Editing Feminist film theory (section)

==History==
The development of feminist film theory was influenced by [[second wave feminism]] and [[women's studies]] in the 1960s and 1970s.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.uh.edu/~cfreelan/courses/femfilm.html|title=Feminist Film Theory|last=Freeland|first=Cynthia|date=3 October 1996|access-date=10 October 2019}}</ref> Initially, in the United States in the early 1970s, feminist film theory was generally based on [[sociological theory]] and focused on the function of female characters in film [[narrative]]s or [[genre]]s. Feminist film theory, such as [[Marjorie Rosen]]'s ''[[Popcorn Venus|Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies, and the American Dream]]'' (1973) and [[Molly Haskell]]’s ''From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in Movies'' (1974) analyze the ways in which women are portrayed in film, and how this relates to a broader historical context. Additionally, feminist critiques also examine common [[stereotype]]s depicted in film, the extent to which the women were shown as active or passive, and the amount of screen time given to women.<ref>Smelik, Anneke.  "And The Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory."New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. Page 7-8.</ref>

In contrast, film theoreticians in England concerned themselves with [[critical theory]], [[psychoanalytic theory|psychoanalysis]], [[semiotics]], and [[Marxism]]. Eventually, these ideas gained hold within the American scholarly community in the 1980s. Analysis generally focused on the meaning within a film's text and the way in which the text constructs a viewing subject. It also examined how the process of cinematic production affects how women are represented and reinforces sexism.<ref>Erens, Patricia. "Introduction", ''Issues in Feminist Film Criticism.''  Patricia Erens, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. pp. xvii.</ref>

British feminist film theorist, [[Laura Mulvey]], best known for her essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", written in 1973 and published in 1975 in the influential British film theory journal, ''[[Screen (journal)|Screen]]''<ref name="0:">{{cite journal |author=Laura Mulvey |title=Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema |journal=Screen |date=Autumn 1975 |volume=16 |issue=3 |pages=6–18 |doi=10.1093/screen/16.3.6}}</ref>  was influenced by the theories of [[Sigmund Freud]] and [[Jacques Lacan]]. "Visual Pleasure" is one of the first major essays that helped shift the orientation of [[film theory]] towards a [[Psychoanalytical film theory|psychoanalytic framework]]. Prior to Mulvey, film theorists such as Jean-Louis Baudry and [[Christian Metz (critic)|Christian Metz]] used [[psychoanalytic]] ideas in their theoretical accounts of cinema. Mulvey's contribution, however, initiated the intersection of [[film theory]], [[psychoanalysis]] and [[feminism]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Issues in feminist film criticism|date=1990|publisher=Indiana University Press|others=Erens, Patricia, 1938-|isbn=978-0253206107|location=Bloomington|oclc=21118050|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/issuesinfeminist00eren}}</ref>

In 1976, the journal [[Camera Obscura (journal)|Camera Obscura]] was published by beginning graduate students Janet Bergstrom, Sandy Flitterman, Elisabeth Lyon, and Constance Penley. They discussed how women were portrayed in films, but excluded from the development process. Camera Obscura is still published to this day by [[Duke University Press]] and has moved from just film theory to media studies.<ref>{{Citation|last1=Hastie|first1=Amelie|title=(Re)Inventing Camera Obscura|date=2015|work=Feminisms|pages=169–184|editor-last=Mulvey|editor-first=Laura|series=Diversity, Difference and Multiplicity in Contemporary Film Cultures|publisher=Amsterdam University Press|isbn=9789089646767|last2=Joyrich|first2=Lynne|last3=White|first3=Patricia|last4=Willis|first4=Sharon|editor2-last=Rogers|editor2-first=Anna Backman|jstor=j.ctt16d6996.19}}</ref>

Other key influences come from Metz's essay ''The Imaginary Signifier'', "Identification, Mirror," where he argues that viewing film is only possible through [[scopophilia]] (pleasure from looking, related to [[voyeurism]]), which is best exemplified in silent film.<ref>Braudy and Cohen, ''Film Theory and Criticism'', Sixth Edition, Oxford University Press, 2004, page 827</ref> Also, according to Cynthia A. Freeland in "Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films," feminist studies of horror films have focused on psychodynamics where the chief interest is "on viewers' motives and interests in watching horror films".<ref>Braudy and Cohen, ''Film Theory and Criticism'', Sixth Edition, Oxford University Press, 2004</ref>

Beginning in the early 1980s, feminist film theory began to look at film through a more intersectional lens. The film journal ''Jump Cut'' published a special issue about titled "Lesbians and Film" in 1981 which examined the lack of lesbian identities in film. Jane Gaines's essay "White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory" examined the erasure of black women in cinema by white male filmmakers. While Lola Young argues that filmmakers of all races fail to break away from the use to tired stereotypes when depicting black women. Other theorists who wrote about feminist film theory and race include [[bell hooks]] and Michele Wallace.<ref>Smelik, Anneke.  "And The Mirror Cracked: Feminist Cinema and Film Theory."New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. Page 20-23.</ref>

From 1985 onward the Matrixial theory of artist and psychoanalyst [[Bracha L. Ettinger]]<ref>Bracha L. Ettinger, ''The Matrixial Borderspace'', University of Minnesota Press, 2006</ref> revolutionized feminist film theory.<ref>Nicholas Chare, ''Sportswomen in Cinema: Film and the Frailty Myth''. Leeds: I.B.Tauris 2015.</ref> 
<ref>James Batcho, ''Terrence Malick's Unseeing Cinema. Memory, Time and Audibility''. Palgrave Macmillan.</ref> Her concept, from her book, [[The Matrixial Gaze]],<ref>Bracha L. Ettinger, ''The Matrixial Gaze''. Published by Leeds University, 1995. Reprinted in: ''Drawing Papers'', nº 24, 2001.</ref> has established a feminine gaze and has articulated its differences from the phallic gaze and its relation to feminine as well as maternal specificities and potentialities of "coemergence", offering a critique of [[Sigmund Freud]]'s and [[Jacques Lacan]]'s psychoanalysis, is extensively used in analysis of films,<ref>Griselda Pollock, ''After-effects - After-images''. Manchester University Press, 2013</ref><ref>Maggie Humm, ''Feminism and Film''. Edinburgh University Press, 1997</ref> by female directors, like [[Chantal Akerman]],<ref>Lucia Nagib and Anne Jerslev (ends.), ''Impure Cinema''. London: I.B.Tauris.</ref> as well as by male directors, like [[Pedro Almodovar]].<ref>Julian Daniel Gutierrez-Arbilla, ''Aesthetics, Ethics and Trauma in the Cinema of [[Pedro Almodovar]]''. Edinburgh University Press, 2017</ref> The matrixial gaze offers the female the position of a subject, not of an object, of the gaze, while deconstructing the structure of the subject itself, and offers border-time, border-space and a possibility for compassion and witnessing. Ettinger's notions articulate the links between aesthetics, ethics and trauma.<ref>Griselda Pollock, ''Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: Time, Space and the Archive''. Rutledge, 2007.</ref>

Recently, scholars have expanded their work to include analysis of television and [[digital media]]. Additionally, they have begun to explore notions of difference, engaging in dialogue about the differences among women (part of movement away from [[essentialism]] in feminist work more generally), the various methodologies and perspectives contained under the umbrella of feminist film theory, and the multiplicity of methods and intended effects that influence the development of films. Scholars are also taking increasingly global perspectives, responding to [[postcolonialism|postcolonialist]] criticisms of perceived Anglo- and [[Eurocentrism]] in the academy more generally. Increased focus has been given to, "disparate feminisms, nationalisms, and media in various locations and across class, racial, and ethnic groups throughout the world".<ref>McHugh, Kathleen and Vivian Sobchack. “Introduction: Recent Approaches to Film Feminisms.” ''Signs'' 30(1):1205–1207.</ref> Scholars in recent years have also turned their attention towards women in the silent film industry and their erasure from the history of those films and women's bodies and how they are portrayed in the films.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Mizejewski|first=Linda|date=2019-05-14|title=Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes by Maggie Hennefeld, and: Comic Venus: Women and Comedy in American Silent Film by Kristen Anderson Wagner (review)|journal=Journal of Cinema and Media Studies|volume=58|issue=3|pages=177–184|doi=10.1353/cj.2019.0035|s2cid=194306243 |issn=2578-4919}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last=Schaff|first=Rachel|date=2019-08-07|title=Jane Gaines, Pink-Slipped: What Happened to Women in the Silent Film Industries?|journal=Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film|volume=46|issue=2|pages=231–233|doi=10.1177/1748372719863945|s2cid=202465564|issn=1748-3727}}</ref> Jane Gaines's Women's Film Pioneer Project (WFPP), a database of women who worked in the silent-era film industry, has been cited as a major achievement in recognizing pioneering women in the field of silent and non-silent film by scholars such as Rachel Schaff.<ref name=":1" />

As of recent years many believe feminist film theory to be a fading area of feminism with the massive amount of coverage currently around media studies and theory. As these areas have grown the framework created in feminist film theory have been adapted to fit into analysing other forms of media.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Cobb|first=Shelley; Tasker|date=January 2016|title=Feminist Film Criticism in the 21st Century|journal=Film Criticism|volume=40|issue=1|doi=10.3998/fc.13761232.0040.107|issn=2471-4364|hdl=2027/spo.13761232.0040.107|doi-access=free|hdl-access=free}}</ref>