Icons of Beautiful Femininity by Qianhe Zhao

          Iconic women and the male gaze in Pre-Raphaelite art are two of the most engaging topics that we have discussed in class. I feel that Laura Mulvey’s essay on female icons in classic Hollywood cinemas is especially interesting in its attention to particular representations of women in film. Professor Marshall’s discussion of the link between women as icons in the films and in Pre-Raphaelite paintings is also very thought-provoking, and it has enabled me to interpret the ideas from the readings in a broader context.

Although paintings and films are different forms of art, they both share the characteristic of presenting visual images in a physical frame. It is naturally accepted that women are meant to look perfect on the screens and canvases, but what are the reasons for this acceptance? I have never thought about this question before because I, like many others, take beautiful women in movies and paintings for granted. I think one of the reasons why such depictions of female icons do not seem problematic is that they drive people’s attention away from who the women are towards how they are represented. As Budd Boetticher said, “What counts is what the heroine provokes or rather what she represents… In herself the women has not the slightest importance.”¹ By depicting iconic women in a two-dimensional space, artists present women as beautiful objects to be gazed upon and appreciated by the male-dominated world.

The purpose of women in old Hollywood film was to function as an eroticized figure who was intended to be the subject of the male gaze.² This idea is also shown in Pre-Raphaelite works. Rossetti’s Lady Lilith (1867) plays with feminine sexuality and the objectification of women. As we discussed in class, Rossetti emphasized Lilith’s full lips, pale skin and red hair, which makes Lilith a sensuous figure. Lilith looks into a mirror instead of looking out towards the viewers; however, her beauty still grasps the spectator's gaze. She occupies the central space in the painting and becomes the focus of the image.

There are two interesting parallels that can be made between Pre-Raphaelite representations of women and Hollywood female movies stars. The first one, as Mulvey argues, is that women are more likely to be depicted in a two-dimensional space, which makes them become an ideal image rather than a representation of a living person. In Lady Lilith, although the window may indicate some sense of depth, the dark wall background emphasizes a rather flat space. The flowers around Lilith are like decorations on a flat plane surface, surrounding Lilith in a shallow space. The second point is, as Professor Marshall explains, how women's behaviors before the camera give them the ability to stop the narrative and attract the male gaze. Lilith in Rossetti’s painting has the same quality of extreme beauty. Lilith sits on the chair and holds a mirror as she combs through her long hair. Her hand stops in the middle of the action, creating a strange sense of stillness, which makes me want to stop and gaze. It is like when the camera turns to a woman, everything else stops and the viewers’ attention has been drawn toward her.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lady Lilith, 1868.

Both Mulvey and Pollock’s readings try to explain such presentations of iconic female beauty in terms of psychoanalysis. The perfection of women reflects male’s fear of a woman’s “otherness”, characterized by the physical differences of the female body³. By presenting the woman as having perfect or extreme beauty, men try to compensate for women's guilt for not having a penis. It is interesting to think about how Freud may explain such subconscious needs. Men have “castration anxiety”, but they are also the ones in power. The male gaze reveals the superior status of men in the society. They are the judge, and they decide what women should look like. In this sense, women are portrayed as passive in the paintings and on the screens. Another display of men’s power is that men tend to be shown in three-dimensional space in the movies⁴. Occupying more space also suggests men’s more active and dominant role, which contrasts with the representation of women in Pre-Raphaelite art and Old Hollywood cinema.

Image link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti#mediaviewer/File:Lady-Lilith.jpg

1 As cited in Laura Mulvey, “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema”, course packet.

2 Mulvey, “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema”

3 Lecture notes, 28 Oct.

4 Mulvey, “Visual Pressure and narrative cinema”