{"id":10624,"date":"2017-01-05T11:00:40","date_gmt":"2017-01-05T05:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak?p=10624"},"modified":"2018-09-19T15:50:58","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T10:20:58","slug":"review-female-gaze-tamil-cinema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/review-female-gaze-tamil-cinema\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Lust, Sex and Pleasure: Is There a \u2018Female Gaze\u2019 in Tamil Cinema?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laura Mulvey\u2019s concept of the male gaze has been much discussed in the context of Indian cinema, especially for Bollywood. Introduced in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema<\/em><\/a>, the male gaze is set within a psychoanalysis framework and describes the concept of a woman being looked at by a man and a camera, to be watched and associated with by a viewer who is assumed to be male and heterosexual. But is there, heterosexually speaking, an inverse concept, a \u2018female gaze\u2019? Where the woman\u2019s gaze, her feelings and her sexual desires are placed at the forefront? Where, for a change, she\u2019s the subject and the man is the object being looked at?<\/p>\n

Of course, there can never be a directly inverse concept, given the patriarchal reality we live in. Some writers such as Melissa Silverstein<\/a> and Janice Loreck<\/a> believe that the female gaze \u2013 or rather, women\u2019s desire \u2013 is more likely to be described and depicted through non-gaze formats such as music, erotic scenes and visual aesthetics (warmer tones, use of flowers, etc.) Even as Loreck understands this kind of depiction follows the clich\u00e9 \u201cthat male desire is \u2018visual\u2019 while female desire is \u2018sensory\u2019\u201d, she argues that men\u2019s inner lives have also been conveyed through music and sensation, such as in films like Rambo <\/em>(2008) or Casino Royale<\/em> (2006).<\/p>\n

All the same, the reality women live in means that they hardly find depictions of their kind of sexual desire on screen. Don\u2019t women lust after male bodies, don\u2019t women fantasise? While examples abound of women chasing men, it is usually for the latter\u2019s \u2018good\u2019 qualities \u2013 he\u2019s brave, he\u2019s handsome, he\u2019s strong, he will protect, and yes, by-the-by, and it\u2019s totally not on her mind, he has a sexy body. Sexual desire is never at the forefront, and any expression of female desire is usually from the male perspective again, as it depicts what this desire represents to the hero; it\u2019s expected that the viewer is a man looking at the \u201cheroine\u201d desiring the \u201chero\u201d. Take, for instance, the song \u2018Ooh La La<\/em>\u2019 from The Dirty Picture<\/a><\/em> (2012) \u2013 the woman\u2019s sexuality is out in the open alright, but it\u2019s all presented for a heterosexual, male audience to lap up. It\u2019s sexual objectification of a so-called sexually liberated female character, Silk, played by Vidya Balan, but not in a way she<\/em> controls it.<\/p>\n