Female Audiences Shelby Core Post #4

Laura Mulvey describes the male gaze as a process that the camera has a male perspective sexualizing the female image; the men do the looking and the women are to be looked at. This correlates to the reasons in which there has been an absence of audiences from film studies regarding the female spectator, according to Jackie Stacey in “Stardom: Industry of Desire.” There has been little examination of feminist works within Hollywood—the stars themselves and even less their spectators. By not even discussing the female spectator, it automatically implies passivity on the subject. Women make up a huge portion of the population who also partake in the consumption of entertainment so it is important to understand how the female audience might interpret stars in relation to their specific cultural or historical contexts.

Stacey claims that it is odd that feminist studies regarding stars in Hollywood hasn’t been pursued more because it seems “an obvious focus for the analysis of the construction of idealized femininities within patriarchal culture.” For example, the way that many people, especially women, strongly responded to Madonna in the 80s shows that Madonna represented a certain aspect of femininity that those people wanted to encapsulate for that era. Certain stars rise to fame because they represent something that the audience needs or desires from a public figure for that specific time period, because they actually desire it for themselves and stars are the embodiment of their desires.

Madonna was confident, aggressive and very comfortable with publicly expressing her sexuality—in fact in her Truth or Dare documentary she considered ‘artistic freedom of speech.’ She was always pushing the boundaries and perhaps her fans admired her rebellion against the generation above them and their traditional notions. She fought back against sexual repression and expressed her sexuality on stage. Her signature crotch grabbing is an aggressive masculine action. I think people responded well to this because it was so rebellious against how women were “supposed” to behave, not necessarily because it was sexy. This aligns with Molly Haskwell’s definition of the ‘superwoman,’ which is a woman who adopts male characteristics to enjoy male privilege. I would say that being very sex-oriented and crotch grabbing are not traditionally feminine and that is exactly the point. She acts like a man so she can be treated like one. I think her audiences wanted the freedoms and privileges of a man, too.