binary gender code. Colette is thus asserting
that “the gaze” the narrator bestows is detached from any hierarchical
gender difference. If, as Richardson claims in Intersections between Feminist
and Queer Theory, “Queer writers explore the deconstruction and fluidity
of transient identities,” (3) then the “hermaphrodite gaze,” unconstrained
and unbiased by traditional binaries, can be characterized as a “queer
gaze.” Instead of merely switching gender opposites, Colette introduces a
perspective she describes as “pure”; one rid of patriarchal gender duality.
Colette’s “queer gaze” allows her to explore “non-conformist” sexual
practices. She recognizes and asserts “not only that a man can be amo-
rously satisfied with a man but that one sex can suppress, by forgetting
it, the other sex” (47). By affirming homosexuality, Colette contradicts
compulsory heterosexuality. In his book Subjectivity (2004), Donald Hall
states that “speaking out, or coming out, about different sexual desires
and subjectivities is thus potentially highly dynamic because it helps
expose the gross oversimplifications that underlie theories of sexual
normality lingering still from the nineteenth century” (107). At a time
when the dominant discourses, medical, social and political, marginal-
ized homosexuality, Colette presented it without taboo, even deliberately
trivializing it. Rather than recounting homosexuality as exotic spectacle,
which would reinforce patriarchal marginalization, Colette’s voyeuse
brings male homosexuals back into the ranks of real and ordinary people.
The narrator identifies with them: “I heard from their lips the language
of passion, of betrayal and jealousy, and sometimes of despair – languages
with which I was all too familiar, I heard them elsewhere and spoke them
fluently myself” (147).
By drawing parallels between the feelings of her gay acquaintances and
those of “ordinary people,” she breaks down patriarchal barriers that tra-
ditionally dictate “normal” and “abnormal” desire, pleasure and love. She
also makes it clear that male homosexuality does not imply effeminiza-
tion: “I would be the last to say they lacked virility” (146). By separating
gender characteristics, in particular physical appearance, from sexuality,
Colette erases as much as possible traces of a binary system. The Pure and
the Impure contains a very modern concept, according to which gender
and desire are two distinct, separate realities. Transforming the usual het-
erosexual female object of “the gaze” into a homosexual male one, Colette
explicitly evokes the latter as an archetype of “purity.” Whereas male
homosexuality is conventionally rejected as “impure,” she declares that:
“the association of the male couple I have just briefly sketched had, for
me, the aspect of union and even of dignity. A kind of austerity overlaid it
which I can compare to no other, for it held nothing of parade or precau-
tion. … I find it in me to see in homosexuality a kind of legitimacy and
to acknowledge its eternal character” (156). The very positive terms used
by the narrator to describe male homosexuality leave no doubt about her
mission to turn the traditionally “impure” into the “pure” and vice versa.
When Colette switches the object of the narrator’s scrutiny to female
transvestites and lesbians, she approaches her ultimate challenge to
the traditional functioning of the peepshow. Transvestism and lesbian
romance constituted deep transgressions, entailing as they do a choice
and activity by women that is outside the realms of patriarchy. Colette
ironically observes that lesbians forget “the nest-building instinct of
industrious females, destined to found and fill a home” (115). In The
Straight Mind (1992), Monique Wittig asserts that heterosexuality is an
oppressive regime for women and that “by its very existence, lesbian
society destroys the artificial (social) fact constituting women as a “natu-
ral group.” A lesbian society pragmatically reveals that the division from
men of which women have been the object is a political one and shows
that we have been ideologically rebuilt into a “natural group” (9). Wittig
reiterates Simone de Beauvoir’s famous statement that “one is not born a
woman but becomes one,” and goes on to repudiate the patriarchal cat-
egory “woman,” believing it to be the root of female subjugation. Female
homosexuality did have a place within patriarchal tradition, but only
as an object of sexual fantasy. In opposition to the patriarchal image of
female homosexuality as something perverse, Colette presents it as “pure”
and even poetical, in particular because of the similarities and symmetry
between two women’s bodies. Observing two women sleeping together,
the narrator describes figures “moulded together, the hips of the one in
the lap of the other, like two spoons in a silver drawer,” (8) and later
says that “a woman finds pleasure in caressing a body whose secrets she
knows,” although she might discover that “their mutual attraction is not
basically sensual” (117). Whereas Colette explicitly praises Marcel Proust
for his representation of male homosexuality, his Sodom, she declares in
The Pure and the Impure that his “Gomorrah of inscrutable and depraved
young girls” probably emerged from ignorance: “With all due deference
to the imagination or error of Marcel Proust, there is no such thing as
Gomorrah” (139). Once again Colette’s voyeuse reverses male percep-
tions that viewed lesbianism as perverse. She erases the conventionally
“impure” imagery that tainted lesbianism and promotes it as “pure.”
The structure of The Pure and the Impure could almost be compared to
a peepshow itself, in which the narrator is a voyeuse whose observations
withstand and counter the “male gaze,” patriarchal codes and binary
structures. In its narrative, traditionally marginalized characters and
their sexualities are legitimated. Sexual practices are described neutrally
and placed in a non-hierarchical range of possible psycho-sexual ways
of being. This subversion of patriarchal structures is a modern and care-
fully considered view on gender dynamics.
Colette’s voyeuse clearly favours sexual practices detached from tradi-
tional gender hierarchies. Through her narrator, Colette promotes a new
system, where the traditional “impure” becomes “pure” and vice versa.
Her “pure” includes those individuals traditionally considered as monsters
while the “impure” encompasses practices linked with traditional patriar-
chal hierarchies. Colette attempts to sum up her thoughts on her system
of values thus: “Tenderly, I recall the monsters who accompanied me for a
long way during that part of my life which was not easy. Monsters – that
is a word soon said. So much for monsters. […] you are the most human
people I know, the most reassuring in the world. If I call you monsters,
then what name can I give to the so-called normal conditions?” (184).
Colette stands against mainstream representations of women and of
men, whether in literature or cinema, that endorse a male-orientated,
heterosexual viewpoint. Revisiting Maura Mulvey’s essay on visual pleas-
ure, Kenneth MacKinnon argued that it was still acceptable in the 1980s
to consider that there could not be a male object of “the gaze” (14).
Colette’s The Pure and the Impure was a pioneering text, in direct and
radical opposition to codes of gender representation: of the masculine as
active, controlling and desiring; and of the feminine as a passive object
of desire. Indeed, Colette, in line with present-day gender theory, was one
of the first female writers to oppose the unified, dominant and phallic
power of the “male gaze.”
Notes
1. The Kinetoscope, conceptualized in 1888 and commercialized in 1894, followed
other inventions such as the phenakistiscope (1843), the choreutoscope (1866)
and the praxinoscope (1877).
2. Robinson (1996).
3. Stag films, also called dirty movies, were the first visual records showing that a
range of sexual practices existed at a time when sexuality was taboo and only
dealt with through euphemisms.
4. Stag films, also called dirty movies, were the first visual records showing that a
range of sexual practices existed at a time when sexuality was taboo and only
dealt with through euphemisms.
5. La Garçonne by Victor Marguerite (1922) or Les Don Juannnes by Marcel
Prévost (1942).
Bibliography
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Colette (2000). The Pure and the Impure. New-York: New-York Review of Books.
Doane, M. A. (1992). “Film and the Masquerade: theorizing the female specta-
tor.” In: M. Merck (ed.), The Sexual Object: A Screen Reader in Sexuality, London:
Routledge.
Eaves, E. (1971). Bare: The Naked Truth about Stripping. Emeryville: Seal Press.
Egan, D., K. Franckand and M. L. Johnson (2006). Flesh for Fantasy: Producing and
Consuming Exotic Dance. New-York: Thunder’s Mouth Press.
Foucault, M. (1978). Herculine Barbin dite Alexina B. Paris, Gallimard.
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Gallagher, C. and T. Laqueur (1987). The Making of the Modern Body. Sexuality and
Society in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of
California Press.
Hall, D. E. (2004). Subjectivity. New York: Routledge.
Huffer, L. (1992). Another Colette: The Question of Gendered Writing. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
Irigaray, L. (2004). Key Writings. New York: Continuum.
Krauthaker, M. (2011). L’Identité de genre dans les œuvres de George Sand et de
Colette. Paris: L’Harmattan.
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and New York: Routledge.
MacKinnon, K. (1997). Uneasy Pleasures: The Male as Erotic Object. London:
Cygnus Arts.
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Mulvey, L. (1975). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In: M. Merck (ed.),
The Sexual Object: A Screen Reader in Sexuality, London: Routledge: 22–34.
Inspired by Duel in the Sun.” In: M. McQuillan (ed.), The Narrative Reader,
Routledge: 182–184.
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and the Voyeur’s Gaze of Sinful Desire. Paris: Olympia Press.
Richardson, D., J. McLaughlin and E. Mark Casey (2006). Intersections between
Feminist and Queer Theory. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Robinson, D. (1996). From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film. New York:
Columbia University Press.
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Stoltenberg, J. (1998). “Healing from Manhood.” In: S. P. Schacht and D. W. Ewing

(ed.), Feminism and Men: Reconstructing Gender Relations. New York: New York
University Press.
Wichins, R. (2004). Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer. Los Angeles:
Alyson Publications.
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Filmography
What Is Seen Through a Keyhole (aka Par le trou de la serrure). Dir. F. Zecca. Pathé
Frères, 1901.
4
The Monstrous
Non-heteronormative Formed
by the Male Gaze
Matthew Martin
Laura Mulvey notes that man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist

like. “Hence the split between spectacle and narrative supports the man’s
role as the active one advancing the story, making things happen,” she
explains. “The man controls the film fantasy and also emerges as the
representative of power in the a further sense” (20). Roderick A. Ferguson
suggests “as it kept silent about sexuality and gender, historical material-
ism, along with liberal ideology, took normative sexuality as the emblem
of order, nature and universality, making that which deviated from hete-
reopatriarchal ideals the sign of disorder” (6).
Throughout history, monsters and “freaks,” in particular, have served
as everything from sources of entertainment, such as court jesters, to the
harbingers of fear in literature and film. The Other – racial, sexual, etc. –
has been depicted as monstrous as a form of propaganda to control the
cultural perception of what is hegemonically different or unacceptable.
Laura Mulvey has famously discussed the representation of inequality
in cinema as well as the manipulative power of the male gaze, par-
ticularly the way in which it has constructed visual representations of
women, the Other and sexuality within the media. By looking at the
American horror films, The Exorcist and Little Shop of Horrors (LSOH),1
this chapter examines the ways in which the male gaze has constructed
the representation of “abnormal” sexuality, more specifically a queer-
of-colour sexuality, as physically monstrous.2 The monsters within the
films, the possessed body in The Exorcist and the entity of Audrey II
in LSOH, portray the fears of hegemony, paradoxically promoting and
celebrating the collapse of the sexual hegemonic order – more specifi-
cally, the burgeoning queer-of-colour presence and disruption of gender
“norms,” all while highlighting the true horrors within patriarchal social
binaries.
62
The Monstrous Non-heteronormative Formed by the Male Gaze 63
In her article “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary

Abjection,” Barbara Creed cites Julia Kristeva’s use of the abject, which is
defined as “that which does not ‘respect borders, positions, rules … that
which ‘disturbs identity, system, order” (45).3 Kristeva highlights that “the
place of the abject is ‘the place where meaning collapses’,” and that “abjec-
tion is above all ambiguity” (46, 48).4 The abject complicates the estab-
lished social binaries of the symbolic order – that which is upheld by the
male gaze. What is perceived as contradicting the symbolic order is thus
coated or associated with abjection in the films. In both films, the monsters
are the disturbers of the symbolic and force all those that come into contact
with them to question their roles within the symbolic order.
To begin, one must understand the way in which some of the charac-
ters in the films view and approach the American ideal. Here I explore
the American ideal as consisting in a hegemonic and heteronormative
(or heterocentric) nuclear family. For example, LSOH is filled with char-
acters attempting to reach this superlative. Seymour and Audrey, the
film’s main human protagonists, live in an urban downtown area in the
1960s, an area referred to throughout the film as “Skid Row.” The streets
of Skid Row are littered with homeless people holding bottles of liquor
and sitting amongst the trash scattered in the streets. People throw food
from pots onto sidewalks; all of the roads have puddles of stagnant
liquid and various forms of waste. Skid Row provides a representational
landscape of American disillusionment. Mushnik’s Flower Shop, located
in the heart of Skid Row, is a failing establishment that doubles as both
Seymour’s place of work and his home. In their introductory song,
Seymour and Audrey repeat the refrain “get outta here” dozens of times;
Audrey dreams of a life where “[She] cook[s] like Betty Crocker And
[she] look[s] like Donna Reed.”5 These characters are striving to achieve
a middle-class lifestyle in which traditional gender roles are strictly
maintained.
In contrast to those on Skid Row, the focal family depicted in The
Exorcist is immensely wealthy: the McNeal family – headed by Chris, an
independently wealthy woman who lives with her daughter – have no
financial woes. As a successful thespian, Chris is able to afford an opu-
lent lifestyle for her daughter, including a small economy of butlers and
chefs at her disposal. Her husband is abroad and the only scene in the
film where he is referenced is when a frustrated Chris attempts, without
success, to reach him on their daughter’s birthday. Chris has no need or
desire for her husband to return; she is a strong and financially successful
woman at a time during which women were battling for equality.6 Clearly,
the McNeal family is living a life that contrasts with the hegemonic norm.
64 Matthew Martin
According to Creed, “Definitions of the monstrous as constructed in

the modern horror text are grounded in ancient religious and histori-
cal notions of abjection …: sexual immorality and perversion; corporeal
alteration, decay and death; human sacrifice; murder; the corpse; bodily
wastes; the feminine body and incest” (46).7 Each of these notions of
abjection is associated with the possession in The Exorcist. Once inhabited,
Regan’s pubescent body – an abject state in itself – is responsible for at
least two murders, and is consistently coated with bile, blood and sweat.
In one of the most viscerally affective scenes in the film, Regan’s body
simultaneously masturbates with and is molested by a crucifix. The scene
continues when Regan’s body forces her mother’s head into her bloody
crotch as she screams, “Lick me! Lick me!” The body changes colour as she
continues to projectile vomit onto those sent to help, and subsequently
begins to decay. This female possessed body is the quintessential image of
Kristeva’s abject and the monstrous.
Conversely, the monstrous entity of LSOH is the talking plant, Audrey II.
The prologue of the film tells of the arrival of “a deadly threat to [the]
very existence” of the human race – a seemingly innocuous plant. The
exotic plant is discovered in a Chinese flower shop, clearly identified by
Seymour’s racial commentary and the caricature of a Chinese shop owner,
complete with a bow of thanks at the moment of sale.8 With a green flash,
the seedling appears under the darkness of an unexpected solar eclipse.
This imagery positions Audrey II as an ultimate Other, a being from
another world. The arrival is also marked by the only time within the
film that Seymour interacts, or attempts to interact, with Afro-Americans.
Seeing a bebop group singing in the street, he approaches and almost
begins to join in as the eclipse occurs. Undoubtedly, the eclipse can be
read as the reaction to a racial blending that almost happened and it is,
furthermore, through this blending that the “deadly threat” makes its
arrival on earth. Very early on in the film it is made clear that the deseg-
regation occurring in the country constitutes a threatening breakdown of
boundaries and norms – a similar threat to that of having a matriarchal,
single-parent home.9
Drawn to Audrey II’s exotic appearance, Seymour brings it to the store
and the plant becomes the catalyst for the flower shop’s salvation. In an
attempt to bring more business to the failing shop, Seymour persuades
Mr Mushnik to place Audrey II in the window to attract customers.10
Drawn to the shop window by what is continually referred to as “a strange
and interesting plant,” customers begin flooding the shop. The store, once
filled with dead plants and featuring grungy walls, becomes clean and
filled with colourful and lively plants. At first, Audrey II fits into the palm
of a hand and has a fleshy pink hue and predominant pink lips. The simi-
larity of the plant to the female genitalia is unmistakable and is perhaps
the reason for Seymour naming the plant Audrey II, after his co-worker
and the object of his sexual desire, Audrey. This vaginal resemblance
might also be the cause of the only time that Audrey II is ever assigned
a gender by Seymour: after a long day, the plant begins to looks ill and
Seymour says, “the Audrey II is not a healthy girl.” Significantly, there is
no other point in the film in which Seymour assigns gender to the plant.
Preoccupied with Audrey II’s weakened state and looming death,
Seymour carelessly pricks his finger and the blood attracts the attention
of the almost lifeless plant. This scene occurs in the middle of his song
“Grow For Me,” which dually comments on Seymour’s impotence as a
businessman unable to keep his one chance for financial success alive,
and on the dying plant. As Seymour sucks his finger in an attempt to
return the abject fluid to its rightful place, Audrey II begins to make
kissing noises, puckering its lips and leaning towards Seymour. With
trepidation, he begins dropping blood into the snapping mouth of the
plant while singing “I’ll give you a few drops if that’ll appease, now
please-oh please-grow for me!” As soon as Seymour leaves the room
Audrey II begins to undergo a transformation. The plant’s flesh darkens,
no longer reminiscent of the pink hue it had started with, the stem
elongates, the head grows in circumference and two large leaves form
at the base. The vaginal shaped plant now takes on the shape of male
genitalia while maintaining a vaginal head at the end of the phallus.
This transformation is the first allusion in the film to the abject dual-
gendered and racial Other represented as Audrey II.
The sexual and racial dualisms within Audrey II are furthered once
the plant has grown taller than Seymour and, for the first time, begins
speaking the iconic phrase, “Feed me!” When asked about the vocalist
casting choice, the film’s director, Frank Oz, said: “[Levi Stubbs]11 was
exactly what I was looking for ... [s]omebody who had an edge to him …
who was real black, real street … who had a touch of malevolence but
could be real silly and funny at the same time” (55).12 Although Oz
continued the interview by denying that Audrey II’s physical form is
intended to be an Afro-American caricature, critics agree that the dark
complexion and large exaggerated lips, combined with an iconic black
voice, do in fact serve to racialize the plant.
It is also important to mention the shift in potential gender represen-
tations. Previously, Seymour had presumptuously referred to Audrey II as
a female, but then a very masculine voice emanates from the plant. Later
in the film Seymour discovers that Audrey II is bearing seedlings and
66 Matthew Martin
refers to itself as a “mother,” all the while maintaining a hyper-masculine

voice. Clearly, it is not the case that Audrey II is female, or that it is only
female. It is at this moment that the relationship between Seymour and
Audrey II changes. Audrey II’s needs outgrow what Seymour himself can
provide (blood) and thus Audrey II convinces Seymour to kill another
human as a way to provide the carnivorous plant with sustenance.
Audrey II thus becomes more demanding of Seymour and effectively
persuades him to cross his own ethical boundaries – an abject collapse
threatening to transform Seymour into a monster.
This same gender and racial duality can be seen in the possessed
body of The Exorcist. Regan’s body, before possession, is the body of a
young, white female. When possessed, the body is inhabited by a male
presence, as is made clear by the reference to the male Christian devil
as well as the masculine voice with which the body begins to speak.
The film is careful at the beginning to show that the source of evil is
coming from Iraq, thus establishing that not only is the possessed body
dual-gendered, but in fact dual-raced. After the possession takes hold,
the body’s skin tone quickly begins to show the signs of the coloured
presence within Regan’s body. As the possession deepens and the Other
inside of Regan becomes more powerful, her skin becomes darker and
hues of green and purple transform her pale complexion into something
dark, ominous – monstrous. Her eyes become an inhuman colour, the
purple and green in her skin make her look as if she is bruising from the
inside and her skin becomes covered with lesions.
Creed argues that the function of the monstrous within horror films
is “to bring about an encounter between the symbolic order and that
which threatens its stability.”13 Once the symptoms of the demonic
possession begin and the status quo of the home is ruptured, Chris, in
The Exorcist, feels it is necessary to reach out to the male-dominated
fields of science, medicine and psychiatry for help. At this point in
the film, much like when Audrey II first speaks, there is a noticeable
change in tone and gender representation. The medical specialists speak
condescendingly to Chris and her frustrations become more apparent
as more men invade her home and tell her that her intuition regarding
her daughter’s health is wrong. Chris’s objections are dismissed and she
is forced to watch helplessly as they use horrific and grisly techniques to
find a “cure.” Their “solutions” leave Regan covered in her own blood;
she is terrified of the bestial sounds made by the thrusting machines,
further agitated and even more abject.
With the failure of medicine, Chris turns to religion and meets with
Father Karras with the intention of seeking an exorcism. In this scene
Chris has been reduced to the female archetype symbolic of domestic

violence. To hide a dark purple bruise across her cheek (acquired after an
attempt to restrain Regan), she is wearing large sunglasses and a head-
scarf. The collar of her winter coat is pulled high across her neck in an
attempt at comfort and protection. Her body has been violated and she
has been reduced to a desperate woman, begging men for help. It is the
possessed body’s projectile vomit on Father Karras that returns Chris to
the role of the domestic housewife – she launders his clothes while he
searches for any clues regarding the situation. With Chris’s wealth and
hired help it is unlikely that she has been required to do any form of
domestic chore in years. After all, it is her housekeeper who cleans the
carpets after Regan urinates on the floor, not Chris. Due to her gender,
Chris is being subjugated as a marginalized Other, similar to the way in
which non-heteronormativity is positioned in the films.
Both of the films feature instances of homosexuality, but never once, in
either film, are the words “homosexual,” “gay” or “lesbian” used to iden-
tify it. What the films use, as a way to allude to or signify the existence
of this homosexuality, is camp. According to Fabio Cleto, “Camp is affili-
ated with homosexual culture” with roots in “late-Victorian slang, mean-
ing ‘actions and gestures of exaggerated emphasis’,” and is associated
with “theatrical, high society, the fashion world, and the underground
city life.”14 By using camp, these films can engage with and acknowledge
homosexuality by way of a veil through which the male gaze can process
it; to portray male homosexuality without a metaphorical distancing
would be offensive to the male audience. Mulvey15 writes, “Man is reluc-
tant to gaze at his exhibitionist like,” and it is for this reason that any
version of non-heteronormativity must be masked by either camp and/
or monstrosity. For example, Father Dyer in The Exorcist, a close friend of
Chris, comments at a dinner party, “My idea of heaven is a solid white
nightclub with me as a headliner for all eternity – and they love me.”
While this is being said both of his hands are hanging limp at the wrist
and there is a noticeable lisp in his voice. The film does not return to the
notion of his sexuality, but it is unmistakably apparent at this moment
in which he is the focal point.
Similarly, in a short cameo in LSOH, Bill Murray plays the role of
a patient who finds himself in the chair of the sadistic dentist. His
mouth is filled with cotton, giving his speech the same lisp as produced
by Father Dyer. As the dentist moves to thrust a phallic metal device
into Murray’s mouth, his eyes fill with glee and he sings out how he is
“going to get a candy bar!” It is as if “candy bar” is his euphemism for
an erection as his male dentist simulates fellatio with dental tools. As
68 Matthew Martin
the dentist continues, Murray repeatedly calls out “You are something
special,” flicks his tongue at the dentist and his moaning builds up until
he ejects the mouthful of white cotton all over his face, mimicking
ejaculation. Finally, the dentist, disgusted by his behaviour throws him
out of the office and calls him a “goddamned sick-o.” This moral judg-
ment is made more severe by the fact it comes from an openly admitted
sadist – placing homosexual desire as more sinful than that of one who
enjoys inflicting pain. Both films, by allowing a mere momentary pres-
ence, acknowledge that within the societal realm, there are homosexual
men. In both films, these men are white. It is thus only through mon-
strosity that the films can acknowledge any aspect of non-binary gender
representation or the “queer-of-colour” presence within America.
Through the dual genders of the abject entities, the films The Exorcist
and LSOH allow for an Afro-American non-hetereonormative presence,
even though this is never actually acknowledged as such. The first
sign of Regan’s possessed body representing a queer-of-colour presence
occurs when a male psychologist puts the dual-gendered consciousness
under hypnosis and clearly states, “I am speaking to the person inside
of Regan now.” When the psychiatrist begins to ask “the person inside of
Regan” a question, the lighting and camera angles shift, the face becomes
covered in shadow and the body’s hand reaches out and grabs the psy-
chologist’s crotch. The psychologist’s surprised screams are met with a
masculine grumbling from the possessed body. By placing shadows over
the body’s angry face, the film alludes to the “dark” presence within
Regan’s body as the non-heteronormative sexual act occurs.
Non-heteronormativity is brought up again as Father Merrin and
Father Karras begin the ritual of exorcism and attempt to rid the body
of its demonic presence. The body, its skin now at its darkest in the
film, looks to Father Merrin and exclaims “Stick your cock up her ass
you motherfucking cocksucker.” The obscene vulgarity of the statement
coming from the body of a young girl, and said to a religious figure, is
heightened by the fact it is a comment regarding homosexuality. The
male entity within the possessed body is demanding anal intercourse, a
sexual act predominately associated with male homosexual behaviour.
Father Merrin ignores the statement, unable to respond because it is so
far from his social reality that there is no way he could respond. The
body continues flicking its tongue in a motion very similar to that of
Bill Murray during the sexualized dental procedure in LSOH.
It is vital to look at the exorcisms within each film in order to truly
understand what exactly the films are attempting to exorcise. Having
fully established Audrey II as a racial Other, Ed Guerrero argues that the
plant “plays on white suburbanite and neoconservative anxieties that

expanding the non-white immigrant populations will become as large,
demanding, and assertive as indigenous blacks are already perceived to
be,” and provides a representation of the “persistent anxieties over race
and immigration” (59, 58).16 I have argued that the possessed body is rep-
resentative of the disruption of the social hegemonic norm, and by exor-
cising it there is an attempt to re-establish gender norms and idealized
“normalcy.” What these entities also represent is the homosexual presence
within society; more specifically, the non-white non-heteronormative
presence.
As has been established, Audrey II represents an androgynous being
in the film. Early on, shortly after Seymour labels Audrey II a “girl,” he
takes it to a radio show where the plant lewdly flickers its tongue and
attempts to bite at the rear end of a bent over woman. At this point
in the film Audrey II has been associated with being female and this
behaviour would strongly imply a same-sex attraction – the flapping
tongue alluding to a desire to perform cunnilingus on the woman.
Later, after Audrey II has started speaking and the masculine presence
is made clear, the plant, in an attempt to convince Seymour to bring it
something to eat, rubs a phallic vine up his sweater and neck. This is
after the countless hours that Audrey II has spent suckling Seymour’s
fingers, its leaves wagging with pleasure. With its iconic baritone “black
voice” it is clear that Audrey II is representative – as is Regan’s possessed
body – of a queer-of-colour presence in the film, although this is never
actually articulated as clearly as instances of white homosexuality.17
Both of the films feature a white homosexuality that the characters
respond to: the dentist’s repulsion at Bill Murray’s sexual attraction; and
the crowd laughing and singing along with Father Dyer as he discusses
his dreams to be a lounge performer. Not once, however, in either of
the films, is the queer-of-colour presence recognized for what it truly is.
According to Roderick A. Ferguson, “Afro-American non-heteronormative
formations function as a palimpsest in which the disparate genealogies of
sociology, American citizenship, Western nation-state formation, aesthetic
culture, and capital collide” (81).18 Essentially, Ferguson claims that it is
the negation or demonization of the non-white non-heteronormative
formations that allowed for the development and existence of the hegem-
ony. By establishing that which is morally and socially acceptable as that
which is not non-heteronormative, it is as if American society, through
film, is attempting its own cultural exorcism. This is why the non-
heteronormativity of Regan’s possessed body, and that of Audrey II, go
without any recognition by the other characters. They, as representatives
70 Matthew Martin
of society, are programmed to be everything except that which black

queer sexuality represents, and they are not able to engage. Black queer
sexuality has been used both to define national identity as well as to be
rejected from its rightful place in culture. Consequently, both films require
a form of exorcism before white, heterosexual, hegemonic order can be
re-established.
The use of a camp lens reveals that what has been referred to throughout
this chapter as dual or non-binary gender is in fact an expression of drag,
rather than simply an example of hegemonic monstrosity. Audrey II’s
and Regan’s possessed bodies actually serve to mock and challenge
the socially-defined roles of gender. As stated by Judith Butler in her
fundamental study, Gender Troubles, “Drag […] effectively mocks both
the expressive model of gender and the notion of a true gender iden-
tity” (174).19 In effect, this form of protest is not working to establish
hegemonic gender norms but instead to promote gender euphoria and
a break in the traditional roles. The monstrosity exhibited in the films
enhances this contradiction of hegemonic norms. Paul Semonin writes
that historically “Monsters came to symbolize the imbecility of popular
beliefs, the perfect metaphor for decrying the sheep-like mentality of the
masses.” (71).20 By creating monsters in the horror films, the films are
mocking the fears they represent – the fears of gender-bending and non-
heteronormativity, and allowing for an exploration of the true horrors
within a patriarchal society.
The abject monstrosities represented in these films serve to highlight
the more realistic and common horrors in post-World War II America. For
instance, once she lets men into her home for the exorcism, Chris McNeal
is relocated to the basement, the furthest point in the house from her
daughter. As if establishing the epitome of Cixous’s gender hierarchy,21
Chris has been physically placed below the men in her own home.
Throughout the film, no matter how horrific the moment, she has
fought to stay next to Regan. In the end, however, she is forced to sub-
mit to the men and is relegated to seclusion to wait out fate. Although
she sought help, she is still helpless, without agency and unable to
effect change. Chris is thereby placed in a hegemonically-defined role
for women within a patriarchal society: she is submissive to male influ-
ence. It is the way in which patriarchy positions women and gender-
based inequality that is monstrous, and it is the possessed body that
highlights this.
Audrey II shows the length to which a man can go to achieve hegemonic
authority. Seymour murders the dentist with an axe, feeding the pieces
to Audrey II. With the dentist dead, who has been dating the woman of
Seymour’s dreams, Seymour is now free to be with the woman he wants –

insofar as she is willing. Seymour stands idly by as Mr Mushnik walks into
the open mouth of Audrey II, which swallows him whole. With the death
of Mr Mushnik, Seymour is able to take over the shop and become the boss
of a now thriving business. Using Audrey II to literally devour the men
standing in his way, Seymour is claiming everything he wants – a nuclear
and middle-class family. Although one might be inclined to see the mon-
strosities in the two films as the possessed body or as Audrey II, these are
in fact merely the catalysts that reveal the monstrous nature of the
hegemonic gender binary – socially and physically.
Once Seymour has realized that Audrey II is intent on taking over the
planet, he realizes that he has no choice other than to kill his source of
economic prosperity. With dozens of Audrey II’s seedlings preparing to
attack, he takes an axe to the monstrous plant, only to be continually
knocked down by the thrusting vines. Seymour almost suffers castra-
tion as Audrey II sings out “I’m gonna bust your balls” and forces a vine
between his legs. With the failure of the axe as a weapon against the plant,
Seymour attaches two electrical wires to the end of one of Audrey II’s ten-
tacles, to blow up the plant and kill its seedlings. With this electric shock
as the tool to kill Audrey II, the film makes its final allusion to the plant’s
queer sexuality. In the 20th century psychiatrists regularly used electric
shock treatments to “cure” homosexuals.22 The final shot of the film
shows Seymour and Audrey, excitedly entering into the quintessential
image of suburban life – a home with a perfectly maintained lawn and a
white picket fence. Once they have entered their idealized bliss, the cam-
era lowers to show a small, smirking seedling from Audrey II. Although
he had tried, Seymour, like the psychiatrists of the 20th century, had not
been able to rid society of the racialized and sexual Other.
As The Exorcist draws to its end the viewer is left lost once more within
the abjection of America in the 1970s. With the demonic presence ban-
ished, Chris and Regan are leaving Washington DC, and while packing,
Chris’s assistant finds the St Joseph medallion. Rather than keeping it
for herself, Chris gives it to Father Dyer and they drive away without
looking back at him or their life in the house. Chris has once again
rejected religion from her life and her daughter’s life. She has been failed
by both science and religion; she has been subjugated and marginalized
by men, and now she is once again rejecting patriarchy.
Although these films are decades old, the endeavour to exorcise the
queer/racial presence continues to occur in America on a daily basis.
According to a study by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force,
approximately 40% of the homeless youth within the country are LGBT
72 Matthew Martin
identified, and 26% of those that come out of the closet are forced out of
their homes.23 After centuries of having moral and just behaviour defined
by what is not LGBT or represented by the racial Other, there remains a
deep-rooted fear and animosity towards these marginalized groups. Both
films end with unsettled conclusions; and hegemonic attempts to remove
the queer and queer-of-colour presences from American society will con-
tinue to confront resistance and the reckoning of the monstrous abject.
Notes
1. The Exorcist (1973) and Little Shop of Horrors (1986).
2. Although LSOH can be described as a dark comedy, it has been discussed and
compared by critics like Guerrero as a horror film and exhibits many of the
tropes of the horror genre: murder, violence and suspense.
3. One of the chapters of her seminal text The Monstrous-Feminine: Film,
Feminism, Psychoanalysis (1986).
4. Creed (1986).
5. From the song “Somewhere that’s Green.”
6. The perennially controversial Roe v. Wade (1973) ruling occurred almost
a year before the film was released and at a time when the nation was satu-
rated with Second Wave feminism that had begun in the early 1960s but
erupted with popularity in the 1970s.
7. Creed (1986).
8. Seymour refers to the shop owner as “an old Chinese man.”
9. The Supreme Court ruling of Brown v. the Board of Education was handed
down in 1956, and in 1957. it was enforced, desegregating schools. This is
only three years prior to the events in the film and was undoubtedly on the
conscious mind of the hegemony at the time.
10. This is reminiscent of the historical acts of travelling circuses placing “exotic”
Others on display for financial gain. See also the story of Sarah Baartman, a
South African woman who was placed in “freak” show exhibitions; or P. T.
Barnum, the American who ran circus shows around objectifying the Other for
monetary gain.
11. Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops – a vocal group that influenced the sounds of
Motown in the 1960s – voices Audrey II.
12. Jensen (2008).
13. Creed (1986).
14. Cleto (1999).
15. Mulvey (2009).
16. Guerrero (1993).
17. It should be noted that in the 1930s it was common that, in horror films,
directors would place some form of plant within the mise-en-scène to allude
to the homosexuality of the characters. “Flowers and things ‘horticultural’
were […] a coded signifier for male homosexuality.” (Benshoff 1997: 46).
18. Ferguson (2004).
19. Butler (1990).
20. Semonin (1996).
21. Hélène Cixous (1988).

22. Benshoff (1997).
23. Ray (2006).
Bibliography
Benshoff, H. M. (1997). Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film.
Manchester: Manchester UP.
Boyle, H. C. “Prayer to St. Joseph.” Our Lady Warriors. <http://www.ourladyswar-
riors.org/prayer/joseph.htm>.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:
Routledge.
Chaudhuri, S. (2006). Feminist Film Theorists: Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa
de Lauretis, Barbara Creed. New York: Taylor & Francis.
Cixous, H. (1988). “Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays.” Modern
Criticism and Theory: A Reader. London: Longman: 358–365.
Cleto, F. (1999). “Introduction: Queering the Camp.” Camp: Queer Aesthetics and
the Performing Subject: A Reader. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan: 1–42.
Creed, B. (1986). “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection.”
Screen 27(1): 44–71.
Doron, G., and I. Sened (2001). Political Bargaining. London: Sage Publications.
Ferguson, R. (2004). Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. Minnesota:
University of Minnesota Press.
Goddu, T. A. (1997). Gothic America: Narrative, History, and Nation. New York:
Guerrero, E. (1993). Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film.
Philadelphia: Temple UP.
Jensen, M. (2008). “‘Feed Me!’: Power Struggles and the Portrayal of Race in Little
Shop of Horrors.” Cinema Journal 48.1: 51–67.
Mulvey, L. (2009). Visual and Other Pleasures. 2nd ed. Great Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Ray, N. (2006). “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth: An Epidemic of
Homelessness” National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute National
Coalition for the Homeless. i-189.
Semonin, P. (1996) “Monsters in the Marketplace.” R. Garland-Thomson (ed.),
Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. New York: New York
UP: 69–82.
Filmography
The Exorcist. Dir. W. Friedkin. Perf. E. Burstyn, M. von Sydow and L. Blair. Warner
Bros./Hoya Productions, 1973.
The Little Shop of Horrors. Dir. F. Oz. Perf. R. Moranis, E. Greene and V. Gardenia.
Geffen Company, 1986.
5
Bearing Witness to the Unbearable:
Ethics and the Phallic Gaze in
Irréversible
Kathleen Scott
Gaspar Noé’s notorious film Irréversible (2002) was met with both
acclaim and condemnation upon its premiere at the 2002 Cannes Film
Festival. Of the 2,400 people in the audience, over two hundred walked
out, and over twenty are reported to have fainted or become physically
ill.1 A Cannes official attending the premiere stated that “I’ve never seen
this at the Cannes festival. The scenes in this film are unbearable, even
for us professionals.”2 However, those who did remain until the end of
the screening gave the film a five-minute standing ovation.3 After its
premiere at Cannes, the film became a lightning rod for controversy
due to the intense physical, emotional and psychological reactions
experienced by spectators at various screenings.
Critical reaction to Irréversible in the popular press at the time of its
wider release was decidedly mixed. Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-
Times praised the film for its reverse chronological structure, arguing
that it exposes the futility of revenge as a just punishment for violent
crimes.4 However, Ebert cautioned that Irréversible may not be appro-
priate for all audiences, a view echoed by David Ansen’s prediction in
Newsweek magazine that it would be the most walked-out on film of the
year.5 In contrast to Ebert’s cautionary praise, Peter Bradshaw’s review
in The Guardian espoused the view that Irréversible was irredeemably
violent and misogynistic. Bradshaw claimed that “[o]nly in hungover,
sensation-starved Cannes could this extraordinarily unpleasant, crude,
fatuous piece of swaggering macho naivety be considered interesting.”6
The criticisms directed at Irréversible extend to the wider New Extremist
trend of recent European cinema to which the film belongs. French
New Extremism gained in popularity and notoriety as a cinematic trend
in the mid- to late 1990s, as directors such as Catherine Breillat, Claire
Denis, Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi, Bruno Dumont, Philippe
74
Ethics and the Phallic Gaze in Irréversible 75
Grandrieux, Gasper Noé, Jacques Nolot, François Ozon and Marina de

Van, among others, began featuring scenes of explicit sex and violence
in their films. The majority of New Extremist narratives centre around
violence and its repercussions and sexual relationships in crisis, often
combining the two to startling effect. Stylistically, the visceral and aggres-
sive aesthetics of New Extremist films mirror their transgressive subject
matter. Although the films do not share a specific aesthetic approach to
their material, they do share a tendency to depict violence and sexuality
in stark and brutally uncompromising manners.
French New Extremist cinema has been widely disparaged for these
hyper-stylized renditions of sexually explicit and brutally violent subject
matter. In a famously inflammatory article in the journal Artforum, critic
James Quandt excoriated New Extremist filmmakers for their supposed
indulgence in vulgar images of sex and violence to no apparent purpose,
singling out and dismissing filmmakers such as Noé, Breillat, Dumont
and Ozon for their insistent need “to break every taboo, to wade in riv-
ers of viscera and spumes of sperm, to fill each frame with flesh … and
subject it to all manner of penetration, mutilation, and defilement.”7
The controversy surrounding the artistic and moral worth of New
Extremist films often includes discussions of the personal motivations
and ethical positions of the spectators who view them. For example,
the writings of critics such as Bradshaw and Quandt suggest that a
violent film such as Irréversible invites a sadistic phallic gaze that mim-
ics those of the assaultive characters within the fictional world of the
film. Within such a polarized critical environment, it is indeed easy to
dismiss Irréversible’s potential to create and impart non-phallic and non-
voyeuristic viewing positions for spectators to encounter violence and
suffering in an ethical manner. This chapter aims to remedy this lack
of attention by examining the ethical function of the non-phallic gaze
in witnessing violence in Irréversible. Specifically, it explores the ways in
which the violent and disturbing aesthetics of the film relate to contem-
porary thinking on both cinematic perception and spectatorship ethics.
This rethinking of the phallic gaze in cinema will attend specifically
to the ethical responsibilities of the diegetic witness to filmic violence
within the narrative, and how these relate to the ethical roles and
responsibilities of spectators watching such violence. Using Irréversible
as a case study, I question the efficacy of the phallic gaze, a concept
popularized by apparatus film theory, to adequately describe the com-
plex physical, emotional and ethical engagement of spectators with vio-
lent film aesthetics – especially regarding the relationship of spectators
to diegetic witnesses. I suggest that the alternate framework of haptic
76 Kathleen Scott
vision better embodies the ethical possibilities that cinematic violence

holds for spectators.
Theories of the spectatorial gaze
The concept of the “phallic gaze” has its roots in the politically engaged
psychoanalytic apparatus film theory which emerged in the 1970s.
Theorists such as Jean-Louis Baudry argued that the cinema functions
as an ideological institution that, through its conditioning of optical
perception, creates a false sense of unified and coherent subjectivity in
spectators. Baudry described this transcendental cinematic subject as pos-
sessing a seemingly infinite gaze freed from the physicality of the body:
[I]f the eye which moves is no longer fettered by a body, by the

laws of matter and time, if there are no more assignable limits to its
displacement – conditions fulfilled by the possibilities of shooting and
of film – the world will be constituted not only by this eye but for it.8
Christian Metz also argued that spectatorship transformed the viewer

into an “all-perceiving” and “all-powerful”9 transcendental subject. This
omniscient subject perceived with an optical vision completely disin-
carnated from the body; Metz writes that the cinema transformed the
viewer into “a silent, motionless spectator, a vacant spectator constantly
in sub-motor and hyper-perceptive state … a self filtered out into pure
vision.”10
The disembodied and omniscient gaze posited by Baudry and Metz
became explicitly phallic in the work of feminist film scholar Laura
Mulvey, who used psychoanalysis to explore the impact of gender
and sexual difference on film spectatorship in her seminal 1975 essay
“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Mulvey argued that the
Classical Hollywood film form is founded on an unconscious logic of
patriarchy that creates men as subjects, or “bearers of the gaze,” while
relegating women to the status of objects that connote “to-be-looked-
at-ness.”11 Through processes of sadistic scopophilia and narcissistic
identification, male spectators derive both pleasure and anxiety from
cinematic representations of women. Both of these processes take
place via a phallic gaze that interpellates male spectators by denying
two of the three “looks” in operation: the look of the camera and the
look of the audience. Only the looks of the characters among each
other within the diegesis of the film remain obvious to the spectators.
Film thus creates a “reality effect” in which male spectators employ
a covetous phallic gaze in order to desire and identify with characters

onscreen without self-awareness or guilt.
In arguing that the cinema constitutes an ideological apparatus gen-
erating and perpetuating phallic power and pleasure specifically, Mulvey
recognized gender and sexual difference as key factors influencing
spectatorial perception. Although gender and sexual difference are not
considered in previously established understandings of the gaze within
psychoanalytic apparatus theory, there are nevertheless certain points of
continuity. Like Baudry and Metz, Mulvey assumed that the visual gaze
that constitutes spectators as subjects operates in an exclusively optical
register. All three also identify a moral dimension of the gaze of the
camera and spectators who identify with it; the look of the camera-eye
operates immorally insofar as it becomes a tool of a Western ideology
of autonomous, individualistic and phallocentric subjectivity. Morality,
ideology and the phallic gaze were thus inextricably linked in this domi-
nant strand of politically engaged film theory. Its characterization of the
spectatorial gaze as a tool of objectifying and possessive phallocentric
power rendered discussions of gendered power dynamics onscreen, and
especially those involving violence, fraught with debate.
However, not all theories on cinematic spectatorship characterize
optical vision as a sense operating exclusively through phallocentric
objectification and distanciation. In the early 2000s, media theorist
Laura U. Marks employed the term “haptic vision” to describe a mode
of spectatorship not premised on a sadistic and alienated phallic gaze.
Marks distinguished between optical and haptic vision, claiming that
optical vision is a distance sense that results in identification with
diegetic figures, while haptic vision is a “tactile, kinesthetic, and pro-
prioceptive”12 mode of perception in which our eyes touch the surface
of the screen, creating a tactile experience “both on the surface of and
inside our bodies.”13 Within the optical/haptical binary proposed by
Marks, the relationship between the spectator and the image fluctuates
between disembodied cognition and corporeal tactility.
In contrast to apparatus theorists, Marks largely divorces her descrip-
tion of embodied spectatorship from any moral or ethical substance.
She focuses instead on the experiential process undergone by spectators
as they slide between optical and haptical vision. Marks also does not
describe the spectator’s gaze as exclusively phallic. Instead, she argues
that the oscillation between optical distance and haptic immersion cre-
ates a spectatorial gaze that is non-gendered in that it is “not organized
around identification …with a single figure, but … is labile, able to
move between identification and immersion.”14
78 Kathleen Scott
Marks’s embodied viewer is akin to what phenomenological film scholar

Vivian Sobchack terms the “cinesthetic subject.” Sobchack draws on
Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of being-in-the-world to argue that
cinematic spectatorship is a somatic and synaesthetic experience in which
spectators perceive with a haptic visuality able to tactilely embrace the
screen. Sobchack considers film and spectator to be simultaneously view-
ing subjects and viewable objects who mutually constitute one another
via this haptic and synaesthetic vision. These reversible relations between
screen and spectator form “cinaesthetic” subjects, or alliances of bodies
that “commingl[e] flesh and consciousness, reversing the human and
technological sensorium,”15 allowing spectators and film to become car-
nally subjectivized in the act of spectatorship.
Certain aesthetic codes of the cinema encourage or call forth somatic
responses and haptic visuality in spectators. At present, I am concerned
with aesthetic registers that invite a tactile relationship with violent
images of pain and trauma. During the rape scene in Irréversible, the
magnitude of the suffering it conveys, along with the intimate terms
in which spectators engage with this suffering, place spectators in dis-
turbingly close and uncomfortable proximity to the violence onscreen.
Spectators no longer observe from a distance, but emotionally and physi-
cally encounter the affective event taking place onscreen. Characterizing
spectatorship as intimate engagement and co-existence with images
requires us to rethink how we conceive of the act of witnessing sexual
violence onscreen, and the ethical import attached to this act.
Cinematic rape as spectacle
Feminist film scholars draw explicit links between rape as a public

media spectacle and a phallic spectatorial gaze or mode of perception.
For example, Tanya Horeck defines public rape as “representations of
rape that serve as cultural fantasies of power and domination, gender
and sexuality, and class and ethnicity.”16 These depictions of sexual
violence against women reflect Western socio-sexual contracts in which
the body politic is both disrupted and united through the act of rape.
Horeck contends that images of rape in mass media constitute “public,
collective fantasies”17 that reinforce the symbolic and bodily subordina-
tion of women. Images of raped women “operate as the ground over
which the terms of the social – and the sexual – contract are secured”18
between men. This socio-sexual contract is enacted through a spe-
cifically phallic gaze that condones and derives pleasure from public
images of raped women.
Sarah Projansky also explores the ethics of witnessing rape in film.

She describes cinematic sexual violence in terms that echo Mulvey’s
condemnation of the sadistic phallic gaze:
[S]exual violence is a normalized phenomenon, in which male-

dominant environments … encourage and sometimes depend on
violence against women, in which the male gaze and women as
objects-to-be-looked-at contribute to a culture that accepts rape, and
in which rape is one experience along a continuum of sexual vio-
lence that women confront on a daily basis.19
Projansky examines the ethical function of the rape witness in films

such as The Accused (Jonathan Kaplan, 1988) in order to elucidate the
violent intersection of the phallic male gaze and female objectification.
Projansky argues that the responsibilities of the rape witness form a core
element of the film’s ethical project. The moral lynchpin of the film and
eventual saviour of Sarah (Jodie Foster), a young woman who is brutally
gang raped at a bar, is a young male college student who witnesses the
rape without attempting to intervene. However, he eventually comes
forward and testifies that the rape was an unequivocal assault for which
the victim bore no responsibility.
Projansky argues that this unbalanced gender dynamic makes a hero of
the male witness, who must bravely validate the raped woman’s testimony
in order for her story to be considered true. This redemptive ethics func-
tions as a sort of apologia for the phallic gaze, lending it a useful moral
dimension through which it is able to justify its sadistic origins.20 The
figure of the heroic male witness, whose inhumane phallic gaze ultimately
transforms into an ethical corroboration of the raped woman’s testimony,
virtually disappears in New Extremist cinema. As we shall see, this lack of
male heroism forecloses any possibility of ethical or moral redemption for
the phallic gaze, and often denies the existence of such a gaze altogether.21
The work of scholars such as Horeck and Projansky on viewing sexual
violence suggests that the act of gazing upon rape in film is just as
morally and ethically controversial as the depictions themselves. With
this background scholarship in mind on how the diegetic witness to
rape has functioned in previous films, we can now turn our attention
to Irréversible, and explore how the act of witnessing its rape sequence
relates to cinematic perception and spectatorship ethics. Such witness-
ing, when conceived of haptically (embodied and proximate) rather
than just optically (disembodied and distanced), opens up new ethical
possibilities for encountering cinematic violence.
80 Kathleen Scott
Irréversible: witnessing the unbearable
Irréversible depicts one harrowing night in the lives of seemingly happy

couple Marcus and Alex (Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci) and their
friend Pierre (Albert Dupontel), who happens to be Alex’s former lover.
The film begins at the end of the diegesis, at a gay sadomasochism club
in Paris called the “Rectum,” where Marcus and Pierre have gone in
search of a pimp known only by the name of La Tenia (Jo Prestia), or
“The Tapeworm,” a regular at the club who had brutally raped Alex in
an underpass earlier that night. The film then proceeds to take specta-
tors through the events of the night in reverse order. Each of the scenes
progresses further back in time, depicting the events leading up to and
following the crucial rape sequence.
La Tenia’s rape of Alex is arguably the most intense scene of violence in
a film whose constant onslaughts of hyper-realistic physical assaults and
trauma constitute a test of spectatorial courage and stamina. The rape
sequence begins late at night as Alex exits a house party without Pierre
and Marcus. She tries to hail a taxi, but a woman loitering nearby tells her
that the underpass leading to the Metro is safer. When Alex descends into
the underpass, the dim, red-tinted lighting glazing over the dirty concrete
and graffiti-speckled walls suggests a dismal and menacing atmosphere.
The underpass is empty except for the pimp La Tenia, who is abusing one
of his prostitutes. He allows the prostitute to run away as he turns his vio-
lent attentions toward Alex instead. He puts a knife to Alex’s throat, forces
her to the ground and anally rapes her for an excruciating nine minutes.
In order to explore the ethical dimensions of spectatorial perception
of this scene, I want to examine how spectators are positioned in rela-
tion to the shadow of a witness glimpsed momentarily in the upper
left edge of the frame, who sees the assault but chooses not to act in
Alex’s defence. This witness performs the rather cowardly action of run-
ning away and refusing the role of saviour so prevalent in Hollywood
depictions of rape and its aftermath. At first glance, the film seems
to be expressing an ethical condemnation of phallic scopophilia by
suggesting an identification between the ineffectual observer and the
cinematic spectator who passively consumes images of sexual violence:
both behave unethically insofar as they are guilty of witnessing hor-
rific trauma without being willing or able to ease the suffering of those
on whom this violence is inflicted. A theoretical framework describing
spectatorial perception as a phallic gaze would argue that spectators
receive a perverse voyeuristic thrill of pleasure from watching the
violation of Alex from a safe distance. Like the witness who sees and
runs away, spectators would have the luxury of placing themselves at

a physical remove from the violence occurring onscreen, secure in the
knowledge that they are unable to intervene.
However, understanding the haptic possibilities of vision offers an alter-
native to this denunciatory characterization of phallic voyeurism. Haptic
visuality engenders an ethos of sympathetic co-existence in the place of
sadistic distanced observation. Namely, the visceral imagery of Irréversible
allows spectators access to a corporeal vision that is constituted in and
through their bodies rather than the disembodied rational mind. Instead
of thinking of spectators as the real equivalents of diegetic witnesses
who perform the unethical acts of running away or passively observing
sexual violence, we can consider them as bodies placed uncomfortably
close to the scene of violence, engaged with it physically and emotionally
through the sharing of space, time and affective experience.
The formal design of the rape scene encourages this intimate proxim-
ity to the images. Techniques of camera movement and positioning cre-
ate a tactile experience of suffering that disallows the distance between
the spectator-subject and screen-object requisite for any putative phallic
gaze. The formal elements of the rape scene have a physically and emo-
tionally disturbing effect on spectators that draws them into an ethical
co-existence with the film.
In terms of movement, the camera is static as opposed to itinerant
throughout the entire scene, which also occurs in one long, unbroken
shot. This anchoring of the camera provides a sharp contrast to the rest-
lessly roving camera and opaque imagery featured in the rest of the film;
there are no wild movements or indiscernible visuals to shield spectators
from the unremitting violence of the scene. Instead, spectators bear wit-
ness without devices of temporal or visual elision that would fragment
the rape into more tolerable pieces or save them from having to witness
it altogether. Time seems to expand during this scene as the rape goes on
and on without any cuts, testing the limits of what spectators can endure.
According to Metz, classical cinema eroticizes its images with wandering
camera movements that continually enflame and postpone the voyeuristic
desires of spectators. These movements constitute “a kind of permanent
undressing, a generalized striptease”22 for the benefit of the omniscient
phallic gaze. Here spectatorial vision is inextricably tied to the free move-
ment of the camera. By way of contrast, in Irréversible the fixed camera
encourages spectators to limit their vision to the horrific immediacy of the
violence occurring on the concrete of the underpass. This immobility fore-
closes the possibility of any erotic suspense, omniscient, liberated view-
points or seductive stripteases observed through a distanced phallic gaze.
82 Kathleen Scott
The camera is also placed at a low height, roughly approximating the

level of Alex’s prostrate body on the bottom of the underpass. Although
I would argue that the repellent affect of the rape arises from the relentless
violence of the entire scene rather than from any strict identification or
conflation with Alex’s experiences based on the spectators’ approxima-
tion of her spatial level, this low camera height nevertheless expresses
Noé’s attempt to align the spectators with her. The director has explained
this camera positioning in explicitly ethical terms as exposing the undeni-
able brutality of rape, thus avoiding any possible eroticism springing from
sharing the rapist’s point of view.23
This spatial positioning of the camera creates what philosopher David
Michael Levin terms an “aletheic” gaze that is “multiple, aware of its
context, inclusionary, horizontal and caring,” as opposed to a sadistic,
controlling “assertoric” gaze associated with the phallocentric ego.24 The
camera positioning allows spectators to be engaged in the scene in a way
that would be “inaccessible to a subject that would survey them from
above, open to him alone that, if it be possible, would coexist with them
in the same world.”25 This aletheic gaze grants spectators proximity to
the physical space of the diegesis, creating an ethics of sensual compas-
sion and sympathy between bodies and screen.
Ethical compassion for female suffering during the rape scene in
Irréversible thus involves physical and emotional levels of engagement in
which spectators maintain both an intimate proximity to and an irreduc-
ible distance from the experiences of diegetic characters. Spectators are
physically and emotionally compelled and repelled by the scene, in a
double movement that simultaneously invites and wards off touch. This
tension between proximity and distance allows for a compassionate rela-
tion to the screen, the com of compassion implying a with-ness, a sharing
of emotions and physicality without experiential conflation or synthesis.
The affective force of the scene reaches out to touch spectators in a haptic
manner, attempting to blur vision and touch.
Alex embodies this striving for hapticity as she extends her hand
towards the camera in a physical gesture of pain that demands compas-
sion and sympathy with her bodily experiences. This compassion allows
for the exposure and sharing of physical and emotional experiences
without fusion or mimesis, or, on the other hand, detachment and
alienation. However, Alex fails to actually touch spectators. The inter-
rupted hapticity of the scene, its invitation to and interdiction against
touch, performs an ethical function because it allows for the sensual
impact of cinematic images upon the bodies of spectators without
completely collapsing the two, constituting what Marks calls a “look
that acknowledges both the physicality and the unknowability of the

other.”26 Jane Stadler refers to an instance such as this as an “intersub-
jective moment of copresence” in which spectators and film engage in
“an intersubjective experience in which they are united in a moment of
mutual recognition.”27 Spectators experience an embodied co-existence
with the film rather than an alienated gaze at it.
The tactile compassion established between spectators and the screen
should not suggest that the camera itself performs the violent act of “raping”
spectators into an awareness of the brutal realities of sexual violence.
Instead, we can think of embodied and haptic proximity to the film as an
ethical form of bearing witness to violence, in which spectators physically
sympathize with those on whom such violence is inflicted without directly
experiencing the invasive penetrations themselves. Spectators engage in
a co-existence with film that is characterized by disturbed compassion
involving emotional and affective proximity and experiential if, as Martin
Jay suggests in his interpretation of the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel
Levinas,28 then the sharing of space and time between spectators and Alex
created through the immobile, low-levelled camera constitutes an ethical
form of haptic perception that physically engages spectators in the vio-
lence experienced by another on the screen. The aesthetics of the scene
prohibit what Sara Projansky criticizes as any “comfortable positions for
viewing rape,”29 allowing spectators to engage in a sympathetic suffering
that constitutes an ethical recognition of co-existence.
Phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty asserts that
vision is always an embodied act that springs from concrete bodies alive to
the affects and sensations that they encounter in the world. Otherwise, per-
ception would not be possible: “The visible can thus fill me and occupy me
only because I who see it do not see it from the depths of nothingness, but
from the midst of itself: I the seer am also visible”.30 Merleau-Ponty argues
that we experience a bodily compassion through a spectatorial vision that
“caresses” images; “between it and them we catch sight of a complicity”31
that implicates us in the physicality of the world. This caressing vision
makes spectators visible witnesses to the world at the same time as it makes
the world visible to them. The vision of spectators must therefore be:
doubled with a complementary vision or with another vision: myself

seen from without, such as another would see me installed in the
midst of the visible, occupied in considering it from a certain spot…
he who sees cannot possess the visible unless he is possessed by it,
unless he is of it, unless…he is one of the visibles, capable, by a singu-
lar reversal, of seeing them – he who is one of them.32
84 Kathleen Scott
The diegetic witness in Irréversible thus functions as a physical manifes-

tation of the carnal vision that places spectators within the screen world
itself, a doubled body that places the bodies of spectators concretely “in
the midst of the visible” instead of in a privileged position outside of it.
Merleau-Ponty’s suggestion of a haptic witness drawn close to the tac-
tile screen stands in direct contrast to the disembodied phallic voyeur
operating within the purely scopic structure posited by apparatus film
theorists. Metz contends that as a spectator he is totally absent from
the screen, that “I take no part in the perceived; on the contrary, I am
all-perceiving. All-perceiving as one says all-powerful … because I am
entirely on the side of the perceiving instance: absent from the screen,
but certainly present in the auditorium, a great eye and ear”33 that
derives sadistic pleasure from the screen from a far remove.
From a contrasting phenomenological perspective, haptic visuality
requires intimate proximity to filmic images in order for spectators to
co-exist with the violence on screen. As witnesses to cinematic violence,
spectators are encouraged to share space and time with Alex during her
assault by occupying a position in which they physically and emotionally
understand and sympathize with her experience, rather than derive sadistic
pleasure from her pain from a distance. This sympathetic haptic vision is
what Jean-Luc Nancy describes as the bodily compassion of co-existence, or
“the contagion, the contact of being with one another in this turmoil.”34
A haptic perception located in the carnality of the lived body thus
advances a viable alternative to what feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray
terms the “overcathexis of the eye”35 and privileging of ocularcentric phal-
lic power on the part of psychoanalytic apparatus theory. The embodied
engagement afforded by haptic visuality creates an ethics of sympathy and
compassion between spectators and screen. This tactile mode of vision
performs the ethical task of, as Martin Jay writes, “restor[ing] the proximity
of self to other, who then is understood as neighbour.”36 The physical and
emotional contiguity of spectators and Irréversible clearly elucidates the
double meaning of the term regard as a mode of encountering others: to
look at, as well as to pay attention and feel compassion for another.
Notes
1. “Cannes film sickens audience”, BBC News, 26. May 2002. Accessed 1 June
2012. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/2008796.stm>.
2. The Society for the Promotion of Community Standards Inc. (21 Mar. 2003)
“Sexual violence depiction causes audience collapse,” Scoop Politics. Accessed
15 June 2012. <http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0303/S00182.htm>.
3. Ibid.
4. R. Ebert (14. Mar. 2003) “Review: Irreversible,” Rogerebert.com. Accessed 10 June

2012. <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030314/
REVIEWS/303140303/1023>.
5. D. Ansen (2. Mar. 2003) “How Far Is Too Far?,” The Daily Beast. Accessed 1.
June 2012. <http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2003/03/02/how-far-
is-too-far.html>.
6. P. Bradshaw (25. May 2002) “Review: Irreversible,” The Guardian. Accessed
1. June 2012. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2002/may/25/cannes2002.
cannesfilmfestival1>.
7. J. Quandt (Feb. 2004) “Flesh and blood: sex and violence in recent French
cinema”, Artforum, 42(6), 127–128.
8. J.L. Baudry (1986) “Ideology of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus”, in
Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader, ed. Philip Rosen (New
York: Columbia University Press), p. 292.
9. C. Metz (1982) The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Le
signifiant imaginaire: Psychanalyse et cinéma), trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl
Williams, Ben Brewster and Alfred Guzzetti (Bloomington and Indianapolis,
IN: Indiana University Press), p. 48.
10. Ibid., p. 96.
11. L. Mulvey (1986) “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Narrative,
Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader, ed. Philip Rosen (New York:
Columbia University Press), p. 203.
12. L.U. Marks (2000) The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and
the Senses (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press), p. 162.
13. Ibid., p. 187.
14. Ibid., p. 188.
15. V. Sobchack (2004) Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), p. 67.
16. T. Horeck (2004) Public Rape: Representing Violation in Fiction and Film
(London: Routledge), p. 3.
17. Ibid., p. 9.
18. Ibid.
19. S. Projansky (2001) Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture
(New York and London: New York University Press), p. 9.
20. More recent films in which the story of the raped woman is validated by the
testimony of a male witness include Boys Don’t Cry (Kimberly Peirce, 1999)
and North Country (Niki Caro, 2005).
21. See also New Extremist films such as Les Amants Criminels/Criminal Lovers
(François Ozon, 1999) and Twentynine Palms (Bruno Dumont, 2003).
22. Metz (1982), p. 77.
23. “National Film Theatre Interviews: Gaspar Noé,” British Film Institute, 2002.
Accessed 22 Jan. 2012. <http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/interviews/noe.html>.
24. M. Jay (1993) Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century
French Thought (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), p. 275.
25. M. Merleau-Ponty (1968) The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working
Notes (Le Visible et l’invisible, suivi de notes de travail), ed. Claude Lefort, trans.
Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press), p. 136.
26. L.U. Marks (2002) Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multi- sensory Media
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press), p. xviii.
86 Kathleen Scott
27. J. Stadler (2008) Pulling Focus: Intersubjective Experience, Narrative Film, and
Ethics (New York and London: Continuum), p. 58.
28. Jay (1993), p. 557.
29. Projansky (2001), p. 118.
30. Merleau-Ponty (1968), p. 113.
31. Ibid, p. 76.
32. Ibid., pp. 134–135.
33. Metz (1982), p. 48.
34. J.L. Nancy (2000) Being Singular Plural (Être singulier pluriel), trans. Robert D.
Richardson and Anne E. O’Byrne (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press),
p. xiii.
35. L. Irigaray (1985) Speculum of the Other Woman (Spéculum de l’autre femme),
trans. Gillian G. Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), p. 47.
36. Jay (1993), p. 557.
Bibliography
Ansen, D. (2 Mar. 2003). “How Far Is Too Far?.” The Daily Beast. Accessed 1 June
2012. <http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2003/03/02/how-far-is-too-
far.html>.
Baudry, J.L. (1986). “Ideology of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus.” In P.
Rosen (ed.), Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader. New York:
Columbia University Press: 286–298.
Bradshaw, P. (25 May 2002). “Review: Irreversible.” The Guardian. Accessed
1 June 2012. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2002/may/25/cannes2002.
cannesfilmfestival1>.
“Cannes film sickens audience.” BBC News. 26 May 2002. Accessed 1 June 2012.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/2008796.stm>.
Ebert, R. (14 Mar. 2003). “Review: Irreversible.” Rogerebert.com. Accessed 10 June
2012. <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030314/
REVIEWS/303140303/1023>.
Horeck, T. (2004). Public Rape: Representing Violation in Fiction and Film. London:
Routledge.
Irigaray, L. (1985). Speculum of the Other Woman (Spéculum de l’autre femme). Trans.
Gillian G. Gill. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Jay, M. (1993). Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twenty-first Century
French Thought (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
Marks, L.U. (2000). The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the
Senses. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
——— (2002). Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multi-sensory Media. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working
Notes (Le Visible et l’invisible, suivi de notes de travail). Ed. Claude Lefort. Trans.
Alphonso Lingis. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Metz, C. (1982). The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Le signifi-
ant imaginaire: Psychanalyse et cinéma). Trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams,
Ben Brewster and Alfred Guzzetti. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Mulvey, L. (1986). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In P. Rosen (ed.),

Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader. New York: Columbia
University Press: 198–209.
Nancy, J.L. (2000). Being Singular Plural (Être singulier pluriel). Trans. Robert D.
Richardson and Anne E. O’Byrne. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
“National Film Theatre Interviews: Gaspar Noé.” British Film Institute. 2002.
Accessed 22 Jan. 2012. <http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/interviews/noe.html>.
Projansky, S. (2001). Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture.
New York and London: New York University Press.
Quandt, J. (Feb. 2004). “Flesh and blood: sex and violence in recent French cin-
ema.” Artforum 42.6: 126–132.
Sobchack, V. (2004). Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
The Society for the Promotion of Community Standards Inc. (21 Mar. 2003).
“Sexual violence depiction causes audience collapse.” Scoop Politics. Accessed
15 June 2012. <http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0303/S00182.htm>.
Stadler, J. (2008). Pulling Focus: Intersubjective Experience, Narrative Film, and Ethics.
New York and London: Continuum.
Filmography
The Accused. Dir. J. Kaplan. Perf. J. Foster and K. McGillis. Paramount Pictures,
1988.
Boys Don’t Cry. Dir. K. Peirce. Perf. H. Swank, C. Sevigny and P. Sarsgaard. Fox
Searchlight Pictures/The Independent Film Channel Productions/Killer Films/
Hart-Sharp Entertainment, 1999.
Criminal Lovers (Les amants criminels). Dir. F. Ozon. Perf. N. Régnier, J. Renier and
M. Manojlovic. Fidélité Productions/arte France Cinéma/StudioCanal/Euro Space/
Canal+/Studio Images 5/Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC), 1999.
Irréversible. Dir. G. Noé. Perf. M. Bellucci, V. Cassel and A. Dupontel. 120 Films/
Eskwad/Grandpierre/Les Cinémas de la Zone/Nord-Ouest Productions/Rossignon/
StudioCanal, 2002.
North Country. Dir. N. Caro. Perf. C. Theron, T. Curtis and F. McDormand. Warner
Bros./Industry Entertainment/Participant Media/Nich Wechsler Productions,
2005.
Twentynine Palms. Dir. B. Dumont. Perf. Y. Glubeva and D. Wissak. 3B Productions/
The 7th Floor/Thoke Moebius Film Company, 2003.
Part II
Phallic and Anti-Phallic Fantasies
6
Transcendental Gazes:
Pornographic Images of
Transmasculinity
Finn Jackson Ballard
Pornographic or erotic imagery of transmasculinity – indeed, imagery of

transmasculinity in general – is a phenomenon that has not yet received
much formal analysis, although its proliferation is at the moment
better charted by month rather than by year. The niche pioneered a
decade ago by Buck Angel, the original FTM porn star, is burgeoning to
encompass numerous other performers, including Dex Hardlove, Billy
Castro and James Darling. Studios such as Crashpad, Good Vibrations
and Trannywood are producing numerous trans-themed porn movies;
furthermore, an increasing amount of home-made footage of transmen
masturbating and having sex is readily available on the video hosting
service Xtube.com. In this chapter, I set out to investigate the grow-
ing swathe of erotica featuring transmasculine subjects – and by that
I mean subjects who identify themselves as transmen, transboys, FTM
(female-to-male) transgender or transsexual people, or drag kings, or
who otherwise correlate with some point[s] or other on the spectrum of
transmasculinity. Not only does transmale porn provide a source of titil-
lation, but it also operates as a heavily politicized subgenre that engages
with the politics of gender identity and that derives for its subjects a sig-
nificant striving towards visibility unprecedented in other pornographic
representations – one of the most important elements of which is that it
is so often produced within the transmale community. Being a member
of this community who has also been involved in the production of a
few pornographic films as an actor, I seek to introduce a mode of rep-
resentation which is in many instances self-reflective, celebratory and
committed to an engagement with contemporary discourse on queer
identity and the politics of “passing.”
The increasing presence of erotic images of transmen, and the con-
temporary shift of such imagery from the margins to the pornographic
91
92 Finn Jackson Ballard
mainstream, must be attributed to the general increase in transmascu-

line visibility in recent years and months – and, indeed, to the resultant
increase in public awareness of transmen’s existence. The most influ-
ential text in this respect has surely been the New York-based quarterly
magazine founded by Amos Mac and Rocco Kayiatos, Original Plumbing,
launched in 2009; which, as the authors describe it: “documents diver-
sity within trans male lifestyles through photographic portraits and
essays, personal narratives and interviews.” Whilst OP’s photographs
may not be overtly pornographic, they are often playfully erotic and
feature their subjects in various states of nudity or variously suggestive
poses. The publication is often equated with Butt, the Netherlands-based
magazine that has been producing a combination of non-sexual and
unabashedly erotic portraits and profiles of gay men since 2001; indeed,
porn star Billy Castro (under the name Tuck Mayo) became the first
transman to be featured in Butt with an interview and photograph series
by OP’s co-founder Amos Mac. The considerable popularity of Original
Plumbing has enabled the magazine not only to chronicle the transmale
community as its first instance of significant visibility, but also to aug-
ment this community’s general confidence and sense of international
connectivity. Certainly, this has further influenced the development of
transmale pornography – or, perhaps, the boundaries between queer
erotica and porn are increasingly becoming blurred, since transmale
pornography shares its most prolific figures with Original Plumbing
and vice versa: James Darling, for instance, has a regular feature in the
magazine entitled “Ask a Porn Star.” Transmale pornography could not
exist – or at least could not find any success as anything more than a
marginalized subgenre – in a world in which images of transmen were
not already beginning to proliferate. Furthermore, queer porn in general
is a medium attracting increasing attention. Recently, not only have
Billy Castro and co-star Jiz Lee hosted a seminar at Stanford University
on the topic, but Buck Angel has also launched a successful career as a
public speaker, having been a keynote guest at Yale University’s “Sex
Week” in 2010. Queer porn, if not entering the mainstream, is certainly
becoming an increasingly recognized phenomenon.
With a little of the logic of Siegfried Kracauer, we might agree that
cinema cannot be analysed without an examination of the society in
which it is produced, for it reveals the unconscious desires of that soci-
ety. Relatively absent as it may be from the sphere of analysis, pornog-
raphy should be seen as no exception to this rule – rather, it may very
well be the genre that epitomizes this revelatory potential of cinema.
Perhaps at this stage we must posit, for the sake of simplicity at least,
Transcendental Gazes 93
a rather crude distinction between “mainstream” (which does not

necessarily mean “heterosexual”) pornography, and its “queer” coun-
terpart. The formulaic nature of the former – its lack of innovation
in narrative or aesthetic – seems to lend it an ahistorical quality, with
the studio operating as a self-contained vacuum in which the only
perceptible change is the performers. Certainly, not all queer porn is
aesthetically ground-breaking; the production values, for instance,
of T-Wood’s releases are very low. Queer porn, however, often tends
considerably more toward artistic creativity (the Fucking Different XXX
project, discussed below, is one example). Furthermore, queer porn (and
especially transmasculine porn) operates as a gleefully rupturing force
that not only engages with the wider concerns of its contemporary soci-
ety but also promotes its own progressive political agenda by imbuing
transpeople – who are so often disempowered by the erosion of their
possession of their own physiology – with the ability to construct and
represent their own identities. Let us begin to investigate the history of
this recent phenomenon of transmale pornography, and what it has to
say about the context in which it is produced.
Probably the first film to contain explicit content featuring an FTM
transsexual is not in its own right a porn but rather a documentary-
drama, Linda / Les and Annie: The First Female-to-Male Transsexual Love
Story (Johnny Armstrong, Albert Jaccoma and Annie Sprinkle, 1992),
which focuses on the relationship of performance artist Annie Sprinkle
with Les (nee Linda) Nichols. A few years later, Del LaGrace Volcano’s
short film Pansexual Public Porn: The Adventures of Hans and Del (1996)
follows transmen with camcorders having public sex with gay non-trans
or “cisgendered” men1 – thus challenging the assumption that cruising
and public hook-ups are the purview only of the latter. Probably the first
feature-length fiction film to present an erotic depiction of female-to-
male transsexual performers is Christopher Lee’s Alley of the Tranny Boys
(1998), in which transmen suck and fuck not only each other but non-
transgender men as well. Exploring the queer pleasures to be discovered
in the motels of San Francisco, Lee evokes the retro aesthetic of porn’s
burgeoning decade, the 1970s – but subverts classic popular porn by
reworking traditionally hyper-masculine or macho roles for transmale
performers. During a scene in which two of the leads, Angel and Guy,
compare their physiques whilst frolicking in the bathtub, the film play-
fully engages with the well-known transmale preoccupation – especially
at the early stages of hormone therapy, where it is chosen – with the
effects of testosterone upon the transitioning body. In 2003, FTM
director Morty Diamond and an all-queer San Francisco cast and crew
released the “gender f*cking porno” Trannyfags, with a tagline promising

“the hottest hormone and surgically altered bodies,” and which features
a jacuzzi petting session, group sex, a circle-jerk, as well as a series of
sequences of trans and non-trans men together. Diamond credited the
creation of an environment in which his film could be released to one
performer in particular: Buck Angel.
Buck Angel came to prominence as the first major transmale porn
performer in the early 2000s. Formerly a successful model named
Susan, Buck experienced severe depression before deciding upon to
medical transition at the age of 28 and shortly thereafter began mak-
ing pornography, creating the first FTM adult website in 2003. Buck
certainly remains the most well-known transman in the adult enter-
tainment industry and became the first transsexual man to win the
AVN Transsexual Performer of the Year in 2007. In 2005, he performed
in what is thought to have been the first recorded sex scene between
an FTM and MTF performer, Allanah Starr, in Allanah Starr’s Big Boob
Adventures (Gia Darling). Buck’s filmography as an actor includes Cirque
Noir (Brian Mills, 2005); Buckback Mountain (Lawrence Roberts, 2007);
Schwarzwald: The Movie You Can Dance To (Richard Kimmel, 2008) and
many more. He has directed himself in Buck Off (2006), Even More Bang
for Your Buck (2007) and its 2008 sequel. Buck has recently produced the
documentaries Sexing the Transman and its sequels Sexing the Transman
Volumes 2 and 3, “docu-porns” that combine interview footage about
the transition process, empowerment and self-identification, with
graphic sexual content. Several of the interview subjects acknowledge
their debt to Buck as a pioneer of transmale visibility and as a figure
who eased their own transition processes or encouraged them to feel
more comfortable in their own bodies. A percentage of the proceeds
from sales and viewings of the documentaries is being donated to the
Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance which campaigns for trans* rights
and equality.2 Buck has recently established an online dating service
(buckangeldating.com) for transmen and their admirers.
In the last few years, there has been a new proliferation of trans-
male pornography produced by Trannywood (or T-Wood) Pictures –
Cubbyholes: Trans Men in Action (Chopper Pierce, Prince Warren and Mark
Van Helsing, 2007); Couch Surfers: Trans Men in Action and its sequel,
Couch Surfers 2 (Pierce, Warren and Van Helsing, 2008 and 2009) and
Trannywood Gone Wild (2010), as well as the Rec Room series (2011-12) cur-
rently in post-production. T-Wood’s productions feature an exclusively
male cast – of both trans and cisgender men. Its new sister company,
Dolores Park Studios, intends to cast all genders in its releases, the first
of which is Brunch Bunch (Ian Sparks, 2011) featuring self-described

“transsexual faggot” James Darling, whose physical transition through
hormone therapy is chronicled by his appearance in numerous porn
movies recording what he calls “really dirty, validating sex.” Darling
acknowledges the empowering quality of his chosen medium not only
for its stars but its audiences: “The largest impetus for me to start doing
porn was that I didn’t really see anybody who looked like me, or had sex
like me, being seen as a hot sexual being, and certainly not in porn.”3
Another current upcoming star is Billy Castro (otherwise known as Tuck
Mayo), who has performed with director Courtney Trouble in Speakeasy
(2009), Bordello and Billy Castro Does the Mission (both 2010), and has
recently directed his first film, Billy Castro’s Naughty Squirters (2012),
starring a cast of femmes on the quest for the elusive female ejacula-
tion. I have also been privileged to contribute to this new niche in
pornography by appearing in Madison Young’s Queer Manor (2009), in
which I was the only transmale member of an otherwise all-female cast,
appearing with my partner, Liz; and in Bruce LaBruce’s Offing Jack contri-
bution to the Fucking Different XXX series (various directors, 2011) with
my co-star Kay Garnellen, a performance artist who has also appeared
in Cheryl Dunye’s Mommy is Coming (2012). Lately, transmale porn
is proliferating online: Ftmfucker.com, most likely the first transmale
pay-per-view porn site, has gone live as of summer 2011; transmale erot-
ica is also compiled on Tumblr sites such as FTMPorn (ftmporn.tumblr.
com/) and FTMs with Femmes (ftmswithfemmes.tumblr.com/). Erotic (as
well as non-erotic) home-made material is often uploaded to sites such
as Trans* Body Pride (transbodypride.tumblr.com/) and the LiveJournal
community “FTMVanity.”
Perhaps the central concern of transmale porn – indeed, of queer
porn in general – which seems to set it aside from mainstream porn,
is its foregrounding of sex positivity. By this I mean: an ideology of
informed, consensual, safer sex that encourages both sex education and
bodily confidence. This attitude is manifest not only within the diege-
sis of the films themselves, which prioritize condoms, dental dams,
lube, gloves and other accoutrements of safer sex, but also within their
conditions of marketing – the DVD edition of Cubbyholes, for instance,
is accompanied by a booklet about safer sex for transmen. Most impor-
tantly, the stars of this genre are often sex-positive spokespeople – most
particularly Buck Angel. Buck’s website (buckangel.com) is divided
into the sections of “Adult” and “Motivational Speaking,” the latter
of which mentions previous presentations he has given at various fes-
tivals. As a queer advocate, Buck maintains that his message is that of
“empowerment through self-acceptance and being comfortable in your

own skin.” Buck speaks openly about his own depression and struggles,
and maintains that he answers every message sent to him – which often
come from teenagers too young to watch his movies legally. His reputa-
tion, therefore, exceeds the genre of pornography, and he now uses his
stardom to communicate to those experiencing their own crises of gen-
der or sexuality. Buck recently contributed to journalist Dan Savage’s “It
Gets Better” project, an online call for videos and pledges of support for
queer youth in the wake of a wave of suicides of LGBT teens. I imagine
that it will take some time before stars of “straight” porn, a genre still
accused of misogyny and of a dubious body politic, will contribute to
the discussion of sex-positivity with the same commitment and trans-
parency as their queer counterparts.
Certainly, one of the most integral elements of the body politic of
transmale pornography is its representation of genitalia, which is often
both playful and subversive. In its representation of men who are most
frequently devoid of what might be determined “male” genitalia, trans-
masculine porn hardly obfuscates but rather foregrounds this biological dis-
tinction. Although the presumed earliest transman to feature in a recorded
sex scene is the post-phalloplasty Les Nichols, I know of no transmale
porn star who has undergone this surgery (which most usually involves
the creation of a phallus through multiple skin grafts); nor metoidioplasty
(which involves the removal of skin surrounding the clitoris, and often
the insertion of testicular implants). Dildos and strap-ons are frequently to
be seen in FTM pornography, but the subgenre shares the preoccupation
of the general pornographic medium with explicit imagery of performers’
own genitalia. Although the overt foregrounding of their genitals does not
make FTM performers unusual as porn stars, their embodiment of their
gender identity as men without penises (for want of a better word) cer-
tainly calls to question the traditional concept of the phallus as a definitive
and hierarchical feature of masculinity – indeed, the vital embodiment of
“manhood.”
The absence of post-operative FTM porn stars is perhaps indicative
of the relative lack of genital surgery amongst transmen in general.
By comparison to chest reconstruction (which involves the removal
of the breasts and the subsequent restructuring of the chest to resem-
ble male contours), “bottom surgery” is a relatively rare occurrence.
Indeed, a transman is often deemed to be “post-op” after having had
chest surgery alone. Phalloplasty is often perceived to be unsatisfac-
tory in terms of aesthetics, with many finding the general trauma and
considerable scarring associated with the procedure to be discouraging;
the procedure also carries a minor risk of partial or total loss of sexual
sensation. However, the relative unpopularity of such surgery is also
indicative of the fact that many transmen find themselves content in
their masculinity without the additional feature of a constructed penis.
Evidence of this fact is found not only in overtly pornographic media;
it is not insignificant that the magazine discussed above takes as its
title Original Plumbing. Transmale identity, then, is by no means vali-
dated by a phallus (in fact, OP’s playful title suggests quite the reverse).
However, this notion is rather in discord with the prevalent attitude of
many doctors responsible for the care of transpeople – and with that
of a world in which masculinity is often measured by the size or at
least the presence of one’s penis. In my own experience, whilst having
a consultation for chest reconstruction surgery, I had a conversation
with my potential doctors during which doctors firmly impressed upon
me that I should take their offer of a simultaneous “package” of other
procedures including a phalloplasty, and that if I wanted to be a “real
man” this was my only logical option. I was left in no doubt that the
prevalent opinion, at least in that particular medical establishment,
was that the penis certainly makes the man (and vice versa). Medical
rhetoric regarding phalloplasty often verges on the bizarre – the Sava
Perovic Clinic in Belgrade, which provides the surgery, promises a penis
with “true point-and-shoot capability” and no more need to “ride a urinal
like a horse.”4 Experiences similar to my own can be recounted by other
transmen – I recall the story of a friend describing his psychotherapy, a
prerequisite before the attainment of hormone therapy, whose doctor
was supportive until he expressed his lack of interest in genital surgery;
at which point she decided that her job was no longer to facilitate his
medical transition but to rehabilitate him into womanhood.
Transmen – transpeople in general – are also often encouraged to “go
stealth”; in other words, to obtain whatever sufficient physical trans-
formation is deemed necessary, via hormone therapy and/or surgery,
to enable their exemption from what is thought to be the burden of
revealing their trans status, and simply to assimilate into a cisgender-
dominated world. Transmen, thus, often find themselves in a double
bind: cajoled towards having a surgery (often deemed necessary for the
purposes of legal recognition of their gender) that for many is unsatis-
factory and undesirable. Furthermore, the burden of compulsion to “go
stealth” and therefore obfuscate one’s past often exacerbates the stress
of transition – the ultimate resistance to which is the overt display
of the body through pornographic, erotic or even purely documen-
tary imagery. Although pornography has historically been accused of
exploiting its subjects, to demonstrate one’s corporeality in this way is a

strategy of empowerment for many queer porn stars. This was certainly
my personal experience; after years of dysphoria with my reflection,
I found it considerably liberating to make my first forays into pornog-
raphy. As well as appearing in films in which my transsexuality is at
least intimated (albeit without an explicit display of genitalia), I have
also appeared in a series of sadomasochistic films in which I “went
stealth,” my gender identity being quite irrelevant to the subject mat-
ter. Incidentally, however, when the reality of that identity transpired
(forgive the pun), immaterial as I assumed it to be, at least one of the
filmmakers concerned was incensed to know that he had filmed (and
overtly enjoyed filming) a transman. From this experience I learned that
not every gay man nor every fetishist has a queer sensibility – but above
all that not only the content of porn, but its means of production, is
a vital element of its politic. To appear in porn that is not created by
people who identify themselves as trans, or are otherwise well-informed
about trans politics, might well necessitate some negotiation and
patience from the performer.
Considering these circumstances, it is not surprising to see that
much porn or erotica featuring transmen is homemade, and that the
appropriate online channels are now awash with a huge swathe of
online transmale self-portraiture – much of which also often functions
to defy the essentialist connection between masculinity and the penis.
Regardless of surgery, if testosterone therapy is chosen, many transmen
will experience a clitoral growth that allows for erection and, in some
cases, even for penetration. Tracking one’s physical transition on testos-
terone via an online journal is a staple among transmen, with compara-
tive photographs illustrating differences over time; and the change to
genitalia is often one of the most dramatic and often one of the earliest
palpable developments for those receiving hormone therapy. Websites
such as FTMPorn or Trans* Body Pride compile numerous, mostly self-
taken photographs of transmale genitalia, often with the accompany-
ing caption detailing how long the subject has been “on T” (taking
testosterone): “My dick, 5 months on T,” etc. Many such photographs
are submitted to the site Trans* Bits (transbits.tumblr.com/) which
describes itself as “a SAFE SPACE for all folks who are trans*, gender
variant, non-binary, non-heteronormative, intersex, etc. to show off
their bottom anatomy without being fetishized, shamed or policed on
their body parts.” Such rhetoric is indicative of the positive body poli-
tics surrounding explicit online imagery of transmen, much of which is
user-generated content.
In discussing their genitalia (at least, speaking from my own experi-

ence), although transmen will often employ the terms “dick” or “cock”
(occasionally “dicklet” or “trannycock”), most will eschew the word
“clitoris” or “clit,” words which have, of course, a feminine association.
It might seem paradoxical, therefore, that the same FTMs often might
not hesitate to utilize the terms “pussy” (or, to a lesser degree, “cunt”).
Perhaps this is in part due to the currency of these terms among gay
men who have adopted them to refer to the anal orifice (or indeed to
the person who desires to be anally penetrated), masculinizing such
rhetoric by undermining the essentialist association between “pussy”
and “vagina” – although not necessarily depriving the word of its
misogynistic or otherwise latently derogatory quality. Perhaps trans-
men are the only men who can really reclaim such a term – a process
most certainly pioneered by Buck Angel, a catchphrase of whom is “it’s
not what’s between your legs that defines you,” and who has made his
career as a porn performer by referring to himself as “the man with the
pussy.”
Buck Angel’s pornographic career is founded on the promotion, not
the obfuscation, of his genitals – for he certainly does not perceive his
vagina as anathema to his masculinity, having earned fame from his
appearances in movies such as Buck’s Beaver and V for Vagina (both
2005), the latter of which he also directed and produced. Buck’s entire
persona eschews the notion that to be penetrated vaginally is to be
feminized. Often seen chewing on a cigar, Buck’s ultra-muscular phy-
sique, tribal tattoos, shaved head and handlebar moustache are every
essence of the hyper-masculine gay leatherman. Even when adopting
the “bottom” or passive role in penetration, Buck makes it apparent
that he is in control. Take, for instance, his own description of one of
his scenes with a co-star, Jeff, in Buck’s Beaver: “I rough him up a bit and
leave him alone in his jail cell ... I force him to suck me off, then I fuck
his tight asshole till he can’t take any more … I then lay back and order
him to fuck my hole.” Although he may frequently submit to being
penetrated, Buck is certainly the dominant party in many of his scenes,
reversing the age-old notion both within and without pornography
that to be penetrated – particularly to be vaginally penetrated – is to be
dominated and disempowered. His overt display of his genitals certainly
does serve to feminise Buck; in V for Vagina he has intercourse with a
number of female partners, but beyond their sharing of a vaginal orifice,
Buck could not look any more dissimilar to his counterparts – a contrast
made especially apparent during his sharing of a double-ended dildo
with Moli Worx. Titan Men’s Cirque Noir, the first major gay adult film
to star a transmale performer, is one of Buck’s earliest releases, during

which he is fucked and also fists his male co-stars. Engaging with the
target audience of a gay porn featuring a number of oiled and muscled
stars of whom Buck is only one (and at the time of release, not yet a
prolific celebrity), he makes his first appearance sporting a prominent
and impressively erect cock – which he then abruptly removes. The
uncanniness of this moment is quickly subsumed by the titillating rev-
elation of Buck’s own dick and pussy, leaving the audience (which we
might assume to be composed in large part of gay men unfamiliar with
transmale physiognomy) little time to react before the action continues.
The relationship of FTM porn to phallic iconography is certainly a
complex but also always a characteristically playful one. Above all, there
is a general absence of discourse about dildos in transmale porn films,
even though they make frequent appearances; strap-ons are sucked,
jerked, bedecked with condoms and simply treated no differently than a
“biological” penis might be treated in porn. When I first acted in a porn
movie, Madison Young’s Queer Manor, since the harness of my strap-on
was concealed in my underwear, I wished to make the artifice of the
dildo conspicuous so as not to obfuscate the fact of my being trans, and
so chose a toy that was dissimilar to my own skin tone. This seems to
have been an unusual choice, however; what is particularly curious is
that although transmale performers will often opt for dildos that are
close to their own skin tones and otherwise naturalistic (as in the mov-
ies of Trannywood Studios), their non-trans co-stars will often use toys
that are evidently fake. For example, in one of the multiple scenarios of
Cubbyholes, a handcuffed, blindfolded transboy is to be initiated into a
new fraternity by being fucked by as many men as possible in one even-
ing. After Ian Sparks fucks the boy, he tells him that he will “bring over
some other cocks” and then proceeds to fuck him again with a bright
red strap-on. In Couch Surfers 2: Trans Men in Action, a scene between
two cisgendered male actors has one fondling and sucking the other’s
evidently artificial, brightly coloured strap-on. Far from reiterating
the entrenched hierarchical parallel between penis size (or presence)
and masculinity, Couch Surfers 2 demonstrates how even cis-men may
prefer to adopt the trappings of transmale sexuality – the passive part-
ner gets to relish the attention given to his dildo, whilst his penis and
testicles, tucked underneath his harness, are ignored. Morty Diamond’s
Trannyfags engages with this trope in the playful and ambiguous man-
ner characteristic of much transmale porn, with a scene in which one
muscular man fucks his partner with a strap-on worn inside a rather
camp, glittery harness. The camera refuses to allow us a glimpse of the
man’s genitals, until his cock emerges from behind the harness. Despite
this revelatory shot, however, the scene’s message seems to be that its
performer is not the sum of this one physical attribute, that his use of
a strap-on is immaterial as to whether or not he is trans – or, indeed,
on a continuum not only of genitalia but of queer sexual and gender
identity, whether or not he is trans in the biological sense scarcely seems
to be the matter of importance in appreciating him as an erotic entity.
When acting in Bruce LaBruce’s short film Offing Jack for the Fucking
Different XXX series, my co-star and I had a particularly curious experi-
ence that I found illuminating in regard to the sensitive issue of phallic
iconography in transmale porn. During our short film, which was part
narrative drama and part explicit content, the original plans for our sex
scene revealed the intention to subsequently splice in footage of anal
penetration taken from a gay, cisgender porn, in which the genitalia
of the performers would be more than apparent. This idea was rather
less with the goal of obfuscating the fact of our transsexuality – since
this became the film’s primary “hook” – but more to intimate a lapse
into fantasy during the course of sex, as we dreamt of being equipped
with the physical attributes of cisgendered men (of course, an extremely
vague concept indeed). The implication was clear, that transmen have
penetrative sex not only to gratify our strap-ons (and, of course, our
actual dicks), but also to indulge a fantasy of possessing a biological
penis. I couldn’t help but recall the prevalent medical rhetoric that a
proper transmale ambition should be the attainment of a penis, and it
was made apparent to me that this is a commonly-shared assumption.
Happily, after discussions with my co-actor and I, no such footage exists
in the film. Rather, we display our bodies as they are – our surgical scars
and strap-ons. As the bodies of transpeople so often become the juris-
diction of others, to display our bodies and to revel in this display is
certainly one of the most empowering qualities of the process of making
pornography. Indeed, it seems, the more that queer porn fulfils its appar-
ent Marxist destiny of granting its subjects increasing control over the
means of production, the more successfully it will appeal to its audience,
and the more successfully it will represent a range of transmasculine
identities.
Notes
1. The term “cisgender” is used to describe individuals who are not trans; in
other words, those whose assignment of gender at birth correlates with their
identification. This word often divides opinion, since it is often employed
as the antonym to the term “transgender,” but some transpeople prefer to

maintain that they were indeed “born” men or women, as the case may be,
regardless of the classification conferred upon them by doctors in accordance
with the appearance of their genitals at birth.
2. The addition of an asterisk to the word “trans*” acknowledges the multiplic-
ity of trans* identity, encompassing transvestism (or “cross-dressing,” as in
wearing the clothing or otherwise adopting the appearance of the “opposite
sex”); transsexuality (feeling oneself to be of the “opposite sex” and therefore
undergoing a medical process of transition); transgenderism (a more ambigu-
ous, inclusive term to suggest identifying at various points on the gender
spectrum); genderqueerness (feeling one’s gender identity to fluctuate, or
rejecting the very concept of “male” and “female” as polarized abolutes), etc.
3. James Darling in interview for QueerPornTV on Youtube.com: http://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=XouD9ByzmIg
4. From the website of the Sava Perovic clinic:
http://www.savaperovic.com/total-phalloplasty-urethroplasty.htm
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Fucking Different XXX. Dirs. M. Beatty, J. Brüning, B. LaBruce et al. Perf. R. Wood
and L. Stevens. Jürgen Brüning Filmproduktion, 2011.
Linda/Les and Annie: The First Female-to-Male Transsexual Love Story. Dirs. J. Armstrong,
A. Jaccoma and A. Sprinkle. Perf. A. Sprinkle and L. Nichols. Annie Sprinkle, 1992.
Mommy Is Coming. Dir. C. Dune. Perf. P. Coxx and L. Harlow. Jürgen Brüning
Filmproduktion, 2012.
Offing Jack. Dir. B. LaBruce (a contribution to the Fucking Different XXX). Kristian
Petersen Filmproduktion/Jürgen Bruning Filmproduktion, 2011.
Pansexual Public Porn: The Adventures of Hans and Del. Dir. and Perf. D. La Grace
Volcano. Del La Grace Volcano, 1996.
Queer Manor. Dir. M. Young. Perf. S. Lune and Anja. Reel Queer Productions, 2009.
Rec Room 1. Dir. Trannywood Pictures. Ed. I. Sparks. Perf. D. Dash, C. MacKinsey,
Q. Valentine, J-Bird. T-Wood Pictures, 2011.
Rec Room 2. Dir. Trannywood Pictures. Ed. I. Sparks. Perf. I. Senzuri, S. Chen,
V. Hunt, T. Springs. T-Wood Pictures, 2012.
Schwarzwald: The Movie You Can Dance To. Dir. R. Kimmel. Perf. B. Angel. Stephen
Pevner Inc., 2008.
Sexing the Transman, vol. 1. Dir. B. Angel. Perf. M. Cho and I. Harvie. Buck Angel,
2011.
2012.
2013.
Speakeasy. Dir. C. Trouble. Perf. B. Castro and J. Lee. Reel Queer Productions, 2010.
Trannyfags. Dir. M. Diamond. Perf. M. van Helsing. Morty Diamond, 2003.
Trannywood Gone Wild. Perf. R. Tiger and B. Barker. Trannywood Pictures, 2010.
V for Vagina. Dir. and Perf. B. Angel. Buck Angel, 2005.
7
“Look Closer”: Sam Mendes’s
Visions of White Men
Ruth Heholt
In 1999 the poster for the film American Beauty, a satire on the suburban
American family and white middle-class masculinity, read in big bold let-
ters, “Look Closer.” This injunction is at the crux of the film and also the
subsequent films about masculinity and the family made by director Sam
Mendes: Revolutionary Road (2008) and Away We Go (2009). In these films
Mendes scrutinizes the normal – white middle-class masculinity and the
white heterosexual nuclear family – casting a detailed and deliberate eye
over what for many years has been discussed as being invisible through
its very ubiquity and acceptance. This chapter argues that at the heart of
this scrutiny is a re-appropriation of the gaze that, since colonial times,
has viewed, categorized, constrained and marginalized people. Mendes
re-turns this objective, distanced gaze onto the white centres of society,
looking beneath what looks like the normal, to see the contradictions,
doubts, conflicts and secrets underneath. What appears to be the privi-
leged powerful position of white middle-class men is shown to be just
one more position of oppression and repression. The male protagonists
in the films are shown to be as powerless, confused, doubting, failing
and marginalized as anyone else. This ostensible failure of idealized mas-
culinity and the depicted impossibility of the normal has an equalizing
effect that moves beyond an idea of “crisis” for white men as a group and
shows instead not that they are victims, but that they are no different
from anyone else: we are all individuals. Although this is a phenomenon
that has been documented before,1 the focus of this chapter is how this
individualization or particularization is effected through the use of the
male, colonial, white gaze. In the case of Mendes’s films, the gaze used
is so explicitly scrutinizing that it by-passes any suggestion of privilege
or power accrued through race, sex or class for the individuals it so care-
fully surveys; and through the individualization of the characters what
104
Look Closer 105
is suggested is that they (and we all) have choices. Thus, paradoxically,

through the agency of this gaze we have a return to the invisibility
of white, middle-class men as a group and a re-individualization that
(again) negates any question of collective and privileged identity. This
gaze turns identity and position into a choice, not a biological or class
or economic imperative. It de-politicizes the position and privilege of
white suburban masculinity. This chapter interrogates the type of gaze
Mendes uses to look at white men and argues that we really do need to
“look closer.”
Historically there has long been a question around the idea of who has
the right to see or to gaze. Richard Dyer argues that “the ultimate position
of power in a society that controls people in part through their visibility
is that of invisibility, the watcher.”2 Many theorists working from the
margins argue that there has been a historical privileging of sight itself:
ocularcentrism,3 whereby there is a complicity of the privileging of sight
with white, Western, masculine power. Irit Rogoff states that many crit-
ics have noted “the gaze as an apparatus of investigation, verification,
surveillance and cognition that has served to sustain the traditions of
Western post-enlightenment scientificity.”4 Throughout colonial times
vision became the predominant sense, but a certain kind of scientific,
classifying, objective vision that involved gazing on others. Thus, tradi-
tionally from Western society’s point of view, it has been the marginal-
ized, and usually black, subject who has been gazed upon. The gaze, in
colonial times and beyond, was turned on to the other, taking a “scien-
tific,” “objective” stance that was intimately bound up with those who
could look, as opposed to those who were disempowered and were looked
at. Under this gaze it was those who were marginalized who were visible,
whilst those who “owned” the gaze remained outside its orbit, seeing but
not subject to being seen.
Because of this, for very many years those who have been marginalized
have argued that white, privileged, hegemonic, normalized masculinity
and the white spaces and places of power have been invisible. The argu-
ment is, in part, that because white, middle-class masculinity pervaded
every part of cultural production, its ideologies and the men behind
this hegemonic form of masculinity were obscured. White masculinity
with its privileged viewpoint was so ubiquitous that it was normal-
ized, and therefore neutralized and naturalized. As Richard Dyer puts it,
white men were “overwhelmingly present and yet apparently absent.”5
It is because of this that calls for the scrutiny of the centre and a mak-
ing visible of whiteness and masculinity began to be heard. From the
1970s onwards, through the work of feminist and post-colonial theorists
106 Ruth Heholt
among others, the “overlooked,” unquestioned and invisible position of

the privileged white middle-class male began to be seen, to be named
and defined. Homi K. Bhabha notes that there was a “feminist and gay
revision of masculinity – the turning back, the re-turning of the male
gaze.”6 Black people, women, gay people re-turned the gaze that had fixed,
characterized and classified them, and began to look at white men as a
group and to see the benefits and privileges they enjoyed because of their
colour, sex and class. Although the power that this group wielded was
social, economic, political and ideological, it was a group with a visible,
biological identity – white skin and a male body. The new type of visibil-
ity of this group had radical potential because the idea that has always
been mooted is that for power to be effective it must remain hidden.
As Foucault argued “Power is tolerable only on condition that it mask a
substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide
its own mechanisms.”7 Thus, if white masculinity as a privileged position
and white men as a privileged group can be seen and made visible, the
political, social, gender and class mechanisms that enable the continua-
tion of this privileged power base will be exposed and opened up to ques-
tion. It is very hard to resist what you cannot see; therefore, if the origins
and specificities of power can be shown, they can be identified, resisted
and then perhaps dismantled.
Throughout the 1980s a movement of pro-feminist masculinity stud-
ies and anti-racist white studies joined in the resistance movement that
opposed their own power and privilege. Throughout, the weapon of
choice in this “fight” has been the gaze. This gaze that had been re-turned
onto white men by those in marginal positions, has been adopted to use
as a deliberate strategy by white men themselves in order to scrutinize
their own positions. In 1986 Anthony Easthope sounded the rallying cry
for pro-feminist white men when he proclaimed: “Masculinity has to be
unmasked.”8 In 1997 Richard Dyer argued that we need to “see white-
ness, see its power, its particularity and limitedness, put it in its place
and end its rule,”9 and much later, in 2010, Todd Reeser stated that the
raison d’être for his book Masculinities in Theory was to “help readers
make masculinity an explicit and visible object of analysis.”10 For over
twenty years masculinity studies and white studies have advocated a
strategy of absolute visibility as a way of dispelling the mythic as well as
the economic, political and social power of masculinity and whiteness.
The idea of vision, visibility and sight is more than just a metaphor;
what is discussed is an epistemological break – a radical challenge to
the privilege of absence and invisibility. The difference here, however, is
that it is not the margins looking at the centre, but the centre looking
Look Closer 107
at itself. This cultural move to visibility for white men also encompasses
the middle-class nuclear family and positions of “normality” and it is
not just confined to theory. Novels, including many “lad lit” titles, tel-
evision programmes and a plethora of films, have all continued to look
directly and explicitly at the phenomenon of white masculinity and the
“normal” family.11 Initially, most of the texts that looked in a concen-
trated way at white men ended up charting a “crisis,” as the supposedly
stable, unquestioned position white men had been used to occupying
began to crumble. The 1990s film in particular detailed and examined
white men in crisis. From the violent breakdown of D-fens (played by
Michael Douglas) in the 1993 film Falling Down, to the family and bodily
crises of masculinity explored through humour and pathos in The Full
Monty (1997), to the schizophrenic separation of masculinities explicated
in Fight Club (1999), and many other films, white men were shown to
be disempowered, fragmented, failing and falling from any position of
privilege that they might once have held.12 Any suggestion of idealized
white masculinity was shattered. Within these films, if you look closely
enough, you will find that the “ideal” never really existed anyway.
Sam Mendes’s 1999 film American Beauty, winner of five Oscars, exem-
plifies this denial and deconstruction of the ideal “normal.” It follows
the life and death of Lester, a white middle-class man who appears to
have achieved the American Dream: the perfect nuclear family, the large
suburban house complete with roses and a white picket fence, and a
good career, wealth and privilege. However, “look closer” and we see he
is in danger of losing his job, his wife is a neurotic who won’t sleep with
him and his daughter hates him as he is “too embarrassing to live.”13
Lester may look privileged but a closer examination shows him to be
failing, disempowered and so emasculated that he starts fantasizing
about his daughter’s teenage friend, Angela. The ideal is not to be found
here and Mendes provides a deliberate, visual examination of the minu-
tiae of the disintegration of Lester’s conventional masculinity.14 At the
beginning of American Beauty, Lester is visible in his disempowerment
and moments of crisis; watched with distaste by his wife and daughter
and boss. Lester, in his suburban life of seeming comfort, security and
affluence tells us “in a way I’m dead already.”15 Lester feels asleep. He
has lost himself in the “American Dream” and lost his sense of self in
the void of conventional normality. Lester’s recuperation comes with
his crisis and his rejection of the expectations put upon white-middle
class men. He gives up his career for a job in a drive-thru burger bar,
he recuperates his body through exercise and relaxes with recreational
drugs. Lester regains self-control and self-respect. The film watches Lester
108 Ruth Heholt
wake up and throw off the shackles of white masculinity and the horrors
of suburban family life. The detailed scrutiny of the gaze employed by
Mendes shows Lester managing to re-make himself into an individual
rather than remaining a sedated clone of suburban masculinity.
In American Beauty the film’s most unflinching gaze is turned upon
extreme white masculinity in the form of the most crisis-ridden man of
all, the hyper-masculine Colonel Fitts, Lester’s neighbour and nemesis.
In the film, old-style masculinity, violent, macho and homophobic, is
embodied in the character of the Colonel, who epitomizes some of the
most extreme expressions of this type of masculinity. From his ramrod
posture to his crew-cut hair, the Colonel’s entire appearance signifies
the masculine. Making his son Ricky give him a urine sample every six
months to check for drug use, obsessively shining his already shiny car,
the state of Ricky’s mother (which is indirectly attributed to the Colonel),
our view of his study with its two US flags, and his extensive weapons
collection and precious Nazi plate – everything gives us clues as to the
type of man he is and the type of masculinity that is ascribed to him. The
film concentrates on the Colonel’s violent homophobia. The Colonel
believes that the “old order” is under threat and falling apart. For him,
one of the most significant factors in this “disintegration of the old
order” is the fact that his gay neighbours, Jim and Jim, make no effort to
hide their homosexuality. To the Colonel, homosexuality is something
to be hidden, kept invisible and something to be ashamed of. Perhaps
inevitably, his violent homophobia masks a deeply repressed homo-
sexuality. Ultimately the Colonel cannot accept his own inadvertent and
uncontrolled homosexual action (he attempts to kiss Lester) and is so
disgusted and overwhelmed by it that he has to murder what he desires.
It is the Colonel’s form of masculinity that is represented as being the
most unstable, and also the most visible. Every detail of this violent and
destructive type of masculinity is highlighted, exposed and shown to be
entirely unacceptable. Through the re-turn of the gaze men themselves
we are now able to perceive old-style masculinity, and it does not look
safe, unified or desirable; it looks unsafe, untenable, brittle and fragile.
Throughout his career Mendes has continued to explore masculinity
in films such as Jarhead (2005), but nearly ten years after American Beauty,
with the film Revolutionary Road (2008), he returned to the penetrating
scrutiny of white suburban masculinity and the formation of the nuclear,
suburban family. Set in 1955, the film looks at the origins of “traditional”
masculinity; the post-war period that saw a re-inscription, re-invention
and expectation of rigid, conventional gender roles. Revolutionary Road
looks back to the supposed “golden age” of the nuclear family and the
Look Closer 109
image of the white, middle-class man as father, breadwinner and benign

patriarch,16 and then proceeds to expose this entire “ideal” as dystopic,
destructive, repressive and wrong. The film explores the efforts of Frank
and April to escape the stifling conventionality of their suburban lives
and prescribed gender roles. Frank and April, like Lester, seem to have the
“perfect life,” with a new house in the suburbs, two children, Frank in
a good job and April as a stay-at-home housewife. However, she in par-
ticular wants something more and hatches a plan for them all to move
to Paris where she will work and allow space for Frank to find himself.
April sees their lives in suburbia as unnecessary, empty and meaningless.
As Robert Beuka says of suburbia, it signifies “both the ‘American Dream’
[but also] that dream’s inverse: the vision of a homogenized soulless
plastic landscape of tepid conformity, an alienating ‘noplace’.”17 A place,
as Frank himself identifies, of “hopeless emptiness.”18 In 1963, in her
ground breaking book The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan examined
the American suburban “housewife’s malaise”: “the problem that has no
name.” She defines it as “a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a
yearning”; and she says this stirring and yearning culminates in a sin-
gle question: “Is this all?”19 This is the question facing Frank and April
throughout the film, as the idealized normal is exposed as a sham and
an empty shell of lost, stifled and repressed dreams. Near the beginning
of the film we follow Frank’s commute into the city and his job. He is
just one of thousands of “grey men,” all dressed the same, all going to
the same kind or job, having the same kind of life and who are shown
as moving like a relentless grey river. These men are seen to have only a
collective identity; not an identity that confers privilege but rather one
that destroys any individuality or creativity. Later, when Frank thinks
he is leaving it all behind to go to Paris, he is shown not just moving
against the tide, but rather as standing outside it. He stops and has a ciga-
rette and views all the other men moving as one; he is able to see them.
However, this level of individuality and independence takes bravery and
eventually Frank cannot resist the flow. In the end Frank is defeated by
the expectations about who he should be as a man: husband, father,
breadwinner, “success.” He finds himself unable to resist the temptation
of an offered promotion, much more money, another child and a contin-
ued “safe” life in the suburbs. Frank has a failure of courage and through
his failure to escape he is shown to be the most repressed of the couple
as he re-immerses himself into the company of grey men. Mendes’s gaze
looks unflinchingly at the consequences of an acceptance of this rigid
type of hegemonic masculinity and this white, middle-class suburban
way of life. Frank’s failure to free himself leads to the tragedy of April’s
110 Ruth Heholt
death as she tries to self-abort their third child, and to the absolute
destruction of the ideal.
The gaze Mendes uses to look at white men does not show privilege
of any sort. The effect of this gaze being re-turned onto white men is to
re-view them not as white men who are part of a traditionally privileged
and powerful group, but as “ordinary,” failing, often repressed and mar-
ginalized individuals who have “fallen” into convention and accepted the
expectations put upon them by society. In the most recent of Mendes’s
films to date, Away We Go, (2009),20 the ideal nuclear family is able to be
remade because Burt (the “fuck-up”)21 and Verona do not unquestioningly
accept convention or bow to expectations. In this film, the rejection of
conformity, the search for an individual identity and the ability to make
one’s own way in the world become the focus. Verona finds herself preg-
nant at the start of the film and being rootless, she and Burt travel round
America ostensibly looking for a location to live, but actually explor-
ing the type of family they want to create. While all three films offer
a level of voyeurism, looking at the minutiae of other people’s private
and domestic lives, this is accentuated in Away We Go. Burt and Verona
watch other people’s families, and as they visit family and old friends, the
messes, miseries and failings hidden behind so many closed doors are
exposed. They visit Verona’s ex-boss, who embarrasses and insults her
own children, ignores her down-trodden husband, drinks too much and
makes everybody cringe. They visit Burt’s brother, whose life has just been
shattered as his wife has left him and their young daughter. They visit
the nicest of the households, where a multitude of multi-ethnic children
have been adopted but the couple cannot have their own children and
the wife, Munch, has just experienced the tragedy of her fifth miscarriage.
The strangest, least accessible and least sympathetic of the families is a
claustrophobic, judgmental, hippy, “continuum” household. Here the
children are breastfed on demand for years, no “strollers” or pushchairs
are allowed as children are always carried and nurtured, and all the fam-
ily co-sleep in one enormous bed. In this household wealth and privilege
abound, but the husband is entirely feminized and has what he terms
an “Electra complex,”22 the children are smothered and, paradoxically,
rigidly controlled, and the entire home is filled with self-righteousness
and bigotry. All of these families are viewed with humour and often with
gentle pathos, but viewed they are, and again with Mendes’s unflinching
and sometimes unforgiving gaze. Burt and Verona look at these families
and do not find one that they wish to emulate. However, what they are
able to do is to exercise a choice that has been enabled by examining
others’ lives. Via this gaze the notion of “the family” moves away from
Look Closer 111
being a biological (white, heterosexual) or ideological imperative and

begins to be able to be seen as more of a free and individualized choice.
Because Burt and Verona are distanced from these families, and because
they are able to see them clearly, they do not sleep-walk into convention
or blindly accept the expectations of nuclear family life. Burt and Verona
view and reject many family forms, but the place where they end up is the
place where Verona began: her old family home. This is a beautiful large
house in the middle of nowhere fronting onto a wide river. There are no
other houses in sight, no other people and they appear to be preparing
to make the most isolated and nuclear of all nuclear families. The nuclear
family in this case is not rejected, but it is represented as being remade
in a more thoughtful, pioneering way; as a choice, not something that is
prescribed.
Burt and Verona exercise individual choice. Eventually they do choose
the isolated nuclear family, but this is shown not to be because of socie-
ty’s expectations but through their own judgment and volition. Burt may
have ended up taking up the position left vacant by Verona’s (idealized)
father, but of his own free will. Catherine Hall says of the ideal of colo-
nial masculinity: “True manliness […] encompassed a belief in individual
integrity and freedom from subjection to the will of another.”23 Thus
from one point of view those men who are independent, individualized
must be more manly than those shown to be trapped into following an
obsolete set of values that require conformity. Ultimately it is the abil-
ity to control oneself, to resist the flow and to make one’s own way in
the world that is shown to matter most. With the absolute scrutiny of
Mendes’s filmic gaze, for those who are able to free themselves and who
resist the temptations of conventionality, what was “old” (white mascu-
linity and the nuclear family), is allowed to become “new,” and Lester and
Burt are able to re-occupy the spaces of traditional masculinity. In the last
scene of American Beauty, after Lester has been murdered by Colonel Fitts,
as the camera moves away from the Earth towards the heavens, Lester’s
disembodied voice-over tells us “I can’t feel anything but gratitude for
every single moment of my stupid little life. [...] You have no idea what
I am talking about I’m sure. But don’t worry ... you will someday.”24 In
those final moments Lester is disembodied and invisible but he can see
everything clearly and his wisdom applies to everyone. Ultimately Lester
is able to move back into the invisible, disembodied, universalized posi-
tion designated for white men. Burt is able to create his own ideal nuclear
family and settles down to occupy the position of breadwinner, patriarch
and father. For Lester and Burt, who manage to exercise choice and re-
occupy these quite traditional positions, it is not about their sex, race or
112 Ruth Heholt
class, but about themselves. In the subtle differentiation of this re-turned

gaze as it is used by white men to look at white men, gender, race and
class seem to have become void and outmoded categories. The gaze that
individualizes Lester, Frank and Burt actually allows them to disappear as
white men. What is not acknowledged in the injunction to “look closer”
is that there is a difference between being visible and being “looked at.”
This gaze that originates from the centre, is being used by, not imposed
upon white men; this is a chosen visibility. David Levin concludes: “The
power to see, the power to make visible is the power to control,”25 and
Mendes carefully controls how his white men are represented. In the
films examined in this chapter the close scrutiny of the centre leads to the
agency and plural individuality of the white middle-classes being made
visible, whilst their power, biological and social privileges are not “looked
at.” Mendes himself talks about each of these films in terms of escape,
stating that American Beauty is about the “imprisonment in the cages we
all make for ourselves and our hoped-for escape.”26 Of Revolutionary Road
he says, “You’ve got one chance to escape […] and you’ve got to take
it”;27 and of Away We Go, “This film is about a couple who want to escape
and who do escape.”28 The important thing to Mendes seems to be an
escape from convention, expectation and fixity. However, what the gaze
Mendes uses finally seems to offer is a re-branding rather than an actual
repositioning. Thus in his films the privileged positions of white mascu-
linity and the nuclear family remain in place, but now they represent a
choice and seem to point to the individualized paths we can all follow.
The rhetoric becomes about choice, not imperative; about possibilities
of movement, not fixity. In Mendes’s work, homophobia, violence and
racism are rightly denounced with absolute clarity. The white centre of
society, however, is enabled to hide in the light. The white, masculine
spaces and places of privilege, benefit and power still exist, but the pen-
etrating scrutiny of Mendes’s gaze disperses and individualizes them, so
that finally the white men he looks so closely at are not seen as white
men and are able to retreat back into positions of power, universality
and invisibility.
Notes
1. See for example Robyn Wiegman (1999), Sally Robinson (2000) and Erica
Arthur (2004).
2. R. Dyer (1997): pp. 44–45.
3. J. Crary (1998). Techniques of the Observer – On Vision and Modernity in the
Nineteenth Century. MIT Press.
4. I. Rogoff (1996): p. 189.
Look Closer 113
5. Dyer (1997).
6. H. Bhabha (1995): p. 58.
7. M. Foucault (1976/1998): p. 86.
8. A. Easthope (1986/1992): p. 2.
9. Dyer (1997).
10. T. Reeser (2010): 4.
11. See for example, T. Parsons (1999), N. Hornby About a Boy (1998), Penguin
Books, “Who Needs Fathers?” (March–April 2010).
12. Falling Down, (1993), The Full Monty, (1997) and Fight Club, (1999).
13. American Beauty (1999).
14. Visual scrutiny of the “ordinary” is intended as Mendes repeatedly uses a
slow “push in” camera shot to “look closer.”. See Mendes’s audio commen-
tary on the American Beauty DVD (1999).
16. This contemporary conception of the 1950s being seen as the “golden age”
of the nuclear family and of patriarchal masculinity is discussed in both
masculinity studies texts as well as family studies texts. See for example:
John Beynon, (2002), Deborah Chambers, (2001) and, Stephen Whitehead,
(2002).
17. R. Beuka (2004): p. 4.
18. Revolutionary Road (2008).
19. B. Friedan (1957/1991): p. 1.
20. This chapter was written in July 2012. before the release of Mendes’s Bond
film Skyfall in October 2012.
21. Away We Go (2009).
22. Ibid.
23. C. Hall (2002): p. 27.
25. D. Levin (1993): p. 7.
26. Alan Ball (1999): p. xi.
27. “Lives of Quiet Desperation: the Making of Revolutionary Road”. Revolutionary
Road, DVD (2008).
28. Away We Go (2009).
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Filmography
American Beauty. Dir. S. Mendes. Perf. K. Spacey, A. Bening and T. Birch. DreamWorks,
1999.
Away We Go. Dir. S. Mendes. Perf. J. Krasinski, M. Rudolph and A. Janney.
Focus Features/Edward Saxon Productions (ESP)/Big Beach Films/Neal Street
Productions/Twins Financing, 2009.
Falling Down. Dir. J. Schumacher. Perf. M. Douglas, R. Duvall and B. Hershey.
Alcor Films/Canal+/Regency Enterprises/Warner Bros., 1993.
Fight Club. Dir. D. Fincher. Perf. B. Pitt, E. Noton and H. Bonham Carter.
Fox 2000 Pictures/regency Enterprises/Linson Films/Atman Entertainment/
Knickerbocker Films/Taurus Film, USA 1999.
The Full Monty. Dir. P. Cataneo. Perf. R. Carlyle, T. Wilkinson and M. Addy. Redwave
Films/Channel Four Films/Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 1997.
Jarhead. Dir. S. Mendes. Perf. J. Gyllenhaal, J. Foxx and L. Black. Universal
Pictures/Red Wagon Entertainment/Neal Street Productions/Motion Picture
KAPPA Produktiongesellschaft, 2005.
Lives of Quiet Desperation: The Making of Revolutionary Road. Perf. K. Bates, L.
DiCaprio and K. Winslet. Sparkhill Production, 2009.
Revolutionary Road. Dir. S. Mendes. Perf. L. DiCaprio, K. Winslet and C. Fitzgerald.
DreamWorks/BBC Films/Evamere Entertainment/Neal Street Productions/
Goldcrest Pictures/Scott Rudin Productions, 2008.
Skyfall. Dir. S. Mendes. Perf. D. Craig, J. Bardem and N. Harris. Eon Productions/
Eanjaq, 2012.
8
Between the Joy of the Woman
Castrator and the Silence of the
Woman Victim: Following the
Exhibition The Uncanny XX
Sigal Barkai
One of the most intriguing and stimulating psychoanalytical concepts,

“the Uncanny,” was formulated by Sigmund Freud1 in his article of that
name. Freud defined the uncanny as “belonging to all that is terrible –
to all that arouses dread and creeping horror.”2 Amongst the complex
of creeping and frightening things, Freud distinguishes a certain quality
of the uncanny: “That class of the terrifying which leads back to some-
thing long known to us, once very familiar” (ibid.). In German, the
word Unheimlich means “domestic” in a negative sense: the unfamiliar,
the non-homey. This is a contradictory term, however, articulating the
unfamiliar and the familiar, the known and the unknown, hidden and
mysterious. Freud concludes that there is a hidden threat deeply rooted
inside the apparently safe and known.
Women, in particular, are subject to the perilous nature of the uncanny,
the unsafe, the unstable, the horrifying. Jacques Lacan3 elaborates Freud’s
theory and claims that a woman, who has no penis to identify with, takes
part in the social order only as non-man. The woman does not voice her-
self but only exists as opposite of man. Both the girl and the boy need to
compensate their mother for her lack of a penis by “becoming a phallus”
i.e., identifying themselves with the social order and norms represented
by the name of the father (75–98). However, many feminist thinkers
confronted Lacan. In her book The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir,4
for example, argues that “one is not born a woman, but becomes one”;
namely, it is the social construction of women as the quintessential
“Other” of Man that is fundamental to women’s oppression.
In her book The Beauty Myth Naomi Wolf5 contends that the modern
“liberated” woman is, in fact, vulnerable and exhausted from within due
to a constant need to protect herself from potential assault. The successful
115
116 Sigal Barkai
working woman, more than her counterpart the housewife, is at risk of

home violence, while also exposed to potential sexual harassment in
her work place and the possibility of confronting “invisible attackers.”
Further, millions of women around the world are being abused and even
raped by their husbands or partners every year. Under these circum-
stances, women develop fantasies of protection.6
The feminist poet and philosopher Hélène Cixous, in her ground-
breaking essay “The Laugh of the Medusa,”7 challenged Freud and
Lacan by addressing Freud’s essay “The Head of the Medusa.”8
According to Freud, the severed head of Medusa in Greek mythology
is symbolic of castration anxiety. It is the moment when the child first
lays eyes on the feminine vagina. The child freezes with dread and hor-
ror. Freud perceives the Medusa’s head as a threatening female sexual
organ surrounded by undulating snakes/penises. Cixous criticizes this
perception: “Woman will return to the body which has been more
than confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny
stranger on display – the ailing or dead figure”; and she adds, “Which
so often turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location
of inhibitions.”9
Cixous responded to the notion of the vagina as uncanny by encour-
aging women to write their own subjectivity and identity; to write (or
create artistically) the beautiful and the poetic in the female corporeal
experience, and not to be subordinated to the misogynist definitions of
the woman’s body: “I write woman,” she explains, “woman must write
woman. And man, man.” (4) Whereas the Phallic Eye is conventionally
regarded as a masculine “scientific” way of defining women through
knowledge (the kind of knowledge established within the patriarchal
framework), I prefer a feminist perspective of a feminine uncanny,
addressing the “dread and creeping horror” back to masculinity and its
perilous pleasures and horrors.
I initiated the exhibition The Uncanny XX at a Tel Aviv gallery in
February 2012.10 The exhibition sought to represent the psychological
and social implications of this particular type of “uncanny,” the femi-
nine uncanny. The name of the exhibition was derived from the bio-
logical definition of female genetics by the chromosome XX. The home
environment proved to be fertile for extracting memories and experi-
ences of women, who summoned the home space into their artistic
work. The re-imagined home scene in this exhibition was constituted
from the uncanny felt by women. The Uncanny XX problematized both
body and soul: the desecration of the female body on the one hand, and
the dismantling of her fragile mental trust, on the other.
Following the Exhibition The Uncanny XX 117
As a curator and scholar of young, contemporary Israeli art, I was

inspired by Freud’s article to look for artworks that reflect the sexual anxi-
eties of Israeli women artists. Many women artists I talked to attested to a
certain sexual anxiety and threat seeping into their work, even if they had
not personally experienced any abuse. Further, the exhibition space inter-
related with a sort of male entity. The artists corresponded, provoked, sub-
verted, confronted or tried to please this abstract male entity. At the same
time, they sought to formulate a private and personal statement about
sexuality, femininity and identification as young female artists in Israel.
At first, I had considered the feminine uncanny as an archaic con-
cept, manifesting women’s solidarity against the threatening male
power throughout history. Later I identified more specific attributes of
the Israeli culture reflected in the exhibited artworks. The works cor-
responded to the state of being-a-woman, or, more precisely, being an
Israeli woman, in the second decade of the 21st century. This chapter
thus deals with interpretations of the universal feminine psyche, as well
as with more particular, local ideas arising from the Israeli culture itself.
The exhibition was created in a two-year process of joint thinking and
working, carried out with a group of young artists involved in the col-
lective, non-profit Hanina Gallery. The gallery is located on the border
between the “white,” prosperous area of the city of Tel Aviv and the
neglected, socially challenged “no-man’s land” of south Tel Aviv. A sig-
nificant area of the latter is home to illegal immigrants and refugees
from Sudan and other African countries. The members of the gallery are
artists and art educators who contribute to this liminal environment by
showing art and initiating social and educational activities in their neigh-
bourhood. The meetings with the artists took place at the gallery every
few weeks. They included a series of talks and passionate debates, reveal-
ing artworks in process and reading texts aloud. The idea of a common,
archaic, feminine experience, marked by fear of the phallus in society and
in art, inspired the artists, who critically explored the social and familial
environments in which they live. The works were created amongst a dia-
logue that provoked antagonism, identification, defiance and reflection,
which eventually yielded a series of new works.
A castrating warrior-girl
The centre of the gallery featured a life-size cast girl, wearing a leather belt
with a huge sword stuck in it. The look in her eyes is intent and troubled.
One of her feet is raised and her posture manifests vigilance and readiness
for battle. The posture and the gaze remind us of Michelangelo’s David.
118 Sigal Barkai
Like the classic figure, the girl clutches a hand to her shoulder, holding
something. Differing from the slingshot of David, marking a potential
future conflict however, Vered Aharonovitch’s girl is already returning from
the battle with her loot. Descending from her shoulder is a long string of
amputated phalluses, crossing the gallery floor and on the staircase.
Freud’s theorization of the uncanny clearly deals with the castration
anxiety. The incarnations of this anxiety are reflected in divided, repro-
ductive and repetitive formations of the self. This anxiety is regularly
represented in multiple symbols of the penis in dreams and reality. This
particular sculpture realizes one of the deepest fears of men. Further, the
title of this work, First Blood, is drawn from the world of martial arts.
The one who cuts his opponent first is the one to “draw first blood”.
The equivalent statement among squabbling children is “You started it!
You hit me first!” This is a moment of revenge and consequent violent
injury. Likewise, the artist Aharonovitch challenges the men’s world:
“We women are allowed to take revenge, because you have hurt us first.”
Although this work ostensibly adopts a virile language and masculine
norms of fighting, it actually subverts the militaristic male imperative. The
chain of amputated male organs descending from the child’s shoulder rep-
resents women’s revenge for male assaults on women throughout history.
The artist intensified the gender-bending pattern by using the image
of the girl to replace the image of David. Aharonovitch thereby relates
to popular cultural structures in Israeli society. Eva Illouz and Eitan
Wilf11 compare the social image of women in the United States to the
way femininity is perceived in Israel, and argue that the Israeli woman
is less identified with the home sphere. In Israel, the feminine sphere
and self-definition of women are tightly connected to hegemonic
masculinity (220). The main agency of this cultural code is the IDF,
the Israeli Defense Force (223). Orna Sasson-Levy12 suggests that many
Israeli women respond to the powerful cultural influence of the army by
imitating and adopting male identification. Hence, it is no wonder that
Aharonovitch chose to express her feminist protest precisely by identi-
fying and imitating an iconic male figure. Moreover, the girl sculptured
by Aharonovich is almost androgynous and can easily be taken for a
young boy. This androgyneity may also symbolize an emotional identi-
fication with the role of the hero, the warrior and the phallic.
A space of female materiality
Keren Ella Geffen’s installation The Blue Blower’s Puff was created only a
week before the opening of the exhibition. Hundreds of white balloons
were inflated and tied with red embroidery thread, then dipped in
acrylic colours. The balloons were attached to the wall and ceiling
and to each other. The final form of the installation reflects a tension
between the artwork itself and the narrow, curved space of the gallery.
The repeated image in Geffen’s work is that of a busty, round breast
with a pink nipple replicated and duplicated. The strings that dangle
down from the “breasts” simulate blood, milk or other body fluids.
The bleeding, dripping, sensual and chaotic object is responding to
physical experiences familiar to almost every woman: loss of control of
body fluids during menstruation, after birth, during breastfeeding and
with aging. In the masculine mind, these phenomena make the woman
abject, excluding and channelling her to the domestic dark, damp, hid-
den sphere.13 Judith Butler, however, in her Bodies That Matter14 rejects
the link between the materiality and corporeality of women. She claims
that by using this physical explanatory, the patriarchal imagination
restricts women to a “vessel.”15 Butler particularly resists the “natural”
identification of women with their productivity. She refers to the devi-
ous way in which the feminine body has become a symbol of reduction
and exclusion of women in culture (35). Geffen, in contrast, celebrates
the power of an excessive, superfluous, productive female body and
turns it into a spectacle of female force and domination.
The French psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray16 also demands a language that
will represent the female body in a non-repressive way. Irigaray develops a
feminine language of smells, touch, heat and cold, texture, light and dark-
ness (106). Such body fantasy liberates women and encourages new pat-
terns and an emergent of a different kind of femininity.17 Correspondingly,
Geffen’s artwork develops a space of its own in a spontaneous and
irrational manner, unconstrained and not limited to phallogocentristic
thinking. She embraces the random, the liquid and the boundless as a site
of power, allowing a different sort of logic, one that dynamically responds
to the constant changes in space and time. The energy erupting from the
many balloons is politicized here. This installation reflects the struggle for
gender recognition and alternative identifications.
The balloons are nonetheless soft, full of air and can be destroyed eas-
ily. These “aggressive breasts” also manifest sensitivity and vulnerability.
Unlike Aharonovitch’s rigid and “masculine” radicalism, Geffen’s work
attacks and retreats at the same time. She provokes and threatens the
boundaries of the Other; and yet, her work implies Vanitas, the destruc-
tion and dismantling of the womanly body from within.18 The breast is
shown as plentiful, smooth and flawless; but soon it will become faded,
decayed and aged.
120 Sigal Barkai
In Geffen’s work, every balloon inflated by the breath of the blower

reflects erotic impulse and creative energy, manifested in the image of
the full breast; and also simulating the swelling of the penis during
erection. Unlike Freud’s theory that contrasts the penis’s fullness and
bursting energy with the female organ’s lack and passivity, Geffen delib-
erately analogizes the penis and the breast. Both organs are perceived
here as vessels of temporary lust that swell during arousal, charged with
impulses, drives and desires; and then, after the sexual climax, both the
penis and the breast gradually deflate and diminish. Thus, the ethos of
the artist as genius is reformulated here, having a significantly vital and
active role for artists of all genders. In this consolidation of gender iden-
tity, art helps to transcend traditional barriers and archaic definitions of
the “material”, particularly the “materiality” of the female body.
Another issue discussed in Geffen’s artwork is motherhood. The
Jewish-Israeli culture is particularly sensitive to the status of women as
mothers. Art-historian Gideon Ofrat analysed the status of the mother
in Jewish-Zionist culture and concluded that “the biological mother
wasn’t overtly praised in Israeli art, for she was subdued to the collec-
tive strata. Indeed, between the “Yiddishe Mama,” the typical, diasporic
Jewish mother who is anxious and devoted to her child, the productive
mother who is subordinated to the national fertility, and the bereaved
mother – not much space was left for the earthy and individual figure of
the biological mother.”19 Such nationalist, collectivist portrayal of New
Jewish Mothers is embodied, for example, in Yohanan Simon’s artwork
Sabbath on the Kibbutz (Oil on canvas, 65 × 55cm, 1947).
In contrast, in 1997 Yehudit Matzkel and Hadara Scheflan-Katzav
curated the exhibition Oh, Mama! Representations of the Mother in Israeli
Contemporary Art at the Museum of Israeli Art in Ramat Gan. The exhibi-
tion presented a variety of maternal representations but did not focus
on collective, national or patriotic mothers, Mother Earth or mytho-
logical mothers. Rather, it emphasized the works of mothers-artists
that concentrate on mother-child relations. This exhibition marked a
significant development in Israeli society in the 1990s. The critical femi-
nist discourse had disseminated further in society, resulting in women
daring to voice their own life experiences, and to reveal their rich and
vibrant inner world that had been kept hidden from the public eye for
too many years. Geffen, who grew up in this emancipated atmosphere,
oscillates among connotations of the breast as a nursing organ, an erotic
zone, a site of anxiety or a dominant and powerful organ; an organ
that stimulates existential meditation or a specific one that raises a sup-
pressed, uncanny threat. The artist feels safe enough to playfully charge
the image with contrasted meanings, and to exaggerate it physically

and metaphorically until it becomes grotesque and humoristic.
Home as a locus of silence and muteness
Yifat Giladi’s video Ha’Ogen 17 (meaning in Hebrew: “17 Anchor Street”,

specifying an Israeli home address) creates a different atmosphere in
regard to gender schemes. It promotes awareness of the oppression,
victimization and submissiveness of women. Giladi’s work visualizes
maternal silence as an inherent characteristic of mother-daughter rela-
tions. Here, the daughter suspects that her mother had been sexually
abused in the past, but she fails to break her wall of silence. In this way,
the mother latently collaborates with the man who had abused her.
This video includes a static one-shot documentation of the artist’s
childhood house, edited in a way that compresses a full cycle of day and
night. This is an extreme long shot taken from behind the bushes, appar-
ently through the eyes of a stalker who is planning to commit a crime.
Alternatively, this might have been filmed through the eyes of the daugh-
ter, who had not dared to come closer to the place where the violent
event had occurred. In a mismatch between image and sound, the voice-
over reflects an intimate conversation between mother and daughter,
which supposedly takes place inside the house. This “interview” includes
the daughter’s piercing questions, which are answered with the continu-
ous silence of the mother (either being there or imagined).
The presence of the mother is represented by her absent voice. The
questions are politely and tentatively posed: “Does it bother you if
I take a video? Can you tell me a little?” As time goes by, and the
silence persists, the questions become more demanding and invasive:
“Did it happen at home? What did you feel? How did he do it?” When
this strategy doesn’t work either, the daughter/interviewer moves to
cross-examination, focusing on the details of the event: “Was he wear-
ing something or was he naked? Did he ask you to take off your shirt
and pants when he did it?” The two last questions are asked together,
urgently and repeatedly, like an investigation operated under pressure.
The only dynamic object in this video is an abstract and strange
image whose colour and sound resemble a UFO. The object appears sud-
denly and then disappears. Once it is in the yard, then it is inside the
house and then duplicated three times in the street. The strange object
can be understood as a visual manifestation of the uncanny; a symbolic
embodiment of anxiety that emerges and then disappears abruptly
inside the soul of the one who experienced the traumatic memory.
122 Sigal Barkai
This specific house is a mute witness, locating the story within a cer-
tain space, but also perpetuating the distress and the bond of silence,
and cooperating with the criminal and the victim alike. Voicing one-
self is an expression of self-representation, of telling a narrative from
an individual point of view. It is opposed to silence/invisibility/non-
existence in language and society.20 The voice becomes an emblem of
the historical effort of women to move from transparency to visibility.21
Women’s voice has been theorized and discussed in several Israeli
feminist writings and artworks. For example, Talya Pfefferman22 exam-
ines the feminine voice expressed in an autobiographical book titled
The Life of a Worker in Her Homeland (1935), written by a Zionist female
worker named Henya Pekelman. Pfefferman suggests that women who
participated in the Zionist revolution experienced disillusionment and
disappointment after their immigration to Palestine. Their expecta-
tions to be equal to the male Zionist pioneers have failed miserably.
Despite their enthusiastic recruitment, they were absent for many years
from the official historiography of Zionism. The private story of Henya
Pekelman reveals discrepancies between the declared ideology of equal-
ity and the reality of exclusion and discrimination against women.
Pekelman, who began her path as a vibrant and assertive activist in
the pioneers’ movement in her hometown in Bessarabia in Eastern
Europe, was employed, after her immigration, by a major tobacco enter-
prise. Following her rape by another pioneer, she collapsed. Finding
herself pregnant from the rape, she was forced to move to the Galilee,
a remote northern region of Palestine/Israel, in order “to deal with her
personal tragedy” on her own. The daughter she gave birth to was never
recognized by the father and died when only a few months old, under
questionable circumstances. Henya was arrested on the unfounded
suspicion of poisoning the baby. Henya’s life experiences following the
assault were accompanied by feelings of loneliness, exclusion and per-
secution, until her suicide at the age of 38. Her voice had been muted.
Notably, Henya’s story exemplifies the patterns of silence and mute-
ness of women in a dramatic historical period. Henya Pekelman’s story
can be analogized to Yifat Giladi’s video. The video artist also tries to
track down a dark tale of sexual assault in the past; albeit her story is
directly connected to her personal life. Giladi is shattered by the wall of
silence erected by her mother’s generation, a generation that is unable
to confess. This video thus documents the frustration and despair of
the daughter generated by the suffering of her mother; an agony that is
doomed to be disregarded and excluded from the national and familial
narrative alike.
Conclusion
My project The Uncanny XX was stimulated by Sigmund Freud’s 1919

ground-breaking essay The Uncanny, a concept referring to the domestic
and the familiar sphere and its obscure danger, a hidden, unknown,
mysterious threat. It soon became evident that the two meanings
are intertwined in the home sphere. The exhibition The Uncanny XX
explored sexual anxieties in the works of Israeli women artists that
reflect the phenomenon that I define as the “Feminine Uncanny.” Since
Freud’s research ignored the specific fears of women in their domestic
environment, I felt it important to expose the uncanny experiences
and memories of women that relate to incest, rape or threat by a family
member. The house itself has been reconsidered in this chapter as a site
of silence and as a physical space of memories.
The long process of preparation for the exhibition, and the intimate
sharing of feelings and thoughts of the artists, taught me that women
artists indeed feel a certain erotic anxiety and threat in regard to their
home environment, even if they have never personally been exposed to
a real threat inside their homes. The artists expressed this anxiety not
from an egocentric point of view, but from a more general, empathetic
perspective on women’s lives.
I believe that this exhibition contributed an artistic point of view on
sensitive social issues such as the exploitation and exclusion of women
and girls by the men who are supposed to be their guardians, as much as
sexual injustice within the home and the false and paralyzing idealiza-
tion of female sexuality both by men and women. In a society in which
the media regularly report on the murder of women by their husbands
and on incest and domestic violence on a daily basis, it is important
that the voice of women will be heard and their perspective be widely
disseminated. Such exposure of an alternative, feminine, point of view
is intended to raise the awareness of significant types of concealed mas-
culine oppression.
The artists and I hoped that the exhibition would be a starting point for
a meaningful public discussion of the status of women in Israeli society at
the beginning of the 21st century, and that it would promote recognition
of the importance of such courageous cultural and artistic representations.
Obviously, this is not enough. An artistic display is limited to the small
number of interested visitors who attend the exhibition. Nevertheless, art
cannot be dedicated solely to presenting a social agenda. Art is primarily
intended to express the creator’s inner world in the most sincere manner.
It is hoped that future work in this field will combine academic study and
124 Sigal Barkai
writing together with artistic expression in order to encourage more car-

ing, understanding and recognition of these painful issues.
Notes
1. Freud (1919).
2. Freud (1919): 1.
3. Lacan (1982).
4. De Beauvoir (1949).
5. Wolf (1991).
6. In Israel too, the media reports about daily violence of husbands against
their wives; as well as reports about incestuous fathers and abusive male
employers, an issue extensively discussed by the Israeli media in 2009–2011.
because of President Moshe Katzav’s, his trial, conviction and imprisonment
for rape. Moshe Katzav served as the eighth President of Israel. The end of his
presidency was marked by controversy, stemming from allegations of rape
of one female subordinate and sexual harassment of others. In a landmark
ruling, Katsav was sentenced to seven years in prison. On 7. December 2011,
he began his prison sentence.
7. Cixous (1975).
8. Freud (1922).
9. Cixous (1976): 8.
10. The participants in The Uncanny XX: Lee he Shulov, Alma Machness-Kass, Yifat
Giladi, Yael Azoulay, Hinda Weiss, Keren Ella Geffen, Vered Aharonovitch,
Reut Asimini, Jonathan Hirschfeld. The works were made in a variety of
techniques, such as video art, sculpture, painting, drawing and computerized
image-processing.
11. Illouz and Wilf (2004).
12. Sasson-Levy (2006).
13. Kristeva (1982); Bourdieu ([1960] 2003).
14. Butler (1993).
15. Butler (1993): 33.
16. Irigaray (1985).
17. Rozmarin (2003): 87–88.
18. Vanitas (Latin, “vanity”) in art, a genre of still-life painting that flourished in
the Netherlands in the early 17th century. A vanitas painting contains col-
lections of objects symbolic of the inevitability of death and the transience
and vanity of earthly achievements and pleasures (Encyclopedia Britannica:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/623056/vanitas).
19. Ofrat (2009).
20. Pfefferman (2011): 24.
21. In her famous performance of the hit song O Superman from the 1980s, for
example, the artist Laurie Anderson wears a special device that she invented
herself on her mouth. This musical tool produces the voice of a man and
changes her performance in a way that creates a gender-bending. This act
suggests that a man’s voice will be better heard in the public sphere than the
voice of a woman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzYu88jIDYs
22. Pfefferman (2011).
Bibliography
Beauvoir, S. de ([1949] 1952) The Second Sex, Parshley H.M. (ed. and trs.),
(New York: A. A. Knopf).
Bourdieu, P. ([1960] 2003) “The Berber House,” in: Low S.M. and Lawrence-Zúñiga
D. (eds). The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture, (Victoria, Australia:
Blackwell Publishing), pp. 31–41.
Butler, J. P. (1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex,” (New York:
Routledge).
Cixous, H. (1975) “The Laugh of the Medusa,” Cohen K. and Cohen P. (trs.)
Signs, 1, 4 (Summer 1976), 875–893. http://lavachequilit.typepad.com/files/
cixous-read.pdf
Freud, S. (1919) “The Uncanny,” In: Strachey, J. (ed. and trs.). The Standard Edition
of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, XVII, (London: Hogarth
1953), pp. 219–252. http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf
Freud, S. (1922). “Das Medusenhaup.” InternationaleZeitschriftfür Psychoanalyse
und Imago, 25, 105.
Illouz, E. and E. Wilf (2004) “Between the Uterus and the Heart: a Cultural
Criticism of Radical Feminism’s Criticism of Love,” Theory and Criticism: An
Israeli Forum, 25 (fall), 196–205 (Hebrew).
Irigaray, L. ([1977] 1985) “The Mechanics of Fluids,” In: This Sex which is not one,
Porter, C. (trs.). (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), pp. 106–118.
Kristeva, J. (1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Leon S. R. (trs.). (New York:
Columbia University Press).
Lacan, J. (1982) “The Meaning of the Phallus,” In: J. Mitchell and J. Rose, Feminine
Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the École Freudienne, (London and Basingstoke:
Macmillan), pp. 75–98.
Ofrat, G. (2009) “Mother Figure in Israeli Art: Rachel, Sarah, Hagar,” in: E. Perroni
Motherhood: Psychoanalysis and Other Disciplines, (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: The
Van Leer Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House), pp. 164–152
(Hebrew).
Pfefferman, T. (2011) “Women’s Silence in ‘The Life of a Worker in her Homeland’
(1935), by Henya Pekelman.” In: Shilo, M. and Katz, G. (eds). Gender in Israel:
New Studies in the Yishuv and State, (Sde Boker: The Ben Gurion Research
Institute, Ben Gurion University of the Negev), pp. 23–49 (Hebrew).
Rozmarin, M. (2003) “Becoming Woman, Luce Irigaray’s Theory of Sexual
Difference” (Hebrew). In: This Sex which is not One, Hebrew edition, (Tel Aviv:
Resling).
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Reference artworks
Aharonovitch, V. (2012). First Blood. Sculpture made of polyester and marble
powder. Hanina Gallery, Tel Aviv.
126 Sigal Barkai
Geffen, K. E. (2012). The Blue Blower’s Puff. Installation made of gummy balloons,
embroidery threads and acrylic. Hanina Gallery, Tel Aviv.
Michelangelo (1501–1504). David. Marble sculpture. Accademia Gallery, Florence.
Simon, Y. (1944). Sabbath on the Kibbutz. Oil painting. Tel Aviv Museum of Art,
Tel Aviv.
Filmography
Ha’Ogen 17 (“17 Anchor Street”) (video art). Dir. Y. Giladi, 2013.
9
Zack Snyder’s Impossible Gaze:
The Fantasy of “Looked-at-ness”
Manifested in Sucker Punch (2011)
Alexander Sergeant
Writing in the introduction to her edited collection Visual and Other

Pleasures, Laura Mulvey is moved to reflect on her contribution to the
field of feminist film theory with the following observations:
The articles and essays published here were not originally intended
to last. I often sacrificed well-balanced argument, research and refine-
ments of style to the immediate interests of the formative context of
the moment, the demands of polemic, or the economy of an idea or
the shape and pattern of a thought. Until recently there seemed no
point in collecting my articles together; on the contrary, to publish
them between two covers seem to contradict my perception of my
writing as essentially and necessarily ephemeral.1
These self-aware comments succeed in demonstrating the vital charac-

teristics of Mulvey’s work that have ensured its ubiquity to the theoreti-
cal study of cinema, particularly in the case of her most influential essay:
“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Originally published by the
journal Screen in 1975, Mulvey’s widely cited analysis is an article about
a specific form of cinema, written in a specific circumstance, with an
explicit polemic agenda to destroy the unconscious patriarchy of main-
stream Hollywood cinema by exhibiting a psychoanalytic model of the
spectator as inhabiting a “male gaze” (19). Following its publication, the
piece has been systematically celebrated, complicated and deconstructed
by individuals such as Kaja Silverman, Jackie Stacey, Mary Ann Doane
and Teresa de Lauretis, with the debates raised through such works
advancing our collective understanding of the intricacies of the film-
going experience as well as gradually divorcing Mulvey’s original text
from the circumstances in which it was written.2 Far from the ephemeral
127
128 Alexander Sergeant
piece Mulvey originally intended, Michele Aaron’s critical introduction

to the topic of spectatorship finds examples of the male gaze in a broad
range of films stretching from classical Hollywood to the Oscar-winning
musical adaptation Chicago (2002).3 Despite the best intentions of its
author, it seems that the concept of the male gaze is not some tran-
sient affair but is instead alive and well in contemporary Hollywood
cinema.
This patriarchal form of spectatorship, however, and indeed the con-
cept of patriarchy in general, is a fantasy of the highest order. This does
not mean to suggest that it does not exist, only that it exists as fantasy:
as a pervasive form of impossibility rendered possible as it is hidden and
supported by various prevailing symbolic constructs. With the release of
a film like Sucker Punch (2011), a mainstream action film with a central
premise revolving around a group of women dressed in military uniforms,
tightly-fitting office attires and school-girl outfits, it seems that this
fantasy has reached a somewhat hysterical level of affirmation. Largely
derided by critics upon its release as a film that, in the words of Richard
Corliss writing in Time magazine, “plays like an adolescent’s Google
search run amok,” Sucker Punch was the first film by writer-director Zack
Snyder – whose previous works include the similarly male-orientated
action pieces 300 (2006) and Watchmen (2009) – to be based on an
original screenplay. On the surface, his conjured story of Babydoll (Emily
Browning), Sweetpea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone) and Blondie
(Vanessa Hudgens) and their elaborate attempts to escape a brothel
through a combination of shooting and striptease seems to represent a
nightmarish example of phallocentric visual pleasure. Yet, fantasies are
not persuasive by being overt in their nature; they are persuasive when
they are not revealed as such.
The link between phallocentrism and fantasy is paramount to under-
standing both the functioning of the male gaze and how one might use
psychoanalytic theory to disrupt its function. Mulvey acknowledges
this link through the distinctly Lacanian model she utilizes to theorize
the male gaze, a model which draws attention to such imaginary struc-
tures within the psyche. However, her rhetorical desire to attack a form
of patriarchy perhaps more easily concealed at the time of her writing
prevents her work from fully articulating the explicitly phantasmic spec-
tatorship with which she deals. Phallocentrism does not exist in the man-
ner of a tree or a piece of paper but instead as something far more illusive
and, potentially, far more dangerous. To deconstruct its power through
psychoanalysis, it must be deconstructed not as something empiric but
as something imaginary.
Zack Snyder’s Impossible Gaze 129
This analysis of Sucker Punch seeks to illuminate the crucial role that
fantasy plays in the perpetuation, as well as the potential deconstruc-
tion, of the form of patriarchal spectatorship first explored in “Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Whilst Mulvey’s work emphasized a
quality of “looked-at-ness,” in which the female image is denied mean-
ing by both the film form and the inherently dominating gaze of the
spectator, this analysis will instead argue for the male gaze to be con-
sidered as the projection of the implicit fantasy of that looked-at-ness.
Contextualizing Snyder’s work against the post-Lacanian film theory
of Todd McGowan and Slavoj Žižek, both of whom theorize fantasy as
a crucial device in the support of dominant ideological structures and
the functioning of reassuring visual pleasure within cinematic specta-
torship, it will argue that Sucker Punch’s overt implausibility serves to
deconstruct the very visual pleasure its fetishized imagery purports to
exhume. By placing the fantasy act up on screen within a narrative that
consistently dramatizes the multifaceted dream worlds of its protagonist
Babydoll, Sucker Punch invokes rather than supports the symbolic struc-
tures of patriarchy, objectifying its female protagonists not in a manner
that supposedly renders them as possible objects of a male scopic desire,
but instead in a manner that transmits their status as impossible objects
of an impossible desire. Rather than being an example of the male gaze,
Sucker Punch manifests the fantasy of that male gaze, with its latex cos-
tumes rendered as impossible as its high-kicking action and folkloric
imagery. This argument seeks to deconstruct the perhaps assumed
phallocentric visual pleasure of Sucker Punch not in order to argue for
a deconstruction of the male gaze, but instead to illuminate its inher-
ently fantastical nature in the hope that, if such fantasies are explicitly
located, then that location allows for the destruction of their power.
Relocating the male gaze: the “looked-at-ness”

of the spectator
It is important to remember that Mulvey’s theorization of the male

gaze was never constructed as a direct lamentation on the eroticization
or objectification of women in Hollywood cinema. Instead, it was the
precise manner of this objectification that her work sought to decon-
struct, a manner which positioned women for the visual pleasure of a
“controlling and curious gaze” that reaffirmed phallocentric discourses
by promoting men as active imposers of meaning and burdening the on-
screen female with the simplistic and passive qualities of “to-be-looked-at-
ness” (19). Utilizing psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s famous articulation of
the mirror stage – a process by which the subject recognizes themselves

in the mirror for the first time as a young child, and thus establishes a
scopic relationship to reality in which conscious identity is supported by
various imaginary and symbolic structures – Mulvey theorized cinema
within a similar context as a device that the spectator looks to master
in the manner that an infant masters its own reflection.4 According
to Mulvey, Hollywood provided that sense of scopophilic mastery by
employing narrative and visual tropes that merged “the gaze of the spec-
tator and that of the male characters of the film,” thereby positioning
cinema-goers as occupiers of a phallocentric, male gaze (19).
Articulating a relationship between a theorized screen and a theo-
rized spectator, Mulvey’s work represents a strand of psychoanalytic
film theory prevalent throughout the 1970s that has subsequently been
rejected by numerous scholars for failing to consider the specifics and
contrasts of the empiric film experience and audience.5 Partially in
response to such criticism, recent Lacanian film scholarship has chosen
not to reject the psychoanalytic mode of analysis proposed by Mulvey
outright but instead to make such analysis “more Lacanian” (28).6
Informed by a much broader context of Lacan’s writing than Mulvey’s
devotion to his essay on the mirror stage – a piece that itself represents
a burgeoning example of his extensive psychoanalytic theory – the
writings of McGowan and Žižek in particular have promoted a new
understanding of spectatorship that considers not only the role of sym-
bolic and imaginary constructs but also Lacan’s equally important, yet
far more traumatic, order of the Real: the repressed gap between the
unconscious and the conscious that lies beyond the signifying process.
In the particular context of “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,”
McGowan’s The Real Gaze has argued Mulvey’s understanding of the
gaze as representing a misreading of its original, Lacanian conceptual-
ization.7 Rather than something the subject utilizes to see, Lacan instead
envisioned the gaze as something that is seen, with its basic function
being to alert the looker to the fact that “we are beings who are looked
at.”8 Taking these concepts back into the field of cinematic spectator-
ship, McGowan’s work emphasizes the gaze according to Lacan’s latter
understanding as the scopic form of the objet petit a: the unconquerable
object of desire created at the mirror stage’s split between the recog-
nized ideal image of the conscious sense of self and the repressed mis-
recognition of the as yet not fully functional corporeal child (15–18).
McGowan’s spectator does not look at the screen in as much as he or
she is looked at by the screen, and it is the manner they are looked at,
the manner in which their own looked-at-ness is exhumed, that forms
the heart of the cinematic experience. This does not mean that voyeur-
istic or festishistic impulses are not still part of the attraction of watch-
ing movies, but that such impulses must be indulged not simply by
allowing the filmic female to be looked upon but, equally importantly,
by preventing the filmic female from looking back at the spectator. As
Lacan himself states, the pleasure of the voyeur is not an act of scopic
domination, as Mulvey articulates it to be in her use of the term, but is
instead an act of retreat, an attempt to escape the symbolic force of the
phallus through visual pleasure:
What the voyeur is looking for and finds is merely a shadow, a shadow
behind the curtain. There he will phantasize any magic of presence,
the most graceful of girls, for example, even if on the other side there
is only a hairy athlete. What he is looking for is not, as one says, the
phallus – but precisely its absence. (182)
The male gaze is a patriarchal avoidance of the objet petit a, a phallocen-

tric example of McGowan’s cinematic “taming of the gaze” (109). The
spectator seeks looked-at-ness in the cinematic image to avoid being
looked at himself.
With this sense of disguise or escape in mind, it seems fitting that
McGowan’s work turns to the role of fantasy within this cinematic tam-
ing of the gaze. Far from sharing a transgressive relationship with reality,
McGowan’s Lacanian understanding of the term articulates fantasy’s sup-
portive function in masking the inherent traumas of the Real, encour-
aging spectators to transform the inherently unattainable objet petit a
into objects of desire by fantasising their attainability (24–25). Indeed,
with specific relation to representations of gender, the work of Elizabeth
Cowie has also argued that cultural representations of women form part
of a public fantasy of desire, embedding the female with the task of solv-
ing that desire in a manner that frames phallocentric discourses.9 Yet,
whilst Cowie’s work discusses fantasy in relation to its cultural impact,
her work does not bring its analysis back into the spectatorship process.
She considers the role fantasy plays in the generation and sustainability
of patriarchy, but does not consider the role of fantasy within patriarchal
spectatorship, a move that, when placed in the context of McGowan’s
theoretical realignment, might help to explain the functioning of the
male gaze as fantasy rather than because of fantasy.
In Slavoj Žižek’s work The Plague of Fantasies, a similarly Lacanian mode
of understanding is used to scrutinize the various paradoxes that lie beneath
this relationship between fantasy and desire. As his analysis elaborates,
because fantasy is by its very nature an essentially impossible notion, its

supportive role is repressive rather than progressive. It gives the subject a
sense of clarity, turning their essential lack into something tangible and
temporal, but must hide its own impossibility in order to achieve this. In
Žižek’s words, it “conceals the horror, yet at the same time it creates what
it purports to conceal, its ‘repressed’ point of reference” (6).10 It masks the
gaze, but it replaces it with its own impossible gaze, recognizing implicitly
both the ultimate unattainability of desire and the subject’s own role in the
creation of that desire it pertains to satisfy. If that impossible gaze is ever
made overt, then “the means in which the subject is already present” at
the conception of this object of desire is also revealed (21–24). McGowan
makes a similar point in his own discussion of the notion of a cinema of
fantasy – a term he divorces from generic notions of fantasy cinema typi-
fied by works such as The Wizard of Oz (1939) – as a type of filmmaking
that, devoid of the necessary symbolic support, succeeds in rendering “the
gaze visible” precisely by exposing the role fantasy plays in the formation
of reality out of the real in everyday social existence (23–29).11 Fantasy can
mask the gaze, but only by masking itself and, without this implicit quality,
with only explicit fantasy as fantasy on the screen, “the spectator must bear
the weight of fantasy and experience its ultimate vacuity” (64). In order
to present looked-at-ness, cinema must hide the fantasy of that looked-at-
ness. It must hide the impossible male gaze beneath its symbolic assertions,
otherwise, like the unseen dust lurking in the perhaps less than sanitized
auditorium, the fantasy process involved in the pleasure of the spectator
will be lit up as it becomes part of the projector’s halo.
The impossible gaze of babydoll: the objectified woman as

Objet Petit a in the fantasy of Sucker Punch
If the male gaze is a fantasy of looked-at-ness, there seems to be little

that is implicit or hidden about the phallocentric discourses presented
in Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch. Its narrative, telling the story of Babydoll,
a troubled young woman who fantasizes her way out of an insane asy-
lum and into a stylized burlesque house and brothel, showcases the
fantasizing process proudly up on screen. Its mise en scène is caked in
layer upon layer of implausibility and impossibility – travelling from a
quasi-Dickensian world of gothic hysterics through a Russ Meyer-like
realm of suspenders and lingerie to a Tolkien-esque space of dungeons
and dragons – embracing an iconography designed not to establish a
sense of a stable, symbolic-rendered reality but instead to present an
overt fantasy.
Its opening sequence – an extended musical montage that displays vari-

ous stylistic excesses including an exaggerated colour scheme and the use
of slow-motion effects – is, paradoxically, the film’s only brief acknowl-
edgement of an even vague sense of reality. In this section, the character
of Babydoll is introduced as a young woman suffering at the hands of her
sexually abusive foster parent. Dressed conspicuously in pyjamas and pig-
tails, Babydoll is looked at by this man, with his reactions to her scopic
identity often mediating the rather objectifying shots of the camera, and
a world of male domination is supposedly established. Whilst Babydoll
does ostensibly fight back against this imposition by threatening the
man with a gun, this act ultimately only dooms her to greater passivity
as he then utilizes this as an excuse to have her committed to an insane
asylum, where it is arranged for her to undergo a lobotomy. However, as
the surgery is being performed, a shift occurs in the mise en scène that
immediately problematizes the dynamics of looked-at-ness that seem so
overtly established in these opening sequences.
Zooming in on a close-up of Babydoll’s heavily painted eyes, these
objectified and fetishized body parts become the basis of a graphic match
that shifts the action from this stylized reality to a world of her overt
fantasy. Suddenly, the operating theatre is replaced with an actual thea-
tre, the doctor replaced with performers dressed as doctors, and Babydoll
herself shifts her position to become an audience member watching the
scene unfold: her own role in the scene replaced by Sweetpea, another
member of the female ensemble to whom we are about to be introduced.
Stopping the performance, Sweetpea reacts angrily to the situation to
which Babydoll had previously been forced to succumb. She asks them
to switch off the music, abruptly ending the soundtrack the spectator
has until now assumed to be an extra-diegetic part of the film’s symbolic
structure, and shouts exasperatedly at the ridiculousness of the scenario.
She is aware of the manufactured nature of the world, the set design, the
costume, and indeed her own role in the performance to turn the audi-
ence on. She states openly that she “gets” the schoolgirl outfit she wears,
and indeed the fantasy scenario of male dominance created by the on-
screen set of the asylum, but that the fake lobotomy makes no sense, and
thus takes off her wig of pigtails and jumps down from the stage. In this
shift from reality to Babydoll’s imagination, an off-screen negotiation of
eroticism is now placed on screen and, rather than spectators watching
theatricality, we become spectators watching fantasy spectators watch-
ing theatricality who, like Sweetpea, are aware of our role in the process.
Žižek’s impossible gaze of fantasy is made apparent, and the spectator’s
own role in masking that impossibility is thus made equally apparent.
The use of this interrupting fantasy scenario, in particular as a replace-

ment for a potentially erotic display of visual pleasure, represents far
more than a knowing deconstruction of its potential phallocentrism. By
placing fantasy in the forefront of the spectator’s considerations at the
very moment a sense of looked-at-ness is invited from the female form,
the two modes become not supportive but synonymous. Fantasy and
scopophilia are placed in an overt dialogue with one another, and this
dialogue features throughout the rest of Snyder’s increasingly impos-
sible plot. The film proceeds to play out the majority of its narrative
within this conjured burlesque house, a realm that performs various
Wizard of Oz-styled juxtapositions as characters in Babydoll’s fantasy
world resemble grotesque imaginings of the characters left behind in
the asylum. It is within this world that the basic escape narrative of the
film is established, as the group of women hatch a plan to distract their
male imprisoners through their talents in striptease in order that they
might be able to steal various items to aid their getaway. It is discovered
quickly that Babydoll possesses a particular talent in this area, and so
it is she who is tasked with the job of performing the numerous erotic
dances required by the plan. Her ability to please her male spectators
visually forms a crucial part of the narrative, yet it is also a part of
the narrative left unrepresented on screen. Each time she is required
to perform, Babydoll proceeds to fantasize her way out of her already
fantasized world, escaping into even more impossible iconographies
of action and spectacle. Rather than lingering on each erotic dance,
Snyder takes the spectator further down his own particular rabbit holes,
escaping into military campaigns in pseudo steam-punk incarnations
of First World War or into epic battles involving guns, swordplay and
mechanized guards on runaway trains, mapping the visual pleasure of
special effects over the visual pleasure of the female form.12 Placed inter-
mittently throughout the narrative, it is these moments that ultimately
destroy the potential pleasure for the male gaze in Sucker Punch.
Mulvey argued that the positioning of female characters as objects
of desire often occurs at the moment that male characters assume
the role of on-screen audiences, a device which fuses the camera with
the voyeur to allow the spectator access to the privileged position of
“active controllers of the look” (21). These formal strategies undoubt-
edly occur throughout Sucker Punch. At the first instant in the film in
which Babydoll discovers her talent for striptease under the supervi-
sion of Madame Gorski (Carla Gugino), an audience of men gathers to
watch her perform as the camera cuts between shots of their objectify-
ing looks at Babydoll and her own body on display. However, although
the spectator may indeed possess the look in this sequence, they do not
possess the gaze. Instead, what they possess is a desire to escape the gaze
and a fantasy that the gaze is somehow escapable. As the film performs
yet another shift from fantasy world to fantasy world, this time replac-
ing suspenders with samurais and striptease with stunt work, a sense of
impossibility is invoked. Babydoll suddenly inhabits a world we know
does not really exist; its iconography is too impossible and the shift
between realms too overtly psycho-orientated within the mise en scène.
The ramifications of this impossibility travel even further. Babydoll also
does not exist, not in this world, nor in the burlesque house, nor in the
insane asylum. She is an image, a collection of light and colour. The
voyeuristic spectators can objectify her, can fetishize her, they can deny
her meaning and fill her with their own phallic imposition, but this act
has about as much ability to ultimately attain the unattainable object
of desire as a towel has of damning a river. As the scene returns to the
satisfied glances of the watching males after the action sequence, it is
not juxtaposition that is invited in the edit but comparison. The action
sequences displayed on screen were impossible, but so too is the satisfac-
tion we return to; so too is the satisfaction of desire itself. Rather than
providing a phallocentric reassurance, the sequence in fact draws atten-
tion to the impossibility of such an endeavour. Babydoll is objectified to
become not an object of desire but a manifestation of the objet petit a.
By the time of her second dance, Babydoll’s previous efforts have
given her somewhat of a reputation and an even larger crowd of male
characters gathers in the dancing studio. Standing all alone in the
performing space, Babydoll begins to present her body as spectacle,
swaying and gyrating her hips in time with the rhythm of the music.
This is then quickly juxtaposed with the next scene as the film travels
from the landscape of the dance studio to a war-torn land of rubble in
a supposedly single, impossible tracking shot: the fantasy of one world
replaced with a more overt fantasy of another. Later on in the film,
Babydoll makes her stage debut in the burlesque house for the pleasure
of the visiting mayor. Standing on stage dressed in lingerie, this world
of lookers is replaced with a world of dragons and orcs, representing
perhaps the most overtly fantastic sequence of the film.
In the final use of this motif, Sucker Punch presents perhaps its most
overt invocation of the fantasy of looked-at-ness to the spectator. Dancing
in the kitchen in order to distract an overweight male chef long enough
to steal a knife, Babydoll constructs a platform for her performance out
of the kitchen’s preparation table whilst her confidante, Rocket, whis-
pers into his ear: “You’re gonna want to watch this.” The address seems
deliberately direct, speaking to the spectators’ presence in the scenario

and telling them simultaneously they also will want to watch this.
Indeed, perhaps they do. Perhaps they crave the visual pleasure of phal-
locentric scopic imposition; they cannot have it. Crucially, it is not on
screen, replaced instead with an image of a cloud-filled, sun-drenched sky
with a conjured map of stars alien to our solar system. A greater, far more
traumatic truth, however, is contained within that image than a simple
denial of the male gaze. “You” may have wanted to watch Babydoll take
her clothes off, but that image – and the pleasure gained from it – would
have been just as far-fetched as the one currently on screen; a fantasy of
the dominated female conjured to appease a patriarchal mindset of mean-
ing. Babydoll’s movements that seem to delight the cook do not showcase
her looked-at-ness as much as they display his, with the spectator shying
away from the grotesque image of phallocentrism he presents, and per-
haps actually relieved this time to have escaped such a scenario in favour
of Sucker Punch’s impossible fantasy.
Conclusion: the future fantasies of the male gaze
This analysis of the workings or, more precisely, the failings of phallo-
centric visual pleasure in Sucker Punch and the role of fantasy within the
psychic machinery of the male gaze has not sought to reclaim Snyder’s
critically derided work as a feminist text, nor has its argument been
presented in order to advocate a deconstruction of Mulvey’s theory as a
viable theoretical concept. It has not attempted to demonstrate the film
as being anything other than the problematic work that critics and audi-
ences alike rejected upon its release, in large part due to the “interminable
sequences of overscale mayhem” that deny the viewer “the sight of Ms.
Browning’s gyrations,” as one reviewer articulated in The New York Times.
It is precisely the lack of visual pleasure, as reflected in such comments,
in such an apparently phallocentric form of cinema that highlights the
interesting challenge the film issues to assumed notions surrounding cin-
ematic looked-at-ness and the male gaze. Scrutinizing this challenge by
Sucker Punch, the film has been utilized here as a case study not to illustrate
that the male gaze does not exist but that, if it does exist, it is a fantasy:
a fantasy that, to fulfil its ideological function, must remain implicit. The
film may utilize many elements of Mulvey’s looked-at-ness, but without
this hidden phantasmic support, such efforts do little to mask the objet
petit a of its objectification.
Mulvey believed the polemic ambition of her work meant that it pos-
sessed an ephemeral quality that would not allow it to last. Contrary
to these predictions, it seems it is precisely this aspect that has ensured

that it is still debated to this day. Inspired by this useful function of
rhetoric, this analysis chooses to end on a similar, deliberately provoca-
tive note. The visual pleasure of the male gaze is a fantasy, and should
be acknowledged as such. A cinema of the male gaze may be voyeuristic
in nature, it may promote a sense of objectification or fetishization of
the female form, but, above all else, it is a ludicrous fantasy that pro-
motes an essentially impossible agenda. It is a cinema that proposes that
woman are denied meaning when their scopic role is highlighted, which
is, of course, a fantasy. It is a cinema that finds meaning only through its
pursuit and understanding of the male and denial of the female, which
is, of course, a fantasy. It is a cinema that perpetuates phallocentric dis-
courses that bear no relation to a search for the Real but instead seek to
hide from it, which is, of course, a fantasy. Where the fantasy of patri-
archy remains implicit, it gathers its insidious strength; but by making
that fantasy explicit, its power is rendered ineffectual. A task of feminist
film criticism should be to find such fantasies in order to render them
precisely what they are: absolutely impossible.
Notes
1. Mulvey (1989). All subsequent references to “Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema” refer to the edition reprinted in this collection.
2. My reference to the work of such individuals is intended only as the briefest
acknowledgement of this invaluable field of research, of which countless other
names could also be added. A more thorough introduction is provided by Janet
McCabe (2004) in her own cogent summary of the field of feminist film theory.
3. Aaron (2007).
4. Lacan (1966).
5. The best summation of this argument is perhaps still provided by David
Bordwell and Noël Carroll (1996).
6. McGowan (2003).
7. McGowan (2007).
8. Lacan (1979).
9. Cowie (1997).
10. Žižek (1997).
11. The separation McGowan makes between the generic category of fantasy and
his cinema of fantasy is slightly ambiguous. McGowan’s cinema of fantasy
has the effect of rendering the gaze more visible, yet fantasy cinema, as a
medium of comforting entertainment, would seem to perform the opposite
function: an example of McGowan’s ‘Cinema of Integration’ (113–159).
However, given the fact that the fantasy genre’s techniques are often similar
to those proposed by McGowan in his own category, both of which depict the
act of fantasizing on screen, this separation does not seem quite as clear cut as
the solution offered. These somewhat conflicting and contradictory strands
of enquiry are beyond the remit of this analysis, but future scholarship should
do well to consider it.
12. In numerous interviews, Zack Snyder has declared Sucker Punch to be “Alice
in Wonderland with machine guns,” and there are various references to Lewis
Carroll’s mythology found throughout the film, most notably in a sequence
in which Babydoll dances to Jefferson Aeroplane’s ‘White Rabbit’. This rather
crass comparison speaks less of the proximity of theme or style of the two
works and more of Sucker Punch’s desire to align itself to an explicitly fantasy
mode of cinema.
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Entertainment MM, 2006.
Chicago. Dir. R. Marshall. Perf. R. Zellweger, C. Zeta-Jones and R. Gere. Miramax

Films/Producers Circle/Storyline Entertainment/Kalis Productions, 2002.
Sucker Punch. Dir. Z. Snyder. Perf. E. Browning, V. Hudgens and A. Cornish. Warner
Bros./Legendary Pictures/Cruel & Unusual Films/Lennox House Films, 2011.
Watchmen. Dir. Z. Snyder. Perf. J. Earle Haley, P. Wilson and C. Gugino. Warner
Bros./Paramount Pictures/Legendary Pictures/Lawrence Gordon Productions/
DC Comics, 2009.
The Wizard of Oz. Dir. V. Fleming. Perf. J. Garland, F. Morgan and R. Bolger.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)/Loew’s, 2009.
10
In-Between Complicity and
Subversion: D. M. Thomas’s
Charlotte or A Reflection of/on
“Pornographic” Literature and
Society
Fanny Delnieppe
The Cornish author D. M. Thomas came to public attention with his

1981 novel, The White Hotel, a story involving sex, Freudian psychoa-
nalysis and the Holocaust. The book’s sexually explicit and violent
contents shocked many critics but did not stop it from coming close
to winning the Booker Prize. In fact, most of Thomas’s works are dis-
tinguished by their pornographic strain and the writer’s 2000 novel,
Charlotte, is no exception.
Charlotte initially appears to be part of the literary trend known as
neo- or retro-Victorian fiction, which particularly flourished in the
United Kingdom in the 1980s and 1990s. This trend, in Christian
Gutleben’s words, consists in “re-thinking and rewriting Victorian
myths and stories,”1 and its origins can be traced back to the publica-
tion of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea in 1966, a novel that rewrites
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre from a post-colonial perspective. Thomas’s
novel, which rewrites both Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Rhys’s text, thus turns
out to be both a piece of neo-Victorian fiction and a rewriting of a
canonical neo-Victorian novel.
In this chapter I seek to show that Charlotte both takes part in, and sub-
verts, voyeuristic and pornographic tendencies in contemporary literature
and society. I begin by showing how Thomas uses pornography to give a
parodic tone to his rewritings and to make the reader aware of the expec-
tations they bring to the text. We will thus see how Charlotte comments
on a certain type of neo-Victorian fiction that it deems opportunistic
and on a certain type of literature that is considered decadent. If por-
nography in literature can be viewed as a symptom of a wider tendency
140
In-Between Complicity and Subversion 141
in society, it can also be used as a way of dealing with power relations

within that society and of thus making a political statement. This politi-
cal dimension constitutes the focus of the second part of my argument.
The chapter ends with a consideration of how Jean Baudrillard’s concept
of pornography as set out in Seduction and Julia Kristeva’s notion of the
abject as appearing in her essay, “Powers of Horror,” can throw light on
pornographic literature in general and on Thomas’s text in particular,
while acknowledging a certain amount of uncertainty about a text that
retains enough ambiguity to keep disturbing its readers.
Voyeurism and political correctness: Charlotte as

a commentary on some contemporary fiction
Thomas’s novel begins where Brontë’s ends: “READER, I MARRIED

HIM. A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were
alone present.”2 Charlotte takes up most of the plot and characters of
Jane Eyre: we naturally find Jane Eyre, the governess, Edward Rochester,
the Victorian nobleman, and Bertha Mason, Rochester’s first wife from
the West Indies. There are also the servants – Grace Poole who was in
charge of Bertha, and John and his wife Mary. The text mentions Adèle,
Rochester’s ward, Mr Mason, Bertha’s brother, Miss Temple, Jane’s
teacher at Lowood, as well as Jane’s cousins, St John, Mary and Diana.
Jane Eyre’s dénouement serves as a starting point for Charlotte’s story:
after the fire that causes Bertha’s death and leaves Rochester blind and
wounded, we witness Rochester’s marriage to Jane. In addition, Thomas
borrows whole passages from the Victorian hypotext3 so that the novel
sets out as a pastiche verging on plagiarism. It nonetheless rapidly sig-
nals its difference from its 19th-century predecessor as the subversion
of the Victorian literary conventions becomes more and more apparent
and the pastiche turns into parody.4
Like so many neo-Victorian novels, Charlotte breaks the codes of
Victorian fiction through, among other things, the incorporation of
sexual material. This breach of Victorian decorum is emphasized in the
novel by means of meta-fictional comments. Thus, Jane confesses to the
reader: “Reader, you will expect me to draw a veil over the intimacies
which transpire between a man and his wife. I am sorry to disappoint and
offend you. I will tell you that everything seemed blissful to me” (17). The
comment is somewhat ironic as, of course, the contemporary reader – the
reader of neo-Victorian fiction – does not expect such reserve. Indeed, as
Christian Gutleben argues, retro-Victorian fiction often combines “sex
and crinolines” and “transforms the Victorian scene into a theatre, a place
142 Fanny Delnieppe
of exhibition where the reader is invited to discover the hidden side of a

prudish tradition” (172,175). What is distinctive about Thomas’s novel is
that it seems to seek and make the reader aware of their potentially voyeur-
istic expectations. This effect is achieved through the use of grotesque and
pornographic detail as in, for instance, this conversation between Jane
and Miss Temple, during which the former’s initial contentment with her
married life gives way to cruel disappointment when she finds out about
her husband’s impotence:
I gathered my courage and at last said in a low voice: ‘I have wondered

how the husband’s … finger can convey the male seed into the womb.’
Her [Miss Temple’s] eyes widened. ‘But it cannot.’
‘Then – how is it transferred?’ [...]
‘Through his member, of course.’
I was silent, running my hand several times across my small bosom.
‘Jane, he does penetrate you, does he not?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said, embarrassed and perturbed. ‘With his finger. Is this not
normal?’
She slid from her chair, down onto the floor next to me. ‘Yes, some-
times, as a preliminary to intercourse.’
My thoughts and feelings were in tumult. ‘Then, Maria, with us the
preliminary is the intercourse itself.’
‘Oh, my poor innocent Jane Eyre!’
‘I have assumed that somehow, without my remarking it, he touched
his member before entry with his finger. It’s true that – I have felt –
something was not quite complete. I am not so ignorant that I did not
feel the male member should somehow be more involved … but I have
been confused … It seems … it seems … too soft and small to enter.’
‘It should grow hard, Jane – hard and long. Is that not so with Edward?’
I replied faintly, ‘I have touched it two or three times, and it has always
seemed soft. Soft and small.’ (49–50)
With its grotesque, almost farcical tone, the passage contributes to parody-
ing and desacralizing the novel’s hypotext. Both characters are ridiculed
as the dark Victorian hero loses his virility and Jane’s ‘innocence’ appears
somewhat ludicrous. The portrait of Rochester is developed later on by
adding to his current impotence with Jane a perverted sexuality with
Bertha – I shall return to this point. The critical distance inherent in the
use of parody is, I believe, aimed at making the reader realize that it is this
type of voyeuristic expectation that many neo-Victorian novels encourage.
The text thus indirectly provides a commentary on certain contemporary
fiction that, under a façade of intellectual respectability guaranteed by the

reference to the Victorian classics, uses sex as a selling argument.
Besides suggesting that this type of fiction panders to the reader’s
voyeurism, Thomas’s novel shows how neo-Victorian fiction is expected
to rewrite the 19th-century texts so as to defamiliarize them and thereby
highlight their ideological tenets. This idea is explicitly stated in the
novel: “[C]reating alternative endings to nineteenth-century novels [is
a way] to bring out some of the repressed issues” (174). Contemporary
rewritings are indeed often interpreted as a means of exposing their hypo-
texts’ ideological foundations; as Rüdiger Imhof puts it: “[W]ell-known
narratives are re-told in order to disclose their ideational deep-structure.”5
By breaking the literary conventions followed by their hypotexts, rewrit-
ings encourage the reader to reflect on the ideological implications of
these conventions. As a piece of neo-Victorian fiction, Charlotte typically
brings to light some of the characteristic traits of the Victorian period,
with the latter appearing as a puritanical society governed by a patriar-
chal system and dominated by a racist ideology. Again, however, through
excess, the reader is made conscious that this is likely to correspond to
the kind of things they expect from a rewriting of Jane Eyre or of other
19th-century fiction.
Thus, the passage quoted above, with its free talk about sexual prac-
tices, breaks the convention of decorum found in Jane Eyre and in
Victorian literature in general and, in so doing, points to the puritan
ideology in Victorian society. The incorporation, however, of not only
sexual, but pornographic detail, seems to be aimed at making us aware
that this type of practice – incorporating sex into Victorian fiction to
highlight the period’s puritanism – has itself become a convention in
much neo-Victorian fiction. One can suppose that not only does this
type of indirect allusion to Victorian puritanism satisfy voyeuristic
expectations, but it may also fuel a certain feeling of superiority in the
contemporary readers who pride themselves on living in an age of liber-
ated speech and morals. Considerations of the standards of the epoch
concerning relations between the sexes and between ethnic groups can
have a similar effect, and it is to these that I will now turn.
As stated earlier, Charlotte is also a rewriting of Jean Rhys’s Wide
Sargasso Sea and, like Rhys’s novel – and unlike Brontë’s – it deals with
Rochester’s first marriage. This focus is typical of neo-Victorian fiction
which, as Christian Gutleben reminds us, is characterized by the “fore-
grounding of Victorian outcasts”; that is, the foregrounding of “those
ethnically, socially or sexually underprivileged characters which are
either marginalized or excluded from the body of Victorian fiction”
144 Fanny Delnieppe
(Gutleben 34, 37). As the West-Indian “madwoman in the attic,” to bor-

row the title of Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s study, which is itself
mentioned in Thomas’s text (139),6 Bertha – who is called Antoinette in
Wide Sargasso Sea – is the perfect Victorian outcast, whose perspective
neo-Victorian fiction will tend to privilege. Charlotte, however, differs
from its 1966 hypotext in two important respects. First, in Thomas’s
novel, Bertha’s story is not part of the main plot, which centres around
Jane Eyre. Second, the account of the relationship between Edward and
Bertha written by Thomas, is, as could be expected, different from the
one given by Rhys. Indeed, we find several depictions of the couple’s
relationship coexisting within Thomas’s story. Taken together, these
depictions form such a contradictory portrait that they cannot but raise
questions as to the reason why they have been written. One can, for
example, distinguish between two versions of the couple’s life before
the return to England. Thus, in one version, which calls to mind Wide
Sargasso Sea, Rochester is portrayed as a wife-beater. While the element
of domestic violence is only hinted at in Rhys’s novel,7 in Thomas’s
rewriting we learn that the beating started after the birth of the couple’s
first child, Robert, whom Rochester thought was not his. As a result,
Bertha sought comfort in the arms of other men. In the other version,
which is reminiscent of Jane Eyre, Rochester is depicted as a kind and
faithful husband and Bertha as a violent and unchaste woman:
Bertha had told her [Grace Poole], several times, during sensible
interludes, that her husband had always treated her kindly – as he
continued to do at Thornfield Hall: never beaten her, never got drunk
in those early days, never left her on her own for long, never been
unfaithful. She had strayed often, from the first, stealing out at night
to meet someone […]. Far from beating her, she had sometimes struck
him, and found him peculiarly responsive to her savagery. (195–196)
In one of Thomas’s versions, as the last sentence indicates, Rochester

has, in addition, masochistic tendencies that he explores after the cou-
ple’s return to England, during episodes of marital rape made possible by
Grace Poole’s complicity. Robert, Bertha’s son, thus tells us: “She [Grace]
imparted, to me alone one evening, that he had come to want – to
demand – abuse and anger from my mother, on the occasion when he
visited her for his rights. She, Grace, needed to sedate her enough with
gin, beforehand, to tame her madness to an extent, but not to remove
her wild, angry spirit completely” (196).8 After Bertha’s death, Grace
will be asked to take on her mistress’s role: “[M]y father,” Robert writes
in a letter, “sent for her several times after my mother’s death: finding
some comfort in her talk, even asking Grace to impersonate my mother
to some extent, because she had known her so intimately; pretend to
be her, leading him to a degree of arousal and satisfaction” (194–195).
With the strategy of defamiliarization in mind, we might interpret the
change from Brontë’s noble Edward to this portrait of Rochester as a vio-
lent, domineering and sexually perverted individual as an indictment
of Victorian patriarchy and colonial imperialism. However, the char-
acterization then seems so caricatured that one can doubt that this is
the author’s (only) intent. Besides, how are we to account for the other
portrait, that of the respectful, patient and long-suffering nobleman?
Likewise, why is Bertha sometimes the female savage and sometimes
the victim of her husband’s violence? Through the use of these stereo-
types, isn’t Thomas parodying (again) some readerly expectation that
would have the story take sides with those Victorian outcasts – women
and the colonized? It seems indeed to me that Charlotte criticizes cer-
tain neo-Victorian fiction that rewrites the classics according to today’s
ideological standards in order to satisfy its right-thinking readership. As
Christian Gutleben writes, “To defend ideas which are (almost) univer-
sally accepted is hardly audacious and to embrace a consensual ideology
can seem close to a demagogic undertaking […]. Because most neo-
Victorian novels were actually written in the 1990s, that is to say after
political correctness had become widespread, one cannot help harbour-
ing the suspicion of an opportunistic drive” (168). As above, with the
incorporation of pornographic detail meant to shock the reader into a
realization of their potentially voyeuristic expectations, the exaggerated
nature of Rochester’s perversions as well as the coexistence of opposite
(and stereotypical) versions within the same text, can lead us to become
aware of the exigencies of political correctness. At any rate, Thomas’s
text appears to deny the reader the comfort of a politically correct
rewriting that would stress the Victorian age’s deficiencies in terms of
attitudes to the Other. Rather, Charlotte comments on those novels that
conform to the ideology of political correctness out of opportunistic
motives. Furthermore, the commentary on this type of contemporary
fiction goes hand-in-hand with that on contemporary society.
“[T]he more Victorian [...] century”: Charlotte

as a commentary on contemporary society
[I]t seems very far from sure that the Victorians did not experience a
much keener, because less frequent, sexual pleasure than we do; and
146 Fanny Delnieppe
that they were not dimly aware of this, and so chose a convention of
suppression, repression and silence to maintain the keenness of the
pleasure. In a way, by transferring to the public imagination what they
left to the private, we are the more Victorian – in the derogatory sense
of the word – century, since we have, in destroying so much of the
mystery, the difficulty, the aura of the forbidden, destroyed also a great
deal of the pleasure.9 (John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman)
While much neo-Victorian fiction is concerned with the Victorian

period, its beliefs and conventions, Charlotte uses its Victorian plot to
demonstrate the similarity of today’s world with that of the 19th century.
This rewriting of Jane Eyre, as explored so far, is in fact a text embedded
within another text; it is the (fictional) work of a character called Miranda
Stevenson, a contemporary English academic specialist in Charlotte
Brontë who has come to Martinique to present a paper at a confer-
ence entitled “L’Europe des Femmes Libérées” (The Europe of Liberated
Women). The two strands of the story echo and parallel one another so
as to foster a reflection on the similarities between the two periods. The
parallels and echoes involve sexual matters in particular. It takes only
three pages for the late 20th-century plot to become pornographic:
Several hours later, after an abortive ferry-ride across the bay to Fort
de France – everything was closed for ‘Liberation of the Slaves’ – and
some other exploration, I was lying on the bed with Jerry, a beach
waiter. I love to talk during sex, and this time I chose to lapse into
my mother’s lyrical Cornish, which she never lost despite marriage
to an up-country ‘toff’ and mixing in his bookish circles. ‘That’s
right, fuck me, my ’andsome! Get it right in there ... Bite my neck,
my breasts, my lover ... I’d like that ...’ and so on. He was frowning,
not understanding, and I had to show him. At that moment my
bedside phone rang. I could have left it, but there is always that fear
that something bad has happened, so I picked up the phone. It was
my husband.
Jerry slid from me, but I kept him interested by finding his anus
with my toe, while talking to David [...]. I slid my toes up to his vel-
vety black cock, gently stroking. (83–84)
Pornography, as Marcus Wood defines it, “is present where the victim is
represented […] as a dehumanized sexual object, thing, or commodity;
[and/or where] body parts are exhibited such that the victim is reduced
to those parts.”10 The passage quoted above is thus deeply pornographic
as it represents a reified black man reduced to his sexual organs. This

sexual relationship and others – Miranda turns out to “ha[ve] sex with
just about everybody” on the island11 – shows the mention of the
“Liberation of the Slaves” to be profoundly ironic. There seems to be
no substantial progress between Rochester’s conduct towards Bertha
and the modern protagonist’s sexual tourism. Despite the abolition of
slavery, the novel suggests that the former colonized are still the victims
of Western imperialism. As Miranda says:
France and Europe, that had given him the good roads and unem-
ployment benefit […] in return demanded that he give up only his
proud independence and become a slave.
And the tragedy was […] that he couldn’t see any way of not being
a slave; trapped by the state’s benevolence, and the petrol stations
and the shopping malls, and the car in almost every family (so my
guidebook informed me). The plantation slaves of the last century
could rebel, or try to escape, because life was toil and suffering; but
there was no escaping from the soft life. (94)
Disregarding her own acts of oppression, the 20th-century protago-

nist accuses the ex-colonizing countries of maintaining the formerly
enslaved peoples in a state of dependency through consumer goods.
Political imperialism has thus given way to an economic and above all
psychological form of domination. Juan, one of Miranda’s Martinican
lovers, explains to her that “probably the island […] couldn’t stand inde-
pendence; it would be like freeing a canary to fend for itself” (107). The
former colonies, having been dominated for so long, have thus been
robbed of their capacity for freedom as well as of their identity:
I was apparently still in Europe, and this tropical island didn’t exist
in its own right. I would come across a red, black and green flag, but
only chalked on walls in odd corners of the island, accompanied
by the word Matnik. But officially Matnik did not exist. The black
islanders had been liberated by being absorbed, as a goose is liber-
ated from its nature by being stuffed with food and turned into foie
gras. (102)
The colonizers’ perhaps most destructive act was to affect the image
the colonized had of themselves by having them internalize the racist
ideology. Thus, in the novel, the slaves’ descendants continue to believe
in the superiority of the white man. Luc, a cane worker Miranda sleeps
148 Fanny Delnieppe
with, tells her, for instance, that his girlfriend is not resentful of their
sexual adventure: “She feel proud of me. Her man could get a lovely
white woman” (155). We can notice something similar in the attitude
of the black female islanders, who are said to wish to “whiten” the
race: “[T]he women don’t need [men]; they don’t care about paternity
so long as the father is as white as possible” (108).12 The relationship
between ethnic groups is shown to remain one of domination – be it
sexual, economic, psychological or ideological.
Our age thus does not appear to be much more egalitarian or less rac-
ist than the Victorian period. In this regard, we can note that pornog-
raphy is often a way of articulating power relations; as Marcus Wood
reminds us, pornography is less about sex than “about power and sex-as-
weapon … its message is violence, dominance or conquest” (93). In the
passage describing Miranda in bed with Jerry, the sexual act is described
as one of aggression, of the woman against the man, which corresponds
to the inverted image of Rochester’s rape of Bertha. The protagonist con-
fesses, “I have drowned. I am underwater. I am Das Boot. I am looking for
long black bodies like Jerry’s to sink my torpedoes into” (84). Traditional
gender roles are exchanged but the relationship is still one of oppressor
and oppressed. The image transmitted by Miranda of a woman taking
power could be interpreted as a subversion of the patriarchal order if
it were not for the protagonist’s feeling of despair: “From somewhere
near the ceiling I looked down at our entwined bodies, distantly, with
amusement. It’s said that newly dead people do this – look down at
their corpses. The difference was, I wasn’t newly dead; I died a long time
ago” (84). As Péter Makra writes, “[T]he representation of (post)-modern
sexuality in Charlotte is not […] one of true liberation. It is rather a mere
libertine simulacrum, a simple inverse of Victorian prudishness, as cold
and inhuman as its original, as inhibitory to real intimacy or happiness
as Victorian repression was.”13 Sexual liberation has not solved all the
problems linked to a patriarchal society, and the title of Miranda’s con-
ference, “L’Europe des Femmes Libérées,” turns out to be as ironic as the
anniversary of the “Liberation of the Slaves.” In fact, although Miranda
acts as a sexual oppressor in the West Indies, she is, at home, the victim
of a father who uses her to assuage his fantasies.
There are clear parallels between the triangular relationships centred
around the two heroines, Jane and Miranda. In both cases, the man – the
husband in the case of Jane’s story and the father in the case of Miranda’s –
has lost his wife, who had committed suicide. Miranda’s mother, like
Bertha in Charlotte, was an alcoholic and a nymphomaniac prone to fits
of violence. Ben, Miranda’s father, resembles Rochester insofar as he has
a liking for perverted sexual relationships. He indeed asks his daughter

to don her mother’s clothes and impersonate her, a habit that parallels
Rochester’s use of Grace Poole. As the reader learns more and more details
about Miranda’s life, it becomes clear that Jane’s story has been patterned
on Miranda’s and that it thus tells more about the late 20th century than
about the 19th century. In Charlotte, modern women are shown still to
be the victims of a patriarchal system. Ben, it is suggested, is the cause
of his daughter’s suffering. In his journals, he writes about a night when
Miranda, while apparently sleepwalking, woke him up and told him:
“‘You ask me to edit your fucking journals! You expect me to go through
all that horror! You’re a fucking rapist, a mind-rapist! and much more of
the same, mad, unreal: how I’d drowned her, as I drowned her mother;
how she existed underwater, like a submarine; how all those years alone
with me made it impossible for her to find a different life” (177–178). The
motif of the rape reinforces the parallel between Ben and Rochester as he
is rewritten in Charlotte. The image of the submarine links Ben’s abuse of
his daughter with the latter’s exploitation of black men. It seems Miranda
is reproducing on black men the same abuse that her father inflicts upon
her. Colonialism – which justified what Miranda refers to as Europe’s
“rapes” (140)—, racism and patriarchy are thus intimately linked in the
novel, and the greatest injuries seem to be those done to the “mind,”
because they make the victims cooperate with their oppressors. Just as,
earlier, the descendants of the slaves were shown to perpetuate the rac-
ist ideology, Miranda proves to be complicit with her father’s oppression
of her. Except during the episode of sleepwalking recounted above, she
indeed never blames him for anything; she even tape-records her sexual
adventures in Martinique for his benefit. The image of contemporary soci-
ety depicted in Thomas’s novel is thus one of a world where gender and
race are still unresolved issues. Thomas manages to use the “Phallic Eye”
subversively. It must however be emphasized that the work is also totally
enmeshed within the voyeuristic/pornographic literature and society of
which it constitutes an indictment. The cover illustration, which depicts
two almost naked black bodies, with its promise of licentiousness, is sure
proof of a book that treads on the borderline between opportunism and
political subversion. It is on this ambiguity and on the disturbing interpre-
tations that can be made of the pornographic element that I focus next.
A disturbing questioning of limits
A decadent literature, which only satisfies its readers’ voyeurism, can be

seen as a symptom of a pornographic society. By “pornographic,” I do not
150 Fanny Delnieppe
only mean those high doses of sexuality that can be found at every street
corner; a pornographic society is also a society in which everything is –
has been made – visible:
Everything is to be produced, everything is to be legible, everything

is to become real, visible, accountable; everything is to be transcribed
in relations of force, systems of concepts or measurable energy; eve-
rything is to be said, accumulated, indexed and recorded. This is sex
as it exists in pornography, but more generally, this is the enterprise
of our entire culture, whose natural condition is obscene: a culture of
monstration, of demonstration, of productive monstrosity.14
As Christian Gutleben notes, the pornographic dimension of a text can

also be read in the light of Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject; that is,
as a way of reflecting (on) a world devoid of a belief system and of ethics:
[T]he introduction and the foregrounding of ugliness in contempo-

rary fiction has crucial ideological repercussions. The ugly, the unsa-
voury, the disgusting connect with Kristeva’s notion of the abject
which is contemporary literature’s most ostensible means of affirm-
ing the impossibility of the law, of ethics or religion […]. Totally
shattering the Victorian’s novel propensity for moral edification, the
postmodern cult of the unsavoury and the monstrous […] negates
any ethical value […]. Postmodernism’s exploration of Victorian fic-
tion’s dark shadows, forbidden lands and taboo topics disintegrates
the stable, reassuring world of Christian values and confronts the
reader instead with her/his cynical godless postmodern condition
deprived of any ‘transcendental signified’.15
This statement is to be understood in the context of Jean-François

Lyotard’s thesis, according to which post-modern society is character-
ized by its “incredulity toward metanarratives.”16 In another book,
the philosopher explains that a meta-narrative is a narrative with “the
goal of legitimating social and political institutions and practices,
laws, ethics, ways of thinking.”17 Such narratives include Christianity,
the Enlightenment Project and the belief in progress and science; in
Lyotard’s words: “[T]he progressive emancipation of reason and free-
dom, the progressive or catastrophic emancipation of labor (source of
alienated value in capitalism), the enrichment of all humanity through
the progress of capitalist technoscience, and even […] the salvation of
creatures through the conversion of souls to the Christian narrative of
martyred love” (17–18). Thus, if we believe Lyotard, in today’s Western

world there is no longer any paradigm by which to endow reality with
meaning and to guide men’s lives. The type of contemporary fiction
that seems to reject any limit could be interpreted as a symptom or
expression of this post-modern condition. The presence of impotent
men in Charlotte – of men who, like Rochester and Ben, are reduced to
the position of voyeurs – could be interpreted as signalling the “col-
lapse of paternal laws”; that is, for our purpose, as signalling the end of
meta-narratives.18
In Kristeva’s view, the abject “disturbs identity, system, order. [It]
does not respect borders, positions, rules. [It is t]he in-between, the
ambiguous, the composite.”19 In the “literature that confronts it […]
there takes place a crossing over of the dichotomous categories of Pure
and Impure, Prohibition and Sin, Morality and Immorality” (16). Such
literature thus disturbs the rules. Thomas’s novel, however, seems to
go further, to the extent that it does not merely reject or cross over the
limits – it also questions them. According to Brian Nicol, this explains
the disturbing quality of his texts: “Thomas’s capacity to provoke is
intimately bound up with the most distinctive feature of his work: its
obsession with exploring, and enacting, the blurring of boundaries.”20
The motif of incest, for instance, runs throughout the book. Ben par-
ticipates in his daughter’s sexual adventures by proxy through the
tape-recordings she makes for him. Moreover, he watches her dress in
her mother’s underwear and clothes and calls her by the latter’s name;
he feels jealous when Miranda tells him about the men she slept with
in Martinique and encourages her to keep the baby she is expecting.
Although Miranda says that the child’s father must be either the beach
waiter or the cane worker, the text contains the suggestion that the baby
could be Ben’s. During the episode of sleepwalking, the protagonist
indeed accuses her father in these words: “This will be our child, you
know that, don’t you!” (178). At the end of the story, Miranda fulfils
her father’s wishes and separates from her husband to go and live with
him. Further, Ben’s behaviour with his granddaughter takes on incestu-
ous and paedophilic accents; he indeed sees no harm in touching the
little girl’s “patate” – a Creole word for the female genitalia: “What is
this fucking puritan, politically correct modern world, where it’s fine to
fuck a dozen men up the bum in a bath-house but you can’t make your
own granddaughter giggle with a tickle of her little patate?” (176). The
first half of the question, with its use of the word “puritan,” intimates
that political correctness constitutes the 20th-century equivalent of
Victorian puritanism. From this perspective, contemporary ideological
152 Fanny Delnieppe
standards, despite their appearance of permissiveness, would be as

repressive and totalitarian as Victorian ideology. With the second half of
the quotation however, the meaning is more ambiguous. The text goes
very far here as, besides the homophobic dimension of Ben’s words,
there seems to be a questioning of the natural and/or moral character of
Ben’s gesture. Is Thomas, however, questioning the limits one must not
cross, or is he suggesting that contemporary morals are so depraved that
such a gesture could come to be considered as “normal”? Subversion
here reaches a climax as it is concerned with our culture’s taboos. The
ambiguity as well as the idea that the text could be questioning such
limits makes it particularly unsettling, even to a voyeuristic readership.
D. M. Thomas’s Charlotte is thus both complicit with, and subversive
of, the voyeuristic and pornographic mood that permeates a great part
of contemporary literature and society. The novel writes pornographic
versions of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso
Sea in order to comment on a type of contemporary fiction that it
shows as decadent and opportunistic. This fiction appeals to its readers’
voyeurism while managing to conform to political correctness; it also
disparages the Victorian age in order to use it as a foil to the contempo-
rary period, and it does all these things for commercial purposes. While
Charlotte, too, takes advantage of its readers’ basest instincts, it also con-
stitutes a subversion of the “Phallic Eye” insofar as it confronts the reader
with a picture of a world where domination and oppression still charac-
terize the relationships between individuals – between men and women,
between blacks and whites, between rich and poor. Imperialism, racism
and patriarchy are not things belonging to the past that the reader can
safely look at from the late 20th-century superior perspective. It is fur-
ther suggested that the ideology of the politically correct, in its excessive
forms, can prove to be as repressive and paralysing as Victorian puritan-
ism. Thomas’s text constitutes a reflection of/on a post-modern world
that has few limits seemingly left – a world haunted by the irrepressible
drive toward showing and seeing everything – and which, at the same
time, remains nonetheless constrained by an ideology that, to borrow
Miranda’s image, can be experienced as “a Victorian corset” (139). The
novel’s ambiguous stance, in between opportunism and political subver-
sion, is perhaps best captured in the text’s questioning of limits relat-
ing to morality and taboos, which proves disturbing even to the most
open-minded readers. We cannot be sure whether the text laments a
moral laxity typical of the post-modern condition; or whether its explo-
ration of limits leads it to take a dangerous leap into the confines of
(im)morality.
Notes
1. Gutleben (2001) 5.
2. Thomas (2001) 9.
3. This term of “hypotext” is borrowed from Gérard Genette’s Palimpsests and
refers to the situation when “a text [(called the hypertext) is] derived from
another preexistent text” (called the hypotext). See Genette (1997) 5.
4. Although one cannot always easily distinguish between pastiche and parody
as the two devices both refer to the practice of imitating, parody must here
be understood as “repetition with critical distance that allows ironic signal-
ling of difference at the very heart of similarity” (see Hutcheon (1988) 26).
On the other hand, pastiche implies “a more neutral practice of compilation
which is neither necessarily critical of its sources, nor necessarily comic” (see
Rose (1993) 72).
5. Imhof (1986), 146.
6. Gilbert and Gubar (1979).
7. It is indeed an assertion made by the servant Christophine. See Rhys (1968),
124–125.
8. The situation here echoes Antoinette’s mother’s treatment in Wide Sargasso Sea.
The latter, once she has yielded to madness, is indeed entrusted to the care of
a man who makes her drink alcohol before taking advantage of her physically.
9. Fowles (1996) 261.
10. Wood (2002) 93.
11. The phrase is borrowed from The Observer review of the novel. See Lane
(2012).
12. Sue Thomas shows how the author of Charlotte has drawn on Frantz Fanon’s
Black Skin, White Masks (1952) for his portrait of a Martinique still trauma-
tized by colonialism. In his work, Fanon studies the process of “lactification”
and the desire to “whiten the race” he observed in Martinicans. See Thomas
(2007) 101–114.
13. Makra (2012).
14. Baudrillard (1990) 34–35.
15. Gutleben (2001) 133–4.
16. Lyotard (1984) xxiv.
17. Lyotard (1993) 18.
18. The phrase “collapse of paternal laws” is borrowed from Julia Kristeva’s
analysis of Dostoyevsky’s work. See Kristeva (1982) 20.
19. Kristeva (1982) 4.
20. Nicol (2004) 1.
Bibliography
Baudrillard, J. (1990). Seduction. Trans. B. Singer. London: Macmillan.
Fowles, J. (1996 [1969]). The French Lieutenant’s Woman. London: Vintage.
Genette, G. (1997). Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Trans. C. Newman
and C. Doubinsky. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Gilbert, S. M. and S. Gubar. (1979). The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer
and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press.
154 Fanny Delnieppe
Gutleben, C. (2001). Nostalgic Postmodernism: The Victorian Tradition and the

Contemporary British Novel. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.
Hutcheon, L. (1988). A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. London
Imhof, R. (1986). Contemporary Metafiction: A Poetological Study of Metafiction in
English since 1939. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.
Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. L. S. Roudiez.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Lane, H. (28 May 2000). “Reader, I had sex with just about everybody….”
The Observer. Accessed on August 19th, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/
books/2000/may/28/fiction.reviews1.
Lyotard, J-F. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans.
G Bennington and B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
——. (1993). The Postmodern Explained: Correspondence, 1982–1985. Trans.
D. Barry et al. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Makra, P. (2003). “Charlotte and the Second Stage of Disenchantment.” Accessed
on August 20th, 2012, http://www.noise.physx.u-szeged.hu/MP/Personal/
Essays/Charlotte.pdf.
Nicol, B. (2004). D. M. Thomas. Tavistock: Northcote House Publishers.
Rhys, J. (1968 [1966]). Wide Sargasso Sea. London: Penguin.
Rose, M. A. (1993). Parody: Ancient, Modern, and Post-Modern. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Thomas, D. M. (2001 [2000]). Charlotte. London: Duckbacks.
Thomas, S. (2007). “Pathologies of Sexuality, Empire and Slavery: D. M. Thomas’s
Charlotte.” In M. Rubik and E. Mettinger-Schartmann (ed.), A Breath of Fresh
Eyre: Intertextual and Intermedial Reworkings of Jane Eyre. Amsterdam and
New York: Rodopi.
Wood, M. (2002). Slavery, Empathy, Pornography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Part III
Bleeding Masculinities
11
“There’s No Losing It”: Disability
and Voyeurism in Rear Window
and Vertigo
Laura Christiansen
Alfred Hitchcock’s diptych of films, Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo

(1958), share many things in addition to the use of James Stewart as
the male lead. In both films Stewart spends time with a woman whose
characterization is a complication of both the maternal and the roman-
tic. Both films contain themes of voyeurism and isolation within society
and introduce the concept of voyeurism in the opening credit sequence.
Particularly striking is that James Stewart’s character begins each film in a
state of disability. The form of disability in each film, physical or mental,
is closely related to the form of voyeurism practised. Thus, a compari-
son of the relationship between physical disability and what I will term
“public voyeurism” in Rear Window, and between mental disability and
what I refer to as “personal voyeurism” in Vertigo, provides a lens through
which we can compare the two films’ resolutions as a result of this dis-
tinction between public and private. Specifically, Hitchcock seems to use
the public voyeurism in Rear Window to emancipate voyeurism by nor-
malizing it; whereas the isolation in Vertigo and the subsequent murders
condemn voyeurism.
In America, the 1950s were a period of increased conservatism and
were marked by a re-emphasis on traditional gender roles. This era,
post-World War II, saw the return of servicemen to industry and the
return of women to the home. Lynn Spigel notes that television was key
to this reestablishment of the family ideal, pointing out that, “Between
1948 and 1955, television was installed in nearly two-thirds of the
nation’s homes” (1).1 However important to the changing American
culture television was, it was not without its critics. Television’s “prom-
ise to transport viewers to the homes of fictional friends”2 raised ques-
tions of morality (136). Was television, with its sitcoms as a portal into
other living rooms, normalizing the act of voyeurism? With two-thirds
157
158 Laura Christiansen
of the nation’s homes containing television sets, this question regarding

voyeurism must have sat in the minds of many; and, in Hitchcock, it
led to this diptych of films taking voyeurism to task. Indeed, Jefferies’s
backyard tableaus are quite similar to television programmes. If, as
Spigel contends, “television was depicted as a panacea for the broken
homes and hearts of wartime life” (2–3),3 then the backyard shows act
similarly as a panacea for the trapped and broken Jefferies.
For the purposes of this chapter, I would like to consider the scene
in Midge’s apartment as the first scene in Vertigo, as the chase scene in
which Scottie dangles from a building is more of a preface to the film
than part of the plot we follow. In both opening scenes, James Stewart’s
character is reclining in a chair in an apartment – in Rear Window it is
his own, while in Vertigo it is Midge’s. In the scenes I have mentioned,
notice how similar they are – in both shots one of Stewart’s legs is raised
but the leg raised in each film is opposite, signalling that these films are
similar and yet opposed. I will discuss just how true this is later. In both
films he is encased in some sort of medical apparatus – in Rear Window
it is a clearly visible cast, while in Vertigo it is a mentioned corset.
That the medical apparatus in Rear Window is visible is directly related
to the fact that his disability in this film is a physical one; similarly, the
corset in Vertigo is not visible and neither is his malady, acrophobia, as it
is mentally based. Also connecting the two films is that in both opening
scenes he discusses his impending freedom from these restrictive medi-
cal items: “Next Wednesday I emerge from this plaster cocoon,” Jefferies
tells his editor in Rear Window, while in Vertigo Scottie exclaims to Midge,
“Tomorrow’ll be the day. […] Tomorrow! The corset comes off tomor-
row!” While both of these exclamations deal with the physical aspects
of their disabilities, as the conversation continues in Vertigo we learn that
Scottie has quit his job with the police force because of his acrophobia,
as there is “no losing it.” While both the cast and the corset, therefore,
have set dates after which they will no longer impede the freedom of
the character, the acrophobia has no end date to which to look forward.
Now that I have established some of the similarities between the films,
I will focus on Rear Window and discuss how Jefferies’s physical disability
impacts the trajectory of the film. First, because he is restricted to a wheel-
chair, the film is limited in its movements; this forces the film to occupy
the same space that Jefferies can occupy – the space of his apartment –
and to see what Jefferies can see – his apartment and his neighbours
through his window. In this way his physical disability clearly impacts
the trajectory of the film as it can only go where he can go. This is further
emphasized by Hitchcock’s use of point-of-view shots – most of the film
There’s No Losing It 159
is shot through the eyes of Jefferies, clearly making the audience identify
with Jefferies’s restriction to a chair. Furthermore, in his article “Alfred
Hitchcock’s Rear Window: The Fourth Side,” Michael Chion asserts, “This
‘rule’ of point of view amounts to an invitation to the audience to share
the hero’s little apartment, while making it forget (just as the film’s char-
acters do) that there may be on Jeff’s side of the block other apartments,
from which one can see just as well and perhaps even better what goes
on in Thorwald’s place” (111).4 We take for granted that there may be
other people who have witnessed the murder of Thorwald’s wife; but, at
the same time, just because there is the possibility that someone else may
have seen, this does not mean that they did. Because Jeff is confined to a
wheelchair and has nothing else to do, while the rest of the characters in
the film have jobs and obligations, it is not completely wrong to believe
that he is the only one to have seen the goings-on in Thorwald’s place,
as there is no evidence of anyone else alerting the authorities, or going
across the courtyard to confirm things, as Jeff has Lisa do.
Second, his being wheelchair-bound limits Jeff’s options of occu-
pation throughout the film, while also relieving him of the guilt of
voyeurism – if he is confined in his apartment, what else can he do but
watch his neighbours? In “Hitchcock’s Rear Window: The Well-Made
Film,” John Fawell observes, “Jeff’s profession seems tied to what the
film reveals as his weaknesses – an inability to settle down, a desire to
view the world from a distance, through a lens, rather than commit
himself fully to one person or place. Who better to fall prey to the lures
of voyeurism than a photographer, and a travelling one at that, one
who not only wants to view the world but never settle into it” (22).5
By asserting that it seems a natural course of action that a wheelchair-
bound photographer would watch his neighbours while trapped in his
apartment, Fawell helps to support Hitchcock’s intentional framing
of Jefferies’s voyeurism as neither menacing nor inappropriate, as his
nurse Stella would have it considered in the beginning, but instead as
an innocent action as it is the only thing available to him in his condi-
tion. This is further emphasized by Stella’s early assertion that “We have
become a race of Peeping Toms,” because, if we indeed have become
a race of Peeping Toms, it can no longer be considered inappropriate.
The mode of his injury also has an effect on the course of the film.
Jefferies’s leg is in a cast because he had been trying to capture “some-
thing dramatically different” by standing on a motor racetrack during a
crash. This establishes him as a risk-taker, which is further emphasized
by his asking his editor to send him to Kashmir despite his injury: “Oh,
stop sounding stuffy, I can take pictures from a jeep or a water-buffalo,”
he tells his editor, to which he is told, “You’re too valuable to the

magazine for us to play around with.” To Jefferies, the most troublesome
thing about his injury is not the injury itself, but that he is trapped in his
apartment with nothing to do but watch his neighbours. Charles Barr
observes, “Men, are you over 40? When you wake up in the morning,
do you feel tired and run down? Do you have that listless feeling?” The
first words of Rear Window are those of an early morning radio advertise-
ment, heard from a nearby apartment while Jefferies still sleeps, as if to
spell out what is troubling his subconscious” (37).6 Jefferies has cabin
fever but also, as evidenced by his saying to his editor “If you don’t pull
me out of this swamp of boredom I’m going to do something drastic.
I’m going to get married and then I’ll never be able to go anywhere,”
his feeling trapped in his apartment correlates in his mind to his fear of
getting married, which he sees as the ultimate impediment to freedom.
Any discussion of Rear Window would be remiss without mentioning the
homosexual undertones throughout the film. Lemire notes in “Voyeurism
and the Postwar Crisis of Masculinity in Rear Window,” “In the early fif-
ties, young men who didn’t want to marry and who remained single for
too long were considered ‘emotionally immature’ or ‘latent homosexuals’
[…] so when Jeff says petulantly that he doesn’t want to marry Lisa, Stella
brands that as ‘abnormal’” (73).7 In addition, Laura Mulvey explains in
her seminal essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” that, to Freud,
scopophilia was “one of the component instincts of sexuality which exist
as drives quite independently of the erotogenic zones” and that “he asso-
ciated scopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them
to a controlling and curious gaze”(17).8 While the latter is true in Rear
Window (Stella personifies Jefferies, saying, “I love my neighbours, like a
father”), the former fails to hold up, but not through any fault of Freud.
Early in the film, Stella, taking Jefferies’s temperature, notes “Those bath-
ing beauties you’ve been watching haven’t raised your temperature one
degree in a month.” She chalks this up to a hormone deficiency, hinting
that a lack of masculine hormones, otherwise considered homosexual-
ity, explains the absence of raised temperature. In fact, the characters
around him all join in echoing this fear through their conversations
with him – his editor responds to his threat of getting married and not
being able to work by saying, “It’s about time you got married – before
you turn into a lonesome and bitter old man”; Stella chides him for not
loving the “perfect” Lisa; and Lisa expresses this fear by consciously not
bringing it up at times of conflict, when homosexuality seems the only
explanation for his disinterest, saying it is “something too frightful to
utter.” However, Freud’s connecting scopophilia to sexuality may be seen
in Jefferies’s watching of the newlywed couple. We assume he is interested

in this particular couple, as immediately prior to gazing at their window
we see him effectively change the channel three times in twelve seconds,
from Thorwald, to the sunbathing sculptor, to “Miss Torso,” until settling
on the married couple for a full minute until they end the show by draw-
ing the shades. We see his face change through cuts from initial interest,
to a smirk, to confusion, to understanding and then to what I consider
most important: to either an embarrassed look caused by recognition of
watching something intimate; or perhaps an uncomfortable look caused
by a challenge to his desire. The new husband carries his new wife over
the threshold and Jefferies clearly understands the significance of this,
mouthing the word “Oh” as he sees it, but then the couple kisses and he
looks away, grimacing briefly, before turning back and looking unsatisfied.
Is Jefferies interested in the couple because of the man, and is this expres-
sion of conventional heterosexuality the cause for his grimace and embar-
rassment, and potential jealousy? Or, is the problem his being confronted
with happy newlyweds?
Jeff’s fear of marriage, complicated by his implied homosexuality, per-
vades the film throughout. The scenes we see with him looking at his
neighbours’ apartments all make different comments on marriage, while
also pointing out that because we see them through Jeff’s eyes, his fear of
marriage colours his views of the world around him. He argues with Lisa,
his beautiful girlfriend (played by Grace Kelly), because his current physi-
cal disability brings his fear of marriage as the most limiting thing to his
freedom to the forefront of his mind. This also complicates his masculin-
ity, as he is unable to take care of himself, having both a nurse coming to
him every day and a girlfriend who brings him meals. Paul Gordon claims
that, “Rather than being in love with this beautiful, ideal woman, Jeff is
threatened by her because she represents the perfection of an objective ego-
ideal rather than the more fragmented ‘perverse’ reality he craves” (71).9
I believe it is more complicated than this, however. While it would appear
that his constant statements that she is “too perfect” arise out of a jealousy
that she has achieved the perfection of self that he has not, thus causing
him to appear subordinate in terms of personality development, he is also
threatened by the confinement he assumes marriage brings with it.
His voyeurism does more than just occupy him, as every time he
rejects Lisa, “Jeff shows a marked preference for fantasy over reality, and
this preference represents a punishment to the person who loves him
the most” (55).10 She competes for attention with the show outside his
window, at one point pulling the blinds closed and announcing, “The
show is over for tonight.” As such, it seems that Jeff “enjoys gazing at
women more than being with them.”11 This is further emphasized by

his renewed interest in Lisa as she becomes involved in helping him
solve the murder, “Especially once she crosses over the courtyard into
Thorwald’s apartment, where she thus enters the ‘film’ Jeff is watch-
ing, Lisa becomes, as do all women, an object of the male gaze” (59).12
I would like to emphasize the part of this quote in which Lemire asserts
that Lisa “becomes an object of the male gaze.” While many critics have
discussed this crossing over of Lisa into the opposite apartments as evi-
dence that she is objectified in the film, I find it interesting that it is this
exact moment that allows her to occupy the same level as Jefferies, as
she is now working as his partner in the mystery. Indeed, Lisa “becomes”
an object by entering the opposite apartments; whereas before this she
had simply been a threat to Jefferies’s ideas of freedom. Now, his inter-
est in her is complicated as a result of her transformation into both an
“object of the male gaze” and an equal partner in the mystery.
Lemire continues to argue that both Lisa and Stella provide insights
that Jeff needs to see in order to fully establish a motive for the crime.
As such, “Jeff’s attempts to solve Anna Thorwald’s disappearance soon
transform him, however, into a great proponent of women’s ways of
knowing when what both Lisa and Doyle call ‘feminine intuition’
makes plausible his hunch that Anna was murdered” (77).13 Jeff is able
to accept the knowledge Lisa and Stella give him as viable because his
disability is only physical – inculcating feminine ways of knowing does
not threaten his masculinity. Lemire further asserts, “It is this newfound
interest in women’s way of knowing that transforms Jeff into an active
heterosexual male, not merely a sexual voyeur” (79).14 This supports my
contention that it is more than just Lisa’s occupying the male gaze that
changes Jeff’s view of her – she helps him become “active” by helping
him to assert his masculinity through solving of the crime, allowing
him to act vicariously. Furthermore, Lemire supports her claim that Jeff
is transformed by incorporating Lisa’s and Stella’s knowledge into his
investigation by noting that “there is a shift in the film from Jeff’s point
of view to point-of-view shots from both Lisa and Stella, a shift related
directly to the film’s increased privileging of women’s ways of knowing”
(80).15 Not only is Jeff transformed by accepting their knowledge, but so
too is the film as it no longer privileges only his point of view.
In Vertigo, Scottie’s disability being a mental one greatly alters the course
of the film. Many critics have perceived Vertigo as a sort of continuation
of Rear Window as it deals with many of the same themes. This is further
emphasized by the fact that Scottie’s situation in Vertigo is the result of a
fall, and a similar fall ends Rear Window.
One notable difference is that Scottie’s voyeurism in Vertigo is not

a result of his boredom but instead is something he is hired to do by
an old classmate. Also notable throughout the film is Scottie’s concern
about his disability – he has no future plans, for, as he jokes, even if he
were to sit at a desk job, “And a pencil falls off the desk onto the floor,
and I reach down to pick up the pencil? Bingo, my acrophobia’s back.”
Despite this difference, Scottie’s disdain at the idea of being “chairborne”
harkens back to Jeff’s wheelchair-bound position throughout Rear
Window.
One of the most obvious effects of his mental disability on the course
of the film is expressed through Scottie’s concern about his masculin-
ity. Tania Modleski asserts that “From the outset, then, with his failure
to perform his proper role in relation to the symbolic order and the
law, Scottie is placed in the same position of enforced passivity as
L.B. Jeffries, a position that the film explicitly links to femininity and
associates with unfreedom” (92).16 Scottie’s mode of enforced passivity
is evident in the way he chooses to follow Madeleine at Elster’s request,
and his concerns regarding his own masculinity are evidenced in the
same pattern: Madeleine is established as an object to be desired as
she is already married, and so Scottie emulates what he considers to
be proper masculine behaviour by also seeing her as an object to be
desired. Having Scottie show up at the restaurant to first see Madeleine,
Elster constructs her in this scene to be an object of the male gaze, and
Scottie buys into this by accepting his role as the observer.
Much has been made of the significance of Scottie’s vertigo, with
many pointing out that the cause and the cure are never explained in
the film. Notably, Paul Gordon conjectures that Freud’s observation that
“erogenous organs are symbolically represented in dreams through fly-
ing” because their mode of physical arousal “causes them to seem to defy
gravity,” suggests that this is the “key to understanding Scottie’s vertigo, a
condition that the film itself never explains; we don’t know how Scottie
acquired the condition, nor do we know why he overcame it” (81).17
He seemingly forgets the dialogue in the very scene he is discussing, as
Scottie goes to leave Midge’s apartment:
Scottie: Midge, what did you mean there’s no losing it?

Midge: What?
Scottie: The, the, the … acrophobia.
Midge: Well, I asked my doctor. He said that only another emotional
shock could do it, and probably wouldn’t. You’re not gonna
go diving off another rooftop to find out.
By saying “only another emotional shock” would cure Scottie of his

acrophobia, Midge implies that the original cause of it was an emotional
shock. Because the acrophobia had set in before the death of the police-
man, the emotional shock that caused Scottie’s onset of acrophobia would
have had to be his failure to make the jump. That two men precede him
and make the jump and he fails undermines his masculinity, and it is this
emotional shock that is the cause of his acrophobia. Midge also foreshad-
ows the cure: being held implicit in Madeleine’s “suicide” by his inability
to climb the tower stairs as a result of his acrophobia provides him with
the basis for what will be another emotional shock – the realization that
this woman, Judy, is the Madeleine he had fallen in love with, and that his
condition had been exploited in order to cover up the murder of Elster’s
wife. His final assertion of his masculinity by climbing the tower stairs
allows him to overcome his acrophobia.
This failure to make the jump in the chase haunts Scottie and, as such,
it is no surprise that after watching Madeleine “jump” from the tower,
Scottie’s sense of self is destroyed. Tania Modleski notes, “Scottie’s failure to
cure Madeleine deals a mortal blow to his masculine identity, as the dream
that he has shortly after Madeleine’s presumed death indicates” (96).18 This
blow is a mortal blow because his masculine identity was already injured
through the initial failure to jump. This inadequate sense of masculinity
is closely related to the same idea presented in Rear Window – Scottie, like
Jefferies, is an unmarried male. We see, over and over again in the film,
Scottie turn back when trying to leave a place, “in each scene he is drawn,
half-reluctantly, by second thoughts or inner compulsion, into something
active, non-chairborne, potentially dangerous” (39).19 In each scene where
he does this he is consciously trying to assert his masculinity through tak-
ing these risks, while his first instinct is to leave. Charles Barr notes, “All
we get to know of Scottie is that he was once engaged to Midge, that he
remains unattached, that he has independent means, and that his acro-
phobia means that he is now an ex-policeman. Unattached, independ-
ent, unemployed” (36).20 I see this statement as key to understanding the
course of the film, and add to Barr’s list of adjectives the word “vulnerable.”
He is played by Elster and Judy and, as a result of their schemes, ends up
in a mental hospital, arguably the biggest threat to masculinity out there.
The methods of Scottie’s “private voyeurism” are also affected by his
mental disability. He follows Madeleine mostly in silence. Barr points out
that, after seeing the Elsters at Ernie’s, not another word is spoken in the
film for nearly ten minutes (39).21 This silence, Barr claims, “draws in,
and indulges, the pleasurable gaze with extraordinary fullness, and at the
same time foregrounds the mechanisms behind it – first by taking them
apart, then by pushing them to an extreme” (10–11).22 Furthermore,

Scottie internalizes everything he sees when following Madeleine –
except for checking in with Elster he does not talk about what he is
doing. He asks Midge to take him to see Pop Liebel, but does not explain
why. After Pop Liebel gives him the information he wants, “Midge
responds to the story with a heartfelt ‘poor thing!’, [while] Scottie sweeps
straight out, and refuses boorishly to give away anything in response to
her understandable curiosity as to what this is all about” (47).23 This is
in direct conflict with the “public voyeurism” in Rear Window – Jefferies
shares his voyeurism with all of the other characters and it helps him to
bond with them, while Scottie shares his with no one and it only serves
to close him off to other people.
His private form of voyeurism causes him to become too independent
and even more vulnerable as a result of that independence. This inde-
pendence and vulnerability is emphasized when Midge leaves him in the
hospital: “Since Midge walked down the corridor after her talk with the
doctor, the film has effectively been a two-hander: the two stars, and some
single scene bit players” (75).24 This makes the last part of the film even
harder to watch, as without Midge around Scottie is flying alone. Modleski
claims, “The shadow of the object having fallen upon him, Scottie not
only identifies with Madeleine in his dream, but becomes caught up in
the very madness he had feared in her” (97).25 We see his madness as he
searches the streets looking for this ghost. In addition to Scottie’s madness
and melancholia, Barr observes, “His visual sense too has atrophied. After
the traumatising POV shots of the falling and then prone body, we get no
more shots of this kind, other than a few low-key point-of-view images,
from his static position, of the male faces around him at the inquest”
(63).26 Thus the camera also takes on his sense of loss of both the object of
his desire and his masculinity. The camera also signifies Modleski’s claim
that, “In a way, we experience through Scottie the split that Freud says
is characteristic of melancholia: on the one hand we identify with him
as before, but the repeated disqualification of his vision makes us wary”
(97–98).27 As he looks for Madeleine we see some shots from his point of
view, but this obsession and its manifestation in stalking strangers makes
him unreliable and thus the camera no longer privileges his vision.
Further tying the film to Rear Window is the story Pop Liebel tells
Scottie and Midge in the bookstore. Charles Barr notes:
The words Pop uses to narrate the history of the victimisation of ‘the
sad Carlotta’ by an unnamed mid-nineteenth-century magnate – They
could do it in those days: they had the power and the freedom’ – echo
what Elster said to Scottie in their first meeting. ‘The things that spell
San Francisco to me are disappearing fast’: what he regrets is the pass-
ing of ‘colour, excitement, power, freedom’ (47).28
This is significant because Elster’s murder of his wife stems from his
idea that he has the “power and freedom” to do it. Thorwald, in Rear
Window, tries to assert that he has the power and freedom to mur-
der his wife, but he is not in a social position to do so. This truth
is emphasized by the conversation between Jefferies and his editor:
“Gunnison: ‘Jeff, wives don’t nag anymore, they discuss.’ Jeff: ‘Is that
so, is that so? Well, maybe in the high-rent district they discuss. In
my neighbourhood they still nag’.” By establishing a class difference
between his neighbourhood and the high-rent district, Jefferies proves
that Thorwald does not have the “power and freedom” afforded those
old “magnates,” the “power and freedom” Elster seeks to employ. The
fact that Jefferies immediately notices that the wife is missing and
figures out that Thorwald has murdered her also undermines the idea
of freedom.
Rear Window and Vertigo are closely related films. While Armond
White writes that “Rear Window’s tale is a social study, relevant to issues
of individual survival in the modern world – to how citizens cope
with the difficult or dehumanizing structures of social life” (119),29
I see Vertigo also as a social study, as it criticizes Scottie’s independent
voyeuristic behaviours, and when compared, exalts Jeff’s communal
voyeuristic behaviours. Vertigo clearly criticizes Scottie’s behaviour, his
distancing of himself from his one friend and his irrational behaviour
throughout the second half of the film. By ending with Scottie stand-
ing on the edge of the tower, looking down at Judy’s body, the audience
is left with an uneasy feeling that drives home Hitchcock’s condemna-
tion of Scottie’s behaviour. Both films conclude in a situation recalling
their opening: In Rear Window, Jefferies is again wheelchair-bound, but
now with both of his legs in a cast; and in Vertigo, Scottie is mentally
paralyzed once again, having witnessed another fall to the death. The
biggest difference between the films is that Scottie’s “private voyeur-
ism,” coupled with his mental disability, makes him implicit in two
deaths; while Jeff’s “public voyeurism,” not impeded by his physi-
cal malady, enables him to solve a murder. Taken together, one film
criticizes voyeurism while the other justifies and emancipates it; while
perhaps also claiming that a mental malady is more pervasive and dan-
gerous than a physical one.
Notes
1. Lynn Spigel (1992).
2. Spigel (1992).
3. Spigel (1992).
4. Michael Chion (2000).
5. John Fawell (2001).
6. Charles Barr (2002).
7. Elise Lemire (2000).
8. Laura Mulvey (1989).
9. Paul Gordon (2008).
10. Fawell (2001).
11. Fawell (2001).
12. Lemire (2000).
13. Lemire (2000).
14. Lemire (2000).
15. Lemire (2000).
16. Tania Modleski (2002).
17. Paul Gordon (2008).
18. Modleski (2002).
19. Barr (2002).
20. Barr (2002).
21. Barr (2002).
22. Barr (2002).
23. Barr (2002).
24. Barr (2002).
26. Barr (2002).
28. Barr (2002).
29. Armond White (2000).
Bibliography
Barr, C. (2002). Vertigo. London: British Film Institute.
Belton, J., (ed.). (2000). Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Chion, M. (2000). “Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window: The Fourth Side.” In: Belton,
110–117.
Cowie, E. (2005). “Rear Window Ethics.” In: J. Geiger and R. L. Rutsky (ed.), Film
Analysis: A Norton Reader. New York: W. W. Norton & Company: 474–494.
Fawell, J. (2001). Hitchcock’s Rear Window: The Well-Made Film. Carbondale and
Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Gordon, P. (2008). Dial “M”for Mother: A Freudian Hitchcock. Madison, NJ:
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
Lemire, E. (2000). “Voyeurism and the Postwar Crisis of Masculinity in Rear
Window.” In: Belton 57–90.
Modleski, T. (2005). The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist
Theory. Second Edition. New York: Routledge.
Mulvey, L. (1989) “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Visual and Other
Pleasures. Second Edition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 14–27.
Spigel, L. (1992) Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar
America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
White, A. (2000). “Eternal Vigilance in Rear Window.” In Belton 118–40.
Filmography
Rear Window. Dir. A. Hitchcock. Perf. J. Stewart, G. Kelly and W. Corey. Paramount
Pictures/Patron Inc., 1954.
Vertigo. Dir. A. Hitchcock. Perf. J. Stewart, K. Novak and B. Bel Geddes. Paramount
Pictures/Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions, 1958.
12
The Vaginal Apocalypse: Phallic
Trauma and the End of the
World in Romeo is Bleeding
James D. Stone
Mona Demarkov (Lena Olin), a smoulderingly beautiful mobster in a

tight, pinstriped dress, sits down on a straight-backed chair and opens
her legs. Jack Grimaldi (Gary Oldman), the NYPD sergeant assigned to
guard her, is enraptured. He gazes at her stocking-clad inner thighs and
into the shadowy realm that lies between them. Mona offers him far
more than a fleeting glimpse. Seconds tick by and tension builds, until
she cuts into Jack’s reverie by murmuring, “It’s not polite to stare.” This
snippet from Romeo is Bleeding1 is a minor landmark in cinema history.
It is one of the first, and indeed few, moments in mainstream film
where a lead actress adopts such an indecorous pose and unabashedly
displays her vulva – lingerie-clad, in this instance – to the hungry eyes
of a male co-star. In 1992, Basic Instinct2 had caused a sensation with
a similar scene in which Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) crosses and
uncrosses her legs, showing her unquestionably naked vulva to a pack
of decidedly uneasy police interrogators. As Amy Taubin argues, with
a playful nod to Freudian and Lacanian theories of the unconscious,
the men who look upon Tramell’s genitals are “faced with a cunt no
one could mistake for a lack.”3 Like Basic Instinct, Romeo is Bleeding
fashions the vulva into an icon of power and identifies it as a locus of
female strength. Mona is an aggressive, controlling figure at all times.
Even with her legs apart, she is no pushover. Her seated body – palms
placed firmly on top of thighs, torso erect, eyes locked unswervingly
upon Jack – bespeaks solidity and watchfulness, not the precarious-
ness and airy indifference of an object-of-the-gaze. She looks ready to
pounce. Romeo is Bleeding shares Basic Instinct’s interest in “the power
of pussy,” as a contemporaneous rock album would have it.4 But the
movie is far more than the tale of a femme fatale whose potency ema-
nates from between her legs. It is cinema’s most detailed and erudite
169
170 James D. Stone
examination of the many ways the vagina has featured in the cultural
imagination.
Mona makes sure that her vagina is the film’s most emphatic and
compelling motif. She appears to Jack in a nightmare, squatting, knees
spread wide, yelping ecstatically as she wins at dice. Whenever able, she
discards her skirt, presenting herself in stockings and garter belt, thereby
highlighting and eroticizing the region below her waist. Offering Jack
$200,000 to let her go free, she lets him view and touch her between
the legs while she waxes rhapsodic on the allure of money. As Jack’s
eyes dart excitedly back and forth between her face and her crotch, her
description of a wad of bills is also an invitation to vaginal pleasure.
“You know what it feels like when it’s just sitting in your hand?” she
asks. “Nothing feels like that, does it?” she continues, spreading her
legs wide for emphasis. In a later scene, Mona displays herself on a bed,
skirt off, a heart-shaped box of cash placed in suggestive proximity to
her open legs. “It’s all yours. All you gotta do is take it,” she breathes,
referring to the box, but also, quite obviously, to another receptacle. As
Jack opens the box, Mona lets out a small, excited gasp.
Jack may regard Mona’s vagina as desirable, as tempting as a bribe,
but he frequently hints that it poses a threat to him. In voice-over, he
tells us that this is “the story of an unlucky guy who fell in love with
a hole in the ground.” Certainly, he is referring to his love for a drain
behind his house, a hole in which he regularly hides money accrued
from shady dealings with the mob. There is something oddly corporeal,
however, about this earthy cavity. When Jack pulls up the metallic drain
cover, intent upon inserting yet more dirty money, he tells us that he
hears a “sucking sound.” As he thrusts the cash inside, the soundtrack
treats us to a faint, extra-diegetic, orgasmic moan. Obviously, we are
encouraged to equate the hole with a sexualized woman. When Jack
refers to his illicit hoarding as “feeding the hole” (“he fed the hole
and he made the hole happy”) we might easily regard him as working
to satisfy the appetites of a voracious sexual partner. Throughout the
film, he will demonstrate devotion to Mona and strive to satisfy her. In
Jack’s mind, it would seem, Mona and the ravenous, demanding hole
are intimately related.
Mona is linked with more than one hole-in-the-ground. A deadly
assassin, she consigns men to their graves. Significantly, when her ene-
mies die, their resting place is referred to by the film’s characters not as a
grave but as a “hole.” Mona kidnaps her criminal mentor, Don Falcone
(Roy Scheider), and brings him to the edge of a freshly dug grave. He
expresses exasperation at the inglorious site of his demise with the
The Vaginal Apocalypse 171
words, “Here? In a hole? In Brooklyn?” At the funeral of another gang-

ster rubbed out by Mona, there is this exchange: “1st Cop: (Looking
at the coffin being interred) ‘That’s a legend gettin’ put in that hole
there, Joey.’ 2nd Cop: (impatiently) ‘Aah, plant the prick’.” One more of
Mona’s enemies has met his end in a hole, a pit that takes on distinctly
vaginal qualities since it will be filled with a prick.
In presenting Mona in such a manner, the film declares its knowledge
that vaginas, and the women attached to them, are often regarded, simply
and damningly, as holes. In an essay entitled “The Hole,” Jean Paul Sartre
tells us “the obscenity of the feminine sex is that of everything which
‘gapes open.’ It is an appeal to being as all holes are. In herself woman appeals
to a strange flesh which is to transform her into a fullness of being by
penetration and dissolution.”5 Here, the renowned existentialist con-
notes that the woman/vagina is a disturbing entity due to the fact of
its emptiness, a void that can only be made innocuous by being filled.
Irigaray sums up, and vehemently objects to, decades of such reductive
musing by concluding that “woman’s erogenous zones never amount
to anything but a clitoris-sex that is not comparable to the noble phal-
lic organ, or a hole-envelope that serves to sheathe and massage the
penis during intercourse: a non-sex … About woman and her pleasure,
this view of the sexual relation has nothing to say. Her lot is that of
‘lack’.”6 Of course, it is not only philosophers who have pondered this
issue. Scribes with more humble ambitions have noted the prevalence
of the woman/vagina=hole idea. In his tome on scatological and sexual
humour, Legman identifies the comedic staple “Woman-as-hole!” and
categorizes this phenomenon as “the fundamental tenet of the almost
conscious estimation of both sexes as to the difference between them.”7
He presents evidence that in many cultures, “To deflower the bride
means to ‘cut out her penis’ and leave a hole.”8 Diana Hume George
contends in an essay on pornography, written after viewing a bestiality
loop entitled Chicken Love, “The spectacle presented to me in that booth
was woman as ovipositor, woman as hole, woman as absence.”9 An
awareness that women are frequently reduced to holes, embodiments of
a vagina that represents lack, castration and emptiness, is an elemental
aspect of Romeo is Bleeding.
Since it frequently links a specific woman, Mona Demarkov, with
holes, Romeo is Bleeding might be accused of endorsing this age-old asso-
ciation and, thereby, expressing a deep misogyny. Yet, rather than func-
tioning as a reactionary screed, the film is an exposé of the woman=hole
phenomenon. It wears its cultural knowledge on its sleeve and, there-
fore, seems a work of intentional camp rather than a dour misogynist
172 James D. Stone
tract. As the film progresses, it becomes a veritable compendium of

vaginal lore, exploring how the female genitals have been characterized
by the dominant culture. It presents a prevailing ideological position
(woman=hole) not to support it, but to reveal and mock it.
The film makes no secret of its obsession with holes of all kinds,
displaying them and discussing them at every turn. It is the film’s
openness and self-consciousness that marks it as a subversive work.
Mainstream films that perpetuate the woman=hole equation usually
do so in a comparatively subtle, suggestive manner. For instance, Helen
Knode opines that Hollywood has given us woman as a “bottomless
hole of sin, moral anarchy, and death (Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction),”
woman as “mouth (Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman),” and woman as “tear
duct (Demi Moore in Ghost).”10 These films solidify the link between
woman and hole but they do so largely at a subtextual level. Romeo is
Bleeding asks us to acknowledge and reflect upon its subject by trans-
forming subtext into text.
Through Mona, the film explores how the vagina has been regarded
as both dangerous and disgusting. She is the embodiment of the vagina
dentata, apparent proof of Sartre’s summation of woman: “Beyond any
doubt her sex is a mouth and a voracious mouth which devours the
penis – a fact which can easily lead to the idea of castration.”11 It is fit-
ting that during one of Mona’s assaults on Jack she attacks him, appar-
ently, with her vagina. From a position in the backseat of his car she
wraps her legs around his neck. Jack’s head is drawn backward toward
her crotch and he registers sheer panic. Mona’s legs act as tendrils, pull-
ing the unfortunate man toward a seemingly hungry maw. This is too
much for him to bear and he crashes the car into a streetlamp.
During Jack and Mona’s very first encounter it is suggested that her
vagina may have the power to unman him. As his hand snakes its way
inside her skirt Jack’s face is a mask of intense concentration, suitable for
defusing a bomb. The soundtrack implies that danger lies dead ahead,
with church bells and sirens scoring the scene. The bells are not celebra-
tory. They toll in funereal fashion, a veritable death knell. The sirens,
blaring from emergency vehicles, suggest that Jack is playing with fire.
At the moment Jack makes intimate contact with Mona she attacks him,
trying to snatch his gun. This attempted, symbolic castration leaves him
shocked, shaken and only able to retain control of the situation due to
the serendipitous arrival of two police colleagues.
Mona will spend much of the film delighting in her ability to terrify
men by taking their guns. One of Jack’s police brethren relates with
utter horror how she had taken his weapon and pointed it at him.
Breathlessly, he recounts, “Everything was going smooth and then all

of a sudden, from out of nowhere, she grabs my gun … Oh fuck, Jack,
she got my gun. Running around with my gun, Jack … You know, she
turned around and she pointed my own gun at me, Jack. She turned
around and she pointed my own gun at me, Jack.” The hysterical tone
and anxious repetition suggest that the unfortunate cop has experi-
enced a significant challenge to his masculinity.
It seems that Mona is highly aware of the symbolic nature of her
thievery, apparently quite amused by men’s grim adherence to phallic
symbols. Near the end of the movie she will confront Jack in the foyer
of a courthouse. Her lawyers have managed to absolve her; and Jack is in
handcuffs. Eager to show Jack the completeness of her dominance over
him, she pulls her hand from inside her jacket, two fingers extended
to resemble a gun. Winking, and blowing on the tips of her “smoking”
fingers, she has again playfully appropriated the phallus, this time add-
ing insult to injury by showing it to the castrated male.
It is notable that the two holes most strongly associated with Mona –
the drain and the grave – are excremental and putrescent. We equate both
with stench. In Romeo is Bleeding, when men die or are in jeopardy their
state is discussed in terms of rank odour, putrefaction and faeces. A room-
ful of dead gangsters “stank like a meat market on Easter week.” The
corpse of an immolated mobster, “stank like a motherfucker.” Jack’s pros-
pects are so bleak that a mob go-between tells him “you’re in, up to here.”
Just in case we miss the scatological connotations of this statement, the
next scene finds Jack sitting on the floor of a toilet stall. It seems that the
most ignominious fate a man can suffer is to be consigned to the realm
of stench and faecal matter. In other words, the lowest state imaginable
is to become one with Mona, to be sucked into her hole.
In making these allusions, the film demonstrates awareness that
female bodies and female sexuality have regularly been described in
terms of the sewer. Lynn Nead, a feminist art historian, demonstrates
the frequency with which “the female body is defined as lacking con-
tainment and issuing filth and pollution from its faltering outlines and
broken surfaces.”12 Kristeva notes that the woman’s body is often consid-
ered an abject place since it is peculiarly connected, in patriarchy, to the
menstrual and excremental: “on her part, there is impurity, defilement,
blood.”13 Klaus Theweleit’s highly influential study of German soldiery
in the early 20th century explores the tendency to associate women
with floods, blood, slime and filth. This was due, in part, to the filthy
nature of “women’s work.” Women, he tells us “stripped off the babies’
wet pants and wiped the shit from their behinds. They cleaned black
174 James D. Stone
muck out of stopped-up drains and cleaned toilets … They wiped the
floors and got their hands into liquid manure.”14
When a woman is regarded as a hole – a potential castrator and font
of filth – she can only be made innocuous by being closed up or filled
in. As Still comments, “The male Imaginary figures Woman as hole,
and wants to close her up.”15 Sartre points out that filling the hole may
result in the man experiencing a “fullness of being” that he lacks when
the void remains unfilled: “The ideal of the hole is then an excavation
which can be carefully molded about my flesh in such a manner that
by squeezing myself into it and fitting myself tightly inside it, I shall
contribute to making a fullness of being exist in the world.”16 Romeo is
Bleeding is highly aware of this desire to suture the woman shut.
Jack Grimaldi is a man on a mission to fill the hole. Rather predict-
ably, he first attempts to do so with his penis. He becomes Mona’s
lover. For a time he, and we, are under the impression that he is able to
satisfy her. Near the movie’s conclusion, however, Mona tells him that
his sexual prowess has been less than satisfactory (“You never got to
me. You’re a dry fuck, Jack”). Discovering that the hole cannot be filled
with a mere penis, Jack pulls out a penis substitute. Grabbing a gun, he
pumps several bullets into Mona’s torso in a scene replete with eroti-
cized violence. Clad in a tight leather skirt, Mona falls to the ground in
slow motion, gushing blood and moaning orgasmically. As she dies, the
camera looks down upon her limp, violated body. Jack might now be
assured that she has felt his penetration. However, even a hail of bullets,
an exasperated ejaculation, cannot fill the hole.
Jack is never able to close the woman up, to defuse her threat. His
powerlessness to do so is suggested by the fact that, even after Mona’s
death, her ghost haunts him. Jack ends the movie as the proprietor of
the Holiday Diner, a rundown filling station/restaurant, somewhere in
an anonymous patch of desert chosen for him by the Witness Protection
Program. This dark, filthy establishment is the last of the film’s holes (it
is, at once, a shit-hole, hidey-hole and hole-in-the-wall). Not only has
Jack failed to fill the hole, he seems to have taken up lodging within it.
The vagina dentata has finally consumed its prey. Mona will appear in
this place, a smirking apparition in the doorway, long enough to star-
tle and terrify Jack, then return to nothingness. In becoming a ghost,
Mona becomes insubstantial, the very embodiment of emptiness, the
un-fillable hole par excellence.
Mona’s final, spectral appearance in the film also suggests that she
has eluded Jack’s efforts to make her the object of his gaze. As Ussher
remarks, the male gaze controls and contains “the physical difference
which ‘woman’ represents – the corporeality, the mess, the filth she is
feared to contain within.”17 The eye, it seems, might be used to stop up
the hole. Ussher continues, “In the archetypal female nude ‘woman’
is painted lying resplendent and exposed in a formalized, languid
pose … She is thus disarmed, the danger diluted, her body sanitized …
Her genitals are reduced to a slit, if that.”18 Jack uses the gaze in an
attempt to achieve this sanitizing of the woman. A committed voyeur,
he is frequently ensconced behind binoculars, often viewing lithesome,
scantily clad female bodies from afar. By keeping his distance, Jack turns
threatening reality into manageable image. He plays a sex game with his
childish mistress, Cheri (Juliette Lewis), in which she dances before him
in lingerie but is never invited into his bed. She has been reduced, as
Ussher would say, to a few formalized poses. Interestingly, Cheri’s erotic
dance never emphasizes her vagina. Unlike Mona, she keeps her legs
closed, her genitals reduced to something less than a slit. Mona’s pen-
chant for genital display seems a defiant statement that hers is a hole
that will not be made safe. In inviting Jack to gaze directly at her vulva,
she challenges him with the surely impossible task of closing it up.
Mona, not Jack, will command the gaze. After being thrust into the
back seat of Jack’s car, she studies his reflection in the rear-view mirror.
She does so without his knowledge. Once Jack begins to return her gaze,
he offers a rather weak attempt to belittle her: “So you’re the big hood-
lum? Personally, I don’t see it.” Mona quashes any claim that Jack may
be making to dominance with her ominous reply, “Keep looking.” Not
only does she ridicule his lack of perception, she invites his gaze, sneer-
ing at its power to reveal her. Even Jack’s long-suffering wife Natalie
(Annabella Sciorra), will reveal, via a series of photographs she has taken
of Jack and his paramours, that her husband’s infidelities have always
been known to her. The triumph of the female gaze is encapsulated by
the last moments of the film in which Jack admits he is haunted by the
way women “looked at me.”
All Jack’s attempts to fill the hole – with his penis, gun and eyes – end
in failure. His claims to phallic authority have wilted in the face of a
far more powerful vaginal regime. Does this mean, then, that Romeo is
Bleeding explores the woman=hole phenomenon only to suggest that
men are tragic figures, forever at the mercy of an awesome and unbeat-
able matriarchy? No. The film makes it very clear that what we see and
hear on screen should be treated with a degree of scepticism. This story
of a terrible, destructive woman is narrated by a man, Jack, who has
lost his mind. Rather than an elegy to fallen men, Romeo is Bleeding is a
damning commentary on the male Imaginary.
176 James D. Stone
Placed squarely inside Jack’s head, we are forced to experience events

through his eyes. The film’s narrative is structured as a series of memo-
ries and, of course, the veracity of recollection is always in doubt. We
first meet Jack, a broken man, at the Holiday Diner, where he proceeds
to tell us, through voiceover, how he has ended up in such a sorry
state. He will blame Mona. “What’s that? A woman was involved?” he
wryly and rhetorically intones. However, we cannot be sure that Mona
was Jack’s nemesis when the story he tells is so highly disjointed and
fragmented. The film flashes forward repeatedly. As Jack’s voiceover
lays out the details of his daily life, we are treated to a preview of the
scene in which Mona forces him to crash into a lamppost. It seems that
our narrator has lost control of his own story. He protests, “Hey, wait
a minute! I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. Pretend you didn’t
see that.” A dream sequence includes an image of Jack handcuffed to
a bed, a moment that will take place much later in the story. We only
ever experience Mona through the distorting lens of Jack’s crazed mind
and faulty memory.
Neither can we trust the film’s other male characters in their summa-
tion of Mona. To them, she is the ghastly face of modernity. Marvelling
at Mona’s abilities as a multiple-murderess, a hoodlum splutters, “She
took down that whole room. It’s a new world, right?,” he will again
identify Mona as a defining figure of her age with the words, “So, this
girl, this Demarkov, she’s very modern. Doesn’t give fuck about noth-
ing, except the you-know-what.” The new world that Mona represents
is one in which civilization has given way to barbarism (“It’s like the fall
of Rome out there. The streets, they’re gonna be filled with animals”).
We are led to believe that Mona is one of these roaming beasts. The
detective whose gun she so easily commandeered refers to her as “some
kind of an animal.” That Mona is a destroyer of civilization, a sacker of
Rome, is again suggested by Don Falcone, who labels her a “barbarian.”
If the world of Romeo is Bleeding is coming to an end, however, respon-
sibility for the apocalypse cannot be placed solely at Mona’s door.
Virtually every character in the film is marked by immorality and
decadence. Don Falcone tells us, “A life’s a life. Moral distinctions can
paralyze you.” He will comment on Jack’s nihilist depravity with the
words, “You know right from wrong, you just don’t care.” Jack is brought
low not only by his greed and immorality. The film is quite clear that his
downfall is ensured, in large part, by his masochistic tendencies. Time
and again Jack informs us that he is at the mercy of an internal mono-
logue prodding him into making self-destructive decisions. Running to
Mona’s side, he tells us, “It was that old voice in his head, the wrong
voice. It sucked his brain out, spit it on the floor. He could’ve gone
back, begged Natalie to forgive him. But he didn’t. Aah, that old voice.”
Dancing with Mona in a nightclub, he accepts responsibility for his
demise. “What’s hell?” he asks. “The time you should’ve walked, but
didn’t.” For the men of Romeo is Bleeding, Mona is a scapegoat. While
they are equally, if not more, responsible for their defeat and the destruc-
tion of their society, they choose to blame her.
Despite the slanderous allegations of men, Mona is the hero of Romeo
is Bleeding. Though Jack may regard her as a hole, her actions make it
quite clear that she is too complex a figure to be reduced to such a simple
characterization. Indeed, she undermines the whole notion that gender
can be reduced to genitalia. Mona is only a hole when she wants to be.
She will present herself as a sort of walking vagina, longing to be filled,
when she wants to control Jack. At other times she wields the phallus,
taking men’s guns and skilfully using her own. Ultimately, however, she
places very little value on the markers of gender. For Mona, the stuff of
femininity and masculinity are flimsy props, just a convenient means
to an end. For instance, while she enjoys wearing stiletto heels, they
do not define her. They may make her legs look great but she is in no
way bound to them, or to any other convention of gendered behaviour.
When the heels no longer have a use she rids herself of them, kicking
them off so that she can better sprint down the street to escape Jack. He,
on the other hand, is pitifully wedded to phallic symbols, flaunting his
police badge, binoculars, gun and handcuffs.
Mona takes them all away, handcuffing him to a bed at gunpoint,
making him, once again, the helpless object of her gaze. She acquires
these talismans of patriarchy not to gain any inherent power they might
possess, but to demonstrate the silliness of Jack’s reliance upon such
puffery. As she looks down at the bed and Jack’s supine body, she reveals
that she has had one of her arms surgically removed and replaced with
a prosthetic limb. She offers him sex, the fake arm jutting toward his
body like a strap-on dildo. Mona certainly has fun frightening Jack with
this appendage, but she has no need of it. “With or without?” she asks
him with a smirk. “Without,” Jack replies, only feeling at ease when the
woman forgoes her toying with what he perceives as a phallus. Mona
can have fun either way. She tosses the fake arm to one side and climbs
on top of Jack. Earlier in the film, when Jack loses a body part, his reac-
tion is quite different from Mona’s. After Don Falcone’s henchmen cut
off one of his toes he is transformed into a shambling wreck. Jack, a
man fully invested in phallic power and its symbolism, experiences this
injury as another in a series of emasculations.
178 James D. Stone
Romeo is Bleeding is a fever dream about holes that threaten to engulf

any hapless males who stray too near their edge. It is emphatically also
Jack’s dream, betraying his insecurities and the anxieties of the patriar-
chy to which he belongs. The film is a damning journey through the
male Imaginary, a mightily confused and psychotic realm that is com-
pletely unable to contain Mona, an individual happily free of its dictates.
Rather than slighting Mona, the film is highly critical of the men who
surround her. We are therefore presented with the subversive idea that
certain reductive characterizations of women – as holes, for example –
have no basis in reality, but are simply the fabrications of fearful males.
Mona will be blamed for bringing about the end of the world, pre-
cipitating a new fall of Rome. In this, the film is remarkably relevant
to the present moment in which blog posts routinely attack prominent
women – Nancy Pelosi, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are popular
targets – as embodiments of a coming apocalypse.19 Cultures in crisis
often inscribe their fears on the bodies of women. For example, in
late Victorian Europe and America the so-called New Woman, notable
for her education and independence, “was popularly identified with
an apocalyptic break-down of the natural or God-given order which
ordained sexual difference.”20 Throughout history, responsibility for
Armageddon has been placed at the door of notorious, overtly sexual
and independent women. Pandora and the Whore of Babylon were
both thought instrumental in bringing about an apocalypse. Romeo is
Bleeding reminds us that, though the end of days may, at some point in
the future, be caused by a wayward meteor or unstoppable pandemic,
we will probably find a way to lay the blame for our demise at the feet
of a woman.
Notes
1. Medak (1993).
2. Verhoeven (1995).
3. Taubin (1992).
4. Bongwater (1990).
5. Sartre (1957).
6. Irigaray (1985).
7. Legman (1968).
8. Legman (1968).
9. George (1996).
10. Knode (1991).
11. Sartre (1957).
12. Nead (1987).
13. Kristeva (1982).
14. Theweleit (1987).
15. Still (1997).

16. Sartre (1957).
17. Ussher (1997).
18. Ussher (1997).
19. “The Three Whores of The Great Apocalypse” (2012).
20. Beetham (1995).
Bibliography
Beetham, M. (1995). “Feminism and the End of Eras: Apocalypse and Utopia.”
The Ending of Epochs. London: D.S. Brewer, 89–110.
Bongwater (1990). The Power of Pussy. Shimmy Disc. CD.
George, D.H. (1996). The Lonely Other: A Woman Watching America. Urbana:
University of Illinois.
Irigaray, L. (1985). This Sex Which Is Not One. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP.
Knode, H. (1991). “Callie Khouri: Against All Odds.” Movieline. PMC, 1 June. Web. 17
May 2012. <http://movieline.com/1991/06/01/callie-khouri-against-all-odds/>.
Kristeva, J. (1982) “Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection.” CSUS. California
State University Sacramento. Web. 08 Feb. 2012. <http://www.csus.edu/indiv/o/
obriene/art206/readings/kristeva%20%20powers%20of%20horror%5B1%5D.
pdf>.
Legman, G. (1968). Rationale of the Dirty Joke: An Analysis of Sexual Humor.
New York: Grove.
Nead, L. (1987). “The Magdalen in Modern Times: The Mythology of the Fallen
Woman in Pre-Raphaelite Painting.” In R. Betterton (ed.), Looking On: Images of
Femininity in the Visual Arts and Media. London: Pandora: 73–92.
Sartre, J. (1957). Existentialism and Human Emotions. New York: Philosophical
Library.
Still, J. (1997). Feminine Economies: Thinking Against the Market in the Enlightenment
and the Late Twentieth Century. Manchester: Manchester UP.
Taubin, A. (1992). “Icepick Envy: The Boys Who Cried Misogyny.” Rev. of Basic
Instinct. The Village Voice 37.17: 35–36.
“The Three Whores of The Great Apocalypse.” (2012). Angry Marlin Sport Fishing.
19 June. Web. 10 Aug. 2012. <http://angrymarlin.com/the-three-whores-of-the-
great-apocalypse/>.
Theweleit, K. (1987). Male Fantasies: Vol 1. Cambridge: Polity.
Ussher, J. M. (1997). Fantasies of Femininity: Reframing the Boundaries of Sex. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP.
Filmography
Basic Instinct. Dir. P. Verhoeven. Perf. M. Douglas, S. Stone and G. Dzundza. Carolco
Pictures/Canal+, 1992.
Ghost. Dir. J. Zucker. Perf. P. Swayze, D. Moore and W. Goldberg. Paramount Pictures,
1990.
Pretty Woman. Dir. G. Marshall. Perf. R. Gere, J. Roberts and J. Alexander. Touchstone
Pictures/Silver Screen Partners IV, 1990.
Romeo Is Bleeding. Dir. P. Medak. Perf. G. Oldman, L. Olin and W. Wood. Poligram
Filmed Entertainment/Working Title Films/Hilary Henkin, 1993.
13
Ambiguous Exposures:
Gender-Bending Muscles of the
1930s Physique Photographs
of Tony Sansone and Sports
Photographs of Babe Didrikson
Jacqueline Brady
With recent advances in anabolic steroids, it is easy to see the gender-

bending aspects of a professional bodybuilder’s body. The shaven and
pumped-up pecs of male bodybuilders can grow droopy with gyne-
comastia, a condition in which the body produces unwanted oestro-
gen, inflating the pectoral area into protuberant lumps. Besides his
developing “bitch tits,” as they are called in gym vernacular, a male
bodybuilder’s testicles might shrink – in the words of one former Mr
Universe,1 “to the size of cocktail peanuts” – even as his body elsewhere
swells with giant balls of muscle. Similarly, a female bodybuilder, who
in using steroids actually ingests male hormones, might lose the hair
on her head, only to find it growing in patches on her face. Beyond the
obvious development of her “manly” muscular body and the noticeable
deepening of her voice, her menstruation might stop and her clitoris
can elongate to the size of a small penis.
Based on such facts, several theorists have noted that the discipline
of bodybuilding simultaneously reveals and conceals the artifice of
gender categories,2 feeding the public’s simultaneous fascination with
and fear of blurred erotic boundaries. As Leslie Heywood explains,
“By definition bodybuilding is a spectacle that performs the masculine;
or looked at another way it is the masquerade of the phallus unveiled,
stripped of its signifying power” (169). By virtue of their campy per-
formance of hyper masculinity, male bodybuilders compare to over-
the-top drag queens.3 Practiced in what Murray Healey calls “the art
of macho drag,”4 they actually belie the myth of male phallic power.
Meanwhile today’s female bodybuilders, who embrace a masculine
180
Ambiguous Exposures 181
model of power, recuperate the monolith of the phallus, as they work

to become “large and in charge” (in their own argot), creating their
own camp subculture.
It is not just the relatively recent use of anabolic steroids, however,
that has created gender blurring in bodybuilding. Bodybuilding pho-
tography documents the destabilization of the traditional masculine
form in America as far back as the 1930s. In this chapter, I argue that
gender troubles – specifically what has recently been identified as the
loss of phallic power by men and the restoration of that phallic power
by women – were already apparent in the photographic media of
muscular bodies during the years between the First and Second World
Wars. In striking contrast to the massive, upright and phallic model
of Modernism’s “Heroic Era” – epitomized in America by the popular
bodybuilder Charles Atlas and throughout Europe by the rising figure
of the fascist soldier – American physique photographers of the same
period focused on a different type of body. Throughout the 1930s, “phy-
sique photographers” exposed an undefended, naked male bodybuilder
in positions of repose. The innovative depictions of the erotic, muscular
male body marked a distinct style shift from the earlier pictorialist pho-
tography, which situated strongmen in heroic poses.
Edwin Townsend’s photographs of New-York based physique model
Anthony “Tony” Sansone epitomize this new trend.5 In Townsend’s
original photos of Sansone, the strongman’s straightforward assertion of
masculine power is replaced by a reclining male body and a vulnerably
naked, non-erect penis. These physique photographs uncover the lie of
naturalized masculine omnipotence, exposing majestic organs as mere
human flesh. Yet, at the same time as physique photographers were
softening traditional representations of manly power, phallic power
became reinscribed in the muscularly armoured body of a woman.
Called “Muscle Moll” for her mesomorphic body type, the Olympic
athlete Babe Didrickson was constantly configured in newspaper pho-
tos as an unbeatably aggressive, Amazonian body. Didrikson’s muscular
body disrupted the even flow between gender and anatomy, instigating
a crisis of femininity.
Physique photography in historical perspective
The new gender-bending images of 1930s physique photography owe

their existence to the overall expansion of the bodybuilding industry
due to new marketing strategies, including an early kind of “target
marketing.” Appealing to different types of clientele, Depression-era
182 Jacqueline Brady
physiculturists sold a wide variety of bodybuilding products. Charles

Atlas offered a cheap mail-order bodybuilding system for the down-and-
out young man interested in building a brawny body to recuperate his
manly potency. Tony Sansone opened posh “body culture studios” in
New York City that appealed to stylish men who wanted to see and to
have fashionable bodies like those of Hollywood actors. Ultimately, an
important by-product of the bodybuilding industry’s target marketing
and manufacturing of different bodybuilder types was the mass pro-
duction of ambiguous photographic images that could appeal to various
consumers.
To better understand the significance of this innovation, it is helpful
to have some history of bodybuilding photography. At the turn of the
20th century, a challenging task faced the first bodybuilding photogra-
phers: how could they validate the mass consumption of the unclothed
muscular body? Photographers had to first extract it from the mire of
realism, disassociating it from the diseased, pathologized and criminal-
ized bodies of the modern state’s medical, scientific and juridical prac-
tices. They then had to raise the body-built body above the disreputable
stages of the circus; and this they did by quite literally propping it up
as an object of artistic display. “Pictorialist” photographers began by
positioning bodybuilders on pedestals, like statues, and framing them
in heroic poses borrowed from the Classical iconography.
In one typical pictorialist photograph, the father of modern body-
building Eugen Sandow is ennobled by a stand that bears his name.
Sandow raises his right arm to the camera and looks at his own bulbous
bicep. In this way, the viewer’s gaze is directed away from the visually
obtrusive tin fig leaf covering his groin and rerouted towards his erect
muscular construction. Thomas Waugh6 accurately interprets the body-
building “arm shot” such as this as a phallus stand-in, which operates
as an assertion of phallic power in the absence of the penis. These clas-
sical images of Sandow, replicated throughout bodybuilding until today,
marked a turning point in the standard dominant cultural procedures
involving photography. Heavily muscled but scantily clad, Sandow
came to represent a physical ideal through bodybuilding photography,
which situated him in the acclaimed place of the “most perfectly built
man in existence.” As a mass-produced form in increasingly wider circu-
lation, Sandow’s body served as a model both to emulate and desire. His
commodified image formed the foundations that the 1930s physique
photographers, with their different target markets, would later sculpt
into homoerotic images.
The Charles Atlas Phallus: an antidote to war

and depression
Charles Atlas (born Angelo Siciliano) offered a tranquilizing antidote

to Depression-era impotence and a remedy for the malaise of war. The
bodybuilder’s inexpensive mail-order system of isometric exercises
began to flourish in America in the 1930s, when he hired public-
ity agent and ad man Charles Roman. Roman’s continuous tabloid
advertising built brand recognition and increased sales. To exploit
the insecurities of young American men during the Depression era,
Roman created the famous Atlas ads with the comic strip story of Mac,
the 97-pound weakling who transforms into an imposing hero. One
of the most recognized trademarks in history, these ads featuring the
“chump”-turned-”champ” whose “shame” shifts to “fame” ran in over
500 different publications. With Mac as its commercial stamp, the Atlas
system of dynamic tension promised quick and painless transformation,
assuring Americans that a new body and “new man of great power and
energy” was only seven days away.
In Atlas’s innovative advertisements, muscles and masculinity are
made homologous through a process that is catalysed by violence. Here,
Atlas foreshadows the rise of what Hal Foster7 calls the “determinant ur-
figure” of the 1930s “worker-soldier” whose “body become weapon” is
armoured for defence. Mac is a scrawny, de-sexed slip of a fellow who,
while at the beach, gets sand kicked into his face by a careless, brawny
hunk. One of his female companions is so impressed with the hulking
invader that she abandons her smaller male companion for the virile
intruder. In the Atlas ad, this is the denouement in the weakling’s life:
“the insult that made the man out of Mac.” He starts the Atlas program,
rebuilds himself into the shape of his aggressor and returns to the beach
to re-stake his claim. Predictably, he beats his competitor, wins back his
manly pride and recaptures his girlfriend. By this advertising logic, liv-
ing as a full man means armouring the body in defence against aggres-
sive onslaught. To all the unmuscled men whom Atlas called “limp” and
“half dead,” his ad declared: “I’ll show you how it really feels to live.”
A photograph of a bare-chested Atlas standing on the beach with his
fists clenched at his sides accompanies the comic strip narrative. In this
type of imaging, Atlas’s full physique represents the totalizing phallus8 –
upright, hard and powerful. The apparent movement of phallic power
from its location in the genitals to its dispersion over the whole mus-
cular frame is evidenced plainly in the following pronouncement by
Atlas: “I took my clothes off and showed them I was the man I said
I was.”9 Still, Atlas’s swagger raises a question: with his clothes off, what
marker of masculinity did he show his audience? The strategic answer
given by Atlas’s publicity campaign was, of course, his muscles.
In terms of American history, the connection of bodybuilding to the
phallus is at least as old as Bernarr Macfadden, who discovered Charles
Atlas and founded Physical Culture, a popular magazine replete with arti-
cles on maintaining manly potency. Macfadden invented the peniscope,
a pumping machine designed to enlarge the penis to phallic proportions.
“The Pump” is also a term in bodybuilding culture describing the desirable
feeling of fullness of a recently worked muscle. Arnold Schwarzenegger
has a famous soliloquy on this topic in Pumping Iron (1997), wherein he
waxes effusive about, “The greatest feeling, or the most satisfying you can
get, is the pump ... It’s as satisfying as coming ... So can you believe how
much I am in heaven? ... I’m coming day and night.” In his gushy ren-
dering of the pump, as in Atlas’s swaggering threat to take off his clothes,
Schwarzenegger displaces desire into his muscles such that his bodybuilt
body becomes a substitute for the phallus.
Paradoxically, as the assertion of phallic power becomes more evident
in the muscular body, the penis recedes from view. Chris Holmlund
makes this point with her observation that the movie camera in
Pumping Iron never pauses on the sexual organs of the competitors
because “to look might reveal too much or too little, threatening the
tenuous equation established between masculinity, muscularity and
men.”10 Kenneth Dutton adds to this with his observation that the pos-
ing trunks of bodybuilders, as opposed to the padded g-strings of erotic
dancers, are designed to de-emphasize the genitals.11 The downplaying
of the penis helps in not distracting the gaze from the phallic build up
of muscularity. Over and over again, to maintain the myth of the pene-
trating phallus, patriarchal culture must cloak the actual vulnerability of
the penis. When concealed, the penis can keep the dream alive, becom-
ing an enchanting package ready to burst from its wrapping. When
revealed, however, the penis runs the risk of defenceless exposure, as
in Bob Mizer’s description of physique photographer Al Urban’s models
with “the tiniest dicks in the world.”12 Susan Bordo explains the logic
behind this game of penis peek-a-boo: “Indeed, the penis – insofar as
it is capable of being soft as well as hard, injured as well as injuring …
insofar as it is vulnerable, perishable body – haunts the phallus, threat-
ens its undoing. Patriarchal culture generally wants it out of sight.”13
Even as the “World’s Most Perfectly Developed Man’, Charles Atlas
could not sustain the myth of the phallus. Photography was joining
forces with the industries of entertainment, fashion and health in popu-

larizing a glamorized male body. Thus, in the shadows of Atlas’s popu-
larity, haunting his highly visible personification of American potency,
appeared the body of the male homosexual. Moreover, in a very different
type of photograph of Atlas, we see that physique photography “sculpted
the heroic along with the homoerotic.”14 Unlike the Mac advertise-
ments, which feature Atlas in frontal assertions of phallic power, a dif-
ferent kind of photo reveals a dreamy Atlas with his knees pulled inward.
With one hand resting behind his head, flirtatiously touching his hair,
Atlas seductively opens up his torso to the viewer’s gaze. Meanwhile,
his other hand relaxes on his stomach, just above his viewable pubic
hair. Contrary to the direct gaze he maintains in his Mac advertise-
ment, Atlas looks upward here, as if in sexual bliss. This photograph of
Atlas invites the viewer to watch him touch himself and partake in his
autoerotic moment.
Toby Miller explains that images like this pacify the male body; as
a result, they create confusion about who should consume them and
produce destabilizing contradictions in masculinity.15 By consistently
situating bare men in erotic postures and as objects of the gaze, phy-
sique photographs of Atlas’s era intensified this confusion. Atlas also
reinforced this confusion in an article titled “Building the Physique of a
Greek God,”16 which he wrote for Physical Culture the same year that he
won Macfadden’s “Most Handsome Man Competition.” Here he bragged
that when he was brought to an artist’s studio a man was so awed by
his body that he “felt my arms and shoulders and asked me to strip so
that he might see my figure. ‘Well,’ he said, as he looked me over, ‘Your
development is splendid. I can use you a little later’.”
Miller’s typology of the penis in The Technologies of Truth (140) (drawn
from Joseph Maguire’s typology of the sporting body) helps us illuminate
the shifts in these varying views of the bodybuilder’s penis, particularly as
Charles Atlas demonstrates them. Indeed, the paradigm of the phallus falls
short when handling the complexity of Atlas’s changeable instrument. On
Miller’s model, Atlas’s monumental penis becomes a three-pronged organ:
dominating, disciplined and mirroring. Atlas’s “dominating penis” – a
sign of the phallic power that he lords over all the limp men around him
whom he sees as “half dead” – merges with a “disciplined penis,” which
regulates and controls itself with the help of Atlas’s system of dynamic ten-
sion. However, clearly Atlas, who is asked to strip, looked over and then
promised that “he will be used later,” also offers up a commodified body
with a “mirroring penis” that sparks consumptive desire. Tony Sansone
would take the muscular mirroring body to a new level.
Tony Sansone’s new body culture: manly muscles

in womanly poses
During the inter-war years, bodybuilding began to walk an obvious

tightrope between heterosexual and homosexual interests, becoming
more inclusive in its marketing strategies and distribution practices. The
front pages of physique magazines targeted the “family man,” proffer-
ing articles on potency exercises for conjugal happiness. Meanwhile, in
the back page space for pen pals, appeared the personal letters of men
seeking men. The beginnings of a covert gay subculture connected to
sports developed at this time in tandem with an identifiable group of
gay physique photographers.17
Physique magazines publicized the normative body – an upright,
stealthy, conquering form – along with the alluring, “mirroring” form of
the masculine body withdrawn in sensual recline. Increasingly, the male
body of this new set of physique photographers, directed towards and
deriving from a homoerotic gaze, was one of receptive postures, modern
dance poses and homosexual references. The term “expressive posing”
came into use to describe this new style. The seductive images of Tony
Sansone, taken by homosexual photographers such as Edwin Townsend,
disrupted a patriarchal system fearful of positioning men as objects of
erotic display. Profiting from the advancement of photographic tech-
nologies, the inter-war physique photographers appeared less defensive
about their art form than the turn-of-the-century pictorialists who had
blazed the dicey trail of the male nude body several decades earlier.
Consequently, this new group of artists was able to diverge from the suf-
ficiently well-established tradition of strongman photography, imbued
as it was with stilted poses and classical references. In their new camera
lenses, gym-built male bodies no longer needed to code heroic power.
Inscribed with a new artistic stylization and photographic technique,
these handsome, naked and languid male bodies personified a new
erotic and aesthetic bodybuilder type who arouses desire more than
esteem.
The Tony Sansone physique photos are the strongest examples of
this emerging sensibility. Several of the Sansone photographs evoke the
codes of sadomasochism. They feature Sansone in positions of domina-
tion or submission, holding a riding crop, leading a subservient slave
(bodybuilder Harry Paschall) or bound in chains. In other more con-
templative photographs, Sansone appears lost in a private utopia. These
grainy, softly focused, sepia-toned studio shots convey a degree of sen-
suousness heretofore unseen in pictorialistic proclamations of power.18
Sansone holds his muscular body in positions of graceful repose or in

fluid modern dance moves; and in contrast to the stock “arm shots” of
most bodybuilding photos, Sansone’s hands and eyes often rest on his
own reposing body and shimmering flesh. With his stunning hand-
someness, which was literally topped off with an extremely appealing
face, Sansone epitomized the glamorous body of Hollywood.
The signpost of this novel homoerotic style, as Waugh notes, was not
just a handsome face but also an open view of the non-erect penis.19 To
maintain a modicum of modesty, earlier bodybuilders like Sandow were
cautiously covered in a tin leaf, a strip of cloth or posing trunks. The
photographers who did risk frontal nudity posed their physique models
in non-compromising positions so that their genitals were not in view.
The new group of photographers, however, abandoned the constraint
of the sheathed penis, stripping it of coverage for an open view of geni-
talia. Edwin Townsend, Earle Forbes, Robert Gebhart, Lou Melan and
Al Urban all photographed their physique models completely naked,
only cloaking their penises “after the fact,” during the process of repro-
duction, when they went to work airbrushing their catalogue sheets and
publishable prints (209).
Earlier versions of the Sansone photographs exemplify this shift. In
one such series, Sansone appears in a standing pose, contemplatively
looking down at a receptacle that he holds with one arm at his hip.
The once highly restricted rendition is a fully nude image, but there is
also the magazine version in which Sansone wears the famous fig leaf
paint-over, as well as the Modern Classics rendering in which Sansone’s
genitals are airbrushed out so that only a pubic mound remains visible.
This spectrum of Sansone nudes is interesting because it insists on the
destabilized condition of the photographic text. Despite an overarching
sensibility that encourages the reading of the male body as a desirable
erotic object, the varying Sansone photographs show up the intersec-
tion of several gazes, reminding us of the various contingencies that fig-
ured into their construction and distribution. The complex of gazes that
took part in the production of the Sansone photographs combined the
gazes of the physique photographer; the specialized audience through
which the restricted Sansone images circulated; the more public phy-
sique magazines; their magazine readers; Sansone himself; and various
private viewers connected to the network of photographers and artists
imaging Sansone.
Insofar as they provide a candid exposure of the non-erect penis and
a general texture of softer physical lines, the Sansone photographs help
to dismantle the popular conflation that marries man with phallus.
Unlike the firm muscular poses of the strongman photos, Sansone’s

portrayal of supple masculinity – made up of contemplative and erotic
gestures – suggests emotional interiority. In this way, Sansone subverts
the built-up male body as external weapon prevailing in the manner of
Charles Atlas. Even so, these Sansone photographs are not completely
satisfactory as counter-forms to normative masculinity. Focusing on a
single model with pensive body postures and a sentimental stylization,
the Sansone photos reinforce the ideal of blissful individualization. In
them, Sansone, like the phallus, is perfectly self-contained, impervious
to the community and world around him. In this manner, the phy-
sique photos fall short as resistant forms because they respond to the
normative “body become weapon” with a reactionary romanticism that
can be readily absorbed within the capitalist framework of narcissistic
individualism.
Just as the photographs of Atlas and Sansone simultaneously recon-
struct and deconstruct hegemonic norms, so too do the photographs
of one famous female athlete of the same period. A discussion of 1930s
gender-bending muscle bodies is not complete without a consideration
of the popular American athlete Mildred “Babe” Didrikson, because her
transgressive body was one of the most exhaustively mediated bodies
of that time period.
Muscle moll: phallic power and pretty hats
Babe Didrikson’s legend involves a well-noted transformation of self-

image from the subversive shape of an aggressive tomboy basketball
player and track-and-field athlete into a self-proclaimed businesswoman
golfer. As a tomboy athlete, Didrikson’s gender transitive physique and
unconventional looks – her short hair, strong jaw, unmade-up face, wiry
muscles and boyish attire – rendered her “abject” according to Barbara
Creed’s apt description of that term as the “monstrous feminine” figure
who blurs the conventional boundaries of masculinity and femininity,
natural and unnatural and normal and abnormal.20 Paradoxically, it
is precisely on account of her masculine qualities that Didrikson was
so readily received by the sports media, which, then as now, favoured
a male morphological ideal. Because the sports photos that represent
Didrikson code her body with phallic power, Didrikson’s gender identi-
fication remains unstable even when strategies to neutralize and femin-
ize her are escalated on both the personal and public fronts. The Babe’s
embodiment of conflicting gender codes shows both how gender is a
performance and how the act of gendering is based in performativity,
which Judith Butler famously defined as “that power of discourse to

produce effects through reiteration.”21
Greatly publicized by popular sports journalists of the decade, “Babe”
Didrikson became a household word, partly on account of her ath-
leticism and freakish capacity to excel as a woman at so many sports,
including running, hurdling, high-jumping, throwing, fencing, swim-
ming, boxing and golfing. Between the years 1930 and 1932 Didrikson
held American, Olympic or World records in five separate track-and-
field events. A decade later, after her metamorphosis into a wealthy
lady golfer, Didrikson continued her triumphant streak, winning 82 golf
tournaments.
Susan K. Cahn22 has persuasively demonstrated that an ongoing oppo-
sition between female athleticism, such as Babe’s, and constructions of
femininity exists in America. According to Cahn, certain sports, such as
football, are designated as exclusively male domains; while others, such
as tennis or golf, are open to female participation. Judith Butler notes
a similar divisive practice regarding the body in constructions of gen-
der.23 Butler explains that one normalizing tactic of hegemonic culture
involves the separation and distribution of parts of the body along a
sex-gender axis (133). In this way, gender constructions are maintained
by assigning certain portions of the body a proper place and function.
For example, women are identified by a womb that reproduces and by
breasts that nurture infants, whereas men are identified by a penis that
penetrates and – thanks to Atlas – by muscles that produce and protect.
With the insights of Cahn and Butler, we can see the obvious threat that
Didrikson would have posed to normative culture as a versatile athlete
with a lean muscularity, strong face, truculent personality and fierce
talent. As Cahn writes: “In its most fantastic form, the image of the
female athlete signalled a total inversion of established gender relations,
an indication that female dominance might eventually replace men’s
traditional authority” (209). Indeed, Didrikson seemed well aware of
her counter normative identity and did not rejoice in her designation as
abject: “They seem to think I’m a strange and unnatural being summed
up in the words Muscle Moll.”24
Although enchanted by Didrikson’s athletic skill, sports journalists
were also intensely anxious that she might symbolize the death of gen-
der distinctions. Across the nation, they compared and contrasted the
“cocksure” Didrikson to men and interpreted her body as monstrous.
Paul Gallico, for instance, disparaged Didrikson for her masculine
appearance – her “piano-wire” muscles and “hatchet face” – and insisted
that all female athletes maintain their “S.A.” or sex appeal.25 In Redbook
magazine, psychologist William Marton explained Didrikson’s athletic

skill in terms of her manly nature.26 Marston described Didrikson as “a
dominant, lone-wolf, conqueror type, almost unheard of among women
since the days of the ancient amazons” (63). Setting her up as a hunger-
ing and hunting power, Marston wrote, “No other woman athlete whom
I have had an opportunity to observe seems to have experienced athletic
hunger pangs to the extent reported by Miss Didrikson. In this respect
she is unique among girls and precisely resembles men” (63).
Other newspaper reporters attempted to soften Didrikson’s masculine
athleticism by focusing on her feminine attributes. Inevitably, they
mention her competence in cooking and sewing as additions to the
lengthy list of manly sports that she had mastered. Often reporters
resorted to describing the details of her clothing and accessories. When
she purchased a frilly hat it made headlines and the discussion of her
attire came first in many newspaper reports. Cahn explains that there
are two types of narratives told in American culture to assuage the
tension between female athleticism and womanhood.27 One cultural
myth suggests that women athletes don a masculine mask during their
participation in sports events. This illusory armament is then removed
for daily life, when they reveal their more delicate feminine nature.
The second myth involves a more complete transformation, similar to
Didrikson’s, from adolescent tomboy to fully mature feminine woman.
In Didrikson’s case, the transmutation into a glamorous woman was
partly a matter of a re-stylization, accomplished with the help of swank
clothing and fashion accessories. This transfiguration, however, was
also coded in Didrikson’s body by a frequently remarked upon soma
shift, from an earlier lean and linear muscularity to an hour-glass shape
with wider hips, larger breasts and a smaller waistline. Henry McLemore
and other reporters enforced the narrative of Didrikson’s evolution from
“button-breasted” poor girl into a curvaceous wealthy lady.28
In both her tomboy and lady incarnations, the configurations of
Didrikson turn on notions of the phallus, as do the stereotypes of butch
and femme lesbians according to Chris Holmlund.29 Didrikson is first
constructed – and self-constructed – as a “Man-Girl” (in Paul Gallico’s
words) with something powerful between her legs; later, she is config-
ured as a “feminine lady” who reveres he-men. When she is depicted as
a tomboy, the will to power generally associated with the phallus gets
grafted onto Didrikson’s muscular body, marking her as a penetrating
form. Indeed, Didrikson’s stock warning to golfing competitors – “Well,
I’m just gonna have to loosen my girdle and let her fly” – compares
with Atlas’s threat to unleash his manly force by removing his pants.
In goading her opponent that she is going to “let her fly,” Didrikson indi-
cates that her girdle contains the hidden power that she is about to reveal.
Such a candid reference to her private parts undermines traditional ideas
of gender by demystifying the secret spaces of the female body.30 When
she is later depicted as a lady golfer, however, Didrikson’s conquering
desire is obverted, rerouted and eventually absorbed by her husband.
For instance, allaying an earlier rumour that Didrikson was actually a
man, Life magazine cheerfully announced her self-transformation in the
headline: “Babe is a Lady now: The world’s most amazing athlete has
learned how to cook and care for her huge husband.”31 With this trans-
formation, the phallocentric cycle that Holmlund notices is completed,
for the married lady Babe has, in effect, handed her tomboy phallus over
to her husband, hopefully for safekeeping.
However, the photographic images of Didrikson that range through
her metamorphosis show that she never completely relinquishes the
phallic power that resides in her muscular body and heroic stance. In
the same years that the new physique photographers were situating
Sansone in receptive poses traditionally coded as feminine, newspa-
per sports photographers were framing Didrikson in heroic postures
traditionally associated with masculinity. Staged outdoor shots of
Didrikson repeatedly fix her in the pictorial poses of power. In one such
photograph, Didrikson is cross-dressed in the regalia of a boy athlete
and poses with her javelin, phallic symbol par excellence. With her
quadricep muscles pressing against the restraints of her skin, Didrikson
assumes the flexed position of the archer – an icon at least as old as
Pindar and an image that is recycled over and over in the repertoire of
bodybuilding poses. In another image, Didrikson is propped up on the
centre of the Olympic victory stand, as stately as Sandow. These photo-
graphs may highlight Didrikson as a specular female body, but they do
not turn her into a passive object. The body of Didrikson that appears
always seems to be doing. This point is most obvious in photo stories in
which multiple “action shots” underscore Didrikson’s position as active
agent by catching her mid-performance – straddling a hurdle, soaring
above a high bar, pushing past a finishing line.
Later newspaper photographs feature Didrikson as a golfing lady.
Nonetheless, these standard athletic shots cannot sustain the feminine
image that they apparently work to construct. Most commonly, these
photos centre Didrikson splendidly on a golf course with a club in her
hands. The post-transformation Didrikson wears make-up, longer hair
and form-fitting dresses. Her mature figure is hourglass shaped with a
prominent bosom and curvy hips. In spite of these obvious markers of
femininity, however, Didrikson’s athletic image is unsettlingly ambiva-

lent in terms of gender categories. In the contemporary parlance of
queer theory, Didrikson remains a stone butch in femme drag, disrupt-
ing the smooth current between gender and soma type. The stone or
immovable and impenetrable quality in her butchiness derives partly
from her organic body, for her lat-span and strong face overwhelm her
daintily outfitted form. Additionally, even though Didrikson might
appear ladylike in her new clothing style, hip and breast proportions
and game choice, the convention of the sports photograph still fashions
her in heroic poses, similar to the bodybuilder’s arm-shot. The traces of
phallic power evidenced in the forceful swing of her golf club contradict
her spiffy new femininity. Didrikson cannot completely change her sub-
jectivity from masculine to feminine because her organic body exceeds
traditional gender categories and the sports photographs of her disrupt
the trajectory of her lady-like self-image by placing her in positions of
manly, authoritative power. In these photos, Didrickson balances pre-
cariously on the brink of conflicting gender constructions.
The various 1930s photographs of muscular bodies examined in this
chapter are not quite as immobile as Roland Barthes32 presumed photo-
graphs generally to be. With their imaging of Babe Didrikson as a linear,
penetrating power dressed up in lady’s clothes, the sports photos ride
the same gender-bending borderline as the physique photographs that
portray the muscular Tony Sansone as a voluptuous, erotic repository
and Charles Atlas as a beefcake pin-up in leopard-skin bikini bottoms.
What these Depression-era photographs show us is the topsy-turvy
movement of muscular bodies as they function in an expanding mar-
ketplace that is constantly reaching for new consumers. Along the way,
the photographs of 1930s muscle bodies bring to light the unstable and
artificial periphery between masculinity and femininity. Shining down
on the tenuous connections between muscles and men, these 1930s
photos show us that to the degree that “dicks sell”33 in the profitable
performance of masculinity, ambiguity and muscles help.34
Notes
1. Quoted in Solotaroff (1991), 30.
2. See Heywood (1997) and Ian (1995).
3. Fussell (1994).
4. Healey (1994).
5. See Sansone Modern Classics (1932) and Rhythm (1935).
6. Waugh (1996).
7. Foster (1994).
8. For another comparison of the bodybuilder to the phallus, see Ian (1995).
9. Quoted in Gaines (1982), 82.
10. Holmlund (1997).
11. Dutton (1995).
12. Quoted in Waugh (1996), 210.
13. Bordo (1994).
14. Budd (1997).
15. Miller (1998).
16. Atlas (1921).
17. Waugh (1996), 208.
18. Dutton (1995).
19. Waugh (1996).
20. Creed (1986).
21. Butler (1993).
22. Cahn (1994).
23. Butler (1987).
24. See “I Blow My Own Horn” in American Magazine 121. June 1936: 103.
25. Gallico (1938).
26. Marston (1933).
27. Cahn (1994).
28. Quoted in Johnson and Williamson (1975).
29. Holmlund (1997).
30. In her essay “Feminist Bodybuilding” Pamela Moore (1997) argues persua-
sively that female bodybuilders, much like Didrikson, subvert the patriarchal
gaze by openly displaying their muscular bodies as the sites of contesting
ideas.
31. Life Magazine, 23. June 1947: 90.
32. Barthes (1981).
33. Miller (1998).
34. Support for this project was provided by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded
by the Professional Staff Congress and the City University of New York.
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14
Reframing Gender and Visual
Pleasure: New Signifying Practices
in Contemporary Cinema
Frances Pheasant-Kelly
The term, “to-be-looked-at-ness” (116), coined by Laura Mulvey1 in

her seminal article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, and assigned
to women as sexual objects in Hollywood visual culture, has assumed
a new egalitarianism in contemporary cinema. While the premise of
Mulvey’s essay entailed an objectification of the female body by an
assumed male spectator, film now diverges from these norms of female
representation. In Mulvey’s model, the classic Hollywood film typically
positioned its female as a passive object within the narrative, merely
functioning in relation to an active male who prompted the story to
unfold. Related studies of masculinity by film scholar Steve Neale2
claimed that the male in film could not be subject to an erotic look
because of Hollywood’s underlying fear of homosexuality. However,
recent filmmakers adopt increasingly diverse ways of representing
and looking at both sexes. For example, Girlfight3 presents its female
protagonist in a gender-neutral mode. The framing of Diana Guzman
(Michelle Rodriguez) does not distinguish her from her male counter-
parts, and lingering shots of her body focus solely on her strength and
stamina. Likewise, the cinematography of Black Swan4 accentuates the
female lead’s musculature and agility, while both women protagonists
propel their respective narratives.
In contrast, we see the contemporary male body not only sexually
objectified by other male characters but also offered seductively for specta-
tor consumption. Both Casino Royale5 and Fight Club6 encourage a desiring
spectator gaze towards the male body. Moreover, the male body is often
a site of physical violation, signalling a newly emergent vulnerability for
men in cinema. This chapter thus examines a range of films in order to
exemplify unfolding trends in cinematic representations of gender, illus-
trating how Mulvey’s argument, though relevant to certain Hollywood
195
196 Frances Pheasant-Kelly
films, is now largely redundant, reflecting the growing status of women, as

well as an ongoing, already well-documented crisis in masculinity.
Mulvey, gender and the male gaze
Mulvey made explicit the concept of gendered viewing in theoretical

models of cinematic spectatorship when she proposed the concept of the
male gaze. Claiming that “[t]he determining male gaze projects its fantasy
on to the female figure, which is styled accordingly,” (116) she utilized
Jacques Lacan’s7 notion of the mirror phase and Sigmund Freud’s8 discus-
sion of scopophilia to vindicate her thesis. According to Freud, scopo-
philia references a point in a child’s psychosexual development known
as the “sadistic anal stage” (193) where the child’s desire for mastery of
its own body may manifest in displays of cruelty or, alternatively, as an
investigative voyeuristic gaze. Mulvey transposed Freud’s notion of sad-
ism and associated voyeurism onto the male character in film, who, she
suggested “controls the film fantasy and emerges as the representative of
power in a further sense: as the bearer of the look of the spectator” (117).
She went on to explain that even as the spectator looks on voyeuristically,
another mode of viewing is in operation. Here, the spectator identifies
narcissistically with the male character by a process akin to the Lacanian
mirror phase whereby the “male movie star’s glamorous characteristics
are [...] not the erotic object of the gaze, but those of the more perfect,
more complete, more powerful ideal ego” (117). According to Mulvey,
the sadistic intent of the male character (and by extension, the spectator)
emerges in Hollywood films where women are passive in the narrative
and serve as sexual objects. In instances where the narrative involves
resistance to such control, women fall victim to death or marriage.
Though such a gendered gaze had always implicitly existed in earlier
discussions of film theory, Mulvey thus laid bare the mechanisms through
which this might operate. However, there were certain omissions in her
thesis, and though she later went on to acknowledge and indeed rectify
some of these, her model was purely hypothetical and foregrounded psy-
choanalytical rather than empirical study. Later analysis of spectatorship
not only addressed some of these absences (for example, the gay specta-
tor), but also went on to consider real audience responses to viewing film.
Important approaches include those of Richard Dyer9 and Steven Neale,
who consider the objectification of the male body, and Jackie Stacey,10
who documents the responses of female audiences to women in film.
Stacey’s empirical study of female spectatorship contests Mulvey’s
approach, illustrating how the “construction of the textual spectator
Reframing Gender and Visual Pleasure 197
often occurs in strong opposition to the so-called empirical spectator.”

(22). Adopting an ethnographic methodology, Stacey investigates British
female spectators’ memories of female Hollywood stars by targeting read-
ers of two women’s magazines. In a related way, Mary Ann Doane’s11
study of melodrama also reclaims the female gaze, arguing that such films
enable the woman’s assumption of the position of subject of the gaze.
Conversely, Neale extends Mulvey’s psychoanalytic argument but
considers looks between male characters and spectators, rather than
those directed at women. Arguing that narcissistic identification with
male characters may induce feelings of inadequacy in the viewer, he
suggests “the look at the male produces just as much anxiety as the look
at the female” (13). He goes on to explain that film may negotiate the
homoerotic implications of men looking at men by the use of distract-
ing spectacles such as scenes of combat and violence. The gaze of the
spectator may also be mediated through the looks of other characters,
because “male homosexuality is constantly present as an undercurrent,
as a potentially troubling aspect of many films and genres, but one that
is dealt with symptomatically and that has to be repressed” (19).
Dyer suggests an alternative way by which visual culture responds to the
male body as sexual object occurs in respect of the male pin-up, with this
having some correspondence with the way in which Daniel Craig as Bond
is portrayed as erotic spectacle in the beach scene of Casino Royale. Dyer
argues that the problems of potential feminization inherent in the male
pin-up can be negated by his adoption of a different kind of (returning)
gaze to that assumed by the female model. He contends, “[w]here the
female model typically averts her eyes, expressing modesty, patience and
a lack of interest in anything else, the male model looks off or up” (123).
Accordingly, the male pin-up may stare into the distance as if focusing
attention elsewhere, or otherwise directly address the viewer, thereby
maintaining agency and essentially disavowing his position as sexual
object of the gaze. Dyer adds that the male body is often engaged in
action but “even when not caught in the act, the male image still prom-
ises activity by the way that the body is posed [...] more often, the male
pin-up is not supine anyhow, but standing taut ready for action” (129).
Overall, therefore, the theoretical positioning of both men and
women as objects of visual pleasure has been problematic, raising
homoerotic or feminizing possibilities in relation to looking at men, or
desiring looks that, because of the long-entrenched power relationships
intrinsic to the gaze, impose limitations on both women characters
and viewers. However, cinematic signifying practices have undergone
change, consistent with the development of feminism, equal rights
and more generalized trends towards androgyny. This has led to strong
female characters promoting the narrative, such as Sigourney Weaver’s
portrayal of Lieutenant Ripley in Alien.12 Alternatively, as Lapsley and
Westlake note,13 even where a female remains the object of a desiring
gaze, she may be the recipient of admiring looks from both female
characters and spectators. Citing Pretty Woman14 as an example, they
note that its protagonist, Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts), is the object of
a voyeuristic gaze directed by both female and male characters and
“a point of identification for spectators of both sexes” (189).
The spate of new millennial “chick-flicks” affords further opportuni-
ties for admiring female looks between female characters, and from
female audiences in narratives where women are the driving force. Sex
and the City15 is a useful example, illustrating independent women in
films targeted primarily towards female audiences. Girlfight especially
exemplifies a resistance to the phallic eye of camera, spectator and male
characters. As Mary Beltrán16 contends, “Girlfight challenges gender typ-
ing with respect to the physical and mental training we associate with
heroism [and] comments on the qualities associated with masculinity
in US culture, and the tradition of resistance to women demonstrating
such so-called ‘masculine’ traits” (194).
Girlfight and the male gaze
Girlfight charts the career of Latino character, Diana Guzman, who aspires
to be a boxer but whose social environments of home and school are
resistant to her potential on grounds of sexism. The gym where Diana
applies to train is also, at first, un-receptive to women boxers, and
Diana’s coach, Hector Soto (Jaime Tirelli), tells her “You can train but
you can’t fight, girls do not have the same powers as boys.” In conveying
Diana’s success as a boxer, Girlfight not only portrays women as physi-
cally strong but also inverts the gender binaries that have dominated
mainstream film. Diana physically overcomes her father, Sandro Guzman
(Paul Calderon), who disapproves of her boxing and “masculinized”
attributes – “would it kill you to wear a skirt once in a while?” he asks
her – while her younger brother, Tiny (Ray Santiago) (his name carrying
connotations of emasculation), opts for the “feminized” activities of art
and music rather than boxing. Diana’s new partner and fellow boxer,
Adrian Sturges (Santiago Douglas), is likewise conveyed as emasculated,
being “weight-conscious,” refusing sex with Diana, and then losing to
her in a boxing contest. Cinematography, editing, and mise-en-scène
collectively contribute towards Diana’s portrayal as a tough female figure
and avoid the connotations of earlier Hollywood depictions that fuelled

Mulvey’s argument.
The film opens with a medium camera shot of a torso, indistinguish-
able as female, in the midst of passing crowds. As Lindner17 notes, “t]his
body has a powerful presence in the frame and confidently takes up space
in the public sphere, it is steady and unmoving in what is depicted as the
fluid and somewhat chaotic space of the hallway” (9). The camera then
cuts to a medium close-up of Diana gazing down at the ground, before
moving in closer to reveal her glowering face. As she looks upward, she
stares menacingly at the camera/spectator. Indeed, the spectator’s views
of Diana are mediated through a number of such close-ups, which on
occasion disclose her wearing a gum shield, her mouth slightly open
and thereby focusing attention on the gum shield. Moreover, during
the boxing contests, instances of facial close-ups regularly unfold in
slow motion, thereby exaggerating Diana’s intimidating appearance.
The lighting conventions adopted for maximizing feminine beauty –
typically three-point lighting system in Hollywood with the use of fill
light to minimize shadows – are absent and, instead, unflattering ambi-
ent and fluorescent lighting are employed to illuminate her. These com-
bined visual devices, together with Diana’s threatening stare, produce an
image that is antithetical to Mulvey’s notion of the close-up as a means
to frame a woman’s beauty. Rather, such images correspond more closely
with Dyer’s account of the male pin-up’s returning gaze at the spectator.
The film further makes clear its agenda when the camera focuses on a
sign saying “girls” on the bathroom door as Diana pushes the door ajar.
She is therefore positioned as female, but, within the girl’s bathroom, she
continues to distance herself from the typical signifiers of femininity.
While Diana sits on a windowsill, looking on disdainfully, the other
girls apply make-up and discuss boys. Moreover, Lindner suggests that
Diana’s first entry into the gym, when she witnesses various male par-
ticipants sparring (whom the spectator surveys from her perspective),
facilitates a look consistent with Mulvey’s notion of the male gaze. She
suggests that, “[t]he lingering close-ups and soft lighting [...] are remi-
niscent of established (mainstream) cinematic conventions for framing
the female body” (10) [emphasis in original]. Lindner contends that
there is also homoerotic potential in the way that the boxers are in close
physical contact (Diana watches one male boxer massage oil onto the
back of another), and concludes that Diana’s masculinity may enable
her identification with the other (male) boxers. Alternatively, she may
project a desiring gaze that is either motivated heterosexually (as a
female) or homosexually (as a masculinized female). Arguably, however,
there are other ways to consider the various gazes in Girlfight. While
heterosexual desire perhaps motivates Diana’s observation of Adrian,
and she may identify as a masculinized female with the male boxers,
a third possibility in her pleasurable watching may involve an element
of empowerment derived from observing the ability of fellow Latinos
and characters of colour from deprived areas. As Fojas suggests,18 “Diana
presents a new way of looking for women of color, who in turn, are
viewed differently from their Hollywood kin” (115). This account may
too explain the interest of the diegetic Latino spectators who watch
Diana fight, while an empowering gaze (in watching strong women) is
relevant to both the diegesis and the film’s female audience.
Indeed, the gaze is central to Girlfight, not only in the way that Diana
watches men fight men but also in the way that women observe women
boxing, with both viewpoints being relevant to sport as performance,
and appearing devoid of obvious erotic or sexually motivated impulses.
Diana’s gaze is foregrounded in the scene where her brother, Tiny, spars
with another aspiring boxer, Ray Cortez (Victor Sierra) at the local gym.
We observe the fight from Diana’s point of view as Ray strikes Tiny,
leading Diana to retaliate later in defence of her brother (also revers-
ing gender conventions) by punching Ray with her bare fists. In the
following sequence, the spectator sees Adrian talking to Ray and, as a
girl passes by, their gaze follows her, though the viewer is not privileged
to their perspective. Rather, we witness their admiring looks omnisci-
ently, with the film thus denying opportunities for identification with
a diegetic sexually objectifying male gaze.
At moments when the camera focuses on Diana she is likewise
engaged in strenuous physical activity, often in relation to the inferior
performance of her school peers. For example, in the school fitness
examination, a low-level camera pans along a line of unfit girls as they
struggle to perform press-ups, before it rests on Diana to see her execute
them effortlessly. Here, the camera reveals her centrally placed and in
close-up to emphasize her strength and agility (rather than beauty),
while extreme long shots are deployed to stress her running prowess
by highlighting the margin between her and her competitors. During
a training session with Hector, a low-level camera films her as she per-
forms back extensions, while a side-on shot discloses her pummelling a
punch-bag, with each of these sequences accentuating Diana’s physical-
ity. As one of the boxing coaches watches Diana during a match with
female opponent, Ricki Stiles (Alicia Ashley), his remark to Hector that
“she’s got a good chin,” references her tough jaw line rather than her
facial beauty. In other words, he is interested in her qualities as a boxer
rather than a female. Correspondingly, slow motion editing and cam-

erawork centre on either Diana’s footwork or her fist action. Moreover,
the cinematography often enables the spectator Diana’s point of view,
witnessed through flashes of white as Stiles aims punches towards
Diana/the spectator. Overhead camera perspectives otherwise look
down on the two girl boxers so that we only see their fists flying in and
out, and their moving feet, thereby displacing the typical fetishization
of female anatomy (such as neckline, midriff and legs) onto body parts
associated with fighting. As Tasker contends,19 this film, as in others
that feature strong female heroines, “re-inscribe[s] [...] the female body
in terms of masculinity” (3) [emphasis in original]. Rapid editing fur-
ther contributes to the physicality expressed by the characters. Though
we often observe reaction shots of the onlookers, especially Tiny and
Adrian, their point of view is rarely evident, with the camera usually
positioned omnisciently within the boxing ring. In training sessions,
cinematography entails close-ups of Diana’s muscular shoulders, which
the spectator observes from behind (an unusual perspective for framing
female characters), thereby also avoiding conventional neckline shots.
Even when Diana looks at herself in the mirror, it is purely to perfect
her boxing technique. In short, the spectator is invited to both observe
Diana and to identify with her as a boxer rather than a female.
After one fight, Diana asks Adrian, “Do you still like me with my
black eye?” “I think I like you more,” replies Adrian, thereby further
illustrating the privileging of women’s physical ability over appearance.
In fact, Adrian is not interested in conventional feminine beauty, as
typified by his first girlfriend, in whom he rapidly loses interest. “She’s
gorgeous but sometimes we don’t have that much to say to each other,”
Adrian tells Diana. Other aspects of the mise-en-scène that deviate from
Hollywood conventions include Diana’s costume. Generally, she wears
loose, androgynous trousers and vest, and often ties her hair back away
from her face. When in the boxing ring, the only clue to her female
identity is a cropped vest top, since framing and cinematography do
not differentiate her from her male opponents. Moreover, while atten-
tion always centres on the boxers’ bodies, these views are fragmented,
or editing is so rapid that we are barely able to discern distinctions in
gender. Outside of the boxing ring, Diana’s figure behaviour remains
confident and she is not intimidated by walking alone in the darkened
streets of the New York projects where she lives. In general, therefore,
the film entails a series of prolonged gazes at the female body that avoid
sexual objectification, whilst, in contrast to usual gender significations,
the active male body is a site of vulnerability.
The male body as spectacle
Men in film increasingly attract a sexually objectifying gaze in their

positioning as erotic spectacle. This revisionist viewing politics not only
reflects a more generalized equality between the sexes but also corre-
sponds to an associated ongoing crisis in masculinity. While this chapter
discerns vulnerable masculinities in post-millennial film, there is general
scholarly recognition of a more pervasive and chronologically broad-
ened crisis in male identity that developed well before this period. For
example, Robinson20 argues that “Post-sixties American culture produces
images of a physically wounded and emotionally traumatized white
masculinity,” (6) with her argument drawing on a range of literary and
filmic texts. Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin,21 too, identify repre-
sentations of failing masculinity, describing several late 1960s and 1970s
Hollywood films whose narratives signalled the decline of masculinity, (281)
perhaps reflecting failures and losses in the Vietnam War. They also refer to
a specific category of films that they define as “dumb white guy comedies,”
(300) and which include films such as “Dumb & Dumber and the Pirates
of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl franchise” (300). Benshoff
and Griffin contend that these representations satirize masculine prowess
and, at the same time, “ask audiences to laugh at their nerdish charac-
ters’ failed masculinity, a process that still upholds those same ideals as
natural and desirable” (300). This latter account of failing masculinity,
however, deviates from the physical compromises to manliness that figure
in Casino Royale, Fight Club and other recent cinematic examples of male
vulnerability.
In such cases, the male protagonist’s tendency for being wounded
immobilizes the body and encourages a prolonged gaze by the spectator
and other characters. Other times, scenes of injury are so excessive that
they disrupt the normal dynamics of looking, and the viewer may be
inclined to look away. Despite leading to considerations of the male body
as objectified and vulnerable, the wounded male character still carries
agency and is able to recover from injury though, on occasion, the male
body is undeniably coded as erotic spectacle. One such example occurs in
Thelma & Louise22 where, as Marita Sturken notes,23 Thelma (Geena Davis)
watches J.D. (Brad Pitt) through her car side-mirror, adjusting her mirror
to observe him. Yet, as Sturken contends, “It could hardly be argued that
J.D. is disempowered by the gaze of the women and the camera upon
him as a sexual being. Rather, the film shows the complexity of the power
dynamics of these gazes. J.D. is sexualized by the gaze upon him and he
uses that sexuality to get what he wants – pleasure and money” (82).
The male body of contemporary cinema is therefore both strong

and enduring but susceptible to injury and erotic contemplation, with
spectator pleasure deriving not only from viewing conventional heroic
performance but also from the spectacle of injured/eroticized men’s
bodies and their capacity to endure suffering.
Casino Royale and the male body as spectacle
Casino Royale features several such scenes of injured/erotic male specta-

cle. For example, we see Bond naked and tortured by his adversary, the
homoerotic Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), while, in a further sequence
of male “to-be-looked-at-ness,” (116)24 Bond emerges from the sea in a
way identical to the female character, Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress), of
an earlier Bond film Dr. No.25
Indeed, Tincknell26 identifies various ways in which the Bond films
have typically interrogated gender roles. As she notes, “[f]rom the very
beginning of the [...] franchise [...] the Bond films have always made
space for a partial critique of the excessive masculinity Bond himself
seems to embody, and it is in this way that they also speak to a female
audience” (105). Estella Tincknell further comments on the way that the
dominant roles of Miss Moneypenny in the earlier films, and now Judi
Dench as “M” in the most recent incarnations, reverse gender hierarchies.
In many ways, Craig’s portrayal of Bond in Casino Royale conforms to
traditions of the iconic character, appearing handsome, tall and muscular,
and possessing the typical signifiers of masculinity. In fact, the spectator’s
first sight of Bond witnesses him wielding a gun, while the narrative typi-
cally centres on heterosexual attraction and his relationship with Vesper
Lynd (Eva Green). In other respects, Casino Royale, however, varies from
the Bond template. As Johnson comments,27 “The action sequences of the
film continue to emphasize physical risk and the vulnerability of the male
body by putting Bond’s body and its wounds on display while simultane-
ously stripping him of the usual panoply of elaborate gadgets which have
become another trademark of the franchise” (118). Johnson highlights
the beach scene where Bond emerges from the sea as an example of such
male display, arguing that the film feminizes Bond’s body, “since it is in
the context in which female bodies are usually displayed” (125).
Lisa Funnell28 discerns a feminization of Bond’s character too, locating
a difference to previous Bond films in Craig’s performance as,
youthful, spectacular, and feminized relative to the gaze through the

passive positioning of his exposed muscular body in scenes where he
is disengaged from physical activity. Moreover, through inter-textual

referencing of renowned Bond Girl iconography [...] Craig’s Bond is
positioned as visual spectacle and aligned with the Bond Girl charac-
ter type rather than with his Bond predecessors. (456)
Funnell therefore designates Craig’s incarnation of the iconic hero as

the “Bond-Bond Girl Hybrid,” based primarily on the beach scene. Here,
as Bond emerges from the sea, he is first visible in close-up, followed
by mid-shot as he stands up and strides towards the shore, but he then
pauses as if something attracts his attention. The momentary medium
shot that centrally frames him contributes little to the narrative, while
his apparent proximity to the camera implies that the spectator is the
sole observer.
Arguably, however, there are other ways to analyse the film’s politics
of looking that contrast with claims for the feminization of Bond. James
Chapman29 suggests that in the beach depiction, “the film can be seen as
representative of changing discourses of masculinity in the twenty-first
century towards ‘heteroeroticism’ rather than homoeroticism” (249).
As Tremonte and Racioppi also note,30 the beach scene is quite short
(and thereby obviates prolonged gazing), although “if the swimsuit
shots of Bond were longer they might risk undermining his dominant
position and masculinity” (192). In addition, Colleen M. Tremonte and
Linda Racioppi juxtapose Bond with other male characters, especially Le
Chiffre, who is persistently emasculated. In one example, they describe
how Le Chiffre “looks on helplessly as an African para-militarist threatens
to cut off his girlfriend’s hand. His cowardice and impotence stand in stark
contrast to the courage of Bond” (194). Certainly, Le Chiffre’s inaction
differs from Bond’s desperate attempts to save Vesper at the film’s finale.
Moreover, if the swimsuit scene is considered from Dyer’s perspective
of the male pin-up, we note that Bond looks off into the distance, as if
something has caught his attention. He thereby resists an objectifying gaze
while the following edit reveals that his attention is focused on an attrac-
tive female character, Solange Dimitrios (Caterina Murino).
In addition to a consideration of Bond as erotic spectacle, he is also
repeatedly penetrated and his visual objectification often correlates
with instances of corporeal vulnerability. In other words, he is both
object of the gaze and victim of violence, thereby appearing to corre-
spond with the feminized position of Mulvey’s original schema. Such
an occasion arises during a high-stakes card game which Bond wins,
leading Le Chiffre to attempt his murder. Prior to this sequence, the film
reflexively highlights Hollywood conventions of female eroticization
in that Bond gives Vesper a dress to wear to distract Le Chiffre. “I need

you looking fabulous,” Bond tells Vesper, “so that when you walk up
behind me and kiss me on the neck, the players across from me will be
thinking about your neckline and not their cards.” Vesper later enters
the casino, kisses Bond and then walks over to the bar, with the camera
viewing her from behind. An edit reveals Bond also scrutinizing her,
though it is unclear whether he is pretending to do so as part of the ploy
to distract Le Chiffre, or merely for reasons of his own desire. However,
as a challenge to these male gazes, Vesper likewise provides Bond with
a dinner jacket, to which Bond responds, “How did you ... [know my
size], it’s tailored.” “I sized you up the moment we met,” replies Vesper,
and when Bond examines his appearance in the mirror he finds that the
jacket fits perfectly, suggesting that she has closely studied him without
his awareness, thus reversing concepts of the illicit male gaze.
During a break in the card game Bond follows Le Chiffre to his room,
where he and Vesper come under attack. Although Bond despatches
his assailants, he sustains injury and bleeds profusely, necessitating the
removal of his clothing, which provides further opportunities for scru-
tiny of his body. A series of close-ups first discloses his wounded chest,
then his bleeding face, as he washes off the blood, thus focusing viewer
attention on the violated male body. Moreover, after resuming the card-
game, Le Chiffre poisons Bond, with the latter’s disorientation mediated
by extreme camera movements and canted angles, as he staggers to his
car in order to connect himself up to a central medical support system.
Omry suggests this to be an example of penetration because Bond has
to insert a needle into his arm so that his blood toxicology and other
physical parameters can be monitored remotely. Visible in close-up, and
sweating profusely and hyperventilating (thus highlighting his physical
distress), Bond goes into cardiac arrest before he can activate the defibril-
lator. However, Vesper finds Bond and re-attaches the lead of the defibril-
lator to enable his survival and, shortly thereafter, he once more returns
to the card game, appearing completely unfazed by his near-death expe-
rience. The film therefore also subverts notions of the male hero, since,
although Vesper saves Bond, he fails to rescue her at the film’s end.
A second example of such penetration further illustrates the film’s
revised system of gender politics, when, as Keren Omry notes,31 “M has
a tracking device inserted into Bond’s arm” (169). While Omry considers
this within the contexts of what she determines as “technologized mas-
culinity,” (169) it nonetheless exemplifies penetration, this time by a
woman. Moreover, when Bond is later tortured, his assailants also violate
him by inserting a knife into his wrist to remove the tracking chip. Seen
foregrounding the frame, the knife pierces Bond’s arm as he lies uncon-
sciousness, accentuating the act as violent and Bond as passive victim.
A third instance in which Bond is rendered physically vulnerable
unfolds in a derelict warehouse where Le Chiffre holds him and Vesper
captive. As one of Le Chiffre’s men cuts out the seating of a chair, the
cries of Vesper are audible. A low angle shot now discloses Bond sit-
ting on the chair, bound and naked, his body smeared with blood, the
low-key illumination contouring his arm and chest muscles, which are
further emphasized by the camera perspective. Despite close-ups of his
blood-stained face conveying anxiety, Bond therefore maintains visual
dominance. An edit to long shot then displays his figure more fully,
framed centrally and appearing small (though directional lighting still
emphasizes his musculature) in the frame in comparison to Le Chiffre,
whose foreground position renders him dominant, while the shadow
cast over him heightens his menace. “Wow, you’ve taken good care of
your body,” comments Le Chiffre admiringly, hinting at the homo-
erotic aspects implied in his character. Indeed, Le Chiffre continually
occupies a feminized position because of his various afflictions – his
eye weeps blood and he is dependent on an inhaler. Le Chiffre then
swings a knotted rope underneath the chair to which Bond is bound,
so that the knotted end strikes his genitals. Now sweating profusely,
Le Chiffre loosens his necktie, before striking Bond a second time. He
then removes his jacket, further compounding homoerotic threat and
when he demands the password to Bond’s account (in order to reclaim
his money), Bond responds, “I’ve got a little itch, down there, would
you mind?” As Le Chiffre strikes him again, Bond, through gritted
teeth, shouts, “No, no, to the right.” He thereby humiliates Le Chiffre,
telling him “Now the world is gonna know that you died scratching my
balls.” Thus, though Bond is portrayed as erotic spectacle, rendered vul-
nerable and positioned as object of Le Chiffre’s sadistic gaze, he garners
agency though refusing to perform victimhood. Ultimately, although
Le Chiffre and the spectator subject Bond to an erotic gaze, and even
though neither Le Chiffre nor Bond is active in the frame, Bond resists
a feminized position through dialogue and the visual emphasis on his
musculature.
Nonetheless, Bond loses consciousness, to reawaken in a hospital bed.
“I have no armour left, you’ve stripped it from me,” he tells Vesper,
making clear his vulnerability (both romantically and in respect of
his injuries) and thereby signalling a further departure from previous
Bond films. Indeed, although Bond’s genitals have been threatened in
earlier Bond movies – as Toby Miller32 notes of Goldfinger,33 “Bond is
more directly at risk in the laser-castration scene” (251), Casino Royale

displays a more profoundly wounded hero, who is temporarily confined
to a wheelchair. He recovers nonetheless and soon resumes typical het-
erosexual activities, evident in several ensuing bedroom scenes, whilst
the film’s final frame displays him from a low camera angle, dressed in
a suit, and pointing a large weapon upward, unambiguously signalling
his reclaimed masculine position.
Fight Club and violence/violation as spectacle
In a similar vein to Casino Royale, Fight Club involves scenes of extreme

bodily mutilation. The film involves two protagonists, its narrator
(Edward Norton), and Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), with Durden being
merely a figment of the narrator’s imagination and serving as an alter-
native unrepressed side to his psyche. The ‘two’ form a series of Fight
Clubs where men fight bare knuckle to provide release from the numb-
ing effects of a mundane materialist existence. Male bodies are there-
fore continually on display, both for other characters and for spectators.
Similar to Brad Pitt’s earlier appearance in Thelma and Louise (and there-
fore partly reflecting his star persona), low angle shots are constantly
directed up at Durden, emphasizing his physique, which is conveyed as
erotic spectacle for male and female viewers alike. Arguably, the porno-
graphic images of male genitals that Durden splices into the children’s
films he projects further present a sexual objectification of male bodies.
Moreover, men’s exposed muscular torsos are consistently displayed
as violated spectacle, low-key lighting, together with a mise-en-scène of
blood and sweat, conjuring a visceral exhibition of tangled, bleeding
bodies. Fight Club thus elicits either visual (sadistic) pleasure through
a witnessing of brutality (the men crowd around regularly to watch),
or masochistic pleasure in its participation. Such violation mostly takes
the form of extreme wounding and we routinely observe men with
their faces streaming with blood. However, despite the “to-be-looked-at-
ness” (116)34 of bloody violence, the men’s participation in Fight Club
vindicates their masculinity in comparison to other male characters
who refuse to take part, and renders them simultaneously violent and
violated. In the first meeting of Fight Club, a defeated participant looks
up towards the spectator, lifting his head to reveal his face covered in
blood, with the masochism of being beaten resonating with the prior
feminizing position of the passive female character of Mulvey’s model.
Contrastingly, however, masochism here mobilizes masculinity and a
sense of power. “You weren’t alive anywhere like you were there, the
narrator’s voice-over tells us. Accordingly, Caroline Ruddell suggests,35

“Fight Club could be considered as a moving away from placing women
as bodily spectacle, and encouraging men to ‘look’ at themselves more
in this light” (494). Ruddell identifies a power in looking on, as well
as in winning the fights, contending that “those who possess the gaze
[channel] our own power of looking” (494). In short, while masculin-
ity is intrinsic to fighting and wounding, a phallic gaze persists both in
the diegetic onlookers, the participants, and in the film’s spectator. In
a related way, the narrator and Durden critically view a passive male
body displayed on a Gucci underwear advertisement. “Is that what a
man looks like?” Tyler asks the narrator, with the advert simulating the
feminized position of erotic objectification and differentiated from the
phallic gazes of Fight Club, where being a man corresponds instead with
both suffering, and inflicting violence.
Further indication of masochistic suffering as a phallic signifier is the
refusal to make it invisible, and the narrator and other members of Fight
Club openly display various abrasions, wounds and blood or accentuate
them with wound dressings. As Karen Lee Ashcraft and Lisa A. Flores
note,36 “The bruises, scars, and blood the narrator sports stand as virile
wounds” (15). The narrator’s deliberate displays of bodily damage are
especially telling in this respect. During a group meeting at work, his
response to a colleague’s remark is a purposeful smile, with his mouth vis-
ualized in close-up to reveal a mouthful of blood and missing teeth. Thus,
where bleeding orifices may have previously signalled feminization, here
they serve to inscribe phallic power, presenting signs of injury as signifiers
of agency rather than victimhood. The correlation between masochism
and masculinity is consistent throughout the film, particularly in the nar-
rator’s self-abuse. For example, in one scene, he beats himself violently
in his boss’s office, pretending to be a victim in an act that enables him
power and agency because he manipulates his manager.
In addition to the men’s portrayal as wounded, erotic spectacle, homo-
erotic intimations pervade the film: the members of Fight Club make
regular bodily contact through fighting; and their semi-naked bodies
are narratively central to the film and persistently visible throughout.
Homoerotic tensions are first visible in the testicular cancer clinic when
the narrator meets Bob (Meat Loaf), whose therapy has endowed him
with breasts. As part of their treatment the men are encouraged to
embrace each other to help them deal with their trauma, and conse-
quently the narrator finds himself buried in Bob’s vast cleavage. Later,
when the narrator moves in with Durden (although they are essentially
the same person, the film and narrative mostly visualize them as two
separate characters), they are constantly together. Even when Durden

takes a bath, we see the narrator sitting in the bathroom with him. Here,
in conversation, Durden comments, “We’re a generation of men raised
by women. I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we
need,” thereby further signalling the film’s homoerotic subtext.
Despite allusions to feminization through physical change and emo-
tional display, their participation in Fight Club remobilizes the characters’
masculinity (including Bob’s), producing damaged bodies as evidence of
endurance. As Yvonne Tasker notes,37 “Suffering – torture, in particular –
operates as both a set of narrative hurdles to be overcome, tests that the
hero must survive, and as a set of aestheticized images to be lovingly dwelt
on” (230). Certainly, this claim is relevant to both Casino Royale and Fight
Club, where suffering relates to fortitude and masochism as a feature of
masculinity, and where the perspective of the spectator and the camera
serve to objectify the male body as violated spectacle. Nonetheless, these
injured male protagonists retain agency, and even though episodes of
wounding immobilize the body and enable a prolonged spectator gaze,
they intensify the symbolic potency of survival.
Conclusion
Whilst Mulvey’s theory of a gendered spectatorship was relevant to

certain Hollywood films, and may still reflect some contemporary
cinema, an increase in the number of women directors, the establish-
ment of equal rights and a shift in audience desires and expectations
have led to increasingly diverse modes of looking. Women are now
not merely sexual objects of the male gaze but perform in more active,
independent roles, while men routinely appear eroticized and victim-
ized. Accordingly, female viewers are invited to project a desiring gaze
towards male characters, while theoretical understanding has recon-
sidered processes of suture and identification. While there is therefore
still an erotic element to gazing at the body, the look may be motivated
homoerotically as well as heterosexually. At other times, the gaze may
be devoid of sexualization and, instead, centres on the body as a source
of physicality and strength, as illustrated by the protagonist of Girlfight.
Conversely, in both Fight Club and Casino Royale, the spectator’s phallic
gaze is encouraged to contemplate the physical appeal of the male body
through effects of lighting, framing and camera angle, whilst simulta-
neously recognizing a projection of masculinity inherent in the male
protagonist’s displays of violence as well as his endurance of wounding
and penetration.
Notes
1. Mulvey (1993).
2. Neale (1993).
3. Kusama (2000).
4. Aronofsky (2010).
5. Campbell (2006).
6. Fincher (1999).
7. Lacan (1993).
8. Freud (2001).
9. Dyer (2002).
10. Stacey (1994).
11. Doane (1993).
12. Scott (1979).
13. Lapsley and Westlake (1993).
14. Marshall (1990).
15. King (2008).
16. Beltrán (2004).
17. Lindner (2009).
18. Fojas (2009).
19. Tasker (1993b).
20. Robinson (2000).
21. Benshoff and Griffin (2009).
22. Scott (1991).
23. Sturken (2000).
24. Mulvey (1993).
25. Young (1962).
26. Tincknell (2009).
27. Johnson (2009).
28. Funnell (2011).
29. Chapman (2007).
30. Tremonte and Raccioppi (2009).
31. Omry (2009).
32. Miller (2001).
33. Hamilton, G. (1964).
34. Mulvey (1993).
35. Ruddell (2007).
36. Ashcraft and Flores (2003).
37. Tasker (1993a).
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Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Dir. G. Verbinski. Perf. J. Depp,
G. Rush and O. Bloom. Walt Disney Pictures/Jerry Bruckheimer Films, 2003.
Pretty Woman. Dir. G. Marshall. Perf. R. Gere, J. Roberts and J. Alexander.
Touchstone Pictures/Silver Screen Partners IV, 1990.
Sex and the City. Dir. M. P. King. Perf. S. J. Parker, K. Cattrall and C. Nixon. New
Line Cinema/Home Box Office (HBO)/Darren Star Productions, 2008.
Thelma and Louise. Dir. R. Scott. Perf. S. Sarandon, G. Davis, H. Keitel and B.
Pitt. Pathé Entertainment/Percy Main/Star Partners III/Metro-Goldwin-Mayer
(MGM), 1991.
Part IV
Surveillance and Big Brothers
15
Voyeurism and Surveillance:
A Cinematic and Visual Affair
Meera Perampalam
As Rockwell notes in “Somebody’s watching me” (1984), he always feels

like somebody’s watching him, and he has no privacy. “I always feel like
somebody’s watching me,” he adds, “Tell me, is it just a dream?”1 he
wonders. Rockwell’s 1980s paranoid pop song seems to reflect the reality
of today’s society. Living in a hyper-technological era, electronic eyes –
among other things – surround us by encircling the private sphere and
publicly exposing it. With the rise of high-tech devices, postmodern
society has demonstrated a certain way of viewing through non-human
devices, in some cases for surveillance purposes. New technologies keep
“helping” us to see whatever, whoever, wherever and whenever we
want, conferring an immense power on the viewer. Indeed, surveillance
tools, specifically surveillance cameras, feed the voyeur’s desire: to watch
(attentively observing) without being seen, offering a perfect device for
any budding peeping tom! Moreover, these surveillance technologies
reveal a new kind of self-exhibitionism by interrogating the act of look-
ing at, of watching: “Surveillance metonymically encompasses looking
and the complex and ambivalent nature of looking and being looked
at, and these elements of human social life are currently undergoing
radical transformation due to technological advancements spurring on
a ‘culture of surveillance,’ or ‘surveillance culture’.”2 This leads towards
the increasing voyeurism inferred by surveillance and its impact on cur-
rent postmodern imagery and narrative cinema. Indeed, “[the] gaze is
already implicated and explored in popular media, especially in film.”3
Norman K. Denzin, in The Cinematic Society: The Voyeur’s Gaze, suggests
that the cinematic gaze implies a voyeuristic position, introducing the
spectator as a “voyeur.”4 Such voyeurism, however, is not limited to
full-length films linked to surveillance, such as Snake Eyes (1998), Eye
of the Beholder (1999), Caché (2005) or Disturbia (D. J. Caruso, 2007).
215
216 Meera Perampalam
Voyeurism and surveillance have affected our entire visual culture, from
cinema to TV serials (The Wire, 2002–2008; Homeland, 2011–present),
to music videos (Paper’s The Get Out Clause, 2008; The Good Natured’s
Video Voyeur, 2011), by means of the camera’s mechanical eye. John
E. McGrath notes that surveillance has been re-appropriated by visual
culture and become more like an entertainment or an amusement.5
Surveillance can be fun when experienced as voyeurism (the pleasure of
watching and being watched), thereby distancing itself from a negative
or even “unhealthy” perception of video surveillance (linked to fear and
control). Surveillance tools are thus no longer operated solely in the
name of repressive policies. Consequently, the film industry has also
adopted this dual meaning.
André Bazin described cinema as a “window opened on the world.”6
The movie camera, in turn, can offer an extension of the visual organ,
thereby opening our world’s windows to the cinematic eye. Indeed, an
ongoing exposure of intimacy emerges with images of daily life – through
Reality TV, CCTV found footage and even photographs. For instance,
Sandra Philips, curator of the exhibition Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance
and the Camera since 1870, has studied the intrusive manner in which pho-
tography scrutinizes the private space and develops a voyeuristic aspect:
Surveillance pictures are voyeuristic in anticipation, seeking deviance

from what is there: the creeping presence of enemy activity; telling
changes in the landscape below; evidence of incriminating behavior,
such as spying, crossing borders illegally, or accepting bribes. Such
pictures today are most often made by unguided machines that only
watch and often do so from a great distance, like the unseen and
immutable Eye of God.7
Thus, the relationship between both fixed and moving images that
present a “surveillance” dimension, and voyeurism, becomes closer. As
the journalist Noé Le Blanc, quoted by Jean-Marc Manach in his blog
Bug Brother, reports: “[…] 15% of the time spent by the (surveillance)
agents in front of their monitoring screens could be qualified as voyeur-
ism.”8 In focusing on the multiple types of video images present in our
daily lives, we seek the thrill of the uncommon, the unpredictable, per-
haps caught by the security camera. What are we looking for? A kind of
Hollywood scene in real life?
In this chapter, I examine the mise-en-abyme of these voyeuristic
images and their representation through surveillance narratives and
aesthetics in visual culture, by analysing examples taken from Sliver
Voyeurism and Surveillance 217
(Noyce, 1993), the movie and TV show Look (2007, 2010), LSD: Love,
Sex aur Dhoka (2010) and Outside, performed by George Michael (1998).
Feeding the eye through the glass frame
Glasshaus
Modern architectural projects built with large glass windows, such as
glass houses, convey an effect of self-reflection, an open view of the
outside from the inside, and vice versa. Henriette Steiner and Kristin
Veel, in their article “Living Behind Glass Facades,” state that this type
of transparency “provides a sense of sociability,”9 bringing people out of
isolation. As we see in a number of films’ perspectives, however, this
could also lead to the development of a growing voyeurism.
Indeed, when the camera comes inside the Glasshaus, the walls
appear to fade away. Thus, cinematic images metaphorically reflect any-
thing hidden. Penetrating into the domestic space, the spectator’s gaze
devours any intimacy, just as with many images viewed in contempo-
rary society. As David Bell suggests, many websites fulfil the scopophilic
desire to experience our neighbours’ intimate lives by watching home
video surveillance freely accessible on the Internet:
Sites like Home Hidden Cams certainly play to voyeuristic desires,

emphasizing the furtive taboo of being a “peeping tom”, and much
of the footage is either “authentic” or else skilfully rendered to appear
covert. Hidden cam sites (and there are many) offer footage collected
in a range of scenarios, from covert filming of people enjoying out-
doors sex, to hidden cameras capturing people bathing or undressing,
images of sex captured in people’s homes […]10
Anyone can become a viewer-voyeur by viewing an “attractive video,”

violating the privacy of strangers. Well before the advent of home auto-
mation (or domotics) allowing the remote control of private security
devices (such as small surveillance cameras set up in the house), Philip
Noyce’s Sliver, released in 1993, presented how scopophilic impulses can
be spread by technological devices such as home security cameras. In this
film, Zeke Hawkins (William Baldwin), the owner of a residential build-
ing, has surveillance cameras installed in all the building’s apartments
and takes a voyeuristic pleasure in observing them from his private secu-
rity room.
The term sliver refers to a typical New York skyscraper-like condomin-
ium tower. In this Hollywood movie, the control comes from the inside
rather than the outside of the building, just as in Hitchcock’s Rear Window
(1955), even though both of the protagonists are immobile. (Jefferies, the
injured hero of Rear Window, cannot leave his wheelchair, while Zeke
must remain in his monitoring room to observe his subjects.). Following
Bazin’s reasoning,11 subjectivity through an unbiased device leads us to a
revelation of the “real.” As Francesco Casetti argues, “The camera works
as a filter on the world. [We] depart from a gaze, but we arrive straight at
the heart of things. The world becomes a kind of gift that is personally
delivered.”12 In fact, the camera allows the spectator to delve into Sliver’s
characters’ lives, by secretly watching them having sex, arguing, laughing,
etc. The invisible seems “coloured” by the light of the cinema.
From the “window cleaner” to the “screen cleaner”

George Formby’s 1936 song “When I’m cleaning Windows” would be a
perfect match for the current “crystal-clear” century. By virtue of doing
his job, the window cleaner “knows” everyone in the building: their
habits, the clothes they wear, etc. He literally symbolizes the archetype
of the voyeur.
Now I go cleanin’ windows to earn an honest bob

For a nosy parker it’s an interestin’ job
Now it’s a job that just suits me
A window cleaner you would be
If you can see what I can see
When I’m cleanin’ windows
Honeymoonin’ couples too
You should see them bill ‘n coo
You’d be surprised at things they do
When I’m cleanin’ windows (…)13
While the window cleaner climbs the floors outside the building, Zeke
operates from the inside. Sliver’s protagonist does not need to move:
safe in his control room, he observes the entire residence from his own
apartment. The young protagonist does not need to show himself,
either, remaining hidden like a typical surveillance agent. This would
be an example of the panoptic vision theorized by Michel Foucault,
except for the fact that the observed person does not know that he
is being watched (the prisoner in Bentham’s panopticon knows there
is a guardian, although he is not informed as to whether or when he is
being watched). Here, none of the building’s residents are aware of the
monitoring system. Foucault emphasizes the profound need to “catch”

the watched space with a single look. “The perfect disciplinary appara-
tus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly.
A central point would be both the source of light illuminating every-
thing, and a locus of convergence for everything that must be known:
a perfect eye that nothing would escape and a centre towards which all
gazes would be turned.”14
Contemporary surveillance cameras bring nearly total control to the
human gaze. As the building’s “guardian,” Zeke needs only to move
a joystick to use the PTZ system (Pan, Tilt, Zoom – most surveillance
cameras follow this system), and all the rooms symbolically “open”
their doors by way of multiple monitors. Through zooms, pixels magi-
cally transform themselves to reveal the neighbours’ intimate lives. Zeke
grows to be a “screen cleaner,” “polishing” the CCTV monitor, letting
us look through the glass frame, providing a subversive and ambiguous
vision of the video surveillance image. Philip Noyce avoids montage,
instead operating with PTZ processes to “frame” and “select” subjects
with Zeke’s (and the viewer’s) gaze, focusing on details of the watched
space via a surveillance monitor. If Zeke does not zoom in on one of
the monitors, it is impossible for him to understand his subjects’ hid-
den daily lives. The act of surveillance is defined as “carefully observing
someone or something in order to control it […] Observing a space,
attentively watching what is going on.”15 With home security cameras,
the owner can easily “possess” the whole building with a single gaze.
From this single position of the typical panoptic surveillance, we are
gradually moving to a synoptic one, through mass media. Zeke Hawkins
is not alone: in many ways, we are all “screen cleaners,” watching each
other’s daily lives through recording devices and screens.
The spectator as supervisor
Look (at me): focusing on the intimate from panoptic

to synoptic voyeurism
Just as a surveillance agent sits in front of a row of monitors, the cinema
or TV viewer remains comfortably seated in the theatre or in the living
room. “Mathiesen argues that the ‘viewer society’ in which we live is not
merely a surveillance society, where the few watch the many, it is also a
mass media society where the many watch the few.”16 Shared by a large
number of viewers, the position of the viewer-voyeur’s gaze becomes
synoptic as it is “supplied” with a constant flow of moving images.
Adam Rifkin’s Look (2007) provides one of the most significant illustra-
tions of the postmodern visual paradigm, with its spectacular explosion
of images of daily life exposed through monitoring screens. The film is
entirely shot from the points of view of various surveillance cameras,
following several fictional characters who seem to be average Americans:
a lawyer, a convenience store clerk, even sexy high school girls.
The narrative structure in Look is built on an external gaze: the gaze
of the movie camera. Is it possible, however, to talk about an exchange
between the spectator’s gaze and the camera’s? Edward Branigan suggests
that we consider the camera as an impersonal figure, an “it,” in the same
way that we interpret the pronoun in the sentence “It’s raining.”17 In Look,
there are no reaction shots and everything is focused on the “action.”
The viewer, referred to by Laurent Jullier and Jean-Marc Leveratto18 as
the “spectator-witness,” co-exists with the observed characters, focusing
on his or her simultaneous presence with the characters and not on the
substitution of the camera’s gaze (which would provide total subjectivity).
This type of point of view emphasizes a direct immersion in the video
surveillance image, rendering an aesthetics of immediacy. Jay David
Bolter and Richard Grusin define “Immediacy (or transparent imme-
diacy)” as “a style of visual representation whose goal is to make the
viewer forget the presence of the medium (canvas, photographic film,
cinema and so on) and believe that he is in the presence of the objects of
representation […].”19 The fusion between the cinema or TV screen and
the video surveillance monitor is unquestionable when the screen takes
on the characteristics of a monitoring screen: date, time, camera number.
It encourages the viewer to see the image as unbiased, accompanied by
pieces of information specifying a precise time and location, without
drawing any subjective conclusions about the individuals pictured. Video
surveillance images are usually “drab,” often in black and white or in cold
colours, especially blue. A grainy image and pixellation during the zooms
are also typical. In sum, the low-fi video image is an explicit aesthetic
that highlights the non-cinematic quality of what is shown, resulting in
a “fake” surveillance monitor in which the spectator is totally immersed.
This is how Bolter and Grusin’s aesthetics of “immediacy” work in Look,
giving much more “credibility” to the images shown (even if they are
fictional). Moreover, the sound is clearly audible, even though this is not
the case with most surveillance cameras. All of these realistic elements
confer a certain power upon the spectator, who gains the ability to see
and listen, like a workplace supervisor observing employees.
Of particular interest is the way the spectator’s gaze penetrates the
“inviolate box” of intimate images. The viewer is transformed into a
surveillance agent. As in traditional cinema, special attention paid to

a subject is denoted by zooming in. However, it is the spectator’s view
of the screen that is zooming in (or tracking forward); the surveillance
camera itself is not actually zooming. This specific movement can be
observed by taking the example of the break room sequence. Marty,
an unpopular employee and frequent victim of bullying at the office,
enters the employee lounge and approaches a female co-worker. The
number and name of the camera “3F Break RM/011” progressively dis-
appear from the screen while zooming in. If we were watching a typical
video surveillance image, these details would remain visible with any
camera movement. At this moment, the film camera clearly disengages
from the surveillance camera. The electronic zoom reveals the camera
watching through the security camera.
This zoom can be interpreted as reflecting curiosity, focusing on the
gossip in the break room. The camera movement (the zoom) is typical of
Rifkin’s use of the PTZ system, functioning like a voyeuristic gaze. As the
forward zoom continues, the viewer begins to distinguish the graininess
of the video surveillance image, highlighting a much more “tendentious”
representation linked to “reality.” Edward Branigan recalls the connections
between different degrees of human attention and certain camera move-
ments, pointing out the cinematic metaphors used to represent specific
actions of the mind. “Psychologists describe our attention as a mechanism
that creates a smaller or larger viewing area or causes a viewing area to shift
(e.g., by a ‘zoom’ in or back, or a ‘pan’ left or right).”20
Next, with a linking shot, we return to the previous point of view,
showing the “break” between the two characters: Marty invites the girl
to have dinner with him and she refuses. In this case, the observer is
looking for gossip, and the film camera dissociates itself from the sur-
veillance camera. Keeping the same angle, the camera independently
zooms in or out in order to emphasize the attention paid to the private
conversation, viewed by the viewer-voyeur.
These types of aesthetics decode an unusual application of surveillance
methods aimed at spying on personal conversations. Above all, the cam-
era is set up in an intimate place (a lounge where employees take breaks
and can set aside their professional demeanour). Rather than mimicking
traditional public surveillance (in the street or public spaces such as sta-
tions), this sequence in Look imitates private surveillance (watching the
workplace). As viewers, are we like supervisors unscrupulously watching
their employees?
Furthermore, we move away from the diegetic world. The zoom move-
ments in Look express the immense power possessed by the spectator,
who can see everything – even things normal surveillance cameras

cannot deliver – by way, as we will see, of audio-visual effects.
The almighty eye

The TV show Look (2010), produced by Adam Rifkin and Brad Wyman,
is based on the same structure and aesthetics of the eponymous movie.
It extends the story of some of the film’s characters, but also conveys
much more information to the viewer despite the limits of surveil-
lance cameras. The TV show incorporates videos from mobile phones
and wireless communication systems in addition to security cameras. It
reflects a variety of digital devices, giving an omniscient authority to the
spectator.
One obstacle to omniscience is the fixed location of security cameras,
which keeps the viewer from seeing what cannot be seen within the
observed space. For example, in the high school sequence in the first
episode, teenage Hannah and Molly are texting one another. The viewer
sees that the pupils are typing on their mobile phones, but cannot see
what they are writing. How can this missing information be filled in?
In Look, a simple bubble pops up on the screen, allowing the viewer to
read what is being “texted” or “tweeted,” imitating with colour bubbles
the aesthetics of the online chats or SMS conversations on smartphones.
What cannot be listened to or viewed is now under the spectator’s gaze.
By moving from one space to another (between classrooms), we follow
the “virtual” conversation between the girls on their cell phones. Hannah
takes a photograph under her dress with her phone. At this point, we
hear the usual “click” sound of the camera, and the photograph, show-
ing the girl’s vagina, then appears in full screen. Afterwards, the point
of view switches to the other classroom, showing her friend’s reaction
in a bubble: “OMG U SLUT! :P.” Thus, the viewer’s eye becomes much
more “mobile” and can investigate several locations through surveillance
cameras. In this case, the TV show’s writers have greater “freedom” in
constructing a narrative and the viewer is “freer” as well, receiving access
to data needed to understand the narration. The TV show even uses
Internet technologies by periodically displaying Google Maps showing
the geographic location of each of the characters. By representing those
telecommunication technologies, the ordinary voyeuristic images are
viewed through a “high-level mega surveillance monitor” in which each
component is connected.
The viewer’s eye cannot only see but can also read, “listen” to the
teenagers’ vulgarity and view their private photos (the photo of the
vagina, which was not intended to be shared, is now exposed to friends

as well as viewers). The viewer’s gaze slowly turns into a voyeur’s gaze.
Psychoanalysts would go further by qualifying it as a perverted gaze. Are
there any limits to what is seen?
“Sexveillance”: caught in the act, caught on tape
The gaze under arrest

Voyeurism not only intrudes on “prudes” seeking a high degree of pri-
vacy, but surveillance technologies can put even the cruder aspects of
people’s intimate lives on exhibit. An abundance of voyeuristic sex web-
sites featuring video surveillance images (often in the form of “caught
in the act” videos) employ surveillance technologies as an indiscreet
means of scrutiny and (sometimes) perversion.
Indeed, “found” footage from CCTV also enters the technologically-

mediated pornscape, collated on websites and on DVDs featuring
“Caught in the Act” footage (such as people having sex in ATM
foyers or in surveilled public spaces). These sites knowingly play on
current feelings about surveillance; as Tabor (2001: 135) writes, “the
very idea of surveillance evokes curiosity, desire, aggression, guilt,
and, above all, fear – emotions that interact in daydream dramas of
seeing and being seen (…).”21
In one example from the film Look, Adam Rifkin employs such sub-
versive images. Mr Krebbs, a high school literature teacher, is seduced by
Sherri, a provocative student, who deliberately entices him outside the
school. Mr Krebbs cannot resist her proposition and discreetly asks her
to get into his car. The inevitable happens: night-shot views from out-
door surveillance cameras reveal them having sex in the teacher’s car, in
front of the high school. As in a regular narrative film, the director uses
different angles to highlight the event. The viewer cannot, however,
see the act from a closer point of view inside the car, as the technical
limits of surveillance cameras prevent the images from becoming por-
nographic. These limits set boundaries for the viewer’s power.
This scene clearly echoes the typical “caught in the act” videos that
can be found on the web. As David Bell suggests, “the eroticization of
surveillance [is] an oppositional repurposing of the logic and aesthetics
of surveillance – a repurposing that is implicitly or explicitly framed as
a ‘hijacking’ of the dominant uses of surveillance.”22 Using surveillance
tools in order to catch an illegal act of sex with a minor delivers the
same sexual pleasure elicited by this type of image. In Sliver, Zeke uses
surveillance cameras not only to observe his neighbours but also to
tape his sexual relations with women living in his building. The power
of recording 24 hours a day is one of the defining qualities of security
cameras, which are thus capable of seizing unpredictable events. In this
case, the tape of the sexual encounter between the teacher and his pupil
becomes an important element leading to the arrest of Mr Krebbs.
The voyeur’s gaze is gradually “liquefied” through these crude images,
trapped in the cage of intimacy.
A “hostage-taking” voyeurism
In the independent Indian movie LSD: Love, Sex aur Dhoka, directed by
Dibakar Banerjee in 2010, we plunge into the digital 21st century. Using
what Banerjee has termed “distant narrative aesthetics,”23 the three-
part film employs digital images from several different perspectives,
but all from the same technological point of view. Combining hand-
held camera and surveillance camera footage, LSD paints a portrait of
contemporary amateur use of cameras, gradually depicting the social
phenomenon of self-filming and its consequences.
The second segment, “Sex,” set in a grocery store, is entirely shot from
the point of view of security cameras, as in Look: a full immersion in
the surveillance environment. Adrash, the supermarket supervisor, con-
spires with a colleague to make an amateur porn clip using the surveil-
lance cameras. By broadcasting it on the web, they hope to earn some
money. Adrash then seduces Rashmi, a young employee in the store,
and they have sex in the back of the shop. Rashmi asks the protagonist
to turn off the surveillance camera, but he only pretends to do so, in
order to record everything that happens.
While “amateur porn” has a history that outstretches modern sur-

veillance technologies, I think it is possible to trace, in contempo-
rary forms, a mobilization of a “surveillance aesthetic” – where the
technologies and staging of pornographic images plays on ideas
of surveillance, voyeurism and exhibitionism and where the tech-
nologies of surveillance structure the narrative, the action and most
importantly the “look” of porn.24
The director specifically states that Adrash does not have enough time
to adjust the camera or shoot from a good angle to record the sexual
encounter with his girlfriend.25 Indeed, there is only one security cam-
era in the back of the store, shooting from only one angle. Like any por-
nographic CCTV found footage, there is no “trace” of editing, stressing
the realistic aspect of the sex sequence with a long take.
The observed space is thus limited, but large enough to give the
viewer an “overview” of the scene. No one is in front of the moni-
tor or can control the camera (except Adrash, who is the supervisor).
Nevertheless, Adrash looks into the camera when he pretends to turn
it off. At this moment, we become a party to the imminent act, aware
that the camera is still running. We understand that one of the protago-
nists knows about the surveillance settings and that the other will be
subjected to his Machiavellian plan, resulting in a disturbing situation.
That said, the mise-en-scène takes the spectator’s gaze hostage. Since
the usual montage provided by multiple cameras is absent, the scene
provides a “one-way” vision of the act. The viewer is trapped in this
voyeuristic image, offered as contemplative. The sexual act is obscured
with pixels, but comes into view not only through security camera foot-
age, but also on pornographic websites specializing in “caught on tape”
images. In this way, we discover the same sequence, with the aesthetics
of immediacy provided by the internet. The frame changes, but the con-
tent of the act remains the same. Finally, as viewers, we are “watching”
what we are “looking” for.
Inside Outside: watching out of the house, off (the) screen

Penetrating people’s intimacy can be simultaneously easy and difficult.
The aesthetics of surveillance in popular culture paradoxically highlight
the ease of invading subjects’ privacy and the limits of this ability.
George Michael’s controversial performance in his music video
Outside (1998), directed by Vaughan Arnell, shows us the profusion of
postmodern images of sex. Outside relates an event that puts George
Michael in an uneasy situation: a plain-clothes officer arrests him for
having “fun” in a public bathroom. The singer responds to the situation
with Outside: fed up with having “indoor” sex, he declares his desire to
do it “outside.” How can the inside be brought outside?
In the video, a police helicopter travels around Los Angeles. The cam-
era observes everything from boats to vans, an elevator, a locker room
and a rooftop, coming across people kissing, having sex, and everything
in between. The images change from indoor public spaces like bath-
rooms to outdoor public spaces. A high-angle shot adopts the perspec-
tive of the helicopter, showing the police point of view. The video thus
gives an overview of the observed locations but enhances the symbolic

vision of the police, emphasizing their repressive policy, undeniably
present to punish acts that should be done “inside”:
The continually circling helicopter of the Los Angeles police is ever

present. The helicopter is the anonymous vehicle of the all-seeing
eye, from which no intimacy remains hidden. It is in every place, a
symbol of the panoptic relationship. The other constant commands,
from a central axis with their music, their bodies, and collective
enjoyment in spite of, and for, the ubiquitous camera.26
Finally, nothing is really shown, as an obstacle prevents the gaze from

looking beyond what is offered by the video. All of the sexual images
are blurred or pixelated (even though we can easily guess the subversive
content); in this way, they are censored. In another way, the blurring
simply highlights what the spectators want to see, and emphasizes that
they cannot go beyond the screen. There is an obvious limit to this
“sexveillance.” Using stylized, fake video surveillance aesthetics, Arnell
raises some pressing questions about how to infiltrate the closed, inti-
mate sphere. Zooming in and zooming back, he creates a kind of meta-
phorical sexualized movement with the camera. Nonetheless, as if the
viewer were wearing an eye-patch, it may be impossible to see beyond
these representations. The viewer remains off the screen, inside, watch-
ing outdoor events: the visible, “undetectable” intimacy of people who
are deliberately exposing themselves.
Unlike the films previously analysed, Outside offers a provocative
vision of voyeurism. Everything is handed to the viewer on a silver plat-
ter. George Michael’s lyrics confirm that the couples under surveillance
are simply interested in having sex outside of their homes, day and
night. They do not care about their privacy.
I think I’m done with the sofa

I think I’m done with the hall
I think I’m done with the kitchen table, baby
Let’s go outside
In the sunshine
I know you want to, but you can’t say yes
Let’s go outside
In the moonshine
Take me to the places that I love best.27
Under the gaze of the authorities (represented by the helicopter, for

example), they do not hesitate to make love “outside.” The interior
space is quietly abandoned, and the intimate sphere expands away from
its usual location and into open, public areas, bringing the “off-screen”
(what might be invisible: the intimate world) into the frame. Are we still
voyeurs? Or simple spectators?
Conclusion
Today’s visual culture exhibits a Russian doll-like structure, where sur-

veillance images feature within a great variety of narrative films. Fiction
films, TV shows and popular culture are generating a proliferation of sur-
veillance images, using surveillance tools as a new way to produce narra-
tion and keep nourishing the unfed human eye with voyeuristic videos.
The abundance of surveillance images also highlights recent changes
in our society: people’s intimate lives are exposed, and it seems natural
that images of this exposure have become commonplace in our audio-
visual landscape. Two types of gaze – voyeurism and surveillance – co-
exist. One does not replace the other, and their relationship depends
on location (no surveillance cameras in the forest), social background
(the poor are observed, the rich observe), and personality (nowadays,
thanks to large-scale communications, it is easier for the voyeur to find
the right exhibitionist. This does not mean that everybody would like
to see, or that everybody wants to be exposed).
The widespread increase in surveillance is not the inevitable conse-
quence of radically changing customs and the disappearance of the
notion of “privacy.” Rather, it follows a capitalistic logic, as manufac-
turing quality and security can be improved by spying on workers; and
these changes imposed by market forces are reflected in our culture.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Daniel Morgan for his valuable and helpful editing.
Notes
1. Rockwell et al. (1984).
2. Tziallas (2010).
3. Lyon (2011, 140).
4. Denzin (1995).
5. McGrath (2004).
6. Bazin (1976).
7. Phillips (2010).
8. “(…) 15% du temps passé par les opérateurs devant leurs écrans de contrôle
relèverait du voyeurisme (…)” Manach (2009).
9. Steiner and Veel (2011).
10. Bell (2009, 207).
11. Bazin (1976).
12. Casetti (2008).
13. Formby et al. (1936).
14. “L’appareil disciplinaire parfait permettrait à un seul regard de tout voir en
permanence. Un point central serait à la fois source de lumière éclairant
toutes choses, et lieu de convergence pour tout ce qui doit être su: œil parfait
auquel rien n’échappe et centre vers lequel tous les regards sont tournés.”
(Foucault, 1975).
15. “observer attentivement quelqu’un, quelque chose, pour les contrôler (…).
Observer un lieu, regarder avec attention ce qui s’y passe” (online Larousse, n.d).
16. Lyon (2011, 140).
17. Branigan (2006).
18. Jullier and Leverrato (2008).
19. Bolter and Grusin (1999).
20. Branigan (2006).
21. Bell (2009, 207–208).
22. Bell (2009, 203).
23. Banerjee (2010).
24. Bell (2009, 204).
25. Banerjee (2010).
26. Holert (2002).
27. Michael (1998).
Bibliography
Bazin, A. (1976, 2008). Qu’est-ce que le cinema? (13th edition). Paris: Editions Le Cerf.
Bell, D. (2009). “Surveillance is Sexy.” Surveillance & Society, 6(3): 203–212. Web.
7 Feb. 2012. <http://www.surveillance-and-society.org>.
Bolter, J. D., and R. Grusin (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Branigan, E. (2006). Projecting a Camera: Language-games in Film Theory. New York,
London: Routledge.
Casetti, F. (2008). Eye of the Century: Film, Experience, Modernity. New York:
Denzin, N. K. (1995). The Cinematic Society: The Voyeur’s Gaze. London: Sage
Publications.
Finn, J. (2012). “Chapter 4: Seeing Surveillantly: Surveillance as Social Practice.”
In: A. Doyle; R. Lippert, and D. Lyon (ed.). Eyes Everywhere: The Global Growth
of Camera Surveillance, London, New York: Routledge: 67–80.
Formby, G. F. Cliff and H. Gilford. “When I’m Cleaning Windows.” When I’m
Cleaning Windows, President Records, 1936. CD.
Foucault, M. (1975). Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la Prison. Paris: Editions Gallimard.
—— (1995). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Sheridan, A.
New York: Vintage Books.
Goldsmith, B. (2007). “Look: Surveillance the Movie, Adam Rifkin’s take on Proteur
Filmmaking.” Web. 4 Jan. 2011. <http://www.aftrsmedia.com/iscreenstudies/
?p=106>.
Hart, H. (2007). “Sneaky Sex, Spooky Scenes: Look Flick Eyes Voyeuristic
Surveillance.” Web. 4 Jan. 2011. <http://www.wired.com/entertainment/
hollywood/news/2007/12/look?currentPage=2>.
Holert, T. (2002). “The Politics of “Outside”: Public Space, Surveillance, and George
Michael.” In T. Levin, T., Frohne, U. and Weibel, P. (eds). Ctrl[space]: Rhetorics of
Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 563–577.
Jullier L., and J-M. Leveratto. (2008). La Leçon de Vie dans Le Cinéma Hollywoodien.
Paris: Vrin.
Lyon, D. (2011). Surveillance Studies: An Overview. GB, USA: Polity.
Manach, J-M. “Les Caméras de Surveillance Sont Aussi Efficaces que des Boîtes en
Carton Peintes en Noires sur des Poteaux,” Bug Brother, 23 January 2009. Web.
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de-videosurveillance-sont-aussi-efficaces-que-des-boites-en-carton-peintes-en-
noires-sur-des-poteaux/>.
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Space. New York: Routledge.
Michael, G. “Outside.” Outside, Epic Records, 1998. CD.
Phillips, S. (ed.). (2010). Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera since 1870.
San Francisco and New Haven, CT: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Yale
University.
Rockwell, C. and A. Nolen. “Somebody’s Watching me.” Somebody’s Watching Me,
Motown, 1984. CD.
Simon, B. (2005) “The Return of Panopticism: Supervision, Subjection and the
New Surveillance.” Surveillance & Society 3(1): 1–20. Web. 5 Feb. 2012. <http://
www.surveillance-and-society.org>.
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Culture and New Architecture.” Surveillance and Society 9 (1/2): 215–232. Web.
5 Feb. 2012. <http://www.surveillance-and-society.org>.
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<http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/surveiller>.
Turner, J. S. (1998). “Collapsing the Interior/Exterior Distinction: Surveillance,
Spectacle.” Wide Angle Volume 20, Number 4, October: 93–123.
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Summer 2010. Web. 7 Aug. 2011. <http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc52.2010/
evangelosTorturePorn/>.
Filmography
Caché. Dir. M. Haneke. Perf. D. Auteuil, J. Binoche and M. Bénichou. Les Films
du Losange/Wega Film/Bavaria Film/BIM Distribuzione/France 3 Cinéma/arte
France Cinéma/Eurimages/Centre National de la cinématographie (CNY)/Canal+/
ORF Film-Fernseh-ABkommen/Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR)/StudioCanal/
Österreichisches Filministitut/Filmfonds Wien/Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen,
2005.
Disturbia. Dir. D. J. Caruso. Perf. S. LaBeouf, D. Morse and C.-A. Moss. DreamWorks
SKG/Cold Spring Pictures/Montecito Picture Company, 2007.
Eye of the Beholder. Dir. S. Elliott. Perf. E. McGregor, A. Judd and P. Bergin.
Ambridge Film Partnership/Behaviour Worldwide/Destination Films/Eye of the
Beholder Ltd/FIlmline International/Hit & Run Productions/Village Roadshow
Pictures, 1999.
The Get Out Clause (music video). Dir. Paper (self-produced). Perf. Paper. 2008.
Homeland. Developed by H. Gordon and A. Gansa (based on the Israeli TV series
Hatufim created by G. Raff). Perf. C. Danes, D. Lewis and M. Baccarin. Showtime,
2011–present.
Interview with Dibakar Banerjee. Bonus on the LSD: Love, Sex aur Dhoka. Balaji
Telefilms, 2010.
Look. Dir. A. Rifkin. Perf. J. McShane and S. Redford. Captured Films, 2007.
Look (Season 1) (TV series). Dir. A. Rifkin. Perf. A. Cobrin and S. Hinendael.
Showtime Entertainment Television, 2010.
LSD: Love, Sex aur Dhoka. Dir. D. Banerjee. Perf. N. Chauchan, N. Bharucha, A.
Jha and R. Kumar Yadav. Balaji Telefilms/ALT Entertainment/Freshwater Films,
2010.
Outside (music video). Dir. V. Arnell. Perf. G. Michael. Sony BMG Music
Entertainment, 1998.
Sliver. Dir. P. Noyce. Perf. S. Stone, W. Baldwin and T. Berenger. Paramount Pictures,
1993.
Snake Eyes. Dir. B. de Palma. Perf. N. Cage, G. Sinise and J. Heart. DeBart/
Paramount Pictures/Touchstone Pictures, 1998.
Video Voyeur (music video). Perf. The Good Natured. Parlophone Records Limited
2011.
The Wire (TV series). Created by D. Simon. Perf. L. Reddick and M. K. Williams.
Home Box Office (HBO), 2002–2008.
16
Thrust and Probe: The Phallic Blade,
The Physician and the Voyeuristic
Pleasures of Violent Penetration
Brenda S. Gardenour Walter
The 1960 film, Peeping Tom, opens with the close-up of an eye stretched
wide as it gazes frenetically upon a prostitute working in front of a lingerie
store window. A hand switches on a half-hidden camera cradled in the
killer’s arms, and we follow the woman to her front door, penetrating
first the hallway, then her apartment. Still safe behind the cross-hairs of
the camera, we hear the erection of a tripod leg, which we later learn is
equipped with a blade. The camera thrusts forward and the woman is
violently penetrated, murdered in her own bed. The scene then plays
again, this time through the lens of a projector in the murderer’s private
screening room where he savours his crime in pornographic detail; he has
become a voyeur to his own crime just as we have, hidden in the darkness
of our own living rooms, safe from prying eyes, savouring the assault. In
seeking and deriving sexual pleasure from the clandestine observation of
vulnerable and exposed bodies, the voyeur is driven by his scopophilia,
his desperate and erotic longing to luxuriate in images that lead to arousal
and to probe them with his penetrating stare. In stealing what is otherwise
private, the voyeur obscured in the shadows asserts power over the object
of his vision through Freud’s “controlling and curious gaze”;1 through this,
the body viewed becomes the body objectified, violated and possessed.
The consumption of horror films is a multivalent act of voyeurism in
which the screen serves as a peephole through which the viewer observes
vulnerable bodies imperilled, stripped, parted and penetrated, tortured
into revealing their hidden compartments and their foul and glistening
viscera. In the darkened safety of the theatre or, increasingly, on a womb-
like couch in the middle-class fortress, the voyeur experiences the arche-
typically male killer’s powerful thrill over the objectified and submissive
archetypical female body. Under the spell of the cinematic gaze – a lens
that Laura Mulvey argues in her now classic article, “Visual Pleasures
231
232 Brenda S. Gardenour Walter
and Narrative Cinema,” is primarily male and dominates the passive

and therefore feminized “other” – the viewer identifies with the phal-
lic blade-wielding killer.2 The introductory sequence to Jon Carpenter’s
Halloween (1978), for example, is filmed through the eye-holes of a mask
worn by the child Michael Meyers; through his eyes we witness the shin-
ing blade, the visual segmentation and incestuous knife-rape of his naked
sister’s body. Throughout the film, the adult Michael-monster wears yet
another mask, under which lurks the viewer’s own sweaty face, eager in
anticipation of the next thrust of the blade, the next torturous kill. In
contrast to Mulvey’s thesis, Carol Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws:
Gender in the Modern Horror Film argues that the viewer does not simply
identify with the male killer, but also with the female or feminized vic-
tim, in particular with the “final girl” who often wields a phallic blade
against her attacker in order to escape and tell her tale.3 In the final scene
of Halloween, for example, Jamie Lee Curtis’s character, Laurie, steals
Michael Meyers’s kitchen knife (an implement, notably, that originates
in the domestic female sphere) and thrusts it into his chest, in an act of
male aggression that buys her time until the properly-male Dr Loomis
can come to her rescue. Clover argues that in such scenes the audience
sees not only through the mask of the monster but also through the eyes
of the victim, feeling her terror, pain and desperate desire to survive.
Through the lenses of Mulvey’s male gaze and Clover’s final girl, the
viewer-voyeur thus becomes a conflated killer-victim who both wields a
phallic blade and is penetrated by one, simultaneously witnessing and
experiencing the knife-rape of a collapsed “other” and “self.”
Our voyeuristic obsession with seeing others’/our own objectified
flesh possessed, punctured, penetrated and parted manifests in our
fascination with both serial killers and physicians – monstrous, human,
and male – in horror films and reality programming dedicated to
corpses and forensic science as entertainment. The serial killer and the
physician, at first, seem dichotomous; the murderer employs a knife or
other crude weapon in a sick and sexual act that destroys human flesh,
while the physician uses needles, probes and delicate scalpels to open
the body professionally, to remove what is rotten, to heal it and restore
its perfect shape. In reality, however, both the serial killer and the physi-
cian penetrate submissive flesh with the phallic blade in order to see and
to know, and through this voyeuristic process possess what is hidden
inside. Whether butcher’s knife or scalpel, the blade is an implement
of desire, filmed with delectation in horror cinema and fetishized as a
representation of male arousal and sexual rage. Breathlessly, the viewer
anticipates the first glint of the phallic blade in the darkness, longs for
Thrust and Probe 233
its first thrust into supple flesh and the slippery mess that results. This
sexual experience of visual penetration by the phallic blade is inher-
ent to all slasher-horror films, in which “a hard look and a hard penis
(chainsaw, knife, power drill) amount to one and the same thing”;4
the experience is both heightened and made more complex, however,
when the man holding the knife is not merely a psychopath who has
chosen his victim at random, but an esteemed member of the medical
profession whose victim, like his audience, has made an appointment
with him.
The horror film image of the doctor as butcher is able to terrify
and thrill so effectively because of the deep structures that inform
American cultural discourse about physicians and the medical profes-
sion. Immortalized in Norman Rockwell’s paintings and echoed on
archaic television shows such as Ben Casey and Marcus Welby, MD, the
idealized western doctor with his white coat, well-kept hair, soft voice
and warm hands is a beloved character with whom we share our deep-
est body-secrets.5 Through a combination of biomedical research and
cutting-edge technology, the very real modern physician has come to
diagnose and cure myriad conditions that once went undetected or
were deemed incurable. This seemingly miraculous power to see inside
of the body and to know the meaning of what is hidden there has
facilitated the apotheosis of the country doctor to MDeity, a godlike
professional with authority over all aspects of human anatomy and
physiology. This authority is not merely claimed by physicians, but
ardently conferred upon them by a culture that sees itself as sick, in
need of discipline and willing to comply. In The Birth of the Clinic: An
Archaeology of Medical Perception, Michel Foucault argues that our faith
in the physician’s “medical gaze,” our unwavering belief in his ability to
see past flesh and disease and into the body’s hidden truths, has led us
to blindly and willingly subject our objectified bodies to his power. At
the physician’s command, we immediately disrobe so that he may cast
his pornographic gaze upon our nakedness, palpate our flesh, remove
parts of us for testing, cut and probe into our dark and moist cavities
and witness our viscera and our inner workings.6 Outwardly, we trust
the physician to “first do no harm”; beneath this platitude, however,
we suspect (and perhaps believe) that the white-coated doctor is none
other than a white-coated butcher, our compliant bodies but choice
meat beneath his eyes, hands and restless blade.
The homicidal physician, fictional and otherwise, who thrusts and
probes into his victim-patient’s body for decidedly anti-Hippocratic rea-
sons forces us to confront deeply repressed fears of bodily domination,
manipulation and penetration by a powerful other in whom we have

misplaced our trust; this realization acts as a catalyst for myriad complex
emotional responses, including both horror and pleasure. As we witness
the beloved image of the authoritative physician violently ripping open
flesh, releasing pumping jets of blood, disgorging bowels, slicing organs,
jabbing with needles, forcing enemas and inducing vomiting, we move
beyond fear and into what Julia Kristeva has termed “abjection,” a
moment of horror so intense that self and other cease to exist within
the symbolic order. In short, we become the befouled patient-victim on
the screen, the rank entrails at the end of the physician’s blade.7 This
experience of abjection is not without what Kristeva terms jouissance, an
unwilled pleasure in the source of abjection that returns us again and
again to the horrifying scene. Of this seemingly perverse obsession with
the source of abjection, Kristeva writes, “One does not know it, one does
not desire it, one joys in it, violently and painfully. A passion.” We see
the image of a submissive and shattered body, its bloody viscera ripped
asunder, and horrifyingly become one with it while simultaneously
desiring to flee from it; unbidden, the image returns to our stimulation-
seeking minds, dragging us back to the experience of abjection and the
unique pleasure associated with it.
The narrative of the empowered physician’s phallic blade and the
patient’s submissive flesh, as well as the voyeur-exhibitionist’s experi-
ences of abjection and pleasure, permeate horror films featuring rogue
medical professionals in both institutional settings and what we might
call private practice.8 Medical authority and its power over the objectified
body are at the heart of the German film, Anatomie (2000), which tells
the tale of Paula, a young medical student enrolled in a very exclusive
and competitive anatomy class at the University of Heidelberg.9 She
ultimately discovers that her colleagues and professor are members of
the Anti-Hippocratic Society, a clandestine group that condones forced
vivisection and the “experimental killing of the few to ensure the survival
of the many” in order to further medical research as well as their own
careers. When Paula confronts her professor about the society’s activi-
ties, accusing him and his students of being “a bunch of psychopaths
with knives terrifying people,” he responds offhandedly, saying: “Did
you really think we would get any research done if we paid attention to
ethical principles?” In locating victims for vivisection, members of the
Anti-Hippocratic Society traditionally select individuals who have been
diagnosed as terminal. From their perspective, the primary goal of medi-
cal practice is the mastery and heroic cure of the compliant and powerless
patient body by the omnipotent physician. In this context, the incurable
patient is worthless, meaningful only as an object of medical inquiry, a

plaything for the physician’s voyeuristic gaze and the dissector’s phallic
blade. Vivisection can thus serve as a sort of redemption, at least in the
eyes of medical science. As Paula’s professor explains, the Nazis’ prisoners
who were vivisected at Heidelberg during Second World War “were all
critically ill, all worthless lives, but they were such fantastic specimens!”
In Anatomie, the medical students’ voracious hunger for knowledge of
the human body drives them to penetrate it with the phallic blade, to
torture it into revealing the secrets buried in its deepest structures, and in
so doing possess it as their own. Throughout the film, the body is objecti-
fied, visually and physically segmented and penetrated in pornographic
detail.10 Anatomie opens, appropriately enough, with a montage of body
parts, from a close-up shot of moist skin, hair, the sensuous curve of an
ear to a nipple and rib cage, all suffused with soft light and shot in first-
person perspective. A male hand, which could be our own, runs down a
length of smooth skin, returning to cup a female breast lovingly; as the
camera lengthens the window of our male gaze, we see that the hand
holds a scalpel which he uses to caress the nipple, tracing a line down to
the hair-tufted pudenda and back to the abdomen, where he finally and
with delectation makes the first incision, the hymen-breaking thrust. As
the camera widens even further, the spell of the medical gaze is broken,
and we become aware that this seemingly intimate encounter takes place
between a medical student and his cadaver in a harshly lit and impos-
sibly frenetic university dissection lab.
The sexualized power of the dissector over an objectified body, and his
prerogative to rearrange its parts according to his desire, are amplified in
the vivisection chamber of the Anti-Hippocratic Society at Heidelberg.11
The vivisection lab is introduced through a sequence of rapidly-shifting
camera angles that allow the viewer to experience the scene from several
perspectives: that of the vivisector, anonymous behind layers of cloth
and latex; that of the powerless victim stripped and flayed on the surgi-
cal table; and that of the titillated and invisible voyeur who permeates
the scene, desperate to see and to know. At first, the camera looks down
upon the victim’s face as bright lights flash from above and he blinks
into consciousness, asking falteringly where he is. The camera angle
then changes abruptly and it is our body prone on the table and sub-
ject to the power of a surgical-gowned stranger who bears down on us,
his eyes obscured by dissection goggles. Next, a gloved hand wrenches
open an eye; then, from behind that eye, we look upwards to see two
surgeons, one of whom notes, “Specimen is awake.” Glancing to our
right, we see our internal organs, sticky with blood, being piled lithely
onto a steel trolley. At the height of our abjection, the camera thrusts us
into the gaping abdominal incision; from this jagged and bloody cavity,
we peer upward through a forest of surgical clamps at the victim’s hor-
rified face as he glances at his hand, beautifully dissected and partially
plastinated, no longer his own. Exquisitely dissected, fully preserved
with a rubberizing agent called Promidal, the “specimen” is now the
property of the University of Heidelberg. Stripped, known and fully
possessed – gazing outward as it is gazed upon – the body will be placed
on permanent display with other such cadavers in the research museum
maintained by the medical school, where it will remain forever an object
of the medical gaze.
Hein, a leading member of the Anti-Hippocratic Society, uses vivisec-
tion and plastination not only as extensions of the medical gaze but
also as sexual weapons against Gretchen, his former girlfriend. Through
the power of his phallic blade, Hein both subdues Gretchen’s body
and subsumes her sexual and corporeal identity. Upon her arrival at
Heidelberg, Gretchen is uninhibited and sexually voracious; her body
as well as those under her sexual command feed her sense of self as a
powerful woman. For Gretchen, her sexual conquest of Hein is merely
a fleeting moment of self-empowerment from which she moves on very
quickly. Hein, however, becomes obsessed with her and in his desper-
ate attempt to possess and control her body – which he believes is his
unquestionable right as a male member of the medical profession –
attacks her while she is sexually engaged with Phil, also a member of
the AHS, on one of the anatomy tables. After thrusting his scalpel into
Phil’s neck, Hein forcibly injects Gretchen with Promidal; as her blood
thickens and her tissues become rubbery, Hein cradles her stiffening
body in his arms and whispers to her lovingly: “You beautiful, beautiful
creature. From now on, you’ll be mine.” With the vivisection complete,
Hein unveils his plastinated dissection of Gretchen to Paula much as
one would a newly acquired objet d’art, slowly tracing the muscles of
Gretchen’s delicate, upraised arm, languishing over the nerves. Opening
her right breast, which is revealed to be a door that swings upon hinges,
Hein says, “Here, her heart.” Touching her face gently, he removes it
from the skull and caresses it: “And her face belongs to me. When I’m
alone, I can wear it …” In dissecting Gretchen, Hein has come not only
to possess her body, but also to reshape it according to his own sexually-
driven narcissistic desire to become the exquisite corpse that he possesses
and creates with his probe and scalpel. In wearing Gretchen’s face as a
mask, Hein, like the viewer, is simultaneously hidden and exposed, in
possession of and possessed by his own phallic blade.
In Anatomie, medical students and physicians arbitrate life and death,

penetrate and reshape their unwilling patients with the phallic blade, all
within a respected and authoritative institutional structure that protects
these unethical rights and privileges. In Autopsy (2008), the rights of the
seemingly omnipotent blade-wielding physician and his homicidal medi-
cal team over the vulnerable patient are reinforced and protected by the
policies, procedures and unquestionable authority of Mercy Hospital, a
formidable institution whose power forces patients into compliance and
places them in peril. Autopsy tells the tale of Emily and her friends who,
after a long night of drinking in New Orleans, hit a man in a hospital gown,
crash their car and are stranded on a desolate country road. After question-
able EMTs arrive to fling the wounded man onto a gurney and into the
back of the ambulance like a side of beef, Emily and her friends naïvely
accept a ride to Mercy Hospital where they are placed in the authorita-
tive care of Nurse Marian, a severe, dark-haired woman clad in white. In
the soft light of the waiting room, Nurse Marian seems to be genuinely
concerned with the health of her new wards. It soon becomes apparent,
however, that her main function is to punish those patients unwilling to
discipline themselves, to force them into compliance with hospital rules
and regulations, as well as the demands of the on-duty physician.12 While
smiling wide and feigning compassionate care, Marian gruffly prevents
them from leaving the waiting room, determines who will be allowed to
see the doctor and dismisses their physical and emotional concerns as
unimportant. When Emily audaciously refuses treatment, Marian tells her
that “Like it or not, once you come through our doors it is our medical
and legal responsibility to assess your condition!” Upon entering Mercy
Hospital, patients surrender all autonomy, their bodies becoming the prop-
erty of the institution and the medical professionals who run it.
Lurking behind Nurse Marian’s seemingly benign waiting room, Mercy
Hospital is dark, filthy and full of corpses, an inversion of our paradig-
matic image of the white, brightly-lit and antiseptic hospital filled with
life in various stages of struggle. In the hospital’s deepest shadows, in a
puddle of light cast by his desk lamp, sits Mercy’s evil heart, Dr Benway.
Like Nurse Marian, whose pure white uniform and calm exterior belie
her murderous intentions, Dr Benway is able to seduce victims into his
“care” because of his outward appearance, his mannerisms and the trust
and authority we have been conditioned to blindly place in the medical
profession. A living image of Norman Rockwell’s country doctor, Benway
is a tall older man with well-trimmed hair and eyeglass frames from the
1950s, wearing a shirt and tie topped by the ubiquitous starched white
coat and stethoscope. Like a father, he speaks to his patients in gentle
but stern tones, reassuring them that he as a male physician knows what
is best. His patient-victims, who Foucault would argue have fallen to
the discursive regimes of medical power, willingly submit to Benway’s
medical gaze as well as his unquestionable and paternalistic authority.
Benway’s mesmeric control of his patients is made manifest in Emily’s
visit to his office. Upon entering, she scans the diplomas on his wall,
including one from Johns Hopkins, as well as a series of newspaper
articles, neatly framed, extolling his advances in organ transplantation.
Dr Benway explains that he’s “not as vain as it looks,” as all of his hard
work has allowed him “to open this clinic for people who really need
the help.” After such assurances of his beneficence, Benway begins ask-
ing routine questions, engaging Emily in conversation about medical
school and the loss of her father, for which he shows a professional level
of empathy.13 After discussing his own wife’s terminal illness, the tone
of the examination changes. He moves to the corner of the room and
from the shadows demands that she take off her shirt, adding “Keep
your face toward the door, your back to me, your knees to your chest,
the foetal position.” Emily is clearly concerned about his strange request,
but doesn’t question his authority, instead simply complying and asking,
like a child in need of reassurance, “Is that good?” When she finally asks
“What are we doing?” he holds up an enormous needle behind her back,
informing her that he will be performing a lumbar puncture to check
for blood in her spinal fluid. The camera closes in first on her terrified
face, then on the needle as it slowly and sensuously penetrates her skin.
Thrusting it home, he barks at her: “Don’t move! You don’t want this
needle ripping through your spinal cord, do you?!” Prone, semi-naked,
pinned beneath his needle, Emily whimpers while Benway pulls out
of her and ejects her spinal fluid into a beaker which, upon tasting, he
declares “perfect.” Ordering her to get dressed, Benway leaves the room
and locks the door behind him, leading Emily to realize that she has
facilitated her own needle-rape by mindlessly complying with the
demands of a white-coated madman.
Like Hein in Anatomie, Dr Benway believes that the medical profession
gives him complete authority over his patients and, more importantly,
their bodies – the true focus of his medical gaze. Just as the medical
students conduct vivisections behind the protective shield of the uni-
versity, Benway arbitrates life and death behind the respectable façade
of Foucault’s “clinic”. Here, in his protected kingdom, Benway is free to
use his phallic blade to thrust and probe into his victims in search of
the organs necessary for the “experimental treatment” of his wife who,
through his butchery, is making a “miraculous recovery.” For example,
one of Emily’s friends, Dmitri, awakens on a gurney as he is being rushed

into surgery. Seeking reassurance, he asks, “Doctor, am I going to be
okay?” Through Dmitri’s eyes, we look up to see a surgically clad Benway
who stares down ominously and says, “I don’t think so.” Benway then
straps him to a stainless steel table, slices open his abdomen with a
scalpel and lovingly fingers the bloody wound with his gloved hands.
Thrusting further into Dmitri’s body, Benway feels for his stomach and
rips it out violently, placing it on ice. Throughout the film, Benway has
repeatedly assured Emily of her boyfriend’s chances of recovery, telling
her that he has spoken to the boy’s parents and that they looking for-
ward to having their son home soon. In reality, Benway has eviscerated
him and left him strapped to a table, still alive but completely violated,
his internal organs suspended from cords and tubes that are used to feed
the doctor’s wife in an adjacent room. For Benway, as with the students
in Anatomie, the patients under his care are worthless beyond their frag-
mented bodies; only the thrust and probe of his phallic blade has the
power to render them medically useful in his quest to save the only life
he values, that of his wife and, through her, his own.
In both Anatomie and Autopsy, as in medical horror more generally, the
unquestionable power of the physician and the patient’s helpless and
compliant body spin through the darkness, two sides of the same terrify-
ing coin. The victim on the screen, like the viewer in her living room, falls
under the spell of the beloved physician and with delectation submits to
his power, trusting him as a medical professional while both fearing and
hoping that he will, in fact, “do harm.” In Anatomie, most subjects for
vivisection are singled out after appealing to medicine for help with their
conditions; once diagnosed as terminal, they are classified as meat and
butchered accordingly. This horror of trust and compliance is intensified
in Autopsy, where individuals dutifully sign consent forms, abide by the
demented and inflexible rules of the hospital and obey without ques-
tion the commands of medical personnel – experiences all too familiar
to patients in the American medical system. Unlike Anatomie, however,
in which specimens need to be hunted down and stolen, the victims in
Autopsy check themselves in, willingly abrogating their autonomy to a
fundamentally chimerical medical authority and subjecting their bodies
to the perils of the phallic blade. In this domination and submission,
the viewer-voyeur experiences manifold pleasures. Identifying with the
killer-physician and his rapacious blade, the viewer longs to thrust and
probe into supple and helpless flesh; in simultaneously identifying with
the victim-patient, the viewer feels the abjection and jouissance of being
stripped and exposed, opened and viscerally known. Through stripped
bodies laid bare of flesh, the viewer experiences the sexual pleasure of
being on display, of gazing and being gazed upon, of dominating and
being dominated by, of thrusting and being thrust into – facets shared by
medical horror and its dark underbelly, medical pornography, two halves
of the same whole.14
In medical pornography, the physician-patient relationship and
phallic blade common to medical horror remove their masks, reveal-
ing their truer sexual natures. The Internet has become a peephole
through which the anonymous and hidden voyeur might penetrate
myriad scenes of medicalized sexual activity. Pornographic vignettes
featuring the traditional naughty nurse who gives sponge baths and
collects sperm for testing and the older physician who provides physical
examinations and orgasms for college co-eds – both of which emphasize
the parental authority of the healthcare provider over the helpless or
naïve patient within a familiar institutional setting – seem somehow
antiquated in comparison with more overtly sadomasochism varia-
tions on this theme. In more extreme medical pornography, male and
female physicians force their patients into violent non-consensual sex,
white-coated gynaecologists and other “specialists” thrust speculums
and probes into the willing and unwilling openings of female and male
patients who are stripped naked and lashed to tables with their feet in
stirrups, while dominant physicians inflict invasive and painful “tests”
upon their submissive slaves. In all of its iterations, medical pornogra-
phy, much like medical horror, provides a lens through which we might
examine our cultural anxieties about the authority that we have given
to physicians over our vulnerable bodies, our jouissance in objectifica-
tion and abjection, and our desire to see others/ourselves exposed –
both on the examining table and on film – to the penetrating gaze and
the unsheathed phallic blade.
Notes
1. See Sigmund Freud (1995), 521–600.
2. Laura Mulvey (1975).
3. Carol Clover (1993). For further feminist critique of Mulvey’s original argu-
ment, see Barbara Creed (1993).
4. Clover (1993), 182.
5. See Walter Cummins and George Gordon (2006), 121–130.
6. Michel Foucault (1994), 164–165.
7. Julia Kristeva (1982).
8. Homicidal physicians in on-screen private practice might include Dr. Giggles
(1992), The Dentist (1996), The Human Centipede: First Sequence (2009), Dead
Ringers (1988), Victim (2010), The Skin I Live In (2011). Films involving homi-
cidal physicians within institutions include The House on Haunted Hill (1999)
and Hellraiser II (1988). For an interesting take on medical testing as torture,
see the restored scenes from The Exorcist: Uncut (1973).
9. On the significance of Heidelberg as a setting, see Steffen Hantke (2004).
10. On this “eye-rape,” see Steffan Hantke’s introduction (2010).
11. Dr Channing in Hellraiser II (1988) describes the dissector’s hunger for
knowledge as he vivisects a patient’s brain: “If we are to be honest, it is
the lure of the labyrinth that draws us to our chosen field, to unlock those
secrets. Others have been here before us and have left us signs, but we, as
explorers of the mind, must devote our lives and energies to going further, to
tread the unexplored corridors in the hope of finding ultimately... the final
solution. We have to see, we have to know.”
12. In this we see an example of Foucault’s panopticon from (1995) Discipline
and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. We comply because we have been condi-
tioned to do so by deeply embedded discourses of power, and therefore been
rendered docile. See also Robert Veatch. (2008).
13. For the institutionalization of empathy and its discontents, see David Morris.
(2000).
14. On the Lacanian gaze in cinema, see Slavoj Žižek (1991). For the relationship
between horror and pornography, see the updated version of Linda Williams.
(1999).
Bibliography
Clover, C. (1993) Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Creed, B. (1993) The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. (New York:
Routledge).
Cummins, W. and George G. Programming Our Lives: Television and American
Identity. (Westport, CT: Praeger).
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. (New York:
Vintage).
—— (1994). Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. (New York:
Vintage).
Freud, S. (1995) “Three Essays on Sexuality.” In: The Basic Writings of Sigmund
Freud. (New York: Modern Library).
Hantke, S. (2004) “Horror Film and the Historical Uncanny: The New Germany
in Steffen Ruzowitzky’s Anatomie.” College Literature, 31:2, 117–142.
Hantke, S. (2010) American Horrors: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium.
(Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press).
Kristeva, J. (1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. (New York: Columbia
University Press).
Morris, D. (2000) “How to Speak Postmodern: Medicine, Illness, and Cultural
Change.” The Hastings Center Report. 30:6, 7–16.
Mulvey, L. (1975). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16:3, 6–18.
Veatch, R. (2008). Patient Heal Thyself: How the New Medicine Puts the Patient in
Charge. (New York: Oxford University Press).
Williams, L. (1999). Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the Frenzy of the Visible. (Berkeley:
University of California Press).
Žižek, S. (1991). Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular
Culture. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Filmography
Anatomie. Dir. S. Ruzowitzky. Perf. F. Potente, B. Fürmann and A. Loose. Deutsche
Columbia TriStar Filmproduktion/Claussen & Wöbke Filmproduktion, 2000.
Autopsy. Dir. A. Gierasch. Perf. M. Bowen, R. Patrick and J. Lowndes. Project 8
Films/A-Mark Entertainment/Autopsythemovie/FlipZide Pictures/Lion Share
Productions/Parallel Media/Voodoo Pruduction Services, 2008.
Dead Ringers. Dir. D. Cronenberg. Perf. J. Irons, G. Bujold and H. von Palleske.
Morgan Creek Productions/Téléfilm Canada/Mantle Clinic II, 1988.
The Dentist. Dir. B. Yuzna. Perf. C. Bernsen, L. Hoffman and M. Stadvec. Image
Organization/Trimark Pictures, 1996.
Dr. Giggles. Dir. M. Coto. Perf. L. Drake, H. Marie Combs and C. De Young. Dark
Horse Entertainment/JVC Entertainment Networks/Largo Entertainment, 1992.
The Exorcist: Uncut. Dir. W. Friedkin. Perf. E. Burstyn, M. von Sydow and L. Blair.
Warner Bros./Hoya Productions, 1973.
Halloween. Dir. J. Carpenter. Perf. D. Pleasence, J. Lee Curtis and T. Moran.
Compass International Pictures/Falcon International Productions, 1978.
Hellraiser II. Dir. T. Randel. Perf. D. Bradley, A. Laurence and C. Higgins. Film
Futures/New World Pictures/Troopstar, 1988.
The House on Haunted Hill. Dir. W. Malone. Perf. G. Rush, F. Janssen and T.
Diggs. J&M Entertainment/CLT-UFA International/Dark Castle Entertainment/
Helkon Media AG, 1999.
The Human Centipede: First Sequence. Dir. T. Six. Perf. D. Laser, A. C. Williams and
A. Yennie. Six Entertainment, 2009.
The Skin I Live In. Dir. P. Almódovar. Perf. A. Banderas, E. Anaya and J. Cornet.
Blue Haze Entertainment/Canal+ España/El Deseo D.A. S.L.U./FilmNation
Entertainment/Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO)/Instituto de la Cinématografía
y de las Artes Audiovisuales (ICAA)/Television Española, 2011.
Peeping Tom. Dir. M. Powell. Perf. K. Böhm, A. Massey and M. Shearer. Michael
Powell, 1960.
Victim. Dirs. M Eskandari and M. A. Pierce. Perf. S. Weigand, B. Bancroft and B.
Kelly. Pierce-Williams Entertainment/Kingdom of Light Entertainment/Zero
Gravity management, 2010.
Part V
Gaps and Cracks
17
Seeing Red: The Female Body and
the Body of the Text in Hitchcock’s
Marnie
Inbar Shaham
Near the end of Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock, 1964), the family secrets
haunting the protagonist are revealed, and the mystery is solved: we
learn that Marnie’s mother was a prostitute. One night, during a thunder-
storm, the client she had, a sailor, tried to soothe her frightened little girl.
Bernice, the mother, thought he was molesting her child, attacked him
and he attacked her back. In order to protect her mother, Marnie hit the
sailor with a fire iron and killed him. For years, she repressed any mem-
ory of that traumatic event. When she finally remembers, she and we
understand the source of all her symptoms: her nightmares, her anxiety
attacks during thunderstorms and when she encounters red objects, her
frigidity, her kleptomania and her compulsive lying. However, as usual in
the films by Hitchcock, things are more complicated than they seem: it
could be that her various symptoms stem from the forgotten trauma but
also from her mother’s cold attitude to her. In addition, it is by no means
clear whether the mother’s aloofness is due to her personality, her fear of
her murderous child, toughness engendered by her sordid occupation or,
perhaps, the need to suppress harsh truths. Furthermore, the end shows
Marnie professing she would prefer to stay with her husband rather than
go to jail, thus casting a black shadow over their future together.
I would like to argue that although the suspense regarding the detec-
tive plot, i.e., what makes Marnie behave the way she does, is more or
less resolved at the end of the film, an unresolved suspense remains –
regarding her special sensitivity to the colour red. Interestingly, Marnie’s
sensitivity to red objects is an original contribution of Hitchcock and his
scriptwriter, Jay Presson Allen. It does not appear in Winston Graham’s
novel (1961), from which the film was adapted,1 or in the treatment
written by Hitchcock in November 1961.2 As I will show, the red suffu-
sions that sporadically “attack” the protagonist create a conundrum: why
245
246 Inbar Shaham
should a physically healthy young woman mentally collapse when she is

confronted by red objects, if her own body discharges at regular intervals
the very thing that these objects stand for – blood? The presentation of
a protagonist who is panicked by the colour red, becomes catatonic and
later dismisses it as “a lot of excitement over nothing” (Presson 1964),
certainly shows Marnie to be suppressed; but what about the suppression
exhibited by the text and its relation to the broader cultural suppression
of the menstrual taboo? In the following I shall address the various sup-
pressions of this specific taboo in the film and around the film – Marnie’s
and Mark’s suppression; Hitchcock’s suppression; the text’s suppression;
and the broader cultural suppression. What they all have in common is
their source – the preference in patriarchal society to ignore those aspects
of female sexuality deemed unattractive. The fact that Mark – a rich,
powerful and desiring man – is the one investigating Marnie’s mysterious
symptoms attests to Hitchcock’s sense of irony. By casting a representa-
tive of patriarchy as a self-appointed sleuth, Hitchcock can address the
limitations of the phallic eye. With all its power and privileges, its fetish-
istic inclinations obscure its view.3
There are seven “attacks” by red suffusions in the film, all tied to the
suppressed memory of the sailor Marnie killed, bleeding in his white uni-
form: Marnie panics when she sees red gladioli in her mother’s house, the
red jackets of hunters, and when she suffers from nightmares and during
thunderstorms. The most revealing attack, in terms of surfacing the hid-
den feminine abject, happens at the office during working hours: a drop of
red ink falls onto the sleeve of Marnie’s blouse and she panics. She rushes
to the ladies’ room and frantically scrubs at the white garment in the sink.
Mark, unable to enter the feminine space of the ladies’ room, sends a
woman to see what is wrong with her. As noted, Marnie immediately dis-
misses the commotion, saying “Good heavens! What a lot of excitement
over nothing.” However, her odd reaction to the red ink stain and the
feminine surrounding in which she tries to get rid of it, bring close to the
surface a topic that the film refrains from addressing explicitly. The view-
ers can nevertheless wonder: how does Marnie cope with her own body,
for a few days each month, if this is how she reacts to red stains? How can
she escape her own menstrual period? If red gladioli or a red jacket or red
ink trigger hysteria in Marnie because of their resemblance to the colour
of the sailor’s blood – how does she react to the thing itself, the recurrent,
cyclic encounter with blood itself, that which comes out of her own body?
Thus, besides the question of why she reacts this way, or what can
save her from her predicament, the text invites questions of how – how
is it possible for a young woman to develop psychological complexes
Seeing Red 247
that clash with the inescapable physical givens and social dictates (the
feminine necessity to deal calmly with blood)? Common sense would
suggest that Marnie cannot sustain her hypersensitivity to red after her
menarche, especially if it stems from a hypersensitivity to blood, no more
than a fish can allow itself to suffer from hydrophobia. This may thus
require an explanation – but none is given. As customary in Hollywood
films, the striving for maximum realism is manifested here in those ques-
tions that the film does raise and then answer. For example, according
to Tony Lee Moral (48–49), after reading the final script Tippi Hedren
asked two questions: 1. Why did Marnie try to drown herself in the pool
on the ship rather than in the ocean? 2. Why did she apply to the Rutland
Company, if it had business with Strutt, the former employer she had
robbed? The script was then altered so that the two questions are asked
by characters in the fictional world and receive reasonable answers. Thus,
Marnie is portrayed as an obsessed woman, yet there is some logic to her
actions. If a question regarding her period would have arisen, the film could
have indicated that she has amenorrhea; hence, unlike most women, she
can panic from red objects around her – as her body does not generate
the same potentially frightening phenomenon. However, the question is
never addressed, hence no answer is given. The film supplies no answer
to this apparent contradiction, thus attesting to the suppression operat-
ing in the film. The fact that this mystery has never been discussed in the
research on this film would seem to attest to the suppression of certain
facts concerning the female body in our somatophobic society.
There are some further implicit references to the silenced topic in
Marnie. First, the film abounds with images of dirt and cleaning and
cleaning activities. Two of Marnie’s sins – being both a killer and a
woman – seem to be symbolized in the recurrence of spaces devoted
to cleaning. The link between the two sins is “natural” in a sense – the
sailor’s blood and the female cyclic blood belong to the same cultural
category that Kristeva4 termed “the abject” – they are both considered
negative and threatening to the male hegemony. The film also binds
the two together. For instance, Marnie’s fit of hysteria described above
likens her to Lady Macbeth and her guilt-ridden hand-washing. For
Marnie, both traumas, the murder and becoming a woman, would seem
to involve losing her childhood. They are even causally linked – losing
her childhood because of the murder led to her refusal to take part in the
productive activities considered normative in a male-governed world –
making an honest living and child-rearing (she refrains from both).
Thus, bathrooms and washrooms – spaces that are culturally coded in
the context of disciplining the body at “that time of the month,” appear
248 Inbar Shaham
repeatedly in the film:5 Marnie dyes her hair in a hotel sink in the open-
ing sequence; she uses the ladies’ bathroom in the office to remove
the red ink from her blouse, and later she hides there before breaking
into the safe; she tries to escape from Mark with the excuse of going to
“freshen up” in a restaurant bathroom; she also hides in the bathroom
during her honeymoon; and in an association game that Marnie and
Mark play, water, soap, cleaning and the Baptist church are mentioned.
Bathrooms here, as in other Hitchcock films, do not, of course, always
specifically call to mind menstruation. According to Michael Walker,6 they
connote entrapment, hiding, secrecy, privacy, guilt, voyeuristic pleasure,
etc. However, the implicit connection of bathrooms to menstruation and
to the feminine abject in Marnie is substantiated by a comparison of Marnie
with Psycho, a film Hitchcock had made four years earlier. In both films, a
beautiful young woman commits a transgression against the patriarchy by
stealing money from her workplace. Both films concern the female body,
blood, bathrooms and obsessive behaviour. The famous shower scene in
Psycho, in particular, reveals Hitchcock’s fascination with blood associated
with women and his reticence in dealing with that taboo:7 his camera
dwells on Marion’s bleeding body, yet the shocking image is defused by
the black-and-white photography, which removes the powerful connota-
tion of the colour red.8
Interestingly, Hitchcock used black-and-white photography to neu-
tralize an even more blatant reference to menstruation in Stage Fright
(1950). There, Charlotte Inwood (Marlene Dietrich) is first seen on her
lover’s doorstep, as she whips open her coat to reveal an enormous blood-
stain on the lower part of her dress. The dress then becomes the only
incriminating evidence against her and even after Jonathan, her devoted
lover, burns it, a miniature in its shape and colour helps to persuade
the police of Mrs Inwood’s complicity in the murder of her husband.
The fact that all the characters, suspects and investigators alike, try to
obtain the bloodstained dress, contributes to its dramatic and symbolic
function. The centrality of the bloodstained dress is also conveyed by
the title of the film: the only incident of stage fright depicted in the film
is caused by the dress. Charlotte Inwood, the seasoned singer, breaks
down on stage at the sight of the miniature dress – the breakdown of her
performance connotes a breakdown in the more general performativity
of a “socially acceptable” femininity. One can only imagine the force
that item of clothing would have had if the film had been in colour. Not
only does black-and-white photography help to disguise the disturbing
image here, but so too does the star Marlene – after all, no woman is
more fetishized than her, and therefore more removed from the earthy,
Seeing Red 249
abject aspects of femininity.9 Perhaps that is why Hitchcock first startles

us with an abstract image of the stained dress accompanied by the voice
of a distraught woman, and only later attaches this image of a broken
taboo (a dress with a strategically placed bloodstain) to Dietrich’s face,
and a murder investigation.
Stage Fright and Marnie are similar in other details too. In both, a fire iron
is used to kill an unsympathetic man (Charlotte’s husband, described as
“an abominable man,” and the sailor); and in both there is a transference
of guilt from the real culprit to someone else (from Jonathan to Charlotte
and from Marnie to her Mother). Moreover, Hitchcock’s vocabulary of
images, events and relationships can be detected in otherwise unrelated
sequences in these two films. For instance, Charlotte Inwood’s enigmatic
words to Mellish, the police sergeant who apprehends her, are somehow
dramatized in a tense confrontation between Marnie and her Mother.
Charlotte says: “When I give all my love and get back treachery and
hatred, it’s ... It’s as if my mother had struck me in the face.” All three
films, thus, demonstrate Hitchcock’s tendency to align female culpabil-
ity with images of dirt and with indirect images of blood.
Another cluster of images in Marnie associated with the taboo of men-
struation concerns the only thing Marnie truly loves – horses. As Robin
Wood (1989), Raymond Bellour ([1997] 2000), Michele Piso (1986) and
Elizabeth Bronfen (1998) have observed, Marnie’s love for her horse, Forio,
has an aspect of zoophilia, deviating from normative heterosexuality. The
artificial background in the shots depicting Marnie riding her horse also
load her few moments of pleasure with symbolic, sexual meaning.
Marnie’s special affection for her horse would seem to be connected to
her sexuality in another sense. During a hunting scene, the brutal kill-
ing of an animal upsets Marnie. Moreover, seeing the red jacket of one
of the hunters causes her to panic. As if in telepathy (which is the name
of another horse that Marnie mentions), Forio is affected by her anxiety
and bolts. He breaks his leg and Marnie insists on shooting him herself.
It seems to me that we can add here another cause to the ones leading
to the crazed stampede – one that is based on the folk wisdom according
to which menstruating women should keep away from horses, for the
horses might go berserk.10 Although the text offers no signs that Marnie
is having her period that day, the combination of a bolting horse and
a young woman with a sensitivity to the colour red – brings to the sur-
face a topic that the text sporadically implies. The hunting scene starts
with elements that combine to form another allusion. Hunters in red, a
hunted animal, and a woman with a childish personality (at least accord-
ing to her husband) all allude to the story of Little Red Riding Hood, which
250 Inbar Shaham
also has symbolic meaning concerning menstruation. As in dream logic,

this allusion is constructed through displacements and replacements: the
red attire is of the hunter, not the child-protagonist; the animal is a fox
rather than a wolf; but the forest is the same and so too is the feeling of
terror that the protagonist experiences.
Another fleeting hint of this thematic cluster has to do with certain
recurrent words that the characters utter. Peter Conrad11 traces a “symp-
tomatic uneasiness” in the film that has to do with the female body. He
shows how a chain of “paranoid” associations reveal a grotesque aspect
in Hitchcock’s oeuvre. In two separate scenes, “bad” women – Bernice,
Marnie’s mother, and Lil, Mark’s sister-in-law – utter words connected
to liquids: dripping, droppage, spillage. Indeed Bernice complains about
dripping flowers taken out of a vase, and Lil warns she will not be able
to pour tea without spilling it; and Peter Conrad finds a symbolic con-
nection between the recurring words, reminiscent of Salvador Dalí’s
surrealist paintings. However, Conrad suggests that for Hitchcock, the
messy fluency is associated with women, not time, as if the female body
is a leaky sac of fluids.
As befitting its status as a social taboo, the film does not explicitly
address menstruation, nor does it address the perceptions and social
behaviour disciplining it. The film seems to exhibit the same reticence
and embarrassment involved in the menstrual etiquette displayed by
western culture in general.12 Iris Young (106–113) claims that hiding
and concealing are the normative behaviour expected of women in
regard to their period, and this means that every woman is “in the
closet” for several days each month. Every woman employs tactics of
“passing as”, simply for being a woman. Every well-mannered girl must
learn to hide, lie and pretend as part of her social design as a woman.
The social arena of course also forces men to pretend and hide physio-
logical facts considered a private matter, and there is no point in treating
every sign of discretion or etiquette as hypocrisy or neurosis. Moreover,
menstrual etiquette concerns the cinematic depiction of women in
general and not just of Marnie. However, it seems that concealment has
special meaning in a film about a woman who conceals her common
background with good manners, her criminal activity with an impres-
sion of decency and industry, and even conceals past experiences from
herself.
The text’s embarrassment and unease can be also read historically.
Despite Marnie’s unusual predicament, she can be construed as represent-
ative of women of the 1960s, facing shifts in employment patterns and
gender roles. In addressing the mass entry of women into the workforce
since Second World War, the film dramatizes (or rather over-dramatizes)
Seeing Red 251
current fears and worries. Among these worries is the more pronounced
burden of concealment on women when they now have more opportu-
nities than before to enter the workplace, but only provided that they
adjust to a male norm – meaning, they should conceal the fact that they
are not at their best, or might not be at their best, for several days each
month (ibid. 113–117). Thus, Marnie can also be read as a text address-
ing the changes and tensions occurring in the gendered social arena.
Together with films such as Sex and the Single Girl (made the same year),
The Apartment (1960) and The Thrill of It All (1963), Marnie responds to
the current discourse concerning women’s status in the workplace. In
the films mentioned above, the working single woman in particular is
depicted as a danger to herself and to others, because of her new (or
newly revealed) sexuality and still shaky status in the workplace, raising
suspicions as to how long she will remain there; and how much effort
she will put into her work rather than her personal life, etc.13 We should
remember that women’s rights, their social role, the female psyche and
female sexuality were all discussed extensively in the popular as well as
the academic discourse during the 1960s. The President’s Commission
on the Status of Women (PCSW) (1961–1963) examined employment
policies affecting women, under the assumption that “women should be
assured the opportunity to develop their capacities and fulfil their aspira-
tions on a continuing basis irrespective of national exigencies.”14
Interestingly, Hitchcock addresses the changes in the conceptualization
of women’s employment through the use of gothic motifs. According to
Eugenia DeLamotte,15 many gothic novels are about “women who just
can’t seem to get out of the house.” Thus Hitchcock shows great ingenu-
ity or, perhaps, pervasive pessimism in his use of gothicism in the depic-
tion of an anxiety-provoking entry of a woman into the business world.
The 1961 treatment for the film abounds with motifs such as graves
and cemeteries, secrets revealed through an old aunt and an old news-
paper clipping, etc. Although these did not make it to the final script,
the film does exhibit many other gothic elements, in its key themes,
its narrative structure, relationships among characters and the heavy
symbolism in disturbing images.
In the following, I examine how Hitchcock used the conventions of
gothic romance in Marnie in order, among other things, to “play it safe”
when approaching sensitive issues such as menstruation. The gothic,
with its strategies of displacement and veiling, allows the film to remain
within the boundaries of mainstream cinema and hide its subtle viola-
tion of decorum.
The existence of hidden meanings beneath the surface of the plot is a
key feature not only of gothic romance, but also of romance in general.
252 Inbar Shaham
Jan Cohn,16 for instance, formulates her argument concerning romance

in terms of layered meanings:
It is my thesis that power, not love, lies at the heart of the fictions of
popular romance. In the fantasy gratification offered by contempo-
rary popular romance are not only the secret sentimental and sensual
delights of love but the forbidden pleasures of revenge and appropria-
tion. In heavily coded structures these stories redistribute not only
power relations that exist within marriage, within the patriarchal
family, but through and beyond that threaten existing gender rela-
tions in the broadest areas of power in patriarchal society itself.
In light of this thesis, Marnie can be read as a story about a woman’s

failed attempt to take revenge against powerful men. Is it, however, also
a story of patriarchal victory over a woman? I shall try to answer this
question through an examination of the gothic elements in the film.
First, Marnie belongs to the gothic tradition thematically. Like other
gothic films by Alfred Hitchcock (i.e., The Lodger, Rebecca, Suspicion,
Shadow of Doubt, Spellbound, Notorious, Psycho), Marnie concerns the
female body, female sexuality and especially the female abject – all central
topics in the gothic tradition.17 As customary in this tradition, Marnie also
concerns aggressive male sexuality18 and secrets within a family.19
The film also connects to the gothic tradition via its structure. Claire
Kahan20 describes a typical structure in modern gothic literature that
corresponds to Marnie’s tale: “female characters continually attempt to
escape by repudiating their womanhood, their flight invariably proves
to be circular, nightmarishly bringing them face to face with the dan-
ger inherent in female identity – face to face, that is, with mothers.”
The outline of the plot in Marnie is pretty much the same: with the
help of scholarly literature and an investigation of her past, Mark tries
to cure Marnie’s disavowal of her femininity (she prefers to focus on
her “career” as a safe-cracker rather than start a family). However, the
change is eventually obtained through the forced and dramatic con-
frontation she has with facts from her past and with her mother.
The film also contains typical gothic imagery. For instance, the past
invades the present here in the form of a mysterious knocking on the win-
dow, waking Marnie from her sleep; just as Catherine’s ghost is presum-
ably knocking on the bedroom window, bringing a disturbing reminder
of a nightmarish past, in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
As Victoria Amador (2) has shown, the film links to the gothic tradition
in literature through its resemblance to vampire stories. Amador traces
Seeing Red 253
several vampire motifs in Marnie, contending that both Marnie and Mark
display vampiric attributes as well as attributes typical of vampire victims.
For instance, through robbing safes, Marnie “sucks the blood” of the com-
panies she works for and then discreetly disappears, like a skilful vampire.
Mark, who “captures” Marnie, resembles Dracula, with his aristocratic
mansion, where he lives and “imprisons” his victims. He also attacks
Marnie on a ship at sea, just like Dracula on his way to London (3–7).21
The motifs belonging to the vampire mythology bring us back to the
issue of blood, and to menstrual blood – an issue that Amador ignores,
despite its significance in the vampire myth. Barbara Creed, in an article
on repressed expressions of male masochism in horror movies,22 claims
that vampire stories express, through symbolism and displacement, a
complex relation towards femininity and its conceptualization in the
western, male-dominant culture. The vampire has an ambivalent sexual-
ity. He represents strong and seductive masculinity, as he attacks innocent
young women who cannot resist his charm; but he also has feminine
traits, particularly in his special relationship with blood – he needs regular
portions of it, at fixed intervals, a counterpart of the feminine need to get
rid of blood at regular intervals (122–123).
Both Marnie’s and Mark’s attitudes towards her symptoms are strange.
Marnie herself does not want to be cured of her kleptomania or frigidity,
and she continues to ignore her catatonic fits and the risks involved in
her criminal escapades. Unlike Graham’s novel and the original treat-
ment for the film, in which Marnie is curious and seeks answers, in the
film itself these typical characteristics of gothic heroines are transferred
to the man in Marnie’s life.23 Marnie’s suppression, or muted rebellion,
takes part in Hitchcock’s ironic handling of male inquisitiveness and
authority. It results, however, in the framing of a woman’s perspective
by a man’s perspective24 and, as I have previously claimed, it constitutes
an inexplicable scenario of a woman trying in vain to defy not only
society’s dictates but also those of Mother Nature.
Mark, on the other hand, is intrigued, even obsessed by her symp-
toms. His fascination and investigation raise yet another important
question that the film never answers: if Marnie attracts Mark because
of her illness,” what might happen to his attraction once she is healed?
Will he be able to feel the same for his frigid kleptomaniac wife once she
becomes a responsive and law-abiding woman? It seems that Mark’s urge
to play “doctor and patient” clashes with his fetish for criminal women.
Mark’s power over his wife, due to her criminal acts, and his economic
and physical superiority, do not necessarily lead him to a happy ending.
His power may allow him to pursue his fantasies until their ambivalent
254 Inbar Shaham
or even paradoxical fulfilment. He may even be able to cure his wife, or

perhaps force her to forsake her unusual habits; but as a rehabilitated
kleptomaniac she would no longer occupy the same position in his fan-
tasy scenario. The film thus conveys an ironic attitude towards phallic
power also through its protagonist’s raison d’être. Patriarchy seems to
allow its privileged members no easy victories, leading them at times to
dead-end routes, even while they prevail over the less powerful.
In conclusion, the fact that a universal, physical phenomenon in
women’s lives is presented in Marnie only implicitly and symbolically,
despite its relevance to the protagonist’s circumstances, indicates the
importance of this film in the history of Hollywood representations of
women and femininity. It does of course also give us another example
of the genius of Hitchcock in dealing with taboo issues. In his drama-
tization of a woman failing to revolt against patriarchy, and oblique
references to her failed revolt against nature, Hitchcock follows gothic
precedents and gives his audience a “temporary release from civilized
constrictions that neither challenges nor alters the essential nature of
those constrictions.”25 He carefully places within the text little puzzles,
dissonances and paradoxes that do no more than hint at patriarchy’s
blind spots, and only slightly mitigate its all-pervasiveness and solidity.
Notes
1. Moral (2002).
2. Auiler (1999).
3. Since the masculine agenda and desires also shape women’s views on the
female body, it is no wonder that female film scholars have also missed the
film’s subtle references to the menstrual cycle. See, for instance, Piso (1986),
Knapp (1993), Bronfen (1998), Amador (2001). Cohen (2005) presents an
extensive analysis of sexual imagery in Marnie but one that also centres on
the alluring aspects of female sexuality.
4. Kristeva (1982).
5. The connection between menstruation and bathrooms is also discussed in
Cummins (2008).
6. Walker (2005).
7. The oblique reference to menstruation in the famous shower scene in Psycho
was detected by Brian De Palma, whose Carrie (1976) opens with a similar
scene dealing with the menstrual taboo in a much more explicit manner.
The scene shows Carrie humiliated by her classmates, when her menarche
occurs in the school shower.
8. See Coates (2008) on the various connotation of the colour red as a “sign of
interiority.”
9. Mulvey (1975).
10. Creed (1997).
Seeing Red 255
11. Conrad (2001).

12. Laws (1990).
13. On the changing views of female sexuality in the 1960s, see Pagni (1999).
14. Peters and Woolley (2012).
15. DeLamotte (1990).
16. Cohn (1989).
17. Kahane (1985).
18. Clemens (1999).
19. Williams (1995).
20. Kahane (1985), 347.
21. Reinforcing Amador’s argument is the fact that Marnie is not the only
Hitchcock film containing vampire motifs. See Sterritt (1993) and Knee (2006).
22. Creed (1993).
23. William Rothman (1982) traces a similar shift in The Lodger (1927): “It is
the man’s view of the woman, not the woman’s view of the man, on which
Hitchcock films turns, but the story is not told from the lodger’s point of
view; the camera stands apart from him as from all its other subjects, in
spite of the bond between them.” According to Rothman, this contrasts with
gothic fiction, where the narration usually bonds with the innocent heroine.
24. For more on this subject, see Bronfen (1998, 341–377).
25. Clemens (1999), 8.
Bibliography
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and Marnie.” Journal of Dracula Studies No. 3. <http://blooferland.com/drc/
images/03Amador.rtf> (Accessed 26.5.2009).
Auiler, D. (1999). Hitchcock’s Notebooks: An Authorized and Illustrated Look inside
the Creative Mind of Alfred Hichcock. New York: Spike.
Bellour, R. ([1977] 2000). “To Enunciate (on Marnie).” In: The Analysis of Film.
Indiana: Indiana University Press: 217–237.
Bronfen, E. (1998). The Knotted Subject: Hysteria and its Discontents. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press: 343–378.
Clemens, V. (1999). The Return of the Repressed: Gothic Horror from “The Castle of
Otranto” to “Alien.” Albany: State University of New York Press: 8.
Coates, P. (2008). “On the Dialectics of Filmic Colours (in General) and Red (in
Particular): Three Colors: Red, Red Desert, Cries and Whispers, and The Double Life
of Veronique.” Film Criticism Spring, 32.3: 2–23.
Cohen, T. (2005). Hitchcock’s Cryptonymies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
Cohn, J. (1998). Romance and the Erotics of Property: Mass-Market Fiction for
Women. Durham, NJ: Duke University Press.
Conrad, P. (2001). The Hitchcock Murders. New York: Faber and Faber.
Creed, B. (1993). “Dark Desires: Male Masochism in the Horror Film.” In S. Cohan
and I. R. Hark (eds), Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood
Cinema. London: Routledge: 118–133.
—— (1997). “Baby Bitches from Hell: Monstrous Little Women in Film.” <http://
www.cinema.ucla.edu/women/papers/creed.doc>. (Accessed 26.5.2009).
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Cummins, J. (2008). “Hermione in the Bathroom: the Gothic, Menarche, and

Female Development in the Harry Potter Series.” In: A. Jackson, K. Coats, and
R. McGillis (eds), The Gothic in Children’s Literature: Haunting the Borders. New York:
Routledge: 177–193.
DeLamotte, E. (1990). Perils of the Night: A Feminist Study of Nineteenth-Century
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Graham, W. (2012 [1961]). Marnie. London: Pan Books.
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Knapp, L. (1993). “The Queer Voice in Marnie.” Cinema Journal, 32.4: 6–23.
Knee, A. (2006). “Shadow of Shadow of a Doubt.” In: D. Boyd, and R. B. Palmer
(eds), After Hitchcock: Influence, Imitation and Intertextuality. Austin, TX:
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Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: an Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia
Laws, S. (1990). Issues of Blood: The Politics of Menstruation. Macmillan: London.
Moral, T. L. (2002). Hitchcock and the Making of “Marnie.” Lanham, MD: Scarecrow
Press.
Mulvey, L. (1975). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16.3: 6–18.
Pagni, C. (1999). “‘Does She or Doesn’t She?’: Sexology and Female Sexuality.”
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26.8.2012).
Piso, M. (1986). “Mark’s Marnie.” In: M. Deutelbaum and L. Poague (eds), A Hitchcock
Reader. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press: 288–304.
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(Accessed 9.3.2010).
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Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 106–113.
Filmography
The Apartment. Dir. B. Wilder. Perf. J. Lemmon, S. MacLaine and F. MacMurray.
The Mirisch Corporation, 1960.
Seeing Red 257
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog. Dir. A. Hitchcock. Perf. June, I. Novello and
M. Ault. Gainsborough Pictures/Carlyle Blackwell Productions, 1927.
Marnie. Dir. A. Hitchcock. Perf. T. Hedren, S. Connery and D. Baker. Universal
Pictures, 1964.
Notorious. Dir. A. Hitchcock. Perf. C. Grant, I. Bergman and C. Rains. Vanguart
Films/RKO Radio Pictures, 1946.
Psycho. Dir. A. Hitchcock. Perf. A. Perkins, J. Leigh and V. Miles. Shamley
Productions, 1960.
Rebecca. Dir. A. Hitchcock. Perf. L. Olivier, J. Fontaine and G. Sanders. Selznick
International Pictures, 1940.
Sex and the Single Girl. Dir. R. Quine. Perf. L. Bacall, T. Curtis and N. Wood.
Fernwood Productions/Reynard, 1964.
Shadow of Doubt. Dir. A. Hitchcock. Perf. T. Wright, J. Cotton and M. Carey.
Skirball Productions/Universal Pictures, 1943.
Spellbound. Dir. A. Hitchcock. Perf. I. Bergman, G. Peck and M. Chekhov. Selznick
International Pictures/Vanguard Films, 1945.
Suspicion. Dir. A. Hitchcock. Perf. C. Grant, J. Fontaine and C. Hardwicke. RKO
Radio Pictures, 1941.
The Thrill of It All. Dir. N. Jewison. Perf. D. Day, J. Garner and A. Francis. Universal
International Pictures/Ross Hunter Productions/Arwin Productions, 1963.
18
Pictura in Arcana: The Traumatic
Real as In/visible Crack
Lysane Fauvel
Toward the visual crack
“At the level of the gaze,” Slavoj Žižek notes in The Plague of Fantasies,
“the Real is not so much the invisible Beyond, eluding our gazes which
can perceive only delusive appearances, but, rather,” he adds, “the very
stain or spot which disturbs and blurs our “direct” perception of reality –
which “bends” the direct straight line from our eyes to the perceived
object” (214). Louis Martin notes in To Destroy Painting, “[But] how can
I see a lack? We see only what is there. If I see what is not there,” she
adds, “I must have been expecting to see something” (146).
This chapter takes its point of departure from Slavoj Žižek’s “The Uncon-
scious Law: Toward an Ethics Beyond the Good,” the appendix to The
Plague of Fantasies (1997), in which he identifies and analyses what he
calls the “traumatic Real.” Regarding the Real per se, Žižek closely follows
Lacan, who defined it as “that which resists symbolization absolutely”
(Seminar I, 66), and later added that it “is absolutely without fissure”
(Seminar II, 97), thus implying that symbolization and the symbolic order
are fissured and that only the Real is absolute. However, Lacan’s latter
assertion, that the Real “is absolutely without fissure,” is problematized
by what we will hear Lacanians like Žižek calling not only “blur,” “stain
or spot” but also the “crack,” which would appear to imply that a fissure
extends into the Real as well, at least in the visual field, compelling us to
“see” the Real, if at all, only indirectly and in a sense at its behest, not
ours. In any event, whereas for Žižek in “The Unconscious Law,” this
crack is essentially “ontological” with crucial “ethical” implications, I will
be stressing that it is also a constitutive part of the “ontic” problematic of
visibility-cum-invisibility: in/visibility (which Žižek would unlikely deny,
though his focus in this particular text happens to lie elsewhere).
258
Pictura in Arcana 259
Returning to the specifically traumatic Real, Žižek qualifies it, provi-

sionally, still closely following Lacan, as that “which resists symboliza-
tion,” namely, “the Real which is experienced in the encounter with the
abyss of the Other’s desire (the famous “Che vuoi?”, What do you want
[from me]?)….” (213–215). I will return to the continuation of Žižek’s
remark presently. However, as we can see already in this formulation,
his primary aim here is to articulate the traumatic Real to a specifically
intersubjective and ethical problematic. In contrast, my own aim, though
not ignoring this move, is to extrapolate from Žižek’s discussion a way
of viewing visual artifacts in terms of the traumatic Real and its crack.
In a sense the “Che vuoi?” is the question that paintings do not only
thematize but also ask of us viewers.
To make my argument, I have selected three paintings, all of which
depict reclining naked women and all of which have a certain – more
or less direct – focus on the genitalia. The first painting is Rembrandt’s
Danaë (1636–1646), which has been analyzed from a quasi-Lacanian
perspective (by Mieke Bal). The second painting was evidently of obses-
sive interest to Lacan himself: Courbet’s Origin of the World (1866), which
he owned – albeit under circumstances so obscure as likely to render full
analysis of his fascination impossible (all of which has been discussed by
Shuli Barzilai). Of course Lacan himself paid a great deal of attention to
other paintings, most famously Hans Holbein’s Ambassadors, but never
publicly to the one that most interested him: namely, that by Courbet.
Whereas two paintings have already been discussed by feminist critics
aware of the Lacanian system, the third one, to my knowledge, has yet
to be analyzed in this theoretical context: Velázquez’s painting, cur-
rently known as Venus at Her Mirror (1644–1648).
Thus I leap from the mid-17th century to some two hundred years
later. While Velázquez and Rembrandt were contemporaries and prob-
ably aware of one another’s existence, it is unlikely that they would
have seen one another’s work (they did however share some sources,
notably Rubens); and Courbet was certainly influenced by Velázquez
and Rembrandt. Nonetheless, questions of influence are not my focus
here. I am interested, rather, not only in the manifest theme shared by
all three paintings – the reclining naked woman – but also, and more
importantly, in the more arcane structural relation of the viewer’s gaze
to that subject, in the dual sense of “subject matter” and a female being
ostensibly “subjected” to the gaze of the viewer (male, but also female).
In other words, my argument here is explicitly structural and psychoan-
alytic rather than historical. This is not because I deny the importance
of history or of historical approaches to works of art, but because I want
260 Lysane Fauvel
to focus on the problem of the traumatic Real, which arguably cannot

be reduced to historical terms, insofar as it is related to what we have
heard Lacan and Žižek call the “absolute.”
More specifically, I have chosen my visual examples less to elaborate
Žižek’s explicitly Lacanian ontological and ethical point into a way
of viewing the in/visible, and more in order to locate a certain visual
problematic. My narrative is a-chronological inasmuch as it deals with
a plausible reconstruction of Lacan’s relation to Courbet’s The Origin
of the World, framed within my articulation of the two other paintings
in terms of the problem of the Lacanian “crack.”1 First, however, a few
brief remarks on Žižek’s overall argument.
As we have glimpsed already in the epigram I have taken from Žižek,
he does relate the traumatic Real to the general problem of vision, vis-
ibility and visuality, and to the blur in the specific, albeit only en pas-
sant. Like his also previously cited statement – that the traumatic Real is
that “which resists symbolization, the Real which is experienced in the
encounter with the abyss of the Other’s desire (the famous ‘Che vuoi?’)” –
this epigram is part of the Žižekian response to a possible “fourth” ethical
position that lies, as Žižek argues, “beyond the Hegelian triad.” That is,
it is fourth as the ostensibly last possible position in a sequence in the
history of ethics extending from a foundational ethics (“grounded in the
reference to some supreme Good”), a procedural ethics (“the grounding
of ethics in some purely formal frame of rules”) and a post-modern eth-
ics (which is constitutively relativistic and hence appears ungrounded,
if not ungroundable, and is at most barely concerned with grounding
in the first place). Žižek elaborates upon the fourth, properly Lacanian
possibility of ethics – as stated in his remark about the “Che vuoi?” – as
follows: “There is an ethics – that is to say, an injunction which cannot
be grounded in ontology – in so far as there is a crack in the ontological
edifice of the universe: at its most elementary, ethics designates fidelity to
this crack.” (215; emphases added). The reason I have emphasized “crack”
will become clearer later. To anticipate briefly, however, it is because
of the word’s colloquial sexual (genital) connotations, and because, in
our explicitly “sexual” paintings, this term appears to refer to something
(what this is, is another problem to be discussed) that is not only explicitly
thematized, “symbolized” or “represented” in these paintings but also
implicitly or indirectly indicated. In any case, for Lacanians, this crack must
be a constitutive part of visual practice, viewing and the visible – or, rather,
of not viewing and of the invisible; and so it is in/visible.
In addition to the statement that is our epigram, in which Žižek
links the Real to the blur, he relates both particularly to ethics in ways
additional to the ones already noted. Later, in his appendix, he returns

to what we have heard him calling “fidelity” to the “ontological crack,”
on which he would ground his Lacanian ethics, in terms of what he
now calls “fidelity to the Real.” Implying thereby a certain equivalence
between the crack and the Real, Žižek writes:
The traumatic Real is … that which, precisely, prevents us from

assuming a neutral-objective view of reality, a stain which blurs our
clear perception of it. And this example also brings home the ethi-
cal dimension of fidelity to the Real qua impossible: the point is not
simply to ‘tell the entire truth about it’, but, above all, to confront
the way we ourselves, by means of our subjective position of enun-
ciation, are always-already involved, engaged in it … For that reason,
a trauma is always redoubled into the traumatic event ‘in itself’, and
into the trauma of its symbolic inscription. (215; emphasis and ellipsis
in the original)
To repeat, as these formulations make especially clear, Žižek’s primary

interest with the traumatic Real is in the specifically ethical, not in the
specifically visual (though he is often, elsewhere, very interested in that
as well). Hence, I use Žižek here not as my main focus but rather as my
point of departure. Nonetheless, throughout this chapter, I will use sev-
eral other “Žižekian” (meaning basically Lacanian) terms and concepts,
or rather problems. The most notable of these are closely related to one
another and are contained in four sets:
(1) The problem of representation, including the problem of “repre-

senting” or “symbolizing” a Real that cannot be represented per
definitionem (“the Real escapes symbolization absolutely”) and the
consequences of the inherent failure when one ignores this impos-
sibility and attempts to do otherwise, as well as the consequent
distinction between the “signifiable” and the “showable” crack.
(2) The problem of what Lacan calls “extimacy” (a neologism combin-
ing “ex-teriority” and “in-timacy”) in order to argue that the loca-
tion of the spot, stain, blur and crack in the visual (as well as ethical)
field is neither objective nor subjective, neither exterior nor interior,
but instead inscribed – more or less traumatically, not within what
we commonly call “reality” but within the Real, our “encounter”
with which is always, ultimately, traumatic.
(3) The problem of the multifaceted relation not only among the Real,
trauma and the blur but also among the Lacanian Thing (Ding or chose),
262 Lysane Fauvel
eventually replaced by the untranslatable objet petit a and the con-

comitant problem of unrealizable (visual or ethical) desire; and
(4) The problem of the monstrous (das Ungeheuere), in its relation to
all the above, but also to (more or less “sublimated,” “scotomized,”
“fetishized,” “veiled” and/or “framed”) sexuality and sexuation, cas-
tration, blindness and, ultimately, death.
Now, because my primary focus is on the specifically “visual” – that is,

what we (following not only Lacan but also what Merleau-Ponty and
others might better call precisely in/visibility), all these problems will
have to be inflected and modified, sometimes critically, for my analyses
of paintings. Finally, I note here at the outset that these are problems
that, by their very nature, cannot but be related ultimately to the specifi-
cally ethical dimension addressed by both Lacan and Žižek. Hence, this
chapter might be described as an attempt to lay at least the groundwork
for an “ethics of vision,” though anything more than a groundwork it
cannot be at present.
Mieke Bal, in her essay “His Master’s Eye,” which is devoted in part to
an analysis of the Danaë, cites Sir Kenneth Clark’s Feminine Beauty (1980):
The closest Rembrandt came to a statement of his ideal was the Danaë
in the Hermitage, where he certainly wished to make the figure as
beautiful as he could. But his love of truth got the better of him. She
is sensuous and desirable, but beautiful is not the word that comes to
one’s mind. (Clark cited in Bal 380)
Why does Sir Kenneth describe Danaë as not beautiful? To answer this
question note his tacit equation and conflation of very distinct catego-
ries: for him, the love of truth (philo-sophia) becomes the not-beautiful,
or ugly, which is sensuous and desirable, as opposed to beauty. There
is something about this tacit equation and conflation that we might
call “monstrous,” in a sense to be specified later. First, however, let us
remain with his argument, as critiqued by Bal. Apart from the question
of further confusing two other domains, that of the painting and that of
the model itself (the woman represented), all of which have been amply
discussed by Bal, as well as the misogynistic implications underlying Sir
Kenneth’s opposition between beauty and truth as applied to women,
is there not another possible interpretation of the position of the
historian-connoisseur at work here? Could it be that the patriarch and
scholar, even as he is sexually attracted, feels threatened by the paint-
ing and, mutatis mutandis, by Danaë (and/or the model) – threatened
by something monstrous, in the sense of something that Sir Kenneth can-

not articulate? In order to find out what may really be threatening about
the painting, let us first examine some of its original conditions of pro-
duction and reception. From the time of their conception and fabrication
onwards, Rembrandt’s nudes have provoked many passionate reactions.
One of the most common criticisms has to do with a certain, perhaps
monstrous, “realism” of the paintings, a problem we will re-encounter
a fortiori in Courbet. As Andries Pels remarked in a mid-17th-century
poem, the fact that Rembrandt chose to represent/paint a laywomen of
flesh and blood rather than a fictitious (mythological or religious) perfect
ideal of beauty (such as Venus, notably) is the first main basis of the
early criticism, although art historians today think it incontrovertible
that the painting depicts the legend of Danaë. The second early criticism,
following directly from the first, is the objection of art critics to Danaë’s
excessively (monstrously) real birthing marks, sagging breasts and all the
other details that apparently emphasized the corporeal reality of the body
painted, specifically in terms of motherhood (the mythological signifi-
cance of which we will see presently).
My thesis does not, however, take its point of departure from this
type of misogynistic projection, nor even its criticism, because I want to
focus on the problem of a specific mise-en-abîme: Rembrandt’s depiction
of the sexual organs or, still more specifically in the case of the Danaë,
the simultaneous covering and uncovering (since they are so strongly
alluded to) of the genitals, along with the role of the viewer as voyeur
in the process of alternating between the glance and the gaze.
The latter distinction has been usefully articulated in Lacanian terms
by the art historian Norman Bryson, and centres around the multiple
meaning of the French regard, which can be translated as either “gaze”
or “glance,” as particularly exploited by Lacan. “Both in English and in
French,” Bryson writes in Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (1983),
vision is portrayed under two aspects: one vigilant, masterful, ‘spir-

itual’. And the other subversive, random disorderly. The etymology of
the word regard points to far more than the rudimentary act of look-
ing: the prefix, with its implication of an act that is always repeated,
already indicates an impatient pressure within vision, a preserving
drive which looks outward with mistrust (reprendre sous garde, to re-
arrest) and actively seek to confine what is always on the point of
escaping or slipping out of bounds. The regard attempts to extract
the enduring form from fleeting process; its epithets tend toward a
certain violence (penetrating, piercing, fixing), and it overall purpose
264 Lysane Fauvel
seems to be the discovery of a second (re-)surface standing behind the

first, the mask of appearances. Built into the regard is an undoubted
strain or anxiety in the transactions between the self and the world,
and in this effortful scansion it is opposed to the coup d’œil, which
preserves and intensifies the violent aspect, the ‘attack’ (in the musi-
cal sense) of regard, yet by the same token creates an intermittence of
vision, a series of peaks traversed by valleys of inattentiveness when
the self, recuperating after the outburst of its activity and with its
resources temporarily depleted, withdraws from the external world
into an apartness alluded to yet lacking in firm definition. (93–94)
However it is where Bryson turns from French regard to English “gaze”

and “glance” that we find the most useful point for our discussion of
the paintings.
In English, a similar division separates the activity of the gaze, pro-

longed, contemplative, yet regarding the field of vision with a certain
aloofness and disengagement, across a tranquil interval, from that of
the glance, a furtive sideways look whose attention is always elsewhere,
which shifts to conceal its own existence, and which is capable of car-
rying unofficial, sub rosa of hostility, collusion, rebellion, and lust. (94)
To anticipate my own argument, extrapolating from Bryson, the gaze

is the way of looking at the ostensible theme of the paintings we are
considering, the regard of the naked women and their more or less con-
cealed genitalia; whereas the glance refers to the even more in/visible
Real, potentially traumatic especially.
The Danaë in the St Petersburg Hermitage is painted not as a naked
female body given to the gaze of just any spectator, if at all, insofar
as she is looking away from any viewer. The visual structure in which
her body is placed thus shifts the perspectives more commonly at play
in voyeurism. In Bal’s words: “The woman is represented as naked in
her most private space, on her bed. But her nakedness does not make
her passive. Her beauty, desired by both the lover Zeus and the viewer,
is not an object to be taken in. She disposes of it herself” (384–385).
Furthermore, there are many visual strata in the painting, five internal
and opposed types of gaze: Danaë’s look; the look of the putto (angel,
Cupid, or Amor); the divine Zeus’ look (the golden light); the look of the
maidservant standing behind the curtain; and, finally, the “external”
position of the viewer of the painting. Taken together, these five looks
form a composite gaze that is “extimate.”
A closer examination of these different looks or composite gaze is

helpful in understanding Bal’s previously cited claim that Danaë “dis-
poses of it [her beauty] herself.” Danaë’s hand, directed away from the
viewer, forces the latter, as it were, to redirect the axis of vision toward
an imaginary space outside of the painting, hence also, now qua glance
(not gaze), toward the unsymbolizable Real. This re-direction of the
voyeuristic gaze is further emphasized by the position of the servant
behind the curtain who also seems to be looking in the same direction.
This is the function of what art historians call “the surrogate viewer,”
who substitutes for the living viewer in the fictional, dead space on the
canvas; and note here that this surrogate viewer is explicitly female.2
Even if Danaë’s obvious disregard for the viewer, however, might put
the participation of that subject at risk of being checkmated, so to speak
(cf. “checkmate”: “death to the king”), creating a feeling of uneasiness
that renders the subject’s visual potency problematic (if not indeed
“castrating” it), I would like to claim that the disturbed and disturbing
feeling, so well exemplified by Sir Kenneth Clark’s confusions and ideol-
ogy, is due to something else, something less obvious and more primal,
something akin, perhaps, to a glance at the Freudian primal scene. This
returns us to our distinction between the gaze (at “sex”) and the glance
(at the Real). In Bal’s terms, describing Danaë’s gesture of pointing and
welcoming, “the powerful arm which makes us aware of this woman’s
self-disposal certainly does not preclude the viewing of her body, but it
does encourage awareness of that act of viewing: from the gaze to the
glance”; (Bal 386) in other words, to the Real.
The scene in the painting can be further described as a superimposi-
tion of several triangular figures – part explicit, part structural. As Bal
again puts it: “The two delegated focalizers, the putto, and the servant,
form an insistent triangle with the female body as its base, paralleling
and reversing the triangle of the exit-vagina-curtain” (386). The other tri-
angle of importance here is the shadowy triangle of Danaë’s own genitals
(but also empty slippers, armpit, etc.). In contrast to Bal’s interpretation,
however, which does not linger on this issue in order to focus instead on
the problematic of subordination and passivity versus domination and
activity, I wish to engage the painting in its precise relation to the repre-
sentation of the genitalia; for herein lies something more monstrous, at
least to Sir Kenneth Clark. Now, it is true that the “sex” of the woman
“on display,” even it were more explicitly revealed to the viewer, cannot
be seen either by the viewer (because the viewer’s gaze is ultimately redi-
rected toward a point exterior to the painting), or by the servant (because
her position is on the other side, behind Danaë’s body). Nonetheless, the
266 Lysane Fauvel
genitals remain in an almost central position in the painting. The fact

that they are slightly off-centre is itself interesting, since what is ulti-
mately at stake is Danaë’s beckoning that points toward something that
must elude representation or symbolization absolutely. Even if the geni-
tals are not really visible, moreover, insofar as they are cast in shadow,
and because Danaë holds her legs closed together, the “béance” or “crack”
(even while invisible because it is itself unrepresentable or unsymboliz-
able) is pointed toward or indicated by another “béance,” that of the cur-
tain opening. Thus it is the juxtaposition of the crack of curtain opening
with the closed legs hiding the crack of the genitals that produces the
traumatic (or monstrous) effect, since the superimposition of the béance
onto the shadow of the genitals is that which, as it were, fissures the gen-
italia. In turn, this crack in the genitalia is that which is unrepresentable,
unsymbolizable and perhaps monstrously in/visible. It “is” das Ding, the
object of desire, the lost object, the prehistoric Other, which remains in
the realm of the Real. It is the unforgettable and forbidden object of the
incestuous “desire of the mother” – in the Lacanian double meaning of
this genitive (not to say genital) metaphor. It is the lost object which
must continually be refound (though in a sense it never existed), and
around which the subject must continually circulate, without ever being
able to attain it. The Thing, following Lacan (who later spoke of objet
petit a), is the subject’s Sovereign Good (here we glimpse part of the ethi-
cal problem noted by Žižek), and the pleasure principle is what keeps the
subject at a perpetual distance from this Good. If, however, the subject
were to transgress the pleasure principle and attain this Good, then the
subject would suffer because it “cannot stand the extreme good that das
Ding may bring to him” (Seminar VII, 73) not to mention bring to her.
Note further in this regard the way that Rembrandt’s painting appro-
priates and redirects the legend of Danaë. She is the daughter of the King
of Argos, Acisios, who, upon hearing the prediction that she would bear
his grandson, who will assassinate him, has Danaë locked up in a tower.
The supreme God, Zeus, having fallen in love with Danaë, penetrates
both the tower and her in the legend as a shower of golden rain, which
is depicted as such in most of the many paintings on the subject before
and after Rembrandt. Here the artist has transformed the represented
rain into the golden light that flows into the room, particularly onto
Danaë’s naked body, through the vaginal-shaped opening into which
Danaë and her maidservant stare, apparently welcomingly. The repre-
sented figures “see” what we are prohibited from seeing, the Greek god
himself, as we see the scene through at least two other openings: the
frame of the canvas and the curtain pulled back from around the bed.
The latter opening substitutes for two other conventions of painting: the
parted curtain as symbolization of the lids of the human eye, and the
indication of the presence of royalty. In any case we see the Real, insofar
as it can be viewed as God, only indirectly. To do otherwise would be
traumatic, as the traditional punishment for seeing, or even desiring
to see God is death (recall the fate of the pagan Semele at the hands of
Zeus when she demands to see who has raped her); but also the Pauline
Christian caution that God can only be viewed, at present on earth,
“through a glass darkly.” Finally, note the apparently pained expression
on the face of the putto, Cupid or Amor, whose eyes are also averted
from the source of light flowing in from the left and indeed appear to
be closed. What this means is unclear, although it presumably, accord-
ing to my reading, would have to do not only with the fact that Danaë
has already given birth to the grandson of whom it has been predicted
that he will kill the secular king, Danaë’s father (if we can indeed read
the marks on her legs and belly as “birthing marks”), but also with three
other considerations.
First, Love is traditionally blind; second (in Lacanian terms) Love is
concomitantly the only thing that gives ultimate meaning to human
life and is strictly speaking impossible; and, finally, there is the aforemen-
tioned prohibition against looking at the Real (of its sacred cognates),
save with traumatic consequences, up to and including death. Thus is
the gaze and/or glance of the viewer caught up in a complex series of
what Lacan would call a “trap for the gaze.” Not only do Danaë and the
female maidservant function as surrogates for us, the viewers, in effect
“castrating” those among us who are male and ostensibly reminding
those of us who are female of what we essentially “lack,” but we are even
all allowed to see the Real or God, indirectly in our glance.
There is yet another surrogate viewer too, and he must be male, insofar
as Amor or Cupid, like all angelic, winged messenger figures is male. This
putto, however, is depicted as “blind” or at least as having closed his eyes,
and of tortured, grimacing mien. Moreover, it is visually unclear whether
the putto is part of the ornate golden ornamentation of the interior of the
room or covered bed, or instead is to be viewed as an harbinger from the
world of Zeus that is acceptable for humans to see. The putto thus stands
at the threshold of two worlds: the physical and the metaphysical, as
does Rembrandt’s whole painting per se. Finally, it is thus that the viewing
subject is itself fissured, just as is the Real itself; namely, into the physi-
cal and the metaphysical (Heidegger’s “ontological difference” between
Being and beings, perhaps), or rather the visible and the invisible: the in/
visible of the traumatic Real.
In the case of Rembrandt’s Danaë, the approach to the Real (which
in a sense is an approach by the Real, since the encounter with it is not
268 Lysane Fauvel
under human control), is what produces the traumatic experience of the

viewer gazing at that which cannot be seen or faced, or if it can, only
in/visibly. Lacan writes in his 1954/1955 Seminar that the Real is: “The
essential object which isn’t an object any longer, but this something
faced [my emphasis] with which all words cease and all categories fail,
the object of anxiety par excellence” (Seminar II, 164).
The Real is “the impossible” (Seminar XI, 167) precisely because it
precludes any possible mediation (dialectical or other), being that it is
outside and yet also inside the symbolic and imaginary orders, in other
words – “extimate.” The Real is impossible to attain in any way except
traumatically or monstrously: we cannot imagine it or integrate it into
the symbolic order; and this impossibility and resistance to (or foreclo-
sure of) representation is precisely what lends it its perhaps monstrous
and in any case traumatic character.
The first written review of Courbet’s Origin of the World reminds us
of the shortcomings of the early responses to Rembrandt’s Danaë. The
author, Maxime du Camp, attacks Courbet with the charge of deca-
dence and excessive realism. He writes:
Courbet, this same man whose avowed intention was to renew French
painting, painted a portrait of a woman which is difficult to describe.
In the dressing room of this foreign personage [Kahlil Sherif Pacha,
who commissioned the painting in 1866], one sees a small picture
hidden under a green veil. When one draws aside the veil one remains
stupefied to perceive a woman, life-size, seen from the front, moved
and convulsed, remarkably executed, reproduced con amore, as the
Italians say, providing the last word in realism. But, by some incon-
ceivable forgetfulness, the artist who copied his model from nature,
had neglected to represent the feet, the legs, the thighs, the stomach,
the hips, the chest, the hands, the arms, the shoulders, the neck and
the head. (Du Camp, cited in Barzilai 9–10)
The difficulty in describing the painting here and the obvious dis-
pleasure felt by Du Camp at the sight of it, is better understood if one
describes and qualifies the painting as a “pornographic” one, as was done
by the art historian and critic Linda Nochlin on the occasion of the first
public exhibition of it at the Brooklyn Museum in 1988. It is also a prob-
able reason why the painting remained in the shadows for so many years
(“scotomized,” as it were). From the time of its production in 1866, until
its first public display in 1988, it had remained in the hands of a few
art connoisseurs, crossing Europe’s borders without being lent to any
museums. Furthermore, not only was the painting kept hidden from the
public gaze, but its various owners used strange devices and stratagems
to hide it from view in the very sanctuaries of their houses. As we under-
stand from Du Camp’s quotation, the Turkish ambassador kept it hidden
behind a green veil. Berheim-Jeune Gallerry, the next owner, held it in
a double-locked frame concealed under a panel representing a castle in
the snow, thought to be another of Courbet’s paintings, The Chateau of
Blonay.3 After being briefly in the hands of Baron Francis Hatvany of
Budapest, the painting disappeared from the city during WWII to reap-
pear in Lacan’s country home “la Prevoté” in Guitrancourt in 1955. This
time the painting was placed on a loggia, hidden from the visitor’s gaze
by a sliding wooden screen commissioned from André Masson, repre-
senting the same painting but in an abstract manner. What may have
been the motivations behind this tradition of sub-rosa concealment?
Following his purloining predecessors, Lacan did not even lend the
painting to the French exhibition of 1966, entitled “Courbet in Private
French Collections.” To rephrase one of Barzilai’s questions: Why all
these elaborate mise-en-scènes that veil the painting in silence?4 It was
not until 1981, after Lacan’s death, that Elisabeth Roudinesco disclosed
that it had been in his possession. Thus, why, again, all these prophy-
lactic measures in order to conceal the painting from the gaze? Barzilai
writes: “The image is protected from the beholder-possessor, or the
beholder-possessor from the image, by means of a system of controlled
disclosure.” (14) Quoting a passage from Christine Froula’s response to
the painting, as a possible explanation, Barzilai continues:
The invisible “reality” that L’origine foregrounds signals not female

lack, the sight of which Freud’s insists, arouses male castration anxi-
ety, but females “have” the recognition of which … can arouse male
fear of its own (étant donné or always-already) lack – an anxiety that
the very notion of castration defensively dissimulates by projecting
the specter of lack back upon the maternal body that arouses it.
L’origine, in other words, punctures [my emphasis] the similarly struc-
tured illusionist scenarios of Genesis and Freudian castration anxiety,
both of which exchange weakness for power along the lines of sexual
difference. (Froula cited by Barzilai 7–8)
Here, after noticing that Barzilai does not give us her own interpreta-
tion but rather hides behind Froula’s, I would like to comment on the
above citation. It is clear that, closely following Freud’s 1918 text on
the castration-complex (“From the History of an Infantile Neurosis”),
270 Lysane Fauvel
the recognition of the ostensible female lack or “have-not” in the female

body (or the body of the mother), the “crack” arouses fears and anxiety
in the male subject, fears which, through the help of defensively project-
ing it back upon the body responsible for it, might produce momentar-
ily relief from the fear of the aforementioned threat of being punctured,
as in Froula’s remark. We should not forget, however, that the scenario
of concealment in question here is to be applied to Lacan himself, so
that a strictly Freudian analysis, even if helpful as a starting point, is not
in itself sufficient.
Here I return to the fil conducteur of this chapter. Could it be possible to
interpret the diverse attempts to regulate, by means of the mise-en-abîme
of more or less technical devices, the effect the painting produces on the
viewer, as a mise en garde against the annihilating power of the approach
to and of the Real qua das Ding? Moreover, one could speak here (build-
ing an analogy with the mirror stage and the specular image) of the
dangerous effect of “captivation” exercised upon the viewer, the viewer
is not only captivated, fascinated by the power of the image, but his or
her gaze is also “captured” or even “imprisoned” in the regard of the
painting. This occurs in two basic ways: on the one hand, the captivation
exerted on the viewing subject by the “erotic” and “erogenous” subject-
matter produces a higher level of excitation; and, on the other hand, the
gaze captured and trapped in the painting imprisons the viewing subject
who cannot discharge or cathect this same excitation. According to
Freud (1926), it is this accumulation of excitation without cathexis that
is at the root of anxiety – the “origin of its world,” so to speak.
For the post-1953 Lacan, the anxiety is rearticulated in terms of the
approach to and of the Real (das Ding, later objet petit a), in the face of
its traumatic encounter. Lacan wrote in 1956: “Anxiety, as we know, is
always connected with a loss … with a two-sided relation on the point of
fading away to be superseded by something else, something which the
patient [or viewer, here] cannot face without vertigo” (“Fetishism,” 273).
In other words, the vertigo is more associated with the glance than with
the gaze. In contradistinction to Freud, who distinguished between fear
(which focuses on a specific object) and anxiety (which does not), Lacan
argued, in his unpublished 1962–1963 Seminar, Anxiety, that anxiety is
not without an object. Rather, the object at play here is a different type
of object, an object which unlike all other objects is outside of symboli-
zation. This object, the object-cause of desire, the desire of the Other, is
none other than the monstrous das Ding, the traumatic Real.
Thus in the Courbet painting it is the realism of the frontal view of
the crack of the female genitalia, the unimaginable, the unrepresentable,
which necessitates protection, prophylaxis, insulation and the guard-

ing of the regard. In Barbara Creed’s words, in The Monstrous Feminine
(1993): “Confronted with the sight of the monstrous, the viewing sub-
ject is put into crisis – boundaries designated to keep the abject at bay,
threaten to disintegrate, collapse” (28).
Once again, it is the proximity to and of the Real that petrifies the
viewing subject, as does the legendary Medusa’s head. Freud, in his post-
humously published essay “Medusa’s Head” (1922; 1940), writes that it
“takes the place of a representation of the female genitals, or rather … it
isolates their horrifying effects from their pleasure-giving one” (273–274).
Yet, as Louis Marin has remarked in To Destroy Painting (1977), “The
psychoanalytic interpretation of the terrifying severed head of Medusa
is too easy because it is readily suggested by the mythological theme
itself. It seems as if the interpretation is already included in the theme
of the story, so what need could there possibly be for further interpreta-
tion?” (145). Marin also makes an important point about a certain lack
(“crack” even) in Freud’s interpretation:
The central episode of the myth goes unanalyzed by Freud, and it is

precisely this very moment that is represented (or perhaps figured)
in the Head of Medusa [by Caravaggio]. This is the moment in which
Medusa petrifies herself and Perseus decapitates her. This central
moment is the moment of the ruse by means of which the hero turns
her own strength against herself, thereby overcoming his own weak-
ness. This is, of course, the ruse of turning the shield’s reflective
power into a weapon. (147–148)
Thus it is, Marin continues, that “there is a sense in which the decapita-
tion is secondary, for it would be impossible without the machination in
which Perseus uses his shield, in a sort of bricolage, as an optical device,
a mirror to capture Medusa in the trap of her own deadly gaze.” (148).
Even more manifestly than in Rembrandt’s Danaë, Courbet’s Origin of
the World (and, as we will see in our next discussion, Velázquez’s Venus
at Her Mirror, which introduces the mirror explicitly into our argument),
the point here is as follows. The reclining naked women, with her geni-
tals more or less exposed, functions as a kind of ruse or trap for the gaze
and the purported trauma of castration anxiety. However, what in fact
appears to occur in these paintings is the displacement of a still more
traumatic, and hence more absolutely unsymbolizable and unrepresent-
able “object” – namely the Real itself; which is precisely what cannot be
seen by the gaze, only by the glance.
272 Lysane Fauvel
As Marin concludes of the gaze:
I can, of course, forget the essential element and fall into the trap
of emphasizing the moment of decapitation and castration, thereby
interpreting it as the moment in which the object is at once present
and absent. I can let myself be trapped by the representation, the trap
within the trap created …, the very mainspring of representation in
which the real itself is what is lacking. In the moment of representa-
tion, we are allowed to see not “the real,” not to want to see it, for
the “gap” where castration is made manifest is covered over … (148)
It is here, to point toward that Real, that we return to the glance. In

Bryson’s words:
To dissolve the Gaze that returns the body to itself in medusal form,
we must willingly enter into the partial blindness of the Glance and
dispense with the conception of form as consideration, as Arrest,
and try to conceive of form instead in dynamic terms, as matter
in process, in the sense of the original, pre-Socratic word for form:
rhuthmos, rhythm, the impress on matter of the body’s internal
energy, in the mobility and vibrancy of its somatic rhythms. (131)
How, then, might the Real be “represented” if it cannot be represented?

And how does this question relate to the problem of the mirror in
terms of its “Medusa effect”? Clearly, at stake is not only the gaze but
the glance, both of which “look” at what they cannot see, which is in
both cases the traumatic Real; but the one is “sexual,” the other more
“ontological.” In a sense, returning to our point of departure, the Real,
though “absolute,” is itself fissured or “cracked.”
The Velázquez painting is composed in the Venetian tradition and
is said to be the only nude depiction of a woman still existing from
Velázquez’s œuvre. Indeed, it is the only significant Spanish nude of the
period ruled by the Inquisition, and there are many competing hypoth-
eses about its production. The latest discovery seems to indicate that it
was painted before Velázquez’s second journey to Italy sometime before
November 1648, but the exact date remains uncertain.
It is important to stress that, in the repressive atmosphere of Inqui-
sition Spain, female nudes were rarely painted. Velázquez’s master
Pacheco wrote that in order to avoid temptation while painting nudes,
he himself would copy the hands and faces from virtuous women, and
for the figures use not flesh and blood models but engravings, drawings,
outlines of figures by Albrecht Dürer or statues. Velázquez, however,

seems not to have been following his master’s precepts for the Venus,
because it is difficult to imagine that this painting was done piece-
meal. Velázquez, nonetheless, did hide the identity of the model who
had posed for his Venus, and did so in two ways. First, her identity is
concealed through her position – she turns her back to the viewer; and
second, the face in the mirror (which is said to have been added later) is
apparently not the face of the model (thought to be the actress Damiana,
mistress of the Marquis of Heliche). The face in the mirror is probably
not hers, but that of a peasant girl. In any case, we are again confronted,
as with Rembrandt’s almost exactly contemporaneous Danaë, with a
crack between a mythological figure (here Venus) and a secular one.
The full complexity of the painting, however, beginning with the mir-
ror, lies less in historical anecdotes than in geometry, that is, the angle of
the mirror. For one thing, it is unclear what it is precisely that Venus sees
when she gazes into it. It cannot be her own face, if what the viewer sees
is that face, because we are not in her position. Alternatively, if we see her
face, as we manifestly do, then she must be gazing elsewhere. We must
also recall the dual iconographic meaning of the mirror in the history
of painting, mythology and theology: on the one hand, it represents the
cardinal Christian sin of vanitas (cf. Greek hubris); on the other hand,
the virtue of self-knowledge (the Platonic Socrates’ “know thyself”). As
a photographic reconstruction suggests, however, in Cartesian space the
angle of the mirror, held by the putto or Cupid (Amor), from the viewer’s
point of view would show not Venus’ face but her headless and legless
torso, including her genital region. This, however, is also veiled by the
white cloth and marks and reduplicates the transition from the bed to
the mirror or, rather, the “crack” between the specular and the symbolic
order, and so points toward the otherwise unsymbolizable Real.
Let us focus more closely on the mirror and the circuit of the gazes:
(1) there is the gaze of the putto. From his position, he cannot see what
the mirror reflects but only the frame, which reduplicates the frame of
the painting itself, making us wonder whether what we see in the paint-
ing itself should be viewed as a reflection, not as a window into reality.
Generally speaking, with particular intensity in the Baroque, the frame of
a painting can be “read” in two opposed ways that parallel the opposi-
tion between the specular and the symbolic order: as a window, opening
the viewer to another world; or as a mirror, returning the viewer back
into her or his viewing space; (2) there is the gaze of Venus, which as we
have noted above is highly ambiguous in terms of what it sees: a face or a
torso; (3) there is the gaze of the viewer, which is similarly or identically
274 Lysane Fauvel
conflicted. Moreover, according to the psychology of perception, two

tendencies conflict here with regard to how we initially look at an object:
either toward the center (here, a mirror) or rather at light before dark col-
ours (here, her illuminated body). Compositionally, the face in the mirror
is most proximate to the buttocks, which are turned to conceal her front
side; and finally, (4) there is the gaze of the face in the mirror, in which
there appears to be a tension between the angle of the face and that of the
eyes. Whereas the face is turned slightly toward that of Venus, the eyes
in the mirror seem to gaze more toward us. This is not all, for the lids of
the eyes in the mirror make it appear as if they were looking downward,
toward the genital region, that “origin of the world.” Or, put perhaps
more precisely still, the eyes in the mirror dip down toward the genitals
(veiled by the white cloth) and then glance up toward the viewer’s eyes.
This multiple triangulation of gazes is in fact open or cracked. In the
language we have been developing from the Lacanian tradition, this is
the trap and ruse for the gaze, the gaze trapped in the genital region,
castration anxiety, monstrosity and its mode of trauma; whereas the
opening in the triangulation is not an object or subject of the gaze, but
of the glance. As for the “content” of the traumatic real, it is precisely
what cannot be shown in paint or stated in language; hence the anxiety
it produces. It is showable but not symbolizable.
In Rembrandt’s Danaë, the open circuit of the gazes draw us into the
intimate scene and then expels us toward the represented source of
light flowing from the god Zeus, or the Real. In Velázquez’s Venus at Her
Mirror, these visual circuits draw us into the depths of the space, only to
encounter the surface of the mirror, which thrusts us back into the space
in which we stand and where we ourselves must encounter the Real. The
one painting “represents” the Real “horizontally,” as it were; the second
“vertically.” As for Lacan’s apparently favourite but purloined painting,
Courbet’s Origin of the World, which at least obliquely recalls the structure
of the Rembrandt and the Velázquez two centuries earlier, we might con-
clude by opening up our discussion here to another dimension, by means
of a remark made about The Origin of the World, and Courbet’s related
paintings, by the art historian Michael Fried in Courbet’s Realism (1990):
Just as the phallus/paintbrush … is characterized by feminine attributes

and thus is other than the unitary masculine entity phallic objects have
classically been theorized to be, so possession turns out to have unex-
pected consequences as the painter-beholder all but becomes his female
surrogates. Here … the difficult question – in this context inescapably
a political one – is how exactly to assess the force of that all but. (222)
Clearly, and leaving Fried’s essentialist undertone aside, the ultimate all
but lies elsewhere, indirectly and in/visibly: in the traumatic Real, or,
pictura in arcana.
Notes
1. We might also note that the two earlier paintings were not demonstrably of
interest to Lacan himself, even though they were produced during a period,
the Baroque, of intense interest to him, partly due to its fascination with vari-
ous types of mise-en-abîme, anamorphosis, and so on.
2. In this respect one might think that this surrogate female viewer in the
painting interpellates the viewer as female – but I want to problematize such
reductively essentialistic responses.
3. Whether the second painting was commissioned specifically in order to con-
ceal completely The Origin of the World is unclear, but the size of both paint-
ings match perfectly (see Barzilai).
4. I use the word “veil” advisedly: it shares a common etymological root with
the German Weib (*ueib), a derogatory word for “woman”, as in English
“wench.”
Bibliography
Bal, M. (1993) “His Master’s Eye,” in Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision,
Ed. David Michael Levin. Berkeley: U of California Press.
Barzilai, S. (1999) Lacan and the Matter of Origins. Stanford: Stanford UP.
Norman Bryson (1983) Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze. New Haven:
Yale UP.
Creed, B. (1993) The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London:
Routledge.
Fried, M. (1992) Courbet’s Realism. Chicago: U of Chicago Press.
Freud, S. (1955) “The Medusa’s Head” in The Complete Psychological Works of
Sigmund Freud, Vol. 18, Trans. James Strachey and Anna Freud. London: Hogarth
Press.
Lacan, J. (1956) “Fetishism: The Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real” in
Perversions: Psychoanalysis and Therapy, Ed. M. Balint. New York: Random
House.
Lacan, J. (1988) The Seminar. Book I. Freud’s Papers on Technique, 1953–54, Trans.
John Forrester. New York: Norton.
—— (1988) The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of
Psychoanalysis, 1954–55, Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: Norton.
—— (1992) The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–60, Trans.
Dennis Porter. London: Routledge.
—— (1977) The Seminar. Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis,
1964, Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press.
Marin, L. (1995) To Destroy Painting, Trans. Mette Hjort. Chicago: U of Chicago
Press.
Žižek, S. (1992) The Plague of Fantasies. London: Verso.
276 Lysane Fauvel
Reference paintings
Courbet, G. (1866). Origin of the World. Oil Painting. Orsay Museum, Paris.
Holbein, H. (1533). Ambassadors. Oil painting. National Gallery, London.
Rembrandt (R. H. van Rijn) (1636–1646). Danaë. Oil painting. Hermitage,
St Petersburg.
Velásquez (D. R. de Silva Velásquez) (1644–1648). Venus at Her Mirror. Oil painting.
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.
19
The Female Body in Frederick
Sandys’s Paintings, or
The Sublimation of Desire
Virginie Thomas
As Blaise Pascal notes in Pensées, “L’homme n’est ni ange ni bête et

le malheur veut que qui veut faire l’ange fait la bête” (358), meaning:
“Man is neither angel nor beast and the misfortune is that he who
wants to make the angel acts the beast.”
The dichotomous opposition coined by Pascal between the Angel
and the Beast is useful in referring to the historical context of Victorian
society. Indeed, in that era women were assigned to one of two cat-
egories: either the “Angel in the House” – to quote the title of a book
by Coventry Patmore; or the whore who enabled men to satisfy their
bestial drives outside the asexual bond of marriage.
Michel Foucault, in The History of Sexuality,1 offered a socially and
economically-based explanation for this cultural evolution, link-
ing the advent of asexual models – and of the corollary “plague” of
prostitution – mainly to the development of the bourgeoisie from
the 18th century onwards, in three main steps that may be roughly
summed up as follows: first, it appeared to the emerging bourgeoisie
that taking care of their bodies and of their biological filiations dis-
tinguished them from the blood of the nobility, “that is in the form
of the antiquity of its ancestry and of the value of its alliances” (124).
The bourgeoisie then decided to extend their concern with the body
to the working classes in order to increase the working capacity of the
latter, for “if sex [was] so rigorously repressed, this [was] because it
[was] incompatible with a general and intensive work imperative” (6).
However, they finally realized that this common concern with the
body and sex narrowed the gap between the social strata, making
277
278 Virginie Thomas
the repression of sex appear as the best way to differentiate them from
the working classes:
Somewhat similar to the way in which, at the end of the eighteenth

century, the bourgeoisie set its own body and its precious sexuality
against the valorous blood of the nobles, at the end of the nineteenth
century it sought to redefine the specific character of its sexuality rela-
tive to that of others, subjecting it to a thorough differential review, and
tracing a dividing line that would set apart and protect its body. (127)
The categorical attempts of Victorian society to imprison the feminine

identity within either the category of the angel or of the demon were
further reinforced by the Evangelical Revival, whose vision of woman
oscillated between the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, the prostitute.
Victorian society saw in that dichotomous stamping a way to tame its
uneasiness in regard to the woman who, even though she may have
been a wife and a mother – the pillar of respectability in the family –
was nonetheless a being deeply rooted in the flesh. During the Victorian
era a great many painters focused on the representation of the female
body, among whom Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys was one of the
most inspired artists, on a par with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as we can
judge from his vast number of portraits of women.
Frederick Sandys was born in 1829 in Norwich. He was first taught
how to draw by his father – who was himself a portraitist – before enroll-
ing to study at the Norwich School of Design. In the 1850s he departed
for London. In May 1857 he exhibited a painting entitled The Nightmare,
which was a parody of a canvas made by John Everett Millais, a member
of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Due to this work he attracted the
attention of the PRB, which accepted Sandys as one of its members at
the beginning of the 1860s. In 1868 one of his most famous paintings,
Medea, was rejected by the Royal Academy because it was deemed far too
shocking for the Victorian audience. Sandys was deeply hurt by this rejec-
tion and decided to abandon oil painting and to devote himself exclu-
sively to chalk drawing. In spite of his disappointment with the Royal
Academy, he remained a celebrated and inspired artist until the 1880s,
when his production started to dwindle and his works became less
numerous and of lesser quality than those he had painted before. He
died, nearly forgotten by his peers, on 25 June 1904 in London. It was
only at the end of the 20th century that his works were brought back
to light and celebrated once again, particularly his chalk portraits, the
technique at which he most excelled.
The Female Body in Frederick Sandys’s Paintings 279
Frederick Sandys’s approach to women is noteworthy and can be

divided into the traditional Manichean typology of the period: “the
Angel in the House” confronting the Femme Fatale. As a consequence,
the question of desire comes to the fore in his works: female desire but
also male desire. Paintings were used as a device to protect the painter
and the viewers through the representation of perilous sensuality, warn-
ing them against women’s lethal sexual potential. They were also, para-
doxically, used as screens onto which both the painter and the viewers
could project their own drives, sublimated in an artistic gesture and
thus satisfying their “appetite of the eye.”2
The angel in the house
Sandys painted quite a number of portraits of aristocratic women because

this kind of canvas represented the main source of income for the artist.
It also enabled him to represent the ideal Angel Woman, the pillar of
the Victorian house and family. One example among many others is the
portrait entitled Grace Rose (1866). The woman’s face is remarkable for
its fresh complexion. The latter is reinforced by the presence of rosebuds
surrounding the figure. Sandys used the classical iconographic device of
the female portrait dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries, which
consisted in accompanying the model with a plant that evoked her
name. Her clear eyes are highlighted by the blue turquoise of her ring, as
well as by the ribbon of her dress, and closely associate Grace Rose with
the Marian blue colour. The dominant colour of the painting is nonethe-
less that of her white dress, which reinforces the asexuality of the figure
in its purity, and evokes Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s definition of
white as the symbolic representation of “the suicidal passivity implicit in
Victorian femininity.”3 Mrs Grace Rose was thus immortalized by Sandys
as a personification of the ideal aristocratic wife and perfectly embodies
the motto of the Rose Family – “Constant and True,” which can be seen
in the top right-hand corner of the painting.
A similar conclusion can be drawn from studying the unfinished paint-
ing entitled Mrs Mary Elizabeth Barstow (1867). Once again the representa-
tion of a patron’s wife is offered to the viewer. The diaphanous face of the
aristocrat, the bluish colour of the skin of her hands and of her ribbons
and her wearing a white dress, tend to give her a disembodied essence,
evoking the subtle body of the Angel in the House:
At the same time, moreover, the aesthetic cult of ladylike fragility

and delicate beauty – no doubt associated with the moral cult of the
280 Virginie Thomas
angel-woman – obliged “genteel” women to “kill” themselves (as

Lederer observed) into art objects: slim, pale, passive beings whose
“charms” eerily recalled the snowy, porcelain immobility of the
dead. (25)
This figure, moreover, is represented in the domestic activity of sew-

ing, much as Grace Rose is painted creating a posy. It reminds us that
Victorian aristocratic women were trapped in the domestic sphere, as
Lord Alfred Tennyson’s quote suggests: “Man for the field and woman for
the hearth, / Man for the sword and for the needle she.”4 Leading spokes-
men and women of the moral standards of the time also related to the
fact that women were denied any existence beyond the domestic realm:
Similarly, John Ruskin affirmed in 1865 that the woman’s “power is

not for rule, not for battle, and her intellect is not for invention or
creation, but for sweet orderings” of domesticity. Plainly, both [John
Ruskin and Mrs Sarah Ellis] meant that, enshrined within her home, a
Victorian angel-woman should become her husband’s holy refuge from
the blood and sweat that inevitably accompanies a “life of significant
action,” as well as, in her “contemplative purity,” a living memento of
the otherness of the divine.5
The cut roses lying in front of Grace Rose in the discussed painting can
thus be seen as a symbolic representation of these women’s sapped vital-
ity. Moreover, turning them into objects of representation through their
portraits could be perceived as another way to definitively trap them
into domesticity and subject them to the painter’s as well as to their
husband’s male authority.
What is noteworthy in the portrait of Mrs Mary Elizabeth Barstow
and of Adelaide Mary, Mrs Philip Bedingfeld (1859) is the predominance
of the landscape in the background. Sandys’s choice thus heightens
the meaning: in the two paintings, the setting used to stage these
models of domesticity is of an urban nature, cultivated – in other words
domesticated – in the vein of the tradition of the representations of
nature preceding the wild beauty of the Romantic Sublime.6 The meek-
ness of these women is therefore reinforced by the domesticated nature
in the background, with the symbolic organization of the painting
thereby illustrating the dual function of the portrait, as underlined by
Louis Marin in De la Représentation: to compensate for the absence of
the represented object but also to reveal the essence of its presence.7
Here, the role of the portrait is to set into relief the ideal essence of
the wife whose purity and tamed identity were celebrated by Victorian
society, as the crowning of Mrs Philip Bedingfeld with a laurel wreath
shows. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the primordial domestic
role of the blameless wife, as embodied by Mrs Philip Bedingfeld, should
be reinforced through her alignment with the pillar in the background,
which turns her pure body into the essential pivot of the painting, sym-
bolizing her pivotal role in her couple and family.
Sandys’s portraits of aristocratic women thus tend to reassure the viewer
by representing angel-women framed by the shape of the canvas but
also by the role of the pure mother and wife ascribed to them by society.
Nevertheless, many representations of women by Sandys do not fit in
this category, displaying instead the alluring but highly lethal body of the
Femme Fatale in order to assuage the scopophilia of the Victorian viewer.
The femme fatale
Sandys made numerous portraits of Femmes Fatales, like his contem-

poraries of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Contrary to Dante Gabriel
Rossetti or William Holman Hunt, however, who clearly devoted some
of their paintings to the issue of prostitution,8 Sandys chose to tackle
the topic of the depraved female body and desire through the recurrent
representation of mythological, desiring, awesome women. His portraits
also differ from those of his peers in his approach to the feminine gaze.
While the women he painted all have an undeniable sensual and deadly
power, in all these portraits Sandys protected the viewer from this malefi-
cent female power by making the latter avert their gazes, and thus
spare the viewer from their enticing, but at the same time objectifying,
Gorgonian power. Sandys’s masterpiece, as far as the Femmes Fatales are
concerned, is undoubtedly Medea (1866–1868). Since the 16th century
artists had been greatly inspired by the representation of this witch, but
in the 19th century she was only represented as a vampire-like woman.
Sandys’s representation is in the vein of this latter tradition: Medea
is portrayed preparing to avenge herself against the King of Corinth’s
daughter – for whom Jason had left her. The protagonist’s facial expres-
sion betrays the suffering and the determination of a woman ready to
unleash her destructive power upon her rival; but also upon her own
children who were born from her union with Jason. Her lacerating ges-
ture against her own flesh may be seen as a proleptic clue to the future
murder of her offspring. In her unfailing determination and thirst for
vengeance at all costs, she truly embodies “the sacrilegious fiendishness
of what William Blake called the ‘Female Will’.”9 Death is foreshadowed
282 Virginie Thomas
by her coral necklace, which resembles bloody beads. Many other wor-
rying symbols abound in the painting: in the foreground, witchcraft
instruments can be observed – an earthenware dish topped by a sala-
mander; an Egyptian statuette used during funeral rites; a dried stingray;
and above all, toads copulating above manuscripts with cabalistic writ-
ing. The background of the painting is also replete with negative sym-
bols that appear in the frieze above Medea: cobras, Egyptian gods with
animal heads, beetles and owls, which are an emblem of darkness but
also Lilith’s sacred animals. In the golden sky astrological signs can be
seen, notably that of Scorpio; and the moon is half-hidden by the figure
of a bat, a satanic animal associated with witches. Finally, the tension of
the painting is built upon the confrontation between the illustrations in
the background that recall Medea’s past – her betrayal of her own father,
her murder of her brother so that Jason and the Argonauts could steal
the Golden Fleece from the dragon and escape – and the devastating
future that the protagonist is preparing in the foreground. The character
is inexorably trapped in her destructive feminine identity but, due to
the diversion of her gaze, she seems to be offered to that of the viewer,
who finds himself exempted from “laying down his gaze.”10
In Helen of Troy (1867), the remarkable portrait of a whimsical girl is
presented to the viewer. The image is clearly characterized by her dis-
dainful pout and her dark gaze – in spite of her blue eyes – underlined
by her frowning in the tradition of the faces painted by Caravaggio
but also typical of Sandys’s Femmes Fatales. Helen’s reddish hair creates
whirlpools from the movements of her curls. The choice of red hair was
almost certainly deliberate because, according to Michel Pastoureau, it
is the colour of demons, of hypocrisy, of lying and of betrayal.11 Helen
may be considered as Aphrodite’s victim but she is also guilty of betray-
ing Menelaus – leaving him for Paris – and, in so doing, occasioning
the Trojan War. Helen’s deadly identity finds an echo in the red colour
of her lips, of her coral necklace whose beads evoke blood drops, and
of the rose that she wears in her hair. In Antiquity roses had a deadly
connotation, since the Feast of Roses was part of the ceremonies linked
to the celebration of the dead. Helen displays a carnal beauty, as we can
judge from the presence of her naked plump body in the foreground;
but nonetheless a nefarious beauty. However, the viewer is once again
protected from her bewitching power and from possible objectification
by the diversion of her threatening gaze; while Helen herself becomes an
object of representation and contemplation. Nevertheless, even though
the viewer manages to escape Helen’s gaze, he is not spared the “gaze of
the painting,” which can appear in several shapes according to Jean-Luc
Nancy: a pearl, a ring, the eye of an animal, a mirror, a nipple, a red

mouth …12 The red spots that predominate either in the shapes of the
coral beads, the perfectly round flowers, or the many curls in the young
girl’s hair, might thus substitute for Helen’s gaze through the symbolic
knowing gaze of the painter in the direction of the desiring viewer.
Similar conclusions can be drawn from another famous portrait by
Sandys entitled Vivien (1863) and which presents us with Merlin’s seduc-
tress’s noxious beauty. As in Sandys’s other paintings of the Femme Fatale,
the profile of a haughty dark-haired woman is offered to the phallic eye
of the viewer, who is granted undeniable visual pleasure while being pro-
tected from the objectifying threat of a potential Gorgon. Once again,
multifarious red spots predominate in the painting: the lips, the amber
necklace and earrings, a poppy, an apple and cabalistic drawings on the
woman’s shawl. What is noteworthy about this painting is the number
of clues intended to warn the viewer against Vivien’s perilous identity.
The background of the canvas is replete with peacock feathers that sur-
round the figure and symbolize her pride and arrogance.13 They can also
be linked to the Evil eye, as the drawings on Vivien’s shawl belong to the
occult sciences. As for the laurel branch that Vivien holds in her hand,
it attests to her link with the world of sorcery, in being used in the pro-
phetic rites of Antiquity. It also alludes to Apollo and Daphne’s thwarted
love14 and reminds the viewer of Merlin’s own thwarted proposals to
Vivien. Another ominous symbol is the wild poppy lying on the bal-
ustrade in the foreground: this flower is traditionally associated with
slumber and evokes the eternal slumber that will befall the unfortunate
Merlin because of Vivien’s lethal action. Her malevolent power is all the
more reinforced by the petals falling beneath her hand, which spares nei-
ther the poppy nor the laurel, contrary to the scene in Grace Rose’s por-
trait, in which her gentle hand lifts up intact flowers. The final symbol of
Vivien’s harmful action is the apple on the balustrade that turns her into
a descendant of Eve, the first and most inspiring temptress. As in the two
previous canvases, here too Sandys portrayed the profile of this Femme
Fatale as avoiding the encounter between her gaze and that of the viewer.
This petrified Gorgon is offered to the phallic eye of the viewer, who can
fulfil his scopic drive apparently unmolested: “… Sandys portrayed her
as passive as the others; men hold the power of decision whether or not
to submit to the modestly offered temptations.”15 Nevertheless, even if
the viewer succeeds in escaping Vivien’s gaze, he is not spared the “gaze
of the painting” because of the great many eyes present in the peacock
feathers, which echo and duplicate the missed scopic encounter with
Vivien and symbolize the painter’s knowing gaze at the viewer.
284 Virginie Thomas
The Femme Fatale, endowed with a petrifying yet tamed gaze in

Sandys’s paintings, consequently appears as an “artistic survival”16 of the
mythological figure of Medusa. The frequent use of coral to adorn his
protagonists with jewels, as in the two previously mentioned paintings,
offers a clue to that archetypal link. Lucia Impelluso indeed reminds us
that, in Metamorphoses, Ovid explained that coral was born of the contact
between Medusa’s blood and the sea:
Ovid tells that Perseus, after killing Medusa and freeing Andromeda,
placed the Gorgon’s head on a layer of seaweed taken from the sea
to spare it the rough contact with the hard sand: the freshly cut sea-
weed soaked up the monster’s blood with their spongy marrow and
stiffened. The sea nymphs, noticing this miracle, repeated the action
onto several other seaweeds which they threw into the sea like seeds
that multiplied. This gave the coral the characteristics of both being
flexible under water and of hardening upon contact with air.17 (my
translation)
In a painting entitled The Pearl (1860–1865), Sandys brought his

Femme Fatale and Medusa closer together, showing a voluptuous
young girl contemplating herself in a mirror. The erotic sensuality of
her gesture is undeniable and is underlined by the palette of colours
of the painting, which aims at replacing the haptic drive of the viewer
with the satisfaction of the eye, as noted by Jacqueline Lichenstein,
who equates the pleasure of colour with the supreme pleasure of the
eye.18 Above all, however, the representation of this woman enables
the viewer to turn himself into a Perseus and fully give himself up to
his scopic drive, contemplating the girl’s reflection in her mirror/shield
without fearing the objectifying gaze of this petrified Medusa. The
white pearl worn by the girl in her left ear may also symbolize, as in
the portraits of Helen of Troy and of Vivien, the “gaze of the painting”
at the viewer.
Sandys used images of mythological women to convey his vision of
an archetypal threatening female body that confronts the male viewers
with both the question of female desire and of their own sexual drives.
This categorical approach by Sandys can also be seen as another way
for the painter to possess and tame woman, while her representation in
his portraits may be compared to ...” those mythic masks male artists
have fastened over her human face both to lessen their dread of her
“inconstancy” and – by identifying her with the “eternal types” they
have themselves invented – to possess her more thoroughly.”19
The fear of the Gorgon
Sandys is notorious for having led a very dissolute life. After leaving his
wife in Norwich, he had two tumultuous love affairs in London. He first
met Mary Emma Jones, an actress in London, with whom he had a liai-
son. He then fell under the bewitching spell of Keomi, a gypsy woman.
Finally, he returned to Mary Emma Jones, with whom he spent the rest
of his life as husband and wife (even though he had never divorced his
legal Norwich spouse) and had ten children with her. He used Mary
Emma Jones and Keomi as models for his Femmes Fatales. Keomi sat
for Medea, La Belle Isolde, Vivien and Judith. Mary Emma’s thick head
of hair charmed and fascinated Sandys both as a man and as a painter.
Consequently, she sat for Mary Magdalene – conveying the sensuality of
this repentant sinner. Sandys also used her in the numerous series of
chalk drawings entitled Proud Maisie – which inspired the artist no fewer
than thirteen times from 1864 to the year of his death in 1904 – as well
as in the painting Love’s Shadow. In each case he staged his mistress in a
semi-bestial attitude, biting either a posy or a lock of hair; and her gaze
reveals a wild and worrying aspect of the female essence.
Sandys’s attempt to represent female identity in its most bewilder-
ing and threatening dimension may be seen as the painter’s attempt
to come to terms with and tame both female desire and his own desire
for women. Indeed, the latter seems to have appeared in Sandys’s eyes
as a perilous drive, and one that might have led him, like Perseus,
to the confrontation with a Gorgonian power reflected in his work
of art entitled Medusa Head (1875). In this black and red chalk draw-
ing three threatening elements predominate: the thick head of hair
surrounding the face and hiding the severed neck; the undulating
snakes crowning the head; and, finally, the horrendously petrifying
gaze of Medusa. The thick head of hair and the objectifying gaze
are leitmotivs in Sandys’s paintings and tend to symbolize the poten-
tially destructive sexuality of the Femme Fatale that may trap and
objectify the unwary male. Even if Sandys chose to protect the viewers
from the Gorgonian look of his Femmes Fatales by making the latter
avert their gazes, they still retain their sexually alluring hair, reminis-
cent of Medusa’s crown of snakes; and they are more often than not
represented with the coral necklace (such as adorns Judith, Helen and
Medea to quote but a few) that is a clue to these women’s castrating
power inherited from the Gorgon.
Sandys’s fascination with the Medusa figure attests to an undeniable
feeling of uneasiness when confronted with a woman and the desire she
286 Virginie Thomas
could experience or arouse. The painter can thus be seen as the perfect
spokesman for the zeitgeist of the Victorian society to which he belonged.
Indeed, Victorian men were confronted with a paradox in regard to
woman. On the one hand, the woman was expected to embody a model
of asexual virtue; while on the other hand, she was seen as the fallible
heiress of Eve. To quote Joan Perkin on Victorian women: “There was
ambiguity thinking about women, too: though they were lauded as men’s
conscience and as repositories of virtue, they were also held to be easily
corruptible. Eve, not Adam, had been tempted by the serpent, and this
showed that women were innately sinful.”20 Women’s fallibility was made
all the more perceptible due to the omnipresence of the figure of Mary
Magdalene, both in art and in society, with the Victorian “plague” of pros-
titution being the logical consequence of the development of these asex-
ual models, as Eric Trugdill underlines: “The prostitute was the enemy of
sexual purity. She was also in many ways its product. For Victorian sexual
fears and sexual idealism were often counter-productive in effect, creating
both a supply of potential customers for the prostitute and also a situa-
tion in which she was paradoxically not only the enemy, but the ally, of
the purity ideal.”21 What characterized the reaction of Victorian males to
the representation of woman as a Janus-like figure was their constant ten-
dency to a sense of suspicion regarding woman, and the desire she could
arouse, leading them to sexual frustration and guilt: “Love of a noble kind
was separate from and superior to sexual desire. Many people thought that
sexual intercourse should take place, even within marriage, only for the
propagation of the species. This made some men guilty about enjoying sex
at all, whether within marriage or with a mistress or prostitute.”22
Frederick Sandys’s work illustrates Foucault’s assumption that because
Victorian society strove to channel desire, it paradoxically succeeded in
making it all the more present in speech and in art: “But is sex hidden
from us, concealed by a new sense of decency, kept under a bushel by
the grim necessities of bourgeois society? On the contrary, it shines
forth; it is incandescent. Several centuries ago, it was placed at the
centre of a formidable petition to know.”23 Art became a way by which
to subtly deal with female and male desire in spite of the yoke of the
“Victorian Cultural Super-ego,” to quote Freud:24 it warned against the
threat of an alluring female body but also enabled the male viewers
and the artist to assuage their scopophilia in an artistic gesture of sub-
limation of their erotic drives. Painting women’s portraits was a way
for the artist to tame the female Other; and also his own desire. In the
end, however, we may wonder who is subjugated by whom: Sandys by
woman? Woman by Sandys? Or perhaps it is the viewer by the painting?
Notes
1. Foucault (1976).
2. Lacan (1973), 102.
3. Gilbert and Gubar (1984), 618.
4. Tennyson (1965), 245.
6. Roger (1978), 123.
7. Marin (1994), 206.
8. For instance, Found (1854–1855) by Rossetti staged an encounter between
a prostitute and her former lover, whereas The Awakening of Conscience (1858)
by Hunt aimed at showing the moral revelation of a whore.
10. Lacan (1973), 93.
11. Pastoureau (2004), 199.
12. Nancy (2000), 77.
13. Impelluso (2004), 309.
14. Daphne repelled Apollo’s advances before asking her father to turn her into
a laurel tree.
15. Mancoff (1990), 185.
16. Didi-Huberman (2002), 59.
17. Impelluso (2004), 354.
18. Lichtenstein (1999), 181–182.
20. Perkin (1993), 229.
21. Trudgill (1976), 119.
22. Perkin (1993), 229.
23. Foucault (1976), 77–78.
24. Freud (1961), 102.
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Reference paintings
Hunt, W. H. (1853–1854). The Awakening of Conscience. Oil painting. Tate Gallery,
London.
Rossetti, D. G. (1854–1855). Found. Oil painting. Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington.
Sandys, A. F. (1859). Adelaide Mary, Mrs Philip Bedingfeld. Oil painting. Norwich
Castle Museum, Norwich.
—— (1862). La Belle Isolde. Oil painting. Private collection.
—— (1866). Grace Rose. Oil painting. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.
—— (1867). Helen of Troy. Oil painting. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
—— (Early 1860s). Judith. Oil painting. Private collection.
—— (1867). Love’s Shadow. Oil painting. Private collection.
—— (c. 1858–1860). Mary Magdalene. Oil painting. Delaware Art museum.
—— (1866–1868). Medea. Oil painting. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery,
Birmingham.
—— (1875). Medusa Head. Black and red chalks on greenish paper. Victoria and
Albert Museum.
—— (1867). Mrs Elizabeth Barstow. Oil painting. Private collection.
—— (1860–1865). The Pearl. Oil painting. Private collection.
—— (1868). Proud Maisie. Pencil and red chalk on paper. Victoria and Albert
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Index
300 (film), 128, 138 American Beauty, 11, 13, 17, 104–14
American culture, 190, 202, 220, 233
Aaron, Michele, 46 n14, 47, 128, American dream, 107, 109
137 n3, 138 Amor see Cupid
aberration, 55, 56 see also perversion Anatomie, 234, 235, 237, 238, 239, 242
the abject, 11, 13, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, Anchises, 30
70, 71, 72, 119, 141, 150, 151, androgyny, 12, 56, 69, 118, 198, 201
173, 188, 189, 234, 236, 239 see also hermaphrodite
feminine abject, 246, 248 angel, 264, 267, 277, 278
abnormality, 29, 57, 62, 160, 188 Angel, Buck, 91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 99,
academic freedom, 10 100, 102
acrophobia, 158, 163, 164 antagonism, 117
Actaeon, 10, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, anxiety, 2, 3, 12, 39, 55, 69, 76, 116,
30, 31, 37 117, 118, 120, 121, 123, 173,
advertising, 3, 46, 160, 183, 185, 208 178, 189, 197, 206, 240, 245,
aesthetics, 13, 42, 43, 75, 83, 96, 249, 251, 264, 268, 269, 270,
217, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 271, 274
225, 226 The Apartment, 251, 256
aesthetics of immediacy, 220, 225 Aphrodite, 28, 30, 282
black-and-white aesthetics, 220, 248 apocalypse, 169, 176, 178, 179 n19
retro aesthetics, 93 Apollo, 21, 28, 283, 287 n14
afterlife, 26 Arbus, Diane, 38
Africa, 117 archetype, 58, 67, 175, 218, 231, 284
Afro-Americans, 8, 64, 65, 68, 69 archive, 35, 41
see also queer; black queer Armageddon, 178
sexuality Arnell, Vaughan, 225, 226, 230
Aharonovitch, Vered, 118, 119, arousal, 5, 28, 115, 120, 145, 163,
124 n10 186, 231, 232, 269, 270, 286
Alcinous, 26 art, 1, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 35–46,
Algeria, 8 115–25, 173, 180, 182, 186,
Alice in Wonderland, 138 n12 258–75, 277–88
Alien, 198, 212 Artemis, 21, 22, 23, 32 n3 see also
alienation, 3, 77, 82, 83, 109, 150 Diana
Allanah Starr’s Big Boob Adventure, 94, Athena, 22, 25, 26, 32 n13
102 asexual, 22, 277, 279, 286
Alley of the Tranny Boys, 11, 17, 93, Asimini, Reut, 124 n10
102 asshole, 99
Almódovar, Pedro, 242 athleticism, 189, 190
Alpern, Merry, 38, 46 n11 Atlas, Charles (Angelo Siciliano), 181,
Amazons, 190 see also body; 182, 183–5, 188, 189, 190, 192,
Amazonian body 193, 193 n16
America, 68, 70, 71, 110, 157, 178, Attia, Kader, 8, 18
181, 183, 189 Authorship, 12
289
290 Index
autoerotic moment, 185 see also Billy Castro Does the Mission, 95, 102
masturbation Billy Castro’s Naughty Squirters, 95, 102
Autopsy, 237, 239, 242 binoculars, 175, 177
avant-garde, 10 Black Sun, 27, 34
Away We Go, 11, 17, 104, 110–12, Black Swan, 195, 212
113 n21, 113 n28, 114 blindness, 25, 26, 27, 32 n15, 32 n16,
Azoulay, Yael, 124 37, 141, 161, 262, 267, 272
blind spot, 254
bacchanalia, 4 blindfolding, 100
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 15, 16 blood, 64, 65, 66, 118, 119, 173, 174,
Bal, Mieke (Maria Gertrudis “Mieke” 205, 206, 207, 208, 234, 236,
Bal), 259, 262, 264, 265, 275 238, 239, 246, 247, 248, 249,
Banerjee, Dibakar, 224, 228 n23, 253, 263, 272, 277, 278, 280,
228 n25, 230 282, 284
Baptist church, 248 The Blue Blower’s Puff, 118, 119,
barbarism, 176 120, 126
Barthes, Roland, 192, 193, 193 n32 body, 2, 4, 8, 13, 31, 36, 37, 39, 41,
Barzilai, Shuli, 259, 268, 269, 275, 42, 46 n8, 50, 52, 56, 58, 62,
275 n3 66, 76, 84, 93, 95, 96, 97,
Basic Instinct, 169, 179 98, 196, 209, 226, 231–41
Bataille, George, 4, 16 see also blood; corpse; female
Baudrillard, Jean, 141, 153 n14 body; male body; organ
Baudry, Jean-Louis, 76, 77, 85 n8, 86 transplantation; torso
Bazin, André, 216, 218, 227 n6, 228, anatomy, 43, 53, 56, 98, 181, 201,
228 n11 233, 234, 236
beauty, 30, 262, 280 body politics, 78, 96, 98
beauty and pain, 15 commodified body, 185, 192
beauty contest, 3 exposed body, 4 see also female
beauty myth, 115, 125 see also nude; male nude
Wolf, Naomi mesomorphic body, 181
feminine beauty, 3, 23, 199, 200, physiology, 93, 233, 250
201, 262, 263, 264, 265, 279, pierced body, 206, 263
282, 283 see also female body; possessed body, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68,
female nude 69, 70, 71
male beauty (handsomeness), 21, somatic rhythm, 272
28, 185, 186, 187, 203 see also somatophobia, 247
homoerotic imagery; male spectacular body, 13
body; male nude; photography; bodybuilding, 180–94 see also
physique photography physique photography;
Belgrade, 97 Atlas, Charles; Didrikson,
Ben Casey, 233 Mildred “Babe”; Paschall,
Benshoff, Harry M., 72 n17, 73, Harry; Sandow, Eugen;
73 n22, 202, 210 n21, 211 Sansone, Anthony “Tony”;
Bentham, Jeremy, 218 see also Schwarzenegger, Arnold
panopticon anabolic steroid, 180, 181
Berholdi, Madame, 50 female bodybuilding, 180,
Bessarabia, 122 193 n30
bestiality, 171 see also zoophilia Bond, James, 113 n20, 197, 203, 204,
Bettelheim, Bruno, 36, 46 n3, 48 205, 206
Bhabha, Homi K., 106, 113, 113 n6 Bond girl iconography, 204
Index 291
Bordello, 95, 102 hand-held camera, 224

Bordo, Susan, 2, 16, 184, 193 PTZ camera system, 219, 221
Bordwell, David, 137 n5, 138 security camera, 216, 217, 219, 221,
Botticelli, Sandro, 47 n32 222, 224, 225
Bourdieu, Pierre, 124 n13, 125 camp subculture/camp reading, 7, 12,
bourgeoisie, 4, 277, 278, 286 67, 70, 100, 171, 180, 181 see
The Bourne Identity, 13, 17 also drag; drag king; drag king;
The Bourne Supremacy, 13, 17 macho drag
The Bourne Ultimatum, 13, 17 Campbell, Martin, 13, 17, 212
boxing, 50, 189, 198, 199, 200, 201 Candaules, 23, 24
breast, 30, 38, 96, 119, 120, 146, capitalism, 3, 150, 188, 227
189, 190, 191, 192, 208, 235, late-capitalism, 1
236, 263 Carpenter, John, 14, 17, 232, 242
“bitch tits,” 180 Carroll, Lewis, 138 n12
breastfeeding, 110 Carroll, Noël, 137 n5, 138
Breillat, Cahterine, 74, 75 Casino Royale, 13, 17, 195, 197, 202,
Brontë, Charlotte, 12, 140, 141, 143, 203–7, 209, 211
145, 146, 152, 252 castration, 3, 11, 26, 39, 71,
Brooklyn, 171, 268 115–25
Brooklyn Museum, 268 Castro, Billy (Tuck Mayo), 91, 92,
Brunch Bunch, 95, 102 95, 102
Bryson, Norman, 263, 264, 272, 275 catatonic, 246, 253
Buck Off, 94, 102 cathexis, 270 see also eye;
Buckback Mountain, 94, 102 “overcathexis of the eye”
Buck’s Beaver, 99, 102 censored images, 226
Burkert, Walter, 22, 31, 32 n6, 33, Chapman, James, 204, 210 n29, 211
33 n32, 33 n34 Chariclo, 25
butch, 190 Charlotte, 12, 13, 53–6, 140–54
stone butch, 192 chest, 96, 97, 183, 205, 206,
Butler, Judith, 70, 72 n19, 73, 119, 238, 268
124, 125 n14, 124 n15, 125, Chicago, 128, 139
189, 193, 193 n21, 193 n23 “chick-flick” film, 198
Butt, 92 childhood, 121, 247 see also warrior;
buttocks/ass, 68, 274 see also anal sex; girl warrior
asshole Chinese people and culture, 52, 64,
72 n8
Caché, 215, 229 Christian Allegory, 42
Cahn, Susan K., 189, 190, 193 n22, Christianity, 150, 273 see also
193 n27, 194 apocalypse; Armageddon;
Calle, Sophie, 38, 46 n11 Baptist church; crucifix; devil;
Callimachus, 21, 32 n2, 32 n3, 32 n14 exorcism; salvation
camera (position of, and positioning chromosome XX, 116 see also The
by), 4, 6, 39, 42, 55, 68, 71, Uncanny XX
76, 77, 81, 82, 83, 100, 111, cinematography, 13, 195, 198, 201
113 n14, 133, 134, 165, 174, see also camera (position and
182, 184, 186, 198, 199, 200, positioning of)
201, 202, 204, 205, 206, 207, “cinesthetic subject,” 78
209, 231, 235, 236, 238, 248, circus, 72 n10, 182 see also freak
255 n23 show/freaks
CCTV camera, 13, 215–29 Cirque Noir, 94, 99, 102
292 Index
Cixous, Hélène, 54, 60, 70, 73 n21, crack (as vaginal metaphor), 258–75
93, 116, 124 n7, 124 n9, 125 béance, 266
Clark, Kenneth, 262, 265 Creed, Barbara, 63, 64, 66, 72 n4,
classical iconography, 182, 279 see 72 n7, 72 n13, 73, 188, 193 n20,
also Greek mythology 194, 235, 235 n3, 253, 254 n10,
the fall of Rome, 176, 178 255 n22, 255, 271, 275
Cleland, John, 15n crime/criminalized, 22, 26, 74,
Cleto, Fabio, 67, 72 n14, 73 85 n21, 87, 121, 122, 162, 170,
climax, 4, 54, 120, 152 182, 231, 250, 253
clitoris, 96, 98, 99, 171, 180 incrimination, 216, 248
Clover, Carol, 232, 240 n3, 240 n4 sex crime, 26
Colette, 50–61 see also The Pure and Cronenberg, David, 14, 17
the Impure cross-dressing, 191
cock, 68, 99, 100, 101, 146 see also crotch, 64, 68, 170, 172
dick; penis crucifix, 64
Colette, 10, 50–61 Cubbyholes: Trans Men in Action, 11,
colonialism, 104, 105, 145, 147, 149, 17, 94, 95, 100, 102
153 n12 see also masculinity; cultural studies, 9
colonial masculinity; culture industry, 3
postcolonialism cunt, 99, 169 see also pussy; vagina;
comics, 183 vulva
communication, 9, 222, 227 see Cupid, 264, 267, 273
also media
compassion, 8, 82, 83, 84, 237 Dalí, Salvador, 250
consciousness, 1, 26, 56, 68, 72 n9, dance, 6, 22, 50, 52, 134, 135,
78, 26, 143, 160, 164, 171, 138 n12, 187
206, 235 see also subconscious; erotic dance, 134, 175, 184
unconsciousness Dancer in the Dark, 27, 34
self-consciousness, 172 danger/dangerous, 28, 39, 107, 123,
consumer society/consumerism, 1, 3, 128, 152, 164, 166, 172, 175,
147, 182, 192 251, 252, 270 see also the
conversion, 150 uncanny
corporeal, 15, 64, 77, 81, 98, 116, 119, Daphne, 28, 30, 33 n25, 283, 287 n14
130, 170, 175, 204, 236, 263 Darling, Gia, 94, 102
corpse, 64, 148, 173, 232, 236 see also Darling, James, 95
body; death David, 117
Couch Surfers 1: Trans Men in Action, de Beauvoir, Simone, 58, 115,
94, 102 124 n4, 125
Couch Surfers 2: Trans Men in Action, de Lauretis, Teresa, 7, 16, 73, 127
94, 100, 102 de Van, Marina, 75
counterculture, 14, 15 Dead Ringers, 14, 17, 240–1 n8, 242
counterpraxis, 9 death, 1, 22, 23, 26, 32 n15, 64, 65,
Courbet, Gustav, 14, 38, 42, 259, 71, 73 n23, 107, 110, 124 n18,
260, 263, 268, 269, 270, 271, 141, 144, 145, 164, 166, 172,
274, 275 174, 189, 196, 205, 237, 238,
The Origin of the World, 14, 38, 42, 260, 262, 265, 281, 285 see also
259, 260, 268, 271, 274, 275, afterlife; corpse; ghost
275 n2 seeing God as death, 267
Cowie, Elizabeth, 131, 137 n9, 138, 167 Debord, Guy, 1, 16
Index 293
decadence, 140, 152, 176, 268 domestic space, 115–25, 217

decadent literature, 12, 149 domotics (home automation), 217
decapitation, 271, 272 see also dominance, 2, 3, 4, 133, 148, 173,
castration 175, 189, 206, 280 see also
deflowering, 171 see also penetration subordination
deity, 10, 21, 23, 26, 27, 29, 31, 32 domination, 2, 9, 12, 23, 25, 30, 32,
Delacroix, Eugène, 41 42, 45, 55, 56, 66, 78, 97, 99,
Deleuze, Jacque, 9, 16 119, 129, 131, 133, 136, 143,
Denis, Claire, 74 147, 148, 152, 185, 186, 198,
Dennis, Kelly, 42, 47 n22, 47 232, 223, 239, 265, 283, 285
dentist, 67, 68, 69, 70, 240–1 n8, 242 Don Juan, 53, 55, 56, 60 n5
The Dentist (film), 240–1 n8, 242 Dunye, Cheryl, 95, 102
Depression-era (late 1920s), 181, Dr. Giggles, 240–1 n8, 242
183, 192 Dr. No, 203, 212
Despentes, Virginie, 74 Dracula, 253 see also gothic culture;
devil (in Christianity), 66 vampire
Diana, 21, 37 see also Artemis drag, 70, 192 see also camp subculture
dick, 98, 99, 100, 101, 184, 192 see drag king, 91
also cock; penis drag queen, 180
Dickens, Charles, 132 macho drag, 180
dicklet, 99 see also trannycock dream logic, 250
Didrikson, Mildred “Babe,” 12, 180, dream sequence, 176
181, 188–92 Dumb & Dumber, 202, 212
Dietrich, Marlene, 248–9 Dumont, Bruno, 74, 75, 85 n21, 87
digital device, 13, 222 dungeons and dragons, 132
“muscle moll,” 181, 188, 189 Dürer, Albrecht, 273
Dionysus, 21, 30 Dyer, Richard, 105, 106, 112 n2,
disability, 12, 25, 26, 157–68 113 n5, 113 n9, 114, 196, 197,
mental disability, 12, 157, 163, 199, 204, 210 n9, 211
164, 166
discretion, 5, 250 Eastern Europe, 122 see also Bessarabia
discrimination, 122 effeminacy, 12
disease, 1, 182, 226 see also illness; effeminization, 57
terminal illness; malady ego/ideal ego, 6, 82, 161, 196 see also
display, 1, 2, 3, 4, 35, 37, 40, 42, superego
46 n8, 47, 51, 72, 97, 98, 99, egocentric, 123
101, 116, 123, 133, 134, 135, Egypt, ancient, 2, 282
136, 169, 170, 172, 175, 182, ejaculation, 68, 95, 174
186, 193 n30, 196, 203, 206, Electra complex, 110
207, 208, 209, 222, 236, 240, electric shock, 71
250, 253, 262, 265, 281, 282 emancipation, 2, 4, 8, 120, 150,
dissection, 235, 236, 241 n11 see also 157, 166
physician; vivisection emasculation, 107, 177, 198, 204
Disturbia, 215, 229 empowerment, 94, 95, 96, 98, 101,
Doane, Mary Ann, 56, 60, 127, 197, 200, 234
210 n11, 211 disempowerment, 11, 93, 99,
documentary film, 27, 93, 94, 97 105, 107, 201 see also gaze;
documentation, 8, 38, 92, 121 disempowering gaze
domesticated sight, 3 self-empowerment, 236
294 Index
Enlightenment, 150 eye,

post-Enlightenment scientificity, 105 almighty eye, 222
entertainment, 15, 50, 62, 94, devastative eye, 4
137 n11, 185, 216, 232 Eye of God, 216
entropy, 3 eye of the beholder, 4, 38, 43
Eos, 28 “eye-rape,” 241 n10
epistemology, 106 “overcathexis of the eye,” 84
Europa, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33 n25 Eye of the Beholder (film), 215, 230
erection, 67, 98, 100, 120, 231 see also
cock; penis; phallus Falling Down, 107, 113 n12, 114
non-erect penis, 181, 187 family, nuclear, 11, 63, 104, 107, 108,
erotica, 4, 91, 92, 95, 98 see also 110, 111, 112, 113 n16
homoerotic imagery suburban family, 108
erotic drive, 15, 286 Fanny Hill: Or, Memoirs of a Woman of
erotic vision, 10, 21–34 Pleasure, 15n
eroticization, 81, 129, 170, 174, 203, Fanon, Frantz, 153 n12
209, 223 fantasmatic, 7 see also phantasm
essentialism (and critique of), 98, 99, fantasy/phantasy, 7, 12, 47 n15, 51,
275, 275 n2 53, 58, 62, 101, 119, 127–39,
ethics, 150, 234, 258, 259, 260, 261, 161, 196, 252, 254
262, 266 see also gaze; ethics of Farmer, Brett, 6, 7, 16
the gaze fashion, 3, 67, 185, 190
foundational ethics, 260 fellatio, 67
post-modern ethics, 260 female body, 10, 13, 14, 54, 55, 64,
procedural ethics, 260 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 78, 116, 119,
unethical, 237 120, 133, 134, 135, 146, 166,
ethnicity, 78, 110, 143, 148 169, 173, 174, 175, 188–92,
Ettinger, Bracha Lichtenberg, 42, 195, 199, 201, 245–50, 258–75,
47 n23, 48 277–88 see also bodybuilding;
evil, 9, 26, 66, 237 female bodybuilding;
evil eye, 272 breast; buttocks/ass; clitoris;
exhibition, 11, 35–51, 115–25, 268 chromosome XX; genitalia;
exhibitionism, 8, 36, 37, 38, menstruation; oestrogen;
46 n4, 51, 62, 67, 215, 224, striptease; to-be-looked-at-ness;
227, 234 vagina; vulva
self-exhibitionism, 215 Amazonian body, 181
self-exposure, 8 “Man-Girl,” 190
existentialism, 120, 171 see also Sartre, “materiality” of the female body, 120
Jean Paul female gaze, 13, 40, 55, 56, 175, 197
exorcism, 66, 68, 69, 70 see also devil female nude, 14, 23, 26, 31, 45, 175,
The Exorcist, 11, 17, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 232, 236, 263, 264, 272
68, 71, 72 n1, 73 female viewer, 6, 40, 46 n14, 56, 196,
The Exorcist: Uncut, 240–1 n8, 242 197, 207, 209, 265, 275 n2
exotic, 50, 52, 57, 64, 72 n10 feminine psyche, 117
exploitation, 3, 123, 149 feminine uncanny, 11, 115–25
exposure, 1, 2, 4, 5, 12, 82, 123, feminine ways of knowing, 162
184, 187, 216, 227 see also femininity, 7, 54, 117, 118, 119, 163,
exhibitionism; self-exposure 177, 188, 189, 192, 199, 248,
Even More Bang for Your Buck, 94, 102 249, 252, 253, 254, 279
extraordinary, 3, 4, 74, 164 crisis of femininity, 181
Index 295
feminism (and feminist critique), Fucking Different XXX, 93, 95, 101, 102
3, 40, 57, 72 n6, 76, 78, 84, Full Monty, 107, 113 n12, 114
99, 105, 106, 115, 116, 118, Fussell, Samuel W., 192 n3, 194
120, 122, 127, 136, 137, 173,
193 n30, 197, 234 n3, 259 Ganymede, 28, 30, 33 n25
feminization, 99, 110, 188, 197, 198, Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie, 3, 16
203, 204, 206, 207, 208, 209, gay men and cinema, 7
232, 264 gay viewer, 7 see also queer viewer
femme, 95, 190 gayness/gay culture, 7, 99, 186 see
femme drag, 192 also homosexuality
femme fatale, 169, 279, 281–4, 285 gaze see female gaze; female viewer;
“the Angel in the House” vs. femme gay viewer; lesbian viewer;
fatale, 279–81 male gaze; male viewer;
fetish/fetishism, 7, 39, 40, 41, 131, objectification; queer viewer;
246, 253, 270 spectator; spectatorship
fetishization, 5, 39, 98, 129, 133, dangerous gaze, 28
135, 137, 201, 232, 248, 262 disempowering gaze, 202
Fight Club, 13, 17, 107, 113 n12, 114, empowering gaze, 200
195, 202, 207–9, 212 ethics of the gaze, 10, 11, 12, 74–87
Fincher, David, 13, 17, 114, external gaze, 220
210 n6, 212 “gaze of the painter,” 283
First World War, 134, 181 “gaze of the painting,” 282, 283, 284
Forbes, Earle, 187 gaze vs. glance, 14, 263, 264, 265,
Formby, George, 218, 228, 228 n13 267, 270, 271, 272, 274 see also
Foucault, Michel, 57, 60, 106, 113 n7, glance
114, 218, 219, 228 n14, 229, matrixial gaze, 42
233, 238, 240 n6, 241 n12, medical gaze, 233, 235, 236, 238
277–8, 286, 287 n1 phallic gaze, 74–87, 208, 209
Fowles, John, 146, 153, 153 n9 see piercing gaze, 31
also The French Lieutenant’s unpardoned gaze, 21–34
Woman Gebhart, Robert, 187
freak show/freaks, 8, 62, 72, 189 see Geffen, Keren Ella, 118, 119, 120,
also circus 124 n10 see also The Blue
France, 7–8, 50, 147 Blower’s Puff
French cinema, 9–10, 74–87 see also gender, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14,
New Extremist Cinema 27, 39, 40, 42, 53–6, 57, 58,
The French Lieutenant’s Woman, 59, 62–73, 76, 77, 78, 79, 91,
146, 153 94, 96, 97, 98, 101, 102 n2,
Freud, Sigmund, 5, 12, 36, 37, 56, 60, 106, 108, 109, 112, 119, 120,
115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 123, 121, 131, 148, 149, 157, 177,
124 n1, 124 n2, 124 n8, 125, 180, 181, 188, 189, 191, 192,
140, 160, 163, 165, 169, 196, 195–212, 232, 250, 251, 252
210 n8, 211, 231, 240 n1, 241, cisgender (individuals who are not
262, 265, 270, 271, 275, 286, trans), 93, 94, 97, 100, 101,
287 n24, 287 101 n1
Fried, Michael, 44, 45, 47 n34, 46, gendered gaze, 12, 13
274, 275 gender-bending, 13, 70, 118, 124 n21,
Friedan, Betty, 109, 113 n19, 114 180–94
Friedkin, William, 11, 17 genderqueer, 102 n2
frigidity, 245, 253 Genette, Gérard, 153, 153 n3
296 Index
genitalia/sexual organs, 8, 14, 37, Anchises; Aphrodite; Apollo;

38, 46 n4, 65, 96, 97, 98, 99, Artemis; Athena; Candaules;
101, 102 n1, 151, 169, 172, Chariclo; Cupid; Danaë;
175, 177, 183, 184, 187, 191, Daphne; Diana; Dionysus; Eos;
206, 207, 259, 260, 263, 265, Europa; Ganymede; goddess;
266, 270, 271, 273, 274 see Gorgon; Gyges; Hades; Hestia;
also clitoris; cock; crotch; dick; Leda; Medea; Medusa; Mount
erection; penis; phallus; pubic Olympus; nymph; Odyssey;
hair; testicles; vagina; vulva Oedipus; Pandora; Persephone;
German cinema, 234–5 Prometheus; Pygmalion;
The Get Out Clause, 216, 230 Semele; Thebes
Ghirlandajo, Domenico, 47 n32 Greengrass, Paul, 17
ghost, 165, 174, 252 Griffin, Sean, 202, 210 n21, 211
Ghost, 172, 179 grotesque, 121, 134, 136, 142, 250
gigolo, 56 see also prositution Gubar, Susan, 144, 153, 153 n6, 279,
Giladi, Yifat, 121–2, 124 n10 see also 287, 287 n3, 287 n5, 287 n9,
Ha’Ogen 17 287 n19
Gilbert, Sandra, 144, 153, 153 n6, Guérin, Michel, 41
279, 287, 287 n3, 287 n5, Gutleben, Christian, 140, 141,
287 n9, 287 n19 143, 144, 145, 150, 153 n1,
Girlfight, 13, 195, 198, 200, 209, 211 153 n15, 154
Giroux, Henry, 8–9, 16 Gyges, 23, 24
glamour, 7, 185, 187, 190, 196 gym, 180, 186, 198, 199, 200
glance, 14, 21, 135, 236, 264, 270, 272
see also gaze; gaze vs. glance Hades, 26
coup d’oeil, 264 Halloween, 14, 17, 232, 242
God-human relationship, 22 Ha’Ogen 17 (“17 Anchor Street”),
goddess, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 30 121–2, 125
Goethe (Johann Wolfgang von haptic visibility, 8, 10, 35–46, 75, 77,
Goethe), 29, 33 n27 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 284
Goldin, Nan, 10, 35–48 haptical vs. optical, 77
Ballad of Sexual Dependency, 38 hardcore reality, 8
Heartbeat, 37, 38, 46 n9 Hardy, Thomas, 25, 29, 31, 32 n12
Scopophilia, 35–48 Healey, Murray, 180, 192 n4, 194
Sisters, Saints and Sibyls, 44 heaven, 67, 184
Stories Retold, 35 Heidegger, Martin, 267
Gombrich, Ernst, 47 n25, 48 Being vs. being, 265
golf, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192 Heidelberg, 234, 235, 236, 241 n9
The Good Natured, 216, 230 Hellraiser II, 240–1 n8, 241 n11, 242
Gorgon, 281, 283, 284, 285–6 Hermaphrodite, 41, 42, 57 see also
gothic culture, 14, 132, 251, 252, 253, androgyny
254 see also Dracula; vampire psychic hermaphroditism, 56, 57
gothic film, 252, 255 n23 Hermitage Museum, 262, 264, 275
gothic romance, 251 Herodotus, 23, 24, 25, 32 n10
Graham, Winston, 245, 253 Hestia, 22, 32 n6
Grandrieux, Phillip, 74–5 heterosexuality, 3, 5, 13, 27, 46 n14,
Greutert, Kevin, 14, 18 53, 57, 58, 59, 70, 93, 104, 111,
Greek mythology, 10, 21–34, 116, 161, 162, 186, 199, 200, 203,
263, 271, 273, 281, 284 see 207, 209, 249 see also straights
also Actaeon; Alcinous; Amor; heterocentricity, 4, 8, 63
Index 297
heteronormativity, 10, 51, 56–9 Hunt, William Holman, 281, 287 n8,

non-heteronormativity, 11, 62–73 288
hierarchical relationship, 5, 57, 59, Hutcheon, Linda, 153 n4, 154
96, 100 hydrophobia, 247
Hilton, Paris, 178 hypotext, 141, 142, 143, 144, 153 n3
hippy culture, 110 hysteria, 128, 132, 173, 246, 247
Hirschfeld, Jonathan, 124 n10
historiography, 122 identification, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 44,
Hitchcock, Alfred, 12, 14, 17, 157–68, 47 n30, 76, 77, 80, 82, 101 n1,
218, 245–57 117, 118, 119, 188, 197, 198,
Hollywood, 7, 39, 76, 80, 127, 199, 200, 209 see also maternal
128, 129, 130, 172, 182, 187, identification
195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201, alternative identification, 8
202, 204, 209, 216, 217, self-identification, 94
247, 254 ideology, 40, 58, 62, 76, 77, 95, 105,
Holmlund, Chris, 184, 190, 191, 106, 111, 122, 129, 136, 143,
193 n10, 193 n29, 194 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151,
Holocaust, 140 see also Second 152, 172, 265
World War illness, 253 see also disease; malady
Nazi memorabilia, 108 terminal illness, 232
The Nazis’ prisoners, 235 Illouz, Eva, 118, 124 n11, 125
Holbein, Hans, 259, 275 imago, 6 see also ideal ego
Ambassadors, 259, 275 immigrants, 69, 117
Homeland, 216, 230 impotence, 3, 65, 142, 183, 204
Homer, 26, 32 n15, 33 n20, 33 n24 India, 50, 224
homosexuality, 3, 27, 57, 58, 67, 68, individualism, 77, 188
69, 71, 72 n17, 108, 160, 161, Ingre, Jean-Auguste Dominique, 38
185, 186, 195, 197, 199 see also inhibition, 5, 116
gayness; lesbianism initiation ritual/rite, 21, 22, 31, 32 n7
white homosexuality, 69 insane asylum, 132, 133, 135 see
homoerotic imagery, 182, 185, 186, also hospital; mental hospital;
187, 197, 199, 203, 204, 206, madness
208, 209 see also photography; instrumentalization, 5
physique photography interdisciplinary studies, 9–10, 15
homophobia, 108, 112, 152 Internet, 11, 12, 91, 95, 217, 222,
horror film, 11, 14, 62–73, 231–42, 253 223, 225, 240 see also new
“final girl,” 245 media
medical horror film, 14, 231–42 Google, 128, 222
slasher, 233 intersex, 98
hormone, 93, 94, 160, 180 see also intimacy, 5, 38, 39, 40, 148, 216, 217,
oestrogen; testosterone 224, 225, 226
hormone therapy, 93, 95, 97, 98 intimidation, 3, 5, 199, 201
hospital, 165, 206, 237, 239 Iraq, 66
mental hospital, 164 see also insane Irigaray, Luce, 54, 60, 84, 86, 86 n35,
asylum 119, 124 n16, 171, 178 n6, 179
The House on Haunted Hill, 240–1 n8, Irréversible, 11, 17, 74–87
242 Israel, 124 n6, see also Ramat Gan; Tel
hubris, 23, 30, 31, 32, 32 n9, 273 Aviv; Jewish-Israeli culture
The Human Centipede: First Sequence, IDF/Israel Defense Force, 118
240–1 n8, 242 Israeli art, 115–25
298 Index
Israel – continued Lady Macbeth, 247

Hanina Gallery, 117 The Last Horror Movie, 14, 17
Museum of Israeli Art in Ramat leather culture, 99
Gan, 120 Leda, 30
Israeli society, 120, 123 Lee, Christopher, 11, 93, 102
Palestine/Israel (before the lesbian viewer, 7, 46
establishment of the State of lesbianism, 7, 46 n14, 53, 58, 59,
Israel), 122 67, 71, 190 see also butch;
It Gets Better (empowering queer femme; homosexuality
youth), 96 Levinas, Emmanuel, 83
Italy, 272 lifestyle, 1, 63, 92
Liman, Doug, 17
Jane Eyre, 12, 140, 141, 142, 144, liminal, 8, 117
146, 152 border zone, 15
Jarhead, 108, 114 Linda/Les and Annie: The First
Jewish culture, Female-to-Male Transsexual
“Yiddishe Mama” (in Yiddish: the Love Story, 93, 103
Jewish mother), 120 literature, 9, 10, 12, 15, 23, 28, 29, 36,
Jewish-Israeli culture, 120 see also 50–61, 62, 140–54, 223, 252 see
Israel also decadent literature; gothic
Jewish-Zionist culture, 120 see also romance
Zionism “pornographic” literature, 140–54
Jouissance, 234, 240 Little Red Riding Hood, 29, 33 n28, 249
The Little Shop of Horrors (LSOH), 11,
Kaplan, E. Ann, 46 n14, 48 17, 62, 63, 64, 67, 68, 72 n2, 73
Kimmel, Richard, 94, 102 Lives of Quiet Desperation: the Making of
kinetoscope, 50, 59 n1 Revolutionary Road, 113 n27, 114
King Lear, 27 lobotomy, 133
kleptomania, 245, 253, 254 The Lodger, 252, 255 n23, 257
Koch, Gertrud, 6, 7, 16 Lohan, Lindsay, 178
Kracauer, Siegfried, 92 Look (film), 13, 217, 220, 221, 223,
Kristeva, Julia, 63, 64, 124 n13, 125, 224, 230
141, 150, 151, 153 n19, 153 n19, Look (TV show), 13, 217, 222, 230
154, 173, 179, 179 n13, 234, looked-at-ness see to-be-looked-at-ness
240 n7, 241, 247, 254 n4, 256 Los Angeles, 35, 225, 226
Kusama, Karyn, 13, 210, 212 Louvre Museum, 35–49
LSD: Love, Sex aur Dhoka, 13, 217,
LaBruce, Bruce, 95, 101, 102 224, 230
Lacan, Jacque, 2, 16, 36, 39, 42, Lyotard, Jean-François, 150, 151,
45, 115, 116, 124, 125, 128, 153 n16, 153 n17, 154
129, 130, 131, 137 n4, 138,
169, 196, 210 n7, 211, 234, Machness-Kass, Alma, 124 n10
258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, MacKinnon, Kenneth, 55, 59, 60
266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 274, madness, 144, 153 n8, 165, 232 see
275 n1, 275, 287 n2, 287 n10, also insane asylum; disability;
287 see also objet petit a; mental disability; hospital;
symbolic order mental hospital; psychopath
The Lacanian Thing (das Ding or crazed mind, 176
chose), 160, 165, 266, 270 psychotic realm, 178
Index 299
mainstream, 8, 42, 59, 92, 93, hyper-masculinity, 66, 93, 99,

95, 128 108, 180
mainstream cinema, 5, 6, 169, 172, middle-class masculinity, 104, 105
198, 199, 251 postwar crisis of masculinity, 160
Makra, Péter, 148, 153 n13, 154 masculinization, 99, 198, 199, 200
malady, 158 see also disease masochism, 5, 144, 176, 207,
mental malady, 166 see also insane 208, 209, 254 see also
asylum; madness sadomasochism
male body, 10, 12, 13, 14, 46, 106, masquerade, 7, 180
181, 185, 186, 187, 188, 195, masturbation, 4, 64, 91 see also
196, 197, 201, 202–7, 208, 209 autoerotic moment; sexual
see also asshole; breast; “bitch intercourse; dildo
tits” bodybuilding; buttocks/ maternal identification, 6–8
ass; chest; cock; dick; erection; “mamma’s boy,” 7
genitalia; male nude; penis; matrocentrism, 7
phallus; sperm; testicles; matriarchy, 64
photography; physique McGowan, Todd, 129, 130, 131, 132,
photography; striptease; male 137 n6, 137 n7, 137 n11, 138
striptease; testosterone McLaughlin, Sheila, 18
Greek God (as body type), 185 MD, 233
male morphological ideal, 188 Medak, Peter, 12, 178 n1, 179
male gaze, 3, 5, 10, 11, 12, 23, 28, media, 1, 2, 7, 62, 77, 78, 97, 123,
39, 40, 42, 45, 50–61, 62–73, 124 n6, 181, 188, 215, 219 see
79, 106, 127–32, 134, 136, 137, also communication; new media
162, 163, 174, 169, 196–201, medical establishment, 97
205, 209, 232, 235 medical authority, 234, 239
“male member,” 142 medical practice, 234 see
male nude, 121, 181, 186, 187, 190 also dentistry; organ
male viewer, 4, 5, 6, 7, 15, 39, 51, 53, transplantation; physician
76, 134, 195, 284, 286 medical profession, 233, 234, 236,
manhood, 56, 96 237, 238, 239 see also nurse;
Marcus Welby, 233 physician
Marin, Louis, 280, 287, 288 medical rhetoric, 97, 101
Marnie, 14, 17, 245–57 medicine, 13, 66, 239 see also horror
marginalization, 10, 11, 51, 53, 57, films; medicalized horror films;
59, 67, 71, 72, 92, 104, 105, pornography; medicalized
110, 143 pornography
Marks, Laura U., 77, 78, 82, 85 n12, Medusa, 54, 60, 116, 125, 271, 272,
85 n26, 86 275, 284, 285, 288
Marx, Karl, 101 Melan, Lou, 187
Magdalene, Mary, 278, 286 memory, 9, 26, 41, 42, 116, 121, 123,
masculinism, 2, 4 176, 197, 245, 246
masculinity, 3, 6, 8, 12, 47 n15, 55, men’s studies/masculinity studies,
56, 104–14, 116, 118, 157–68, 106, 113 n16
169–79, 180–94, 195–212, 253 Mendes, Sam, 11, 13, 17, 104–14
see also manhood; transgender menstruation, 14, 31, 119, 180, 246,
persons; transmasculinity; 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 254 n5
virility menarche, 247, 254 n7
colonial masculinity, 111 amenorrhea, 247
300 Index
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 78, 83, 84, Mother Earth, 120

85 n25, 86, 86 n30, 262 Mother Nature, 253
metanarrative, 150 motherhood, 120, 263
Metz, Christian, 43, 44, 47 n29, mother and daughter, 121
47 n30, 46, 76, 77, 81, 84, Mount Olympus, 23, 28
85 n9, 85 n22, 86, 86 n33 multiculturalism, 8, 9
Michael, George, 217, 225, 226, 230 Mulvey, Laura, 5, 6, 8, 12, 13, 16,
see also Outside 39, 40, 44, 46 n12, 46 n14,
Michelangelo (Michelangelo di 47 n15, 51, 60, 62, 67,
Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni), 72 n15, 73, 76, 77, 79,
117 see also David 85 n11, 87, 127, 128, 129,
middle-class, 11, 63, 71, 104, 105, 130, 131, 134, 136, 137 n1,
106, 107, 109, 112, 231 see 138, 160, 167 n8, 168, 195,
also masculinity; middle-class 196, 197, 199, 204, 207, 209,
masculinity 210 n1, 210 n24, 210 n34,
Midsummer Night’s Dream, 29 211, 232, 240 n2, 240 n3,
Millais, John Everett, 278 241, 254 n9, 256 see also
Miller, Toby, 2, 16, 185, 193 n15, to-be-looked-at-ness
193 n33, 194, 206, 210 n32, 211 muscular body, 180, 181, 182,
Mills, Brian, 94, 102 184, 187, 188, 190, 191,
mirror, 7, 14, 130, 175, 185, 186, 201, 192, 193 n30, 203 see also
202, 205, 259, 274, 283, 284 bodybuilding; gym
mirror stage, 44, 47 n30, 130, 196, unmuscled man, 183
270, 271, 272, 273 muteness, 121, 122
misogyny, 45, 74, 96, 99, 116, 171, myth/mythical, 4, 10, 14, 37, 106,
262, 263 120, 138 n12, 140, 180,
Mizer, Bob, 184 184, 190, 253 see also Greek
modernism, 181 mythology
modernity, 176
modesty, 24, 187, 197, 283 Nancy, Jean-Luc, 84, 86 n34, 87,
Modleski, Tania, 163, 164, 165, 282–3, 287 n12, 288
167 n16, 167 n18, 167 n25, narcissism/ narcissistic, 6, 7, 8, 36, 76,
167 n27, 168 188, 196, 197, 236
Mommy Is Coming, 95, 102 National Gallery (London), 275
monster, 59, 60, 63, 66, 70, 232, 284 National Gallery of Art in Washington
monstrosity, 67, 68, 70, 71, 150, 274 D.C., 275
“monstrous feminine,” 11, 63, nationalism, 120
72 n3, 188, 271 Neale, Steven, 6, 16, 46 n14, 48, 195,
monitoring system, 205, 216, 196, 197, 210 n2, 211
218, 219, 220, 222, 225 see Netherlands, 92, 124 n18
also camera; CCTV camera; New Extremist Cinema, 11, 74–5, 79,
surveillance 85 n21
montage, 35, 44, 133, 219, 225, 235 new media, 13 see also Internet
Moore, Carmencita and Annabelle, 50 New Orleans, 237
Moore, Demi, 172, 179 New York, 35, 46 n2, 46 n9, 92, 181,
morality, 5, 25, 68, 69, 72, 75, 77, 79, 182, 193 n34, 201, 217 see also
143, 150, 151, 152, 157, 176, Brooklyn
279, 280, 287 n8 Nichols, Les, 96
immorality, 64, 77, 151, 152, 176 nightmare, 170, 245, 246
moral anarchy, 172 Nissani, Moti, 10, 16
Index 301
Nochlin, Linda, 268 outcast, 143, 144, 145

Noé, Gaspar, 11, 17, 74, 75, 82, 87 Outside, 13, 225, 226, 227, 230
Nolot, Jacques, 75 Ovid, 32 n1, 32 n2, 37, 284
North-Africans, 8 Oz, Frank, 11, 17, 65, 73
Notorious, 252, 257 Ozon, François, 75, 85 n21, 87
Noyce, Phillip, 13, 18, 217, 219, 229
nude body/nakedness, 36, 232, Pandora, 178
240 see also female nude; painting, 14, 35, 36, 38, 40, 41, 42,
male nude 45, 45 n1, 124 n10, 124 n18,
nurse, 159, 161, 237, 240 233, 250, 258–75, 277–88
nymph, 21, 22, 25, 28, 284 self-portraiture, 11, 98
nymphomania, 148 Panic Room, 13, 18
panoptic, 218, 219, 219, 226
objectification, 4, 5, 39, 51, 56, 77, panopticon, 218, 241 n12
79, 114, 129, 132–6, 137, 162, Paper, 216, 230
187, 195, 196, 201, 202, 204, Paris, 8, 18, 80, 109 see also Louvre
207, 208, 231, 232, 233, 234, Museum; Orsay Museum;
235, 240, 282 Pompidou Centre
objet petit a, 130, 131, 132–6, 262, Pascal, Blaise, 277, 288
266, 270 Paschall, Harry, 186
obscene/obscenity, 1, 3, 4, 9, 68, passivity/passive object, 40, 51, 59,
150, 171 80, 81, 120, 129, 191, 195, 196,
obsession, 13, 37, 45, 108, 151, 165, 203, 206, 207, 208, 232, 264,
172, 232, 234, 236, 247, 248, 280, 283 see also to-be-looked-
253, 259 at-ness; penetration; sex; anal
observation, 7, 15, 40, 51, 54, 59, 81, sex; passive/bottom
127, 163, 184, 200, 231 pastiche, 141, 153 n4
Odalisque, 38 pathologized bodies and pleasures,
Odyssey, 26, 32 n15, 33 n20 36, 37, 182
Oedipus, 26, 32 n17 pathosfonnel (pathos formula), 44,
oestrogen, 180 47 n32
Offing Jack, 95, 101, 102 patriarchy/patriarchal society, 3, 10,
Ofrat, Gideon, 120, 124 n9, 125 51, 58, 70, 71, 76, 111, 116,
Olympics, 181, 189, 191 119, 127, 128, 129, 131, 136,
Omry, Keren, 205, 210 n31, 211 137, 145, 149, 152, 173, 177,
ontology, 258, 260, 261, 272 178, 184, 186, 246, 248, 252,
oppression, 1, 4, 8, 58, 104, 115, 121, 254, 262
123, 147, 148, 149, 152 peephole, 231, 240
optical, 4, 50, 76, 77, 79, 271 see also peeping tom, 43, 159, 215, 217 see
panoptic; panopticon also voyeur; voyeuse
orgasm, 240 Peeping Tom (film), 14, 18, 231, 242
faked orgasm, 53, 54 peepshow, 10, 50–61 see also
orgasmic, 170, 174 voyeurism
organ transplantation, 234 Pelosi, Nancy, 178
Original Plumbing, 92, 97 penetration, 4, 5, 13, 38, 75, 83,
Orsay Museum, 35, 38, 45 n1, 275 98, 99, 101, 108, 112, 142,
the Other, 5, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 171, 174, 184, 189, 190, 192,
68, 71, 72, 72 n10, 115, 204, 205, 209, 217, 221, 225,
119, 145, 232, 259, 260, 231–42, 263, 266 see also
266, 270, 286 deflowering
302 Index
penis, 2, 3, 39, 56, 96, 97, 98, 100, physician, 231–42, 253 see also
101, 115, 116, 118, 120, 171, dentist; gaze; medical gaze
172, 174, 175, 180, 181, country doctor, 233
182, 184, 185, 187, 189, 233 “doctor vs. butcher,” 233, 238, 239
see also cock; dick; erection; gynaecologist, 240
“male member” homicidal physician, 233, 240–1 n8
penile representation, 2 MDeity, 233
penis peek-a-boo, 184 omnipotent physician, 234
penis vs. phallus, 2 physique photography, 13, 180–94
peniscope, 184 see also beauty; male beauty;
performance, 6, 7, 55, 93, 95, Forbes, Earle Gebhart, Robert;
124 n21, 133, 135, 180, 188, homoerotic imagery; male
191, 192, 200, 203, 225, 248 body; Melan, Lou; Mizer, Bob;
performativity, 8, 188, 248 Townsend, Edwin; Urban, Al
Persephone, 28 beefcake pin-up, 192
perversion, 37, 45, 58, 59, 64, 80, physique magazine, 13, 186, 187
142, 145, 161, 223, 234 see also physical Culture, 184, 185
aberration Pierce, Chopper, 94, 102
Phallic Eye, 1–18, 29, 31, 42, 116, Pirates of the Caribbean, 202, 212
149, 152, 198, 246, 283 La Piste d’Atterrissage, 8, 18 n2
phallocentrism, 11, 45, 77, 82, 128, plagiarism, 141
129, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, police, 158, 169, 177, 225, 226, 248
136, 137, 191 policeman, 164, 172, 225, 249
phallogocentrism, 2, 119 point-of-view shot, 158, 162, 165
phallus, 2, 3, 4, 7, 12, 13, 15n, 43, politically correctness, 29, 145,
65, 96, 97, 115, 117, 118, 131, 151, 152
173, 177, 180, 181, 182, 183, Pompidou Centre, 45 n1
184, 185, 187, 188, 190, 191, pornography, 3, 11, 12, 14, 42, 50,
193 n8, 233, 274 see also gaze; 91–102, 146, 148, 150, 171,
phallic gaze; trauma; phallic 207, 223, 224, 225, 231, 233,
trauma 235, 240, 241 n14, 268 see
anti-phallic fantasy, 12 also literature; “pornographic”
phallic agency, 6 literature
phallic power, 3, 13, 31, 59, 77, “amateur porn,” 224
84, 177, 180, 181, 182, 183, medical pornography, 14, 240
184, 185, 188, 191, 192, pornographic society, 149, 150
208, 254 pornscape, 223
phallic practice, 4 queer pornography, 91–102
phallic regime, 8, 42 portrait, 8, 35, 41, 45, 47 n26, 92,
phallus anxiety, 12 142, 144, 145, 153 n12, 224,
phalloplastic surgery, 96, 97, 102 n4 268, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282,
see also transsexuality; FTM 283, 284, 286
phantasm, 9, 128, 136 see also self-portrait, 11, 98
fantasmatic post-human, 3
phenomenology, 78, 83, 84 postcolonialism, 3, 105, 140 see also
photography, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, colonialism
15, 35–46, 92, 98, 159, 175, postmodernism, 1, 3, 12, 150, 225
180–94, 216, 220, 222, 223, see also ethics; post-modern
248, 273 ethics
Index 303
potency, 6, 169, 182, 184, 185, 186, racism, 8, 112, 143, 147, 148, 149,
209, 265 152
Powell, Michael, 14, 18 anti-racism, 106
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Ramat Gan, 120
278, 281 rape, 21, 25, 29, 30, 78–84, 85 n20,
Pretty Woman, 172, 179, 198, 212 116, 122, 123, 124 n6, 144,
privacy, 5, 215, 217, 223, 225, 226, 148, 149, 217, 232, 238, 267 see
227, 248 also sexual intercourse; incest;
Prometheus, 22, 32 n8 incestuous rape; sexual violence
prostitution, 8, 25, 80, 231, 245, 277, “eye rape,” 241 n10
278, 281, 286, 287 n8 see also public rape, 78
gigolo “reality effect,” 76
Proust, Marcel, 58, 59 Rear Window, 12, 18, 157–68, 218
Provost, Jan, 42 Rebecca, 252, 257
Psycho, 248, 252, 254 n7, 257 Rec Room 1, 11, 18, 94, 102
psychoanalysis, 2, 3, 26, 35, 36, 39, Rec Room 2, 11, 18, 94, 102
76, 77, 84, 115, 119, 127, 128, red (colour), 245–54
129, 130, 140, 196, 197, 223, refugees, 117 see also immigrants
259, 271 religion, 22, 66, 71, 150 see also
psychology of perception, 274 crucifix
psychopath, 233, 234 see also serial Rembrandt (Rembrandt Harmenszoon
killer van Rijn), 14, 259, 262, 263,
pubic hair, 185, 187 266, 267, 268, 271, 273, 274,
Pumping Iron, 184, 194 275
punishment, 10, 21, 22, 23, 25, Danaë, 14, 259, 262–3, 271, 273,
26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 74, 274, 275
161, 267 Renaissance, 47 n32
The Pure and the Impure, 10, 51, 52, representation, 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 13,
53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60 14, 39, 45, 58, 59, 62, 63,
puritanism, 151, 167, 175, 176 65, 66, 68, 69, 76, 78, 91, 96,
pussy, 99, 100, 169 see also cunt; 120, 123, 131, 148, 181, 195,
vagina 202, 216, 220, 221, 226, 232,
putto (angelic child in painting), 264, 254, 261, 265, 266, 268, 271,
265, 267, 273 272, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282,
Pygmalion, 37 284, 286
self-representation, 122
queer, 3, 6, 10, 11, 40, 70, 71, 72, 91, unrepresentable, 266, 270, 271
92, 93, 95, 96, 98, 101, 192 unrepresented, 134
see also gayness/gay culture; unsymbolizable Real, 273
gender-bending; genderqueer; Revolutionary Road, 11, 18, 104, 108,
homoerotic imagery; 112, 113 n18, 114
homosexuality; lesbianism; repression, 4, 104, 108, 109, 110, 130,
transgender people 132, 143, 146, 148, 152, 197,
black queer sexuality, 70 216, 226, 227, 245, 253, 272,
“queer gaze,” 51, 56, 57 277, 278
queer theory, 57, 192 irrepressible, 12, 152
queer-of-colour, 62, 68, 69, 72 non-repressive, 119
queer viewer, 6 see also gay Queer repressive policy, 226
Manor, 95, 100, 102 unrepressed, 207
304 Index
Rhys, Jean, 140, 143, 144, 152, Saw VI, 14, 18

153 n7, 154 see also Wide schaulust, 36 see also scopophilia
Sargasso Sea schautrieb, 36
Richards, Julian, 14, 17 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 184, 194
Rifkin, Adam, 220, 221, 222, 223, 230 Schwarzwald: The Movie You Can Dance
Roberts, Julia, 172, 179, 198 To, 94, 102
Roberts, Lawrence, 94, 102 scopophilia, 5, 7, 10, 13, 14, 35–46, 51,
Rockwell (Kennedy William Gordy), 76, 80, 130, 134, 160, 196, 217,
215, 227 n1, 229 231, 281, 286 see also schaulust
Rockwell, Norman, 233, 237 “screen cleaner,” 218–19
Rogoff, Irit, 105, 112 n4, 114 Second World War, 157, 181, 235,
Romeo Is Bleeding, 12, 18, 169–79 250, 268
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 278, 281, post-World War II, 70, 157
287 n8, 288 self-destruction, 176
Ruskin, John, 280 self-representation, 122
Semele, 21, 30, 267
Sabbath on the Kibbutz, 120, 126 serial killer, 13, 231, 232 see also
sadism, 4, 5, 39, 67, 68, 75, 76, 77, psychopath
79, 81, 82, 84, 196, 206, 207 Sex and the City, 198, 212
sadomasochism, 80, 98, 176, 177, Sex and the Single Girl, 251, 257
186, 240 see also leather culture sex-gender axis, 189
salvation, 64, 150 Sexing the Transman 1, 94, 102
San Francisco, 93, 166 Sexing the Transman 2, 94, 102
Sandow, Eugen, 182, 187, 191 Sexing the Transman 3, 94, 102
Sandys, Frederick, 14, 277–88 sexual intercourse, 4, 30, 31, 68, 75,
Adelaide Mary, 280, 288 91–102, 142, 171, 177, 217,
Grace Rose, 279, 280, 283, 288 225, 226, 286 see also orgasm;
Helen of Troy, 14, 282, 284, 288 faked orgasm; orgasmic;
Judith, 285, 288 penetration
La Belle Isolde, 285, 288 anal intercourse, 68, 80, 99, 101 see
Love’s Shadow, 285, 288 also penetration
Mary Magdalene, 285, 286, 288 dildo, 96, 99, 100, 177
Medea, 14, 278, 281, 282, 285, 288 incest, 26, 64, 123, 124 n6, 151, 266
Medusa Head, 285, 288 incestuous rape, 226
Mrs Mary Elizabeth Barstow, 279–80 oral sex, 68, 93, 99, 100, 170 see
Mrs Philip Bedingfeld, 280, 281, 288 also fellatio
The Nightmare, 278 sexual pleasure, 36, 37, 46 n4, 145,
The Pearl, 284, 288 224, 231, 240
Proud Maisie, 285, 288 sexual violence, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83 see
Vivien, 283, 284, 285, 288 also rape
Sansone, Anthony “Tony,” 12, 180–94 sexuality, 10, 37, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57,
Sartre, Jean Paul, 171, 172, 174, 59, 60, 62, 67, 70, 71, 75, 78,
178 n5, 178 n11, 179, 179 n16 96, 100, 117, 123, 142, 147,
satisfaction, 4, 5, 7, 8, 45, 51, 57, 132, 148, 150, 160, 173, 202, 150,
135, 143, 145, 149, 170, 174, 251, 253, 254 n3, 255 n13,
184, 188, 277, 279, 284 262, 263, 277, 278, 285 see also
dissatisfaction, 109 asexuality; heterosexuality;
unsatisfying, 96, 97, 161 homosexuality; lesbianism;
Savage, Dan, 96 transssexuality
Index 305
sexualization, 22, 40, 46 n14, 68, 170, “transvestist” tactic, 6

202, 209, 226 viewing mechanism, 8
desexualization, 56 Spellbound, 252, 257
Shadow of Doubt, 252, 257 sperm, 75, 240
Shakespeare, William, 27, 29 see Spigel, Lynn, 157, 158, 167 n1,
also King Lear; Lady Macbeth; 167 n2, 167 n3, 168
Midsummer Night Dream sport, 13, 180, 185, 186, 188, 189,
She Must Be Seeing Things, 7, 18 190, 191, 192, 200, 208 see
Shulov, Lee he, 124 n10 also athleticism; bodybuilding;
signifying practice, 195–212 boxing; golf; Olympics
silence, 11, 53, 115, 121–2, 123, 146, Sprinkle, Annie, 93, 102
164, 247, 269 see also muteness St Petersburg, 264, 275
Silverman, Kaja, 127, 138 Stacey, Jackie, 127, 138, 196, 197,
Simon, Yohanan, 120 see also Sabbath 210 n10, 211
on the Kibbutz stag film, 52, 60 n3, 60 n4
simulacrum, 3, 148 Stage Fright, 248, 249, 257
The Skin I Live In, 240–1 n8, 242 staring, 3, 4, 5 , 169, 197, 199, 231,
Skyfall, 113 n20, 114 237, 266
The Sleeping Hermaphodite, 38, 49 stereotype, 145, 190
see also hermaphrodite Stone, Sharon, 169, 179, 230 see also
slideshow, 35, 37, 42, 43, 46 n9, Basic Instinct
47 n16, 47 n26 stimulation, 4, 5, 15, 45, 46 n4, 115,
Sliver, 13, 18, 217, 218, 224, 229 120, 123, 234
snake, 116, 172, 215, 285 Stoltenberg, John, 56, 61
Snake Eyes, 215, 230 striptease, 3, 51, 81, 128, 134, 135
snapshot, 35, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45 n1, 53 male striptease, 56
Snyder, Zack, 12, 18, 127–39 Sturken, Marita, 46 n13, 48, 202,
Sobchack, Vivian, 78, 85 n15, 87 210n 23, 211
Speakeasy, 95, 102 subconscious, 12, 127, 160
spectacle, 1, 4, 5, 15, 51, 57, 62, 78–9, sublime, 2, 280
119, 134, 135, 171, 180, 197, sublimation, 4, 5, 15, 262
202–3, 204, 206, 207–9 see also sublimation of desire, 277–88
body; spectacular body subordination, 2, 4, 5, 23, 78, 116,
spectator, 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 120, 124 n6, 161, 265 see also
15, 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46 n13, dominance
46 n14, 47 n30, 50, 51, 52, 56, Sucker Punch, 12, 18, 127–39
74, 75, 76–8, 80, 81, 82, 83, Sudan, 117
84, 127, 129–32, 133, 134, 135, superego, 3, 286
136, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, surrealism, 250
200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 206, surrogate viewer, 265, 267, 274,
207, 208, 209, 215, 217, 218, 275 n2
219–23, 225, 226, 227, 264 suture, 6, 174, 209
queer spectator, 6 surveillance, 4, 12, 13, 15, 30, 105,
“spectator-witness,” 220 215–29
spectatorship, 1, 2, 7, 10, 15, 16, 39, 45, “sexveillance,” 223, 226
46 n14, 47 n16, 75, 76, 77, 78, “caught in the act” video, 223
79, 128, 129, 130, 131, 196, 209 surveillance aesthetics, 13, 224, 226
despecularization, 6 survival, 166, 205, 209, 234
hyperspecularization, 6 “artistic survival,” 284
306 Index
Suspicion, 252, 257 post-transformation, 191

symbolic order, 2, 11, 14, 63, 66, 163, self-transformation, 191
234, 258, 268, 273 transgender persons, 8, 91–102 see
also transsexuality
taboo, 3, 57, 60 n3, 60 n4, 75, 150, FTM, 91–102 see also phalloplastic
152, 217, 246, 248, 249, 250, surgery
254, 254 n7 MTF, 94
Tarn, Gary, 27, 34 transmasculinity, 11, 91–102
Tasker, Yvonne, 201, 209, 210 n19, transmen, 91–102
210 n37, 210, 211 transgression, 4, 5, 15, 23, 30, 58, 75,
tattoo, 99 131, 188, 248, 266
Teiresias, 10, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, transsexuality, 91, 93, 94, 95, 98, 101,
32 n13 102 n2
Tel Aviv, 116, 117 transvestite, 53, 58
television, 1, 9, 14, 46 n14, 107, 157, trauma, 12, 14, 78, 80, 96, 121,
158, 216, 220, 222, 233 130, 131, 136, 153 n12, 165,
reality TV, 13, 216 169–79, 202, 208, 245, 247,
territory, 5, 28 261, 264, 266, 267, 268, 270,
testicles, 100, 180 271, 274
testosterone, 93, 98 Traumatic Real, 14, 258–75
Thebes, 21, 25, 26 phallic trauma, 12, 169–79
Thelma and Louise, 202, 207, Trier, Lars von, 27 see also Dancing in
211, 212 the Dark
theology, 273 Trinh Thi, Coralie, 74
Thomas, D. M., 12, 140–54 Theweleit, Klaus, 173, 179,
The Thrill of It All, 251, 257 179 n14
Till, Emmet, 8
Tithonus, 28, 33 n25 the uncanny, 11, 115, 118, 120,
to-be-looked-at-ness, 5, 10, 13, 105, 121, 123 see also feminine
106, 127–39, 195, 203 see also uncanny; vagina; vagina as
Mulvey, Laura uncanny
Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel, 132 Uncanny XX, 11, 115–25
Tolstoy, Leo, 25, 31, 32 n12 unconsciousness, 76, 92, 169,
tomboy, 188, 190, 191 206, 258
torso, 161, 169, 174, 185, 199, United Kingdom, 140
207, 273 Urban, Al, 184, 187
torture, 8, 203, 205, 209, 231, 235, utopia, 186
240–1 n8, 267
Townsend, Edwin, 181, 186, 187 V for Vagina, 99, 102
trannycock, 99 see also dicklet vagina, 38, 65, 99, 116, 169–79, 222,
Trannyfags, 94, 100, 102 223, 265, 266 see also crack;
Trannywood Gone Wild, 94, 102 cunt; pussy; vulva
transcendental, 39, 42, 44, 76, 91, vagina as uncanny, 116
120, 150 vagina dentata, 172, 174
transformation, 1, 8, 22, 23, 28, 30, vampire, 252, 253, 255 n21, 281
33 n23, 46 n8, 56, 58, 65, 66, see also Dracula; gothic
76, 79, 97, 131, 141, 162, 171, culture
172, 177, 183, 188, 190, 191, Van Helsing, Mark, 94, 102
215, 219, 221, 266 vanitas, 119, 124 n18, 273
Index 307
Velásquez (Diego Rodríguez de Silva 149, 152, 157–68, 196, 215–29,

Velásquez), 14, 259, 271, 272, 230, 264
273, 274, 275 public voyeurism vs. personal
Venus at Her Mirror, 14, 259, 271, voyeurism, 12, 157, 165, 166
274, 275 synoptic voyeurism, 219
Venus, 263, 273, 274 voyeur, 5, 7, 12, 37, 39, 43, 44,
vertigo, 270 46 n11, 51, 52, 53, 84, 131, 134,
Vertigo (film), 12, 18, 157–68 151, 162, 175, 215, 216, 217,
victim, 22, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 55, 218, 220, 221, 223, 224, 227,
79, 104 230, 231, 232, 234, 239, 263
patient-victim, 233, 234 voyeuristic expectation, 142,
victimization, 121 143, 145
victimized, 8, 209 voyeuse, 10, 50, 53, 55, 57, 59
victimizer, 22 vulnerability, 12, 115, 119, 164, 165,
Woman Victim, 11–12 184, 195, 201, 202, 203, 204,
Victim, 240–1 n8, 242 206, 231, 237, 240
Victorian era, 12, 14, 67, 140, 141, vulva, 169 see also cunt; pussy; vagina
142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148,
152, 178, 277, 278, 279, 280, Warburg, Aby, 44, 47 n32
281, 286 Warren, Prince, 94, 102
late-Victorian, 178 Warrior, 118
neo-Victorian, 12, 140, 141, 142, warrior girl, 117–18
143, 144, 145, 146 Watchmen, 128, 139
retro-Victorian, 140, 141 Waugh, Thomas, 182, 187, 192 n6,
Video Voyeur, 216, 230 193 n12, 193 n17, 193 n19, 194
Vietnam War, 202 weapon, 15n, 71, 106, 108, 172, 183,
violence, 1, 2, 22, 39, 45, 67, 72 n2, 188, 207, 232, 236, 271
75–84, 112, 116, 123, 124 n6, sex-as-weapon, 148
144–5, 148, 174, 183, 197, 204, blade, 13, 231–42
207–9, 263 knife, 80, 135, 205, 206, 232, 233
virility, 57, 118, 142, 183, 208 see also Weiss, Hinda, 124 n10
masculinity What Is Seen Through a Keyhole, 50, 61
viscera/visceral imagery, 10, 11, 19, white people/whiteness (and critique
81, 234, 235 of), 8, 11, 15–16n, 66, 67,
evisceration, 239 68, 69, 70, 71, 104–14, 117,
visibility, 1, 8, 11, 45, 50, 91, 147, 148, 152, 153 n12, 202
92, 94, 106, 107, 122, 258, see also homosexuality; white
260, 262 homosexuality
invisibility, 105, 106, 112, 122, 258 white gaze, 104–14
visual pleasure, 3, 13, 15, 22, 36, 59, Whore of Babylon, 178
128, 129, 131, 134, 136, 137, Wide Sargasso Sea, 140, 143, 144, 152,
195–212, 283 153 n8, 154
vivisection, 234, 235, 236, 238, wife-beater, 144
239 n11 Wilf, Eitan, 118, 124 n11, 125
Vivien, 14, 283, 284, 285, 288 Williams, Linda, 52, 53, 241 n14, 242
Volcano, Del LaGrace, 93, 102 The Wire, 216, 230
voyeurism, 3, 4, 7, 10, 12, 13, 22, Wittig, Monique, 58, 61
23, 27, 31, 36, 37, 39, 43, 45, The Wizard of Oz, 132, 134, 139
46 n4, 51, 81, 110, 141, 143, Wolf, Naomi, 115, 125
308 Index
“woman=hall” (critique of), 175 Zeus, 21, 28, 29, 30, 33 n23,
womanhood, 8, 97, 190, 252 264, 266, 264, 274
New Woman, 178 Zionism, 122
womb, 43, 142, 189, 231 Žižek, Slavoj, 2, 3, 17, 129–33, 137,
Wood, Robin, 249, 256 138, 141 n14, 241, 258–62,
wound, 141, 202, 203, 205, 207, 208, 266, 275
209, 237, 239 zoom/zooming, 4–6, 55, 133,
219, 220, 221, 222,
Yoshiyuki, Kohel, 38, 46 n11 226
Young, Madison, 95, 100, 102 zoophilia, 249 see also bestiality

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Sensational Pleasures in Cinema, Literature

Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.

9 Zack Snyder’s Impossible Gaze: The Fantasy of

19 The Female Body in Frederick Sandys’s Paintings, or

Broadening the perspectives on phallic imperatives and their cultural

Finn Jackson Ballard is a Berlin-based historian and queer porn per-

Sigal Barkai is Head of Curation Studies at Seminar Hakibutzim College

Jacqueline Brady is Assistant Professor of English at Kingsborough

Nurit Buchweitz is Senior Lecturer of Comparative Literature and Chair

Laura Christiansen is a supplemental instructor and Master’s candi-

in 2011. Her research interests include representation, new media, the

Fanny Delnieppe holds a Master’s degree from the University of Kent,

Lorraine Dumenil is Senior Lecturer at University Paris Sorbonne-Paris 3.

Lysane Fauvel is Professor of Philosophy at Southwestern University.

Rachel Gottesman is a historian of the Greek world and has a special

Ruth Heholt is Senior Lecturer in English at Falmouth University. Her

of the normal and its hegemonic repositioning as a choice rather than

Marion Krauthaker-Ringa is Lecturer in French at the University of

Matthew Martin is a member of the adjunct faculty at both Sonoma

Meera Perampalam is currently a PhD candidate in Film Studies at

Frances Pheasant-Kelly is an MA Award Leader and Senior Lecturer

Insanity: Abject Spaces in Shutter Island” in New Review of Film and

Kathleen Scott is a PhD candidate in Film Studies at the University of

James D. Stone is Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinematic

Virginie Thomas is a teacher of English working in Chambéry, France.

Brenda S. Gardenour Walter is Assistant Professor of History at the

unattainable (Žižek 1999). The exposed and displayed reality, mediated by

Penile representation of obscene and bacchanalian pleasures

Susan Bordo (1999) distinguishes between the (biological) penis and

Zooming as sadistic and masturbatory practice

In prevalent, formulaic cinemas, which are mostly patriarchal and

Notably, zooming makes the remote accessible. It is a visual device

spectator identifies with the male character, however, and experiences

Narcissistic pleasure and queer maternal relationship

Occasionally, the camera itself assumes a frontal position analogous to

Gay viewers, however, experience both a narcissistic pleasure of iden-

the chapters in this collection – attempt to challenge the highly phallic

The haptic visibility of a hardcore reality

What about voluntary self-exposure, for example? Is this merely nar-

Determined to make visible the horribly mangled face and twisted

Giroux’s analysis considers this haptic visibility of the tortured boy as an

Interdisciplinary exposure of the Phallic Eye

In the same spirit, Sensational Pleasures in Cinema, Literature and Visual

approaches, and interdisciplinary knowledge and research serve to

Barkai attempts to capture a specific form of Freud’s the Uncanny: the

the embodiments and symbols of phallic power. In particular, Stone

Reich, Stephanie M. and Reich, Jennifer A. (2006). “Cultural Competence in

from Mount Olympus and gave it to humanity, are a paradigmatic

Herodotus demonstrates how the erotic-voyeuristic gaze is closely con-

The fundamental relation between blindness and insight is a con-

Zeus saw Phoenix’s daughter Europa plucking flowers together with

girls are abandoned to the unrestrained desires of men. This motif

Goethe conceals a violent-erotic description beneath a naive and

transforms into a swan (when seducing Leda), or eagle (Ganymede),

This five-stage structure differs paradigmatically from that found in

inherently, the act, its punishment and compensation. A human gaze

19. Buxton 1980; Létoublon, 2010, 167–180.

In 2010, on the occasion of the exhibition “Faces and Bodies” guest-

Stories of the eye: the paradoxes of scopophilia

In the narrative voice-over in which she gives an account of her journey

shows that this curiosity can however degenerate into a compulsive

With Scopophilia, a work that openly focuses on the ambivalences of

Chains of desire: shifting the gaze