Title: (PDF) Feminist Film Theory | Anneke Smelik - Academia.edu
Headings: Feminist Film Theory
Feminist Film Theory
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Feminist Film Theory

Content: For over a decade, psychoanalysis was to be the dominant paradigm in feminist film theory. More recently, there has been a move away from a binary understanding of sexual difference to multiple perspectives, identities and possible spectatorships. This open- ing up has resulted in an increasing concern with questions of ethnicity, masculinity and hybrid sexualities. Classic film narrative Claire Johnston was among the first feminist critics to offer a sustained critique of stereotypes from a semiotic point of view. She put forward a view of how classic cinema constructs the ideological image of woman. Drawing on Roland Barthes's notion of myth, Johnston investigated the myth of'woman' in classic cinema. The sign 'woman' can be analysed as a structure, a code or convention. It represents the ideological meaning that 'woman' has for men. In relation to herself, she means no-thing  (Johnston, 1991, p. 25): women are negatively represented as 'not-man'.