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

Content: Such fixed and endlessly repeated images of women were considered to be objectionable distortions that would have a negative impact on the female spectator. Hence, the call for positive images of women in cinema. Soon, how- ever, the insight dawned that positive images were not enough to change underlying structures in film. Feminist critics tried to understand the all-pervasive power of patriarchal imagery with the help of structuralist theoretical frameworks such as semiotics and psychoanalysis. These theoretical discourses have proved very productive in analysing the ways in which sexual difference is encoded in classical narrative. 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.