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From: rshapiro@arris.com (Richard Shapiro)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: female voice-over
Message-ID: <1991Apr7.154454.5148@arris.com>
Date: 7 Apr 91 15:44:54 GMT
References: <1991Apr5.220612.13190@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
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In article <1991Apr5.220612.13190@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> lputnam@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Lee P Putnam) writes:
>Can anyone out there name a film in which the trailer had a female
>narrator?  I'm trying to find at least one 'mainstream' movie in which
>this is the case, but have found none.  Which, of course, can lead to
>the discussion of why this true...


If you mean "female voice-over" in general, there are a few, but not
many. "Rebecca" and "A Letter to Three Wives" are two that come
immediately to mind. Kaja Silverman covers this topic in a very
interesting way in her book "The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in
Psychoanalysis in Cinema" (Indiana University Press, 1988).

As for trailers, that's harder to say. I would guess you'd find some
if you had access to trailers for "women's pictures" from the 30s and
40s (a genre that would include both films mentioned above). But
trailers for older movies are fairly rare items, at least for the
public at large. It may be that you can't find any for that reason.

As to why female voice-over in general is so rare, I would suggest two
reasons. First, voice-over has a kind of god-like authority,
especially when it's disembodied voice-over (as it will always be in
trailers). God-like authority and femininity don't mix well in our
cultural heritage. Second, voice-over presumes a particular kind of
"full" and coherent subjectivity; and, as many feminist film
historians have shown, female subjectivity as depicted in mainstream
cinema rarely has the same degree of fullness or coherence as male
subjectivity. Voice-over carries a kind of strength that the culture
at large is uneasy about granting to women.

Silverman's book should be consulted on this topic; and Mary Ann
Doane's book "The Desire to Desire" should be consulted on the problem
of female subjectivity and its depiction in Hollywood cinema.