{"id":2312,"date":"2018-12-10T20:56:12","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T20:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/?p=2312"},"modified":"2019-05-16T15:28:51","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T15:28:51","slug":"myths-gender-screen-culture-gender-genre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/myths-gender-screen-culture-gender-genre\/","title":{"rendered":"Myths of Gender and Screen Culture: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Other columns in this series:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Part 2: The Myth of the F-Word<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Part 3: The Myth of Collaboration I<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Part 4: The Myth of Collaboration II<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Part 5: The Myth of Equality<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

There was perhaps a time when the notion of the \u201cmale gaze\u201d \u2014 a dominant, sadistic masculine viewing perspective that reduces representations of women on-screen to objectified, sexual spectacle \u2014 was wholly the terrain of academic films studies. But Laura Mulvey\u2019s foundational concept, defined in <\/span>her famous 1975 essay \u2018Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema\u2019<\/a>, has since bled beyond the parameters of academia into the critical lexicon of film, television, video games and the visual arts more broadly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the last twelve months, I\u2019ve thought a lot about the critical dominance of the male gaze<\/a>, a starting point that brings with it a myriad of assumptions and implications about its alternatives. But this process of gendering may be more reductive than the good intentions behind its analysis might suggest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Take for example, the terrain of genre filmmaking. In late 2017, I began work on my forthcoming book from BearManor Media, <\/span>1000 Women in Horror<\/em>, which seeks to bring to the surface a whole range of women film industry practitioners who made a notable impact on what is traditionally assumed to be a male-oriented domain. While many of these 1000 women worked in front of the camera as actors, I also wanted to emphasize the diversity of women\u2019s labor behind the scenes as editors, screenwriters, sound technicians, cinematographers and directors.<\/span><\/p>\n

An unreliable narrative<\/h4>\n

Of immediate interest here is the way certain types of films are viewed in relation to their authors (and the audience, another future topic of discussion). <\/span>We need only consider the ubiquity of a term like \u2018chick flick\u2019 to demonstrate how the idea of linking gender to certain kinds of movies is ingrained in our viewing habits.<\/span><\/p>\n

It works the other way, too; think of the machismo hyperbole hovering around the\u00a0 discourse about war movies, action films or crime and horror cinema \u2013 t<\/span>hen think of Kathryn Bigelow, who renders such biases irrelevant with a filmography that consists almost solely of these kinds of films, from <\/span>K-19: The Widowmaker<\/span><\/i> (2002) to <\/span>Point Break<\/span><\/i> (1991), <\/span>The Hurt Locker<\/span><\/i> (2008) to <\/span>Near Dark <\/span><\/i>(1987).<\/span><\/p>\n