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From: feit@acsu.buffalo.edu (Elissa Feit)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Female human aesthetics
Message-ID: <47372@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 23 Nov 90 07:55:41 GMT
References: <8654@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <658245246@lear.cs.duke.edu> <1990Nov11.171709.25842@arris.com> <1990Nov22.003657.14371@informix.com>
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: State University of New York at Buffalo/Comp Sci
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>In article <1990Nov11.171709.25842@arris.com> rshapiro@arris.com (Richard Shapiro) writes:
>
>-Women are, in our society, objects of spectacle MUCH more than men
>-are: the movies make this clear even more than advertising, fashion
>-magazines etc.

AND in article <1990Nov22.003657.14371@informix.com> uunet!infmx!robert@ncar.ucar.EDU (robert coleman) replies:

>    For instance, the cinema is all about being a spectacle; going to
>the movies is all about being a spectator.  It's one of the purest
>forms of spectacle/spectator situations, because under no
>circumstances can the spectator participate; under no circumstances
>can the spectacle observe the audience.

>    What a perfect test case for the theory that women primarily are
>spectacles and men primarily observe!  If this were true, we would
>expect to see mostly women on the screen, and mostly men in the
>audience.

I think you're missing a fundamental point about movies: the objective
of a movie is to present a story such that the audience becomes as one
with the subjective experience of the characters. If it were as simple
as the audience being spectators, there would be no suspension of
disbelief, no involvement with the characters.

Thus, given the formulation of men as see-er, women as see-ee, we
would expect that men be the central characters in movies while women
be part of the pretty scenery. As a matter of fact, that's what we
see.

Elissa Feit (feit@cs.buffalo.edu // {rutgers,uunet}!cs.buffalo.edu!feit)
               I know it's over, and it never really began,
               but in my heart it was so real - The Smiths