ABOUT

Welcome to my Blog!

Hello, my name is L and I am a baby cinephile. I absolutely LOVE films. I have been going to the cinema since I was little and try to go now in my adult life at least once a week. I love a wide-range of films such as social commentary, historical fiction, slice-of-life, biopics, psychological thrillers, comedies and drama films. As I have a background in Politics and Sociology and am currently doing a master's in Gender, Development and Globalisation, I am very sensitive to how gendered and racialised subjects are portrayed in cinema. It is a switch I cannot turn off. Women reduced to their appearances, and sexualised in some manner. People of colour always depicted as poor, in need of saving, or with foreign accents… My studies have made me naturally suspicious of the intent and/or purpose of the ways in which directors/screenwriters/editors choose to portray their female+/queer+/racialised characters, and how they treat these subjects’ autonomy and/or agency. I believe that each breath, each shot included in the final product of a film has meaning and intention. The product created by the producers and the directors serve to support an ideology that they are trying to communicate through the piece. Despite it improving in recent years, the BIG BUCKS directors remain White heterosexual men from the West, and are not well versed or to put it plainly, not that interested in all things gender and decoloniality.

Reclaim the Gaze is a project that seeks to re-evaluate the political nature of the gaze that the viewer and the camera exercise. The voyeuristic nature of cinema is complicit in many ways in how we as a society view things. British film theorist Laura Mulvey in her essay ‘Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema’ (1973) exposed the politics of looking in film through the concept of the “male gaze” and how it ‘projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly.’ Mulvey’s essay breaks down the mechanics of looking to expose how cinematic conventions reinforce patriarchal fantasy. This is fundamental in understanding how cinema has for many decades constructed their characters around an active masculinity against a passive objectified femineity, think all James Bond films, The Terminator franchise, and the list goes on and on and on…. From an intersectional perspective, cinema has enabled racist and sexist rhetoric to prevail. bell hooks famously demonstrates the politics of “gaze” and the power held by the spectator over the subject in her essay ‘Oppositional Gaze’ (1992). Hooks coined the concept of the “oppositional gaze” to refer to the “right to look” and the power in looking. The oppositional gaze is looking with the purpose of perceiving, seeking to break through the barrier of identity to look under a gaze that is opposed to convention. Hooks rejects the assumed white male gaze, instead producing an oppositional gaze that denies the pleasure from looking, resisting voyeurism and submits itself to a self-determined subject. This illustrates the reality for Other-ed individuals who are outside of status quos which control the means of cultural production. This is a fundamental concept for me as it redefines the politics of viewership and thus gaze. As a woman of colour myself, I want to be able to identify with the narrative told on screen. I don't want to accept whatever depiction of female realities and feel like an after-thought or just lumped together just because we are "minorities". Our realities are just as interesting and worthy of a story to be told on the big screen. I demand complexity in the characters and care and curiosity in the storytelling.

Reclaim the Gaze seeks to hold films accountable to their power in reproducing patriarchal and colonial narratives. Just because a film is good quality, with the top star director and the big bucks production company does not mean that it is critcally good from a gender lens. Many big executives and directors still play the game with the old rules and see themselves immune to the "Woke Infection" or "Cancel Culture" just because of their status as BIG SHOTS in the industry. On the other hand, some newcomers get caught in the whiplash of wanting to be a film of its time and assimilating to the current values and principles, and the politics of producers and distrbution holding the purse strings. I am not saying that I want films to be superfically politically correct. I am instead advocating for those who are in power to step aside with their expired values and perspectives of the world and make space for the developed people of today. Hire people from under-represented groups, everyone has a story to tell, so learn to listen to them. I do not want a woke film, I want a film that fully cares about its subjects, that does not sensationalise violence and considers the complexities of being a racialised and gendered subject. It really is NOT THAT HARD.

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I am introducing The Counter Gaze Meter, a sharp, feminist-decolonial rating system that scores films based on their gendered implications, how boldly they challenge dominant narratives and reclaim the gaze. The Counter Gaze Meter provides a system that enables a critical understanding of films’ voyeuristic role as well as confronting the viewer to its ethical position in its spectatorship of such images.

My scoring system grades films out 5 with

1/5: Reproduced Gaze	Upholds heteronormative, patriarchal and colonial narratives
2/5: Performative Gaze	Pretends to be progressive, but still rooted in dominant frameworks.
3/5: Shifting Gaze	Moments of critique or nuance exist, but the film doesn’t fully disrupt dominant narratives.
4/5: Counter-Gaze Engaged	Consciously challenges dominant power structures and re-centers marginalized voices.
5/5: Reclaimed Gaze	Highest rating. Film is bold, subversive and reclaims the gaze with clarity and fire. Redefines who gets to look, speak and be seen.

And follows the criteria of:

Representation:	o   What is the purpose of the gendered/racialised subject in the story? o   Are they portrayed as full, complex characters with full autonomy and agency? Are their storylines passive, relegated to stereotypes? o   Is their subjectivity in their narrative respected?
Nudity:	o   Are their bodies objectified, and if so, to what end? o   Did it make sense to the story or was it gratuitous?
Depictions of consent/ sexual violence:	o   How is consent communicated, respected or violated in the film? o   Are scenes of sexual violence handled with care and critical intent, or do they reproduce voyeuristic or sensationalist tropes? o   Is there space for affirmative consent, mutual desire, and bodily autonomy to be portrayed without coercion or ambiguity? o   Does the film interrogate structural factors (e.g. race, class, gender, migration status) that shape vulnerability to sexual violence?
Power dynamics and the gaze:	o   Is the film told through a lens that challenges dominant power structures (capitalism, neoliberalism, patriarchy, imperialism)? o   Who holds power in the story, and how is that power visually or narratively reinforced or disrupted? o   Does it reclaim the character’s subjectivity, or does it replicate a patriarchal/colonial gaze?
Intersectionality and Context:	o   Does the film engage with the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, migration, etc.? o   Is there an awareness of historical and geopolitical context, or are those erased?
Resistance, Reclamation, or Reproduction?	o   Does the film reinforce harmful narratives, or does it reclaim space and vision for marginalised voices? o   Does it offer a space for imagining alternative futures or just recycle existing power structures?

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These film reviews and ratings are a product of my own thoughts and opinons. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and readings of films. My words are not truth just a personal opinion. This blog is a safe space for those who are interested in a decolonial feminist lens on films shared and received in a respectful and kind manner.

Hope you like it.

L xx