What is Feminist Film Theory? A Beginner’s Guide

Let’s start by dialling the clock right back to the late 19th century. Early feminist movements were already starting to question women’s roles in society and their portrayal in the media.

Feminism and Film History

Silent Movie Era (1894-1929)

During the time of silent films, women like Alice Guy-Blanché and Lois Weber were pioneering directors who addressed social issues and tried to provide nuanced portrayals of women. Alice Guy (as she was known) directed almost 600 silent films and for a period of time was possibly the world’s only female filmmaker. Both Guy and Weber were some of the first women to actually own and manage their studios. Weber made a string of controversial films on social issues like capital punishment, drug use, and poverty.

Classic Hollywood

The rise of the studio system was a bit of a backward step for women in film, they became marginalised both in front of and behind the camera. Actresses were often typecast in roles that reinforced traditional gender roles and female directors were rare. The Hays Code was released in 1930, setting out a set of rules largely based on moral principles, which restricted the types of story that could be told which often meant sanitising and simplifying women characters, not to mention putting a stop to anything considered improper or ‘controversial.’

1950s and 1960s

Post-war there was a push for women to return to ‘women’s roles’ in the US, with a concerted campaign of adverts, educational films and TV shows that all focused on women being in the home: cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the children. Even though the percentage of women working was on the up from the mid-50s, women still weren’t seen as ‘proper workers,’ were limited in the type of work they could do, and were paid less than men.

The Counterculture movement of the 1960s was a pushback to all of this, a rejection of mainstream society’s conventions and the desire for change. With the Civil Rights Movement, and protests around the Vietnam War, there was widespread disillusionment and these social causes often intersected and supported each other. Art, music, literature, and film were great ways to express the themes of Counterculture. This set the groundwork for the more radical shifts in feminist theory and practice in the following decades.

Development of Feminist Theory in Film

The 1970s was a pivotal time for feminist theory in film, mostly because of Counterculture and the ongoing second wave feminist movement with a focus on equality and discrimination. It was at this time that academics and critics began to look at films through a gendered lens and question how cinema was portraying women.

The Male Gaze

In 1972 John Berger, an English art critic, used the concept of the gaze as the representation of women ‘as passive objects to be seen’ in the broader art world. Laura Mulvey, a British film theorist and filmmaker introduced the concept of The Male Gaze which in media studies and film theory, is linked to voyeurism. Mulvey argued that mainstream cinema is structured around a masculine viewer, objectifying women and positioning them as passive subjects of male desire, which in turn marginalises women and supports patriarchy.

In 1973, film theorist Claire Johnston’s essay ‘Women’s Cinema as Counter-Cinema’ spoke of the need for a distinct women’s cinema that subverted mainstream narratives and offered an alternative representation of women. She argued that women film-makers needed to create a new language of cinema that was more accurate to women’s experiences.

1980s and 1990s

Feminist theories continued to develop through the decades and the 80s and 90s saw more diverse perspectives and became intersectional, including social issues like race, class, and sexuality. Feminist academics started to look at the concept of the female gaze as a counterpoint to the male gaze, exploring how women view films differently and how films might be made with a female perspective. The rise of queer theory in the 90s also helped to challenge heteronormative representations in cinema.

By the end of the 90s, feminist film theory had influenced mainstream film criticism significantly and there was a much greater awareness and critique of gender representation in popular culture more generally.

What is Looked at in Feminist Film Theory?

• Representation and Stereotyping: How women were represented and stereotyped in cinema. Often, the critique focused on the lack of diverse and complex characters.
• Male Gaze: Whether the film is made from a male perspective, objectifying women.
• Female Gaze: Exploring how films can be made from a female perspective.
• Narrative: How traditional storytelling techniques reinforced patriarchal values and how alternative narrative structures could help subvert this.
• Genre: A look at specific genres like horror, melodrama and action, how these present women, and whether that reinforces or challenges stereotypes.
• Intersectionality: The overlap of social issues including race, class, sexuality, poverty and more.
• Spectatorship: How the viewers (but particularly, women) engage with and interpret films.
• Alternative Cinema: How independent and experimental films by women directors can offer different representations of women.

Women Filmmakers

Women filmmakers have had an essential role in advancing feminist theory in film. Here are some of the pioneers from the silent movie era, to contemporary cinema.

1. Alice Guy-Blaché (1873 – 1968)

Notable Works: The Fairy of the Cabbages (1896), Falling Leaves (1912)

Alice Guy-Blanché, who we’ve touched on already, is commonly thought of as the first female film director and one of the earliest narrative filmmakers. She not only directed, but also wrote and produced hundreds of films across a range of genres.

2. Dorothy Arzner (1897-1979)

Notable Works: Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), Get Your Man (1927)

Dorothy Arzner was the only female director working in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s, with the exception of Lois Weber. She directed films featuring strong female protagonists and explored gender roles and women’s independence, as well as the idea of unconventional romances. Arzner was the first woman to join the Directors Guild of America and also the first to direct a film with sound.

3. Ida Lupino – (1918-1995)

Notable Works: Outrage (1950), The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

Lupino tackled social issues like rape, mental illness, and women trapped by social conventions in her films. She was first woman to direct film noir (The Hitch-Hiker) and knew many of the roles of production inside and out, though she was not above pretending not to know certain things in order to get men to cooperate!

4. Maya Deren – (1917-1961)

Notable Works: Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), At Land (1944)

Ukrainian-born Deren got into filmmaking when she purchased a camera with money left to her after her father’s death. She used it to make her first film, Meshes of the Afternoon. Deren explored themes of identity, the subconscious, and female experience in films that were experimental in black and white short, with slow-motion, jump cuts and other techniques.

5. Agnès Varda (1928 – 2019)

Notable Works: Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Vagabond (1985)

Arlette (later Agnès )Varda was born in Belgium and became a central figure in French New Wave, even though she started filmmaking prior to it. She’s known for her innovative narrative techniques and focus on women’s stories and perspectives, and her films often blended documentary and fiction.

6. Chantal Akerman (1950-2015)

Notable Works: Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), News from Home (1977)

The minimalist style and focus on the everyday aspects of women’s lives that Akerman focused on, challenged traditional cinematic narratives. She used domestic spaces to explore women and the mundane nature of daily routines, including an almost real-time depiction (Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles) of a woman cooking, cleaning, and looking after her son.

7. Kathryn Bigelow (1951 – Present)

Notable Works: The Hurt Locker (2008), Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Action and thriller genres are typically male dominated but Bigelow has carved her path and became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director for The Hurt Locker. She’s rejected the idea of trying to break gender roles but has said there should be more women directing.

8. Julie Dash (1952 – Present)

Notable Works: Illusions (1982) Daughters of the Dust (1991)

Dash was the first Black American woman to have a full-length film distributed theatrically in the US. Her work is known for its rich visual style and focus on Black American women’s stories, history, and culture, which has had a big influence on Black feminist cinema.

9. Jane Campion (1954 – Present)

Notable Works: The Piano (1993), The Power of the Dog (2021)

Campion’s films often centre on women’s experiences and emotions, and she’s lauded for both her storytelling and for her complex female characters. She was the first woman to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival, and she’s the only woman to have been nominated twice for the Oscar for Best Director, one of which she won.

10. Ava DuVernay (1972 – Present)

Notable Works: Selma (2014), Middle of Nowhere (2012)

DuVernay only started filmmaking at the age of 32 but has made significant steps in highlighting issues of race, justice, and civil rights. She makes both narrative and documentary work, and both of these highlight systemic inequalities and the experiences of Black women.

Challenges and Criticisms

Despite forging paths through cinema, women as a whole are still very under-represented in film production. Although women make up 50% of movie-goers, women still make up only ‘22% of all directors, writers, producers, executive producers, and cinematographers working on the top 250 grossing films.’ There are far fewer female characters too, with only 28% of protagonists being women in 2023.

Figures are worse still for Black women and women of colour, with 80% of directors being white men and only 1% women from under-represented groups. Early feminism was criticised for being essentialist and focusing primarily on white, middle-class women’s experiences. Intersectionality has broadened this to include race, class, and sexuality, but we can see from these statistics that we’re still very far from equality yet.

There are external criticisms that say feminist film theory is guilty of overanalysing films and suggest that not all films are consciously propping up patriarchal values with some views imposing feminist interpretations where there were none intended. It’s also problematic to judge everything by western feminist frameworks, when there may need to be a more nuanced understanding of different cultural contexts and how gender dynamics play out in other societies.

Feminist Film Theory Books

• Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Laura Mulvey
• Feminism and Film edited by E. Ann Kaplan
• The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory by Tania Modleski
• From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies by Molly Haskell
• Issues in Feminist Film Criticism edited by Patricia Erens
• Feminist Film Theory: A Reader edited by Sue Thornham

Conclusion: What is Feminist Film Theory?

Modern feminist theory in film has come a long way since the 70s and has had to adapt to the changes and challenges of broader society, coming to incorporate other civil protests and rights movements to form a feminism that is more intersectional.

Feminist film theory really highlights how important it is to have diverse voices in shaping the stories we tell, and what we see on screen, so that it truly reflects the feelings, thoughts, and lives of women of all types, and doesn’t just sink to lazy tropes with stereotyping or objectifying. In the near future, we’re likely to see a closer look being taken at gender dynamics within the film industry and a push for changes that better support gender equality and inclusion.

Future feminist film theory will likely continue to be intersectional, bringing in greater representation of non-binary, trans, and genderqueer people, as well as exploring issues like ecofeminism, which is the exploitation of women and nature, and analysing the broader cultural impact of feminist films.

• 

  50+ Top Video & Film Editing Terms (Beginner’s Glossary)

  

  Marie Gardiner

  18 May 2024

• 

  What is the Kuleshov Effect? +How to Use It With Examples

  

  Marie Gardiner

  06 Mar 2024

• 

  Top 10 Free Public Domain Footage Sources to Use for Your Videos

  

  Marie Gardiner

  04 Mar 2024

• 

  The Psychology of Colour in Film, TV, and Video

  

  Marie Gardiner

  29 Feb 2024

About This Page

This page was written by Marie Gardiner. Marie is a writer, author, and photographer. It was edited by Andrew Blackman. Andrew is a freelance writer and editor, and is a copy editor for Envato Tuts+.