The author’s motivation for writing, “Chick Flicks” as Feminist texts: The Appropriation of the Male Gaze in Thelma & Lousie, is to inform us on how the explanation for the movie’s wide appeal among women spectators. “The film's female gazes undercut and appropriate the dominant male gazes typical of mainstream Hollywood cinema by using mockery as a narrative device to illustrate the sexism inherent in the male gaze, and it is precisely this appropriation of patriarchal construction that offers pleasure to women spectators” (Cooper). The movie Thelma & Lousie caused so much controversy that she wanted to inform us on the topic, and explain how, “a conceptual framework for explicating these subversive gazes within film narratives” (Cooper). …show more content…
The author wants us to realize that it is okay for women to show a sense of revenge towards men in movies, and that it is not meant to show a betrayal in feminism. The author uses a great deal of evidence throughout the article to convince us of her argument. She uses three narrative devices that structure the films mockery, those being: stereotypes of lecherous and testosterone-crazed men, depicting men as spectacles for women’s attention, and the celebration of women’s friendships. The author uses examples from the movie to help support the claim she is making about the three narrative devices that structure the film’s mockery. She goes on to talk about how the writer made this film to show us that, “her screenplay was structured specifically to challenge these patriarchal boundaries both cinematically and societally, and in turn the film presents spectators with narratives and alternative gaze’s that encourage viewers to feel through the female figures on screen” …show more content…
“Consequently, Mulvey argued that the patriarchal hegemony dominating Hollywood makes impossible for a female gaze free of male constructs, and a feminist voice can only be found in counter-culture cinema” (Cooper). The situation of power, expert and sexualized control over 'women’ still rules standard Hollywood movies, she contended that similarly as ladies have opposed the "prince charming" children's stories of our way of life, they have effectively "reformulated and opposed the prototype 'masculine gaze' in silver screen. Ways that this article is different from the one by Laura Mulvey is, “that Thelma & Louise represents "an explicit subversion of traditional representations of a narrow feminine role" (p. 125), a representation previously limited primarily to avant-garde feminist films and independent feminist filmmakers” (Mellencamp, 1995; Ussher, Cooper). This article helped me to better understand other articles we have read in class, and movies we have watched by showing me that the female gaze does exist and that not all movies are made just for male’s pleasure, but female pleasure as well. When watching the movies, this article has made it easier for me to be able to focus on my experience as a female viewer. How this article relates to my experiences is, I have seen movies that show the ‘female gaze’ Baywatch being one of those movies. When watching this movie it was easy to see a sense