In "Hitman," Olyphant portrays what else but a genetically engineered hitman who is very good at what he does. There is a very funny scene involving the female interest of the movie, played by Olga Kurylenko, in which she has become very drunk and attempts to seduce '47,' the hitman. It's very much the 'sex scene' of the movie, and can easily be described through Mulvey as a scene that "unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic fantasy" and a glimpse at the pair's hotel room existing as a "private world" (324). Kurylenko's character has been sexualized throughout the movie until this point, and it would seem only inevitable. While Mulvey's theory of the female as causing a "castration anxiety" is a bit extreme, this movie turns the hero on it's head in a funny and poignant way: Instead of what one would be presume the 'cut to our hero and woman, having a post-coital cigarette,' '47' knocks her out with a gadget or tranquilizer of some kind--he's very awkward throughout the whole scene, the implication that he is somehow sexless or refuses to have sex with by merit of the science fiction of his being a clone and genetically engineered for one purpose: to kill. He continues to drive the narrative, but this shortcoming remains unresolved: is he castrated by her? Does Mulvey's theory fall short for this movie? Or is it simply taken as a humorous resolution to the obligatory 'sex scene' of the movie, the voyeuristic filmmaking opprotunism that seems so common in almost any R-rated movie?
Similarly, in Casino Royale, lothario James Bond's love interest, Vesper, also seems to present a threat of castration in the sense of disallowing the male figure to not continue driving the narrative: in this origin story of James Bond, he actually falls in love with her after a rather horrific part of their adventure and what amounts to a torture scene involving literal castration. Interestingly, Vesper becomes to Bond a reason for leaving his globe-trotting, womanizing and killing-laden career with British MI6 and there is a scene where he actually tenders his resignation to the higher-ups while planning on how to live his life out with Vesper. This could also be viewed as a castration of sorts, the manly figure of James Bond brought to retirement not by the Russians but by love? No longer shooting his gun and his mouth off at every opprotunity, but rather living a peaceful and monogamous life? It's a nice thought, but short-lived: It turns out that Vesper is *SPOILER ALERT* working with the bad guys, and even though James kills them all, he cannot save her in the end. The end of the movie offers Bond in a return to being a bad-ass, with revenge on his mind, once again fully in control of the narrative with a finger on the trigger.
The general question I'd like to raise, then, how do these females work in Mulvey's model? Are they set aside by "active voyeuristic or fetishistic mechanisms," (331), in effect rendering them ineffectual through objectification? They both remain central to the plot, whether their castration threats come to fruition or fall through, and in the case of "Casino Royale," the female interest, very well fetishized, remains a driving force for Bond straight into the next movie: he's out for revenge on the people that took away his love and cemented his position as a good-looking British killing machine.
1 comment:
Evan, just a couple of points: the idea of castration anxiety is actually Freud's. Mulvey turns to it as a way of understanding the positioning of women within the cinema. So, to attribute a weakness to her theory wouldn't quite work.
I think the question you ask at the end is a good one. I wonder, though, if Mulvey would be the best critic through which to analyze the representation of women. She is much more interested in how women are positioned -- as spectators -- vis-a-vis these representations. Let's talk about this in class.
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