'Look Closer' - The Male Gaze in American Beauty

Sam Mendes' classic 1999 melodrama American Beauty is a shining example of how, through looking relations, the female figure is subjectivized and held up for the audience's voyeuristic pleasure. The woman in cinema as put by 'Doane' is an "enigma"with the images" written of the woman but not for her. For she is the problem" (Doane 1982 p.75) Although the male looking relation is developed throughout the film, (later through the use of video camera surveillance and window framing of Jane - Played by Thora Birch - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNSEWWJLHb0) a memorable example is the gymnasium dance scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a90BAwsvlA where we see a sexualised teenage 'Blonde Bomshell' seared into the mind as the object of desire for the Male protagonist and thus, by extension, the audience. Here we see scophophilia in full flight: initially the long shot of the gymnasium, from the man's point of view, views what is clearly a mundane and formulaic dance scene. As soon as the object is revealed, framed by other young females, we see a complete change in the editing, performance and sound in the scene. Firstly, we cut to a shot of the protagonist sitting in the crowd, surrounded by family, and then the shot switches to his point of view, resulting in a long zoom shot, (0.42secs in the clip) which relegates the rest of the girls, gymnasium crowd into the visual periphery, and makes us sure that the blonde teenage cheerleader is the object of desire. Next the point of view flips to the girl, looking up at Kevin Spacey's character, who is aghast and completely entranced, followed by another point of view shot, (from the male), with the girl, centre of frame, and the remainder of the background blurred and out of focus. The use of zoom clearly shows the 'to be looked at ness' (Mulvey 1975  p.17) of the girl, as well as zoom on the male, to highlight his is the desire, and she is the object. This is furthered by the use of lighting: a spotlight falls on the girl, singling her out, framing her in a way seen in classic bond films, and again emphasising the female as the object of desire. From here on we see the cheerleader dancing provocatively to a change of musical score, a rythmic, minimalist piece one might associate with snake charming or bellydancers. From here we see a mix of fetishism (close ups of the girl's legs and miniskirt), and scopophilia, with a shot of the male protagonist on his own, himself lit in an empty gymnasium. Crucially, in the editing, we see the look of the classic 'looking back over the shoulder' shot (shot with Hayworth, Monroe, and any number of Hollywood sirens on the red carpet) not just once, but reversed and repeated three times, coupled with the winking suggestion of implicit action of the girl, a classic cinematic 'come and get me'. If the audience was left in any doubt of their own complicit nature in this episode, an extreme close up of Kevin Spacey's eyes followed by an eyeline match shot (1min27). Finally, we see a careful use of editing emphasising the fetishistic desires of the male, when the young Angela begins to unzip her top to show her breasts - presented as glitch type shots - repeating a number of times close up, and in medium close up, and eventually revealing a shower of rose petals.

Clearly the tropes of voyeurism, fetishism and scopophilia are used in the piece, highlighting what Doane describes not only "as the image of desire but as the desirous image" (Doane 1982 p.77). In this scene, the desires of the male protagonist to undress and to 'have' the female, leads to a projection, whereby the id (in Freudian terms), desires the girl of questionable age, initially dancing in a non-provocative way, but who eventually becomes the canvas for the desire of the man. The man, in this sense, cannot help but explore this through the projection of his own sexual desires into the provocative, flirtatious and smutty dancing of the girl, touching herself and undressing in a teasing manner, complicit in his own desire. This sexualisation of the girl by the man becomes a theme throughout the film. It is left up to question whether this projection of the girl as complicit in the desire (through the wink), is a truth or merely a mechanism of the man's self preservation - a defence mechanism of the man's ego, convincing himself that in fact, she wants it too. In this sense it is possible to see what is perhaps one of the great patriarchal fallacies; the sexualisation of the female as the 'fault' of the female. Although this is still an idea prevalent in many aspects of society worldwide (the accusation that women dressing provocatively invites attention), it is one that is wrong. Still, we see this idea persistent throughout cinema, and is a clear example of an attack on the woman, by means of fetishising, or voyeurising her "to circumvent her threat" (Mulvey 1975 p.17). The medium of cinema is one that builds the way female is to be looked at into the spectacle itself. In this case, the female is spotlighted, focused upon, zoomed upon artificially, fetishised and repeated. Furthermore, through the eroticised form of dance, the cinema again emphasises "The image of woman as (passive) raw material for the (active) gaze of man" (Mulvey 1975 p. 17) much like Demi Moore's character in Striptease. However,  one might further comment that the problem of the female in this scene is not resolved, and that the man does not fully possess the object of his desire , and therefore neither does the audience possess the woman (we are not show the female's nakedness). Yet, like almost all 'problems' of the woman in cinema, the male (and ergo the audience), does solve it, culminating in the resolution of the seduction of the teenage girl, and the baring of her breasts on screen, "Demystifying her mystery"(Mulvey 1975 p.13).

A more difficult question to answer in this scene would be that of the notion of female spectatorship. Doane hypothesises the female perspective as a form of "narcissism". The image is the woman, and the distance required for voyeuristic pleasure is negated as the female on screen is equivalent to the female off screen. One might see that the image is focused here around the male gaze, and thus assert that the woman has to reassign her gender identification to the male to act out his own fantasy, creating a narcissistic love of the self, however, the central issue I feel is one of power. More than the man possessing the woman in this scene, the female possesses the man, his thoughts, gaze, his mind. In fact it is the man who is demystified, for there is no doubt as to what the man's central focus, and carnal desire is. Perhaps in this sense the lack of revulsion a female may have to this scene, is the pleasure in exerting this power over the male in an embodied sense. In fact, rather than the joke being on the female, the image only serves to subvert the man, visually agog and hanging on the every movement of his own fantasy, rather than the reality of the situation around him. Perhaps, if the pleasure of the female spectator is in the ultimate knowledge of control of the man, for even in classical hollywood, the destruction of the female, or the possession of her through sex, is not in fact the last will of control over the woman but for the female, but ironically, the possession of man's desire, his will, his emotions, his very way of looking. The image focused on the female, therefore relegates the man to the irrational, the animal or in even the insane, locked into a never ending state of anxiety, to have, to need, to want and to destroy, the decline of man viewed "with sentimental regret" (Mulvey, 1975 p.18). I suggest that this use of cinema to subjectify the female, as a vehicle for projected desire, is a representation of the way that our patriarchal society seeks to control and to dominate the woman, and it is in this strife that the man reveals himself as the weakness, and himself the problem.

References

Mulvey, L., (1975) Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema, Screen, autumn edition 16.3

Doane, M.A., Film and the Masquerade: Theorising the female spectator Screen (1982) 23 (3-4): 74-88