Girls will be Boys
We all get angry, whether we like it or not. Maybe your kids left Legos on the rug, and you just stood on them, or someone hit your wing mirror off your car without leaving a note, anger is a basic human emotion that seems to have been male-dominated throughout film. Men in film seem to punch walls and kick down doors, but what representation do women have? We get equally as angry as men so why isn’t that normalised in film?
(Spoilers lie ahead)
I have been racking my brain trying to think of examples of female rage, I came up with Amy Dunne from ‘Gone Girl’ and ‘Matilda’. Two incredibly different examples but they both work. Amy Dunne is an iconically strong female character with a few psychopathic tendencies, which is oddly refreshing to see a woman portray. Dunne finds out her husband is cheating with a younger, prettier woman, she feels like her husband is sucking the life out of her. So naturally, she fakes her death and makes her double-dealing husband the main suspect through a methodical plan. This film also falls under the “good for her” trope. This trope started out from “Arrested Development” which went viral back in 2010 and has since become a figure in film.
Amy Dunne, Gone Girl 2014
Matilda, 1996
The infamous “cool girl” monologue is something that cannot be replicated in film. “Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex”. Her rage was built up over the years of being married to Nick, played by Ben Affleck, and not being appreciated enough which is perfectly normal in relationships sadly, however, the crimes she later commits are not, so please don’t get any ideas, ladies. ‘Gone Girl’ is a tough example to talk about due to the extremities and gruesome scenes but you must be able to strip it back. A woman has finally reached her breaking point in her cookie-cutter lifestyle and wants to leave, maybe she could have done so in a less psychopathic way, but it honestly just adds more to the narrative.
The other example I had was ‘Matilda’, a much cuter approach with a lot less murder and sex. Matilda lived her life in the shadow of her criminally questionable family. When Matilda finally attends school, she's faced with a rather ugly headteacher who reminds me way too much of my old history teacher. Miss Trunchbull tests the protagonist so much she discovers her telekinesis powers which we were all jealous of when we watched the 1996 film. Matilda’s rage stems from her love for Miss Honey and how mistreated she was by her own stepmother, Miss Trunchbull. Her family also test her throughout the film, which leads to a great montage of Matilda playing tricks on them. After a spat between the two on who's more mature, she glues her father's hat to his head with the same glue he uses to scam his customers.
There is a recurring theme of power in this film, it is based around who is older and who is younger, yet Matilda is defiantly more mature, and her intelligence speaks for itself diminishing any accusations her father puts against her. Her rage in this film is graspable and built up over years of people not understanding her from such a young age. If I was treated like a child when I had powers that could make stuff fly into your face, I probably would do exactly that.
‘Gone Girl’ and ‘Matilda’ couldn’t be any further from one another in narrative yet the similarities they share are based on breaking the barriers of stereotypes. Amy Dunne’s anger is built up from years of having an underappreciative husband like Matilda’s family. It also plays on the female gaze massively which is refreshing to see in film.
When looking into the female gaze, I found a French critic by the name of Iris Brey, she talks about six conditions a film must achieve to be a part of the female gaze. These are that the protagonist must identify as a woman, the narrative needs to be told from her point of view and it must question and challenge the patriarchal order. The other three points are that the audience must feel the female experience, if bodies are sexualised it must be done consciously and finally, the pleasure of viewers does not stem from scopophobia.
Films nowadays are slowly becoming made for the woman's eye just as much as the man's, which all women can vouch for me that is been a long time coming. Aesthetics are the way to pull women in, for me personally I love films like ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ where we follow an emotional storyline that many girls could relate to, yet it’s shot so beautifully that it makes us appreciate it just that little bit more.
As well, more female directors are getting the respect they deserve for creating films that are not just well made but sit well with such a specific audience. Greta Gerwig who has directed ‘Little Women’ and ‘Lady Bird’, which are fantastic films, shows the beauty of being a woman without over-sexualising the characters which took such a long time for the film industry to understand. We don’t need scenes of sexual acts between characters for us to understand where they stand in adolescence, show us them arguing with their parents as we all did, and show us their awkward interactions with boys from school. We want realness and we are finally getting it, even if that is very slow.
Little Women, 2019
Little Miss Sunshine, 2006
American Psycho, 2000
The female gaze is nowhere near as mediatized as the male gaze which doesn’t come as a surprise. Laura Mulvey's famous 1975 essay raised the question of the male gaze and how it works in media, we’ve seen it in almost every bond film and all films that men tend to fascinate over like ‘American Psycho’, ‘Fight Club’ and ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (the list could go on). These films stand for violence, male manipulative characters and unsafe sex, it seems as if men have taken these films to be propaganda into life as males. In my personal opinion is strange to think, that men have taken these incredibly fictional narratives and put them in a gold frame on their shelf of toxic masculinity.
A literal perfect example of the transition from the male gaze to the female gaze would be Harley Quinn in ‘Suicide Squad’ and ‘Birds of Prey’. In ‘Suicide Squad’ she is so oversexualized it becomes hard to watch, there are too many scenes that add no character development only insight into what underwear she’s wearing. It was so clearly directed by a man.
The depiction of Quinn from DC Comics hasn’t been followed over to the film. The comics' representation shows a strong, slightly deranged woman who can hold her own, in the film she is hanging onto the male characters like I would my childhood teddy. Her relationship with the Joker is falling apart and this leads to her spiraling. The relationship is shown as traumatic and abusive in many ways but luckily in the second film, ‘Birds of Prey’, which is directed by a woman, the joker is thankfully her ex. The character development is so much more powerful and meaningful In Birds of Prey it deconstructs and breaks down the walls of the male gaze.
This film explores more female relationships and Harley Quinn has finally been given a new and improved wardrobe that actually adds to her character. It's clear to see that the female gaze has more of a sensory impact like I mentioned earlier, films like ‘Lady Bird’ offer beautiful aesthetics with a more emotionally captivating storyline whereas the male gaze is more about visuals and the way each character looks and performs to stereotypes.
Anya Taylor-Joy an actress spoke about feminine rage in an interview publicizing her latest film ‘The Menu’. A well-deserved slap wasn’t scripted but she felt like it was needed compared to what she was told to do which was to shed a singular tear. Who even sheds a singular tear? This moment was pivotal to understanding the characters just a little bit more. This needs to be done more in film honestly, some men really deserve a slap especially if they knew they were setting you up to die (sorry spoilers).
Some of the best acting I've seen is from the cast of ‘Euphoria’. They really know how to show true emotion whether it’s over a not-that-attractive man or trying to get clean off drugs, I think this show deserves the hype it does get, we will just ignore the fact the new season actually made no sense and left too many things up in the air. Rue Bennett's mum honestly shows some of the rawest and most real emotions when it comes to her daughter relapsing, there are scenes between the two that highlight the realism of disappointment and anger towards someone you truly love. Zendaya and Nika King really blew us away with their scenes together. Zendaya undoubtedly deserved those two Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.
Rue in Euphoria, 2021
I spoke to some film students to pick their brains about what they think of the female gaze and female rage in film. One student made a good point, he stated how male rage is typically more violent, more sporadic, and unpredictable. This student mentions how he's tired of seeing emotionless men, but he feels as if we don’t like seeing them because it is too close to reality. I agree with this point as it works for women too in film as well as men. There is such a stereotype when it comes to men and women and how they should act and be. A very stereotypical example may perhaps be the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”, a perfect illustration of this would be Zooey Deschanel in ‘500 Days of Summer’. This trope of a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” is that she is a very attractive, fun and hyper woman who is at the male's disposal whenever he needs her, she is there to help him blossom into this amazing man. There seem to be so many different tropes that have been boxed and packaged by men to help their journey just a little easier.
Another film student mentioned the final girl trope, which is normally seen in horror films. This “final girl” is a sexualized virgin who had all her friends killed and is now herself going on a rampage, it’s also justified because she is this virginal sexualized girl. This student also stated “A lot of the time when we see female rage, we’re not seeing an accurate representation, we are seeing the sexualized version that isn’t intimated to men. The women normally must go through this massive trauma to have the right to be angry.”. A film that portrays the final girl trope would be ‘Ready or Not’ which is a horror based on a game night where the family must hunt and kill the wife before sunrise, Grace the wife ends up having to adapt to the rules and become this killing machine to protect herself, she shifts from being hunted to the hunter making her no better than her in-laws but you can’t help but think “Good For Her”
As long as the film industry is male-dominated the male gaze will still exist but with the help of female directors such as Greta Gerwig and actresses such as Anya Taylor-Joy who speak up when they feel something isn’t the correct interpretation then we are heading in the right direction. Film and TV are an imperative part of our lives, whether we like it or not and what we see on the big screen is important, we take what we see in, we see these characters as role models, we see them as achievable, so we need the representations to be correct.