Dysfunction of Psychoanalytic Film Theory from the Perspective of Cultural Feminism
Subject Areas : Philosophy
Keywords: Stuart Hall, Christine Gledhill, Psychoanalysis Theory, Cultural Studies, Cultural Feminism, Negotiation, Cultural Differentials,
Abstract :
The feminine language in the feminist film theory has two major fields. The first one would be the theory of psychoanalysis. According to that, men and women face two different processes in shaping their identities, and get a stable and fixed identity as male or female. So, as film or other cultural products' spectators, men and women will have fixed specified experiences due to their sexualities which have been formed according to the fixed formula of psychoanalysis; for example, men are always the subjects of desire and women are its objects. It was after the cultural studies that the cultural point of view in feminist film theory showed up. In this theory, receiving the meaning of a cinematic product is affected by the culture and the negotiation among the cultural differentials, such as age, sex, history, class, economy, and lived experiences of each man and woman. So all the men and all the women won't make the same meaning just due to their sexualities. As the cultural feminism claims, the meaning is always fluid and changing. So there's no need to make a feminine language vs. the masculine language in film making, because a fixed static masculine language in cinema is totally out of question according to the cultural feminism. It would be enough to reread the cinematic products and their sexual significations over and over again. In each reading the sexual significations are deconstructed due to the cultural differentials, and get new meanings which can even be anti-masculine
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