Summary Of Claire Johnson's Essay Women Cinema As Counter Cinema
Claire Johnson’s essay, Women Cinema as Counter Cinema, explores the ways in which female stereotypes in films came to be and how feminist filmmakers can go about subverting the damage that decades of problematic portrayals of women have caused. Johnson spends a great deal of time talking about the idea of the woman as an “icon”—merely a symbol meant to represent a separate idea or ideal. This type of iconography has turned women in films into rough caricatures that audience members are able to categorize through specific visual and aural cues such as the way the character dresses, speaks, or the way the camera fixates on her. This concept is particularly interesting when considering the 1970 film Wanda. When reading the synopsis for this film
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Although Wanda uses her sexuality often throughout the narrative, she is not portrayed as a seductress; rather she is just written as a desperate woman doing what she needs to do in order to survive. Loden takes this thing that men take pleasure in viewing on screen—female sexuality—and subverts it into something painful and emotionally draining to watch. Similarly, the stereotype of the woman as the maternal, nurturing figure is challenged right at the beginning of the film. Of course, abandoning one’s children (as a woman) in order to benefit one’s own happiness is an extremely taboo notion in a society that views the mother as the home keeper and the care-giver. Throughout the movie, it seems as though the world is punishing Wanda for deciding to leave the children she never asked for and didn't particularly want with her ex-husband. Even though she didn't love her family and she only set out to regain her autonomy, she is continuously beaten down for abandoning the identity that society had already selected for
Although Wanda uses her sexuality often throughout the narrative, she is not portrayed as a seductress; rather she is just written as a desperate woman doing what she needs to do in order to survive. Loden takes this thing that men take pleasure in viewing on screen—female sexuality—and subverts it into something painful and emotionally draining to watch. Similarly, the stereotype of the woman as the maternal, nurturing figure is challenged right at the beginning of the film. Of course, abandoning one’s children (as a woman) in order to benefit one’s own happiness is an extremely taboo notion in a society that views the mother as the home keeper and the care-giver. Throughout the movie, it seems as though the world is punishing Wanda for deciding to leave the children she never asked for and didn't particularly want with her ex-husband. Even though she didn't love her family and she only set out to regain her autonomy, she is continuously beaten down for abandoning the identity that society had already selected for