Feminist Film Theory - Essay Example

He seems angry but could not resist himself from taking a peek inside once again and while he does so, a dog is shown licking his hand, obviously giving an indication of what is going on inside. Looking at the description of the scene it seems to be a part of some porn film. But it is actually is a scene from an award winning film ‘ The Piano’ directed by a female director named Jane Campion . The scene is erotic, it is sexual and it is about sex.

Does it involve a woman? Yes. Is a woman in this scene used as a commodity or is she objectified? No. The scene is a brilliant work of art where even though the love scene shot is very intimate and erotic, it does not expose the body of a woman just so that it can create a visual pleasure for men. This scene, and the movie as a whole, is an answer to what Laura Mulvey in her essay, “ Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” had challenged the film makers to achieve.

Sex is a part of life. We are born out of sex. So sex can never be denied or eliminated from the cinema. But the challenge was to show sex and woman in such a way that it allows her to maintains her dignity and respect in the society and does not become just an object of visual pleasure. The movie ‘ The Piano’ is an excellent example of how this aim can be achieved. Laura Mulvey is one of the thinkers who had discussed the feminism in cinema with the aid of the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud.

She studied the theories of Freud and have tried to understand how woman has been suppressed and objectified in the world of cinema. She has compared Freud’s theory with the way the audience