Somehere As a Challenge to the Male Gaze

Somewhere As a Challenge to the Male Gaze

Laura Mulvey’s article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” argues her theory of the male gaze.  Mulvey claims that women are viewed as objects to men in film.  Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere (2010) focuses on an actor who starts to see things differently in his life.  Coppola challenges Mulvey’s theory through Somewhere by changing who is making the female gaze active, the male gaze passive or not scopophilic, and by taking away the patriarchal unconscious usually seen in film.

Laura Mulvey argues that males have all of the looking power in classic Hollywood cinema.   Males are the active viewers of the females, who are passive.  According to Mulvey, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.  She says, “[t]he determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly” (2011, 719).  With this Mulvey is saying that not only is the male in control of the gaze while the woman is viewed as a passive object, but in film women are designed to be looked at.  An example of this is in Charles Vidor’s Gilda (1946).  The character of Gilda played by Rita Hayworth is portrayed in soft lighting in a seductive manner.  The male characters indulge in scopophilia, pleasure in looking, and view her as an object.  Mulvey says, “[i]n their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (2011, 719).  Clearly in classical Hollywood cinema women are designed to be looked at erotically by men. According to Mulvey’s theory, men control the gaze while women are passive objects.  

Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere (2010) takes Mulvey’s theory and challenges it.  The first challenge is shown through the women in the film.  Most if not all women in the film, excluding Cleo, Johnny’s daughter, are in control of the gaze.  These women turn Johnny into the passive object they can turn their scopophilic fantasies towards as they actively gaze.  A prime example of this is in the beginning of the film when Johnny is driving in his car.  He pulls up next to a car and the woman driving it flirtatiously gazes at him.  She is actively gazing at him and viewing him as an object.  The woman has all the power and is not seen as the object  This happens again in the end of the film.  Johnny has just dropped his daughter off at camp and returns to the hotel.  A model is getting her makeup done and stares at Johnny.  She is in control of the gaze, viewing him as an object.  This role reversal happens time after time in this film, and Coppola is saying that the gaze isn’t strictly active/male and passive/female.  Women can control the gaze too and this film exemplifies that.

Coppola challenges Mulvey once again with Johnny’s gaze.  As a male, he is supposed to actively gaze at women and control that gaze.  Coppola changes this almost immediately in the film.  In an early scene we see Johnny sitting in bed while twin strippers perform in front of him.  The camera alternates between a point of view shot of the twins watching Johnny fall asleep, and a long shot that is to the right of Johnny aimed at the twins.  First of all, the point of view shot from the twins signifies their active gaze towards Johnny, and secondly, Johnny is not actively participating in the male gaze.  There are women right in front of him projecting a “to-be-looked-at-ness” and he is falling asleep.  We also know that Johnny is not actively gazing at these women because the second camera shot, the long shot of the twins, is not active.  We do not get any close-ups of the twins’ bodies, or any camera movement.  The shot is long and static.  If Johnny was actively gazing, we would have close-ups of the twins, and camera movement following their bodies, and most likely inter-cutted with Johnny’s gaze.  This does not happen, and instead we get a static shot of the twins dancing, making Johnny a passive viewer.  This is a role reversal of Mulvey’s active/male passive/female theory because Johnny is being a passive/male.

An important scene where the male gaze is changed once again is in Cleo’s ice skating scene.  The camera follows Cleo as she skates from Johnny’s point of view.  It is established that Johnny is actively watching Cleo.  The scene intercuts with medium shots to close-ups of Johnny watching Cleo.  Although Johnny is actively watching Cleo who is performing for him, and asking for his attention, his gaze is not scopophilic.  This gaze is not sexual or perverted, which is what Mulvey would argue.  His gaze is an innocent paternal gaze that challenges Mulvey’s belief that the male gaze is scopophilic.  Johnny’s gaze is active, but in an inappropriate way.

Women encourage Johnny’s gaze throughout the entire film.  These women are as Mulvey would argue, styled to encourage the male gaze.  Although Johnny is encouraged to actively gaze at these women, he typically does not.  For example, there is a scene where Johnny is on the phone with Cleo’s mother.  He is on the balcony of his hotel room and spots a woman on a level below him.  A high angle long shot shows a woman as her gaze meets the camera’s or Johnny’s gaze.  She smiles flirtatiously and takes her top off.  This action encourages Johnny to look at the woman as an object and entice him.  He smiles politely but walks away from the ledge, not encouraging the active/male passive/female theory.  As a male in a Hollywood film, it is expected of him to indulge in this, but he does not.  In this film the male is passive once again while the female is active.

Another example from the film where Johnny reversing the role of the male gaze is when he is getting his picture taken for a film promotion.  A long shot shows him and the leading lady of the film posing for pictures.  Johnny is standing on a box, seemingly put on display for us to look at.  Not only is he getting his picture taken so people can specifically look at him as an object in the photograph, but he is standing on a box like a show dog.  He is standing there as a spectacle and the subject of the gaze.  This goes against Mulvey’s article because in this scene Johnny is the passive object being looked at instead of the active male viewer.

Later in the film, Johnny is paranoid of being followed.  In two scenes we find Johnny driving in his car, paranoid that an SUV is following him.  This shows us that Johnny, the male, is the subject of the gaze.  Johnny feels like a passive object while someone stares at him.  This is obviously a reversal of the roles once again.  According to Mulvey, the male is the active spectator, but Coppola switches it and makes the male the passive object.  The next question is, who is following Johnny in this scene?

As the audience we are.  In the very end of the film, the camera follows Johnny driving in his car through traffic and along a country road.  The camera is literally following, perhaps revealing who Johnny is paranoid of.  In this scene, the camera and the audience hold the active gaze.  With this Coppola draws our attention to the fact that we hold the gaze, exposing us as spectators indulging in scopophilia.  We are the ones following Johnny, making him paranoid.  By introducing two new spectators to the game, the camera and the audience, we realize that the director of the film is a spectator as well.  Because Sofia Coppola is female, the film lacks a  patriarchal unconscious.  The patriarchal unconscious is the unconscious assumption that a male is the most powerful person in a group or family.  Because there is a woman in charge of the film, men aren’t as dominant in it.  This film is successful because Sofia Coppola eliminates the patriarchal unconscious and can play with the male gaze without feeling like it needs to have a stronger presence.  If a male was the director, the message of this film could be entirely different.  Johnny could actively gaze and women could be passive.  Even if the male director chose to have the male be passive and the females active, the viewpoint of the whole film would be from a male’s, not a female’s.  This film is Sofia Coppola’s voice and this is her response to Mulvey’s article.  She is saying that the roles can be reversed, which is leaning towards feminist ideology.  If a male made this film, it could be argued that by saying the roles are reversed, women can have a perverted scopophilic gaze too.  With a female director, the change in gazes creates more equality between men and women.  If a male directed it, it could be argued that males are trying to push some of this bad image onto woman by reversing the roles.  This film breaks down these constraints with the help of the lack of the patriarchal unconscious. 

Laura Mulvey’s article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” brings forth the theory of the active/male passive/female gaze.  In classic Hollywood cinema the male actively views the female as a passive object, styled to encourage the male gaze.  Sofia Coppola takes Mulvey’s theory and twists it around in her film Somewhere (2010).  Coppola makes the females active spectators, while the lead male is passive.  When he is actively gazing, it is not in a scopophilic form.  In the end of the film, Coppola makes us realize that we are voyeurs in the film, and that Coppola has a powerful gaze over the film.  Her gaze changes the film by taking away the patriarchal unconscious and replacing it with a woman’s point of view.  Coppola takes Mulvey’s article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” and throws it out the window in Somewhere.

Works Cited

Gilda. dir. Vidor, Charles. Columbia Pictures Corporation, 1946. Film. 

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Critical Visions in Film Theory. Ed. Timothy Corrigan, Ed. Patricia White and Ed. Meta Mazaj. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 719. Print.

Somewhere. dir. Coppola, Sofia. American Zoetrope, 2010. Film.