Mayne
argues that there are two methodologies to analyze classical film from
a feminist perspective. These are the "images of women" and the "reading
against the grain." The methodology of "images of women" usually points
for the negative and distorted representation of women in the screen, and
with the lack of correspondence between those representations and the real
world. The "reading against the grain approach" to the analysis of classical
cinema sees the images of women not so much as distorted, but as parts
or components of a system. This approach concentrates on the contradictions
inherent in the film as it is a representational commentary of the world.
This approach implies deconstructing the film
and seeing what gets resolved and how does it resolved, or
what the film leaves either in tension or intact.
These two methodologies of the feminist film criticism can be understood
chronologically. In the early stages, feminism and feminist theory were
interested in the absence of women from the public sphere and, from
the also, public screen. For these feminists absence meant displacement
or repression and NOT necessary failure to appear. There have always
been women in the images of film, but their role has been traditionally,
passive. The "images of women" approach suggests that the eye behind
the camera is male and that the world of filmical representation, like
our world is looked at from a male point of view that is to say. Patriarchy
is for this approach, a system of social control. For this type of
analysis there are privileged lookers and the objects of their gaze (females).
For the "reading against the grain" method, patriarchy is not so monolithic
as to only produce distortedimages of women only serve its
hegemonic purposes. Hence, the difference between the two methods of analysis
is ideological. The "images of women " method sees patriarchy as a system
of control, the "reading against the grain " method sees patriarchy as
a system full of contradictions, gaps and slips of the tongue. (189)
The two
methods of film analyisis reflects the trajectory of feminist literary
criticism and of the feminist movement in general. These are the
moments of the development of feminist criticism; 1. naive but conciliatory
assertion of sisterhood as encoded in the slogan "sisterhood is powerful";
2. patriarchy as the enemy of women; 3. power of femininity
within the mythology of men; 4. contradictions in patriarchy towards the
role of women.
Mayne argues that because there are so very few women film makers the "reading
against the grain" method becomes important since it is necessary to demystify
classical cinema and because this method sees in the contradictory
positions towards women that film embodies, the cracks of the patriarchal
system. By deconstructing, say, the sexual politics of classical
cinema, the feminist critique can see the weak bases of such a politics.
she can do this by asking qustions of this sort; Is the narrative
traditional? Does it ending have the traditional solution of boy gets girl?
Are there subplots that reveal the ambiguity of the film towards its own
traditional narrative? T
The "reading against the grain" method has
also to account for the preference of the female spectators. Why
do women go to see movies made by an industry that represents them
on the screen as absence? Apparently, female viewers are "the ultimate
dialecticians." Like a person in exile, she lives the tension of two different
cultures. The language of the screen is coded for the invisibility of the
female, yet she watches it and brings into the viewing an her interpretation
of the film her particular female codes. How are women spectators dealing
with the images they see on films?'. Do women, as spectators, experience
and hlod the same ambiguities as those present in films they watch?
These avenues of analysis have not been, for Mayne, fully explored and
therefore she proposes an analysis of female spectator hip which deal with
the ambiguity of the films and the ambiguity if the female viewer.
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