The Visual Pleasure Of The Medusa

The thesis will use psychoanalytic theories to analysize the features and functions of the female gaze in The Piano, The Tango Lesson and Letter From an Unknown Woman. Contrary to the male gaze in the male cinema, the looks of the camera in these films are female, the leading protagonists are female lookers and the looks of the spectators are female or most frequently, non-sexed. The female gaze bears the different characteristics of non-hegemony. Though the objects of the female gaze can be male lovers, but the look never means to repress or possess men. In addition, the objects also include other women, their children, and even themselves. The aim of the female gaze is not to voyeur, to fetishize, to avoid castration, to possess the other sex as objects, to masculinize or to masochise. This female gaze, as a parallel to a special female language in the female writing, tries to articulate female unconsciousness, female desires and sexuality, in attempt to establish their real speaking subject and to find their pleasure.