Modern societies survive and function through the stimulation of progress and evolution. A lack of progress would only lead to the stagnation of an institution. So, society changes, whether it be through activism, participation, or natural phenomenon. Within the last several decades, Hollywood has undergone several transformations. The rise of globalization has created an international box office that has a high demand for US films (Brooks). In addition, the allegations against Harvey Weinstein have led to a recent drastic change in the nature of the culture of the film industry (Robbins). Yet, among all this progress, the representation of women in Hollywood films has remained pitifully insufficient. According to one study published by the Executive Director of San Diego State’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, “Females comprised 12% of protagonists featured in the top 100 grossing films of 2014. This represents a decline of 3 percentage points from 2013 and a decline of 4 percentage points from 2002” (Lauzen 1). Male domination within the film industry is evident. But, the power that men hold in the industry is much more widespread than it appears just in film itself. It extends to how the characters are perceived, how the actors are filmed, and how the audience watches the film.

The notion of male domination that runs throughout popular culture, and specifically, Hollywood cinema, traces back to Laura Mulvey’s psychoanalysis on the ways “the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form” (Mulvey 393). Mulvey claims that films are created using a masculine and heterosexual point of view, which objectifies women and enforces a passive role on them, subsequently allowing men to be the clear, active participants in the film. Thus, spectators are inevitably subject to view the film through the gaze of the male protagonist, internalize this view, and thereby subconsciously identify with it. The purpose of the female in the film is erotic objectification by both the characters in the film and the audience in the theater.  Mulvey’s argument on hierarchical power relations between gender roles in film and their reinforcement of patriarchal structures in society is still relevant today. I believe that pop culture, and, specifically, Hollywood film, compels all its viewers to see through male eyes, even in films with female protagonists considered to be the hero.

For example, The Hunger Games tells the story of the strong, independent, and heroic Katniss Everdeen and her experience of being forced from her home district and having to fight to the death in an arena with 23 other tributes. This competition, known as The Hunger Games, is broadcast throughout this new, post-war nation (Panem) to serve as entertainment and a reminder of the consequences of rebellion. Katniss Everdeen, who is played by actress Jennifer Lawrence, offers the audience a positive and empowering representation of the female in modern cinema through her active role in progressing the narrative and as an overall powerful woman within the story (Moore). Yet, even a film like The Hunger Games is under the influence of the male gaze and can exemplify how the male gaze still has power in film today.

The entire premise of The Games allows both the audience and the characters to partake in one particular pleasure that Mulvey describes: scopophilia, or taking erotic pleasure from viewing “other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze” (Mulvey 395). The Games removes the tributes from their old lives and thrusts them into an arena where they are tracked, recorded, and broadcast to the people of Panem. Thus, the actual Games can be compared to a film in the sense that someone is responsible for editing the footage to create and control what is seen by the audience. This role falls upon Seneca Crane, the Head Gamemaker, who is also in charge of the gameplay, obstacles, and the events of the Games. As the editor, Seneca Crane is in control of the specific point of view of the Games, so the people of Panem view Katniss in the way he decides to portray her. The citizens of Panem – the audience watching the Games in the districts and Capitol – are forced to passively view Crane’s perspective (a male gaze) while watching the Games. Therefore, the male gaze is clearly in control of the depiction of Katniss’s role and actions within The Hunger Games.

Furthermore, the audience in the real-world theater effectively becomes characters within the film and is thus also under Crane’s gaze. The audience is reminded that only Crane is in control of the Games when it sees him making certain decisions (like sending in the mutated mutts at the end of the Games). But, when viewers are completely immersed in the film, they disavow the camera and begin to forget that the film is not reality, and also, that they are watching the Games at the same time as the characters within the film are watching it. They, like the rest of Panem, are under the control of Crane’s point of view. The audience is only reminded of the male gaze within the film when the shot shows the citizens of the districts watching the Games on the screens. One example of this within the film is the District 11 riot scene: Katniss salutes Rue, the young girl tribute from District 11 who has just died. In the next moment, we see Katniss saluting on a screen within the center of District 11 with hundreds of people watching her. When the cinema audience has forgotten that the Games are separate from real life within the film, the audience has fallen under the influence of Crane’s point of view. Everyone, both within the film and sitting in the audience, is watching the same content, and is subject to the male gaze. The audience forgets that the Games are artificial and becomes so involved that it forgets that not only is there someone in the film controlling what it sees, but there is the other, actual editor of the film who is controlling those shots too.

Seneca Crane can also take the conventional role of the male protagonist “forwarding the story, making things happen” (Mulvey 398). Although Katniss is the protagonist, she is ultimately under the control of Crane; he decides when her narrative needs to be furthered. For instance, Katniss starts off the Games by traveling to the edge of the arena in an effort to find high ground and wait out her opponents. However, Crane decides that it is time to turn her around and send her back to the tributes, manipulating her into fighting. Thus, in moments like these (where Crane fills the role of the active contributor) Katniss is forced into being the passive participant, functioning as something to be viewed and enjoyed by the spectators. This implies that a woman cannot properly fill the role of the active narrator by herself; she needs the help of a man to complete her story.

 

Mulvey’s claim lies on the notion that the film is structured around the audience identifying with the male lead: the ego libido. But, if Katniss is a female, how is the male gaze still effective? I believe that Katniss’s characterization throughout the film allows the audience members to identify her in either a masculine or feminine manner. The majority of Katniss’s qualities are more stereotypically male than female traits: she is a hunter, she is capable of violence, she has mastered weaponry, she is focused on survival, and she is typically portrayed as a stoic figure. One critic even describes her as “stripped of sentimentality and psychosexual ornamentation, armed with Diana’s bow and a ferocious will” (Dargis). Katniss does not draw on her femininity for power, but rather she relies on the skills and strength she developed to provide for her family after her father’s death. This allows Katniss to avoid explicitly aligning herself with one gender’s characteristics over the other, which means her character can appeal to everyone in the audience. Women are likely to admire her strength and willpower, and men can appreciate her ferocity and her success as the sole provider for her family. Thus, the dichotomy of Katniss makes her stand out as a powerful figure. As one critic writes:

Katniss nurtures and she kills… what makes her powerful – and, I suspect, what makes her so important to a lot of girls and women – is that she’s one of the truest feeling, most complex female characters to hit American movies in a while. She isn’t passive, she isn’t weak… She’s active, she’s strong and she’s the girl who motivates the story (“A Radical Female Hero From Dystopia”).

Katniss is both the caregiver and the provider, allowing her to transcend conventional gender roles and the implications associated with them. Katniss represents something more than just a passive, objectifiable woman in a film because she shows both feminine and masculine qualities.

These masculine qualities allow her to become the active participant in the plot (for example, taking her sister’s place in the Games). However, despite all of this, she cannot escape the influence of the male gaze within the film and audience. Her inherent womanhood means that the male gaze is inevitably holding its power over her. Katniss is a woman, but she does not explicitly fill the conventional role of a woman in traditional Hollywood films. This allows the audience members to identify with either or both of Katniss’s feminine and masculine qualities. Thus, the audience is identifying with a character who is not ambiguously feminine, even when the audience think they are. This exemplifies how the male gaze can manipulate the audience into believing that it is escaping the male gaze, when, in reality, the male gaze is just as strong as ever. Audience members think that they are identifying with a feminine character and are avoiding the male gaze, but can be identifying with her due to the masculine qualities she possesses, not just the feminine ones. Katniss’s characteristics allow the audience to identify with her and objectify her at the same time. Due to the nature of The Games, her role in the film is to be gazed at, which allows people to fulfill their scopophilic desires. This ultimately shows that a female has to fulfill stereotypically masculine traits if she wants to be the active participant, and even then, she is still under masculine control.

Lastly, Mulvey’s argument rests on the notion that women are portrayed as erotic objects for men, regardless of who is watching the film. How does this apply to The Hunger Games when Katniss is not sexualized? The male gaze of the camera is typically exemplified by shots that linger over a woman’s body, thereby allowing the audience to fulfill their voyeuristic tendencies. But, Katniss is not sexualized by the camera within the film. There are many instances where Lawrence could have been depicted in an erotic manner. For example, when she is cleaned up and made presentable by her Capitol designers, the audience sees the back of Katniss’s heel as she is showered, the top of her head as her hair is cut, and her grimace as the attendants wax her legs. Lawrence is almost completely covered by a medical gown, leaving no room for the audience to interpret this scene as anything other than Katniss being purified before the Games. This ritual is to ensure that Katniss, as a tribute, is to “make an impression” as her designer says, not just to make her look pretty. The camera never lingers on the curves of her body or her figure in a sexual way, yet the audience still views Katniss as an object to be sexualized. Take these two responses to Lawrence being casted as Katniss: “A few years ago Ms. Lawrence might have looked hungry enough to play Katniss, but now, at 21, her seductive, womanly figure makes a bad fit for a dystopian fantasy about a people starved into submission,” (Dargis) and “it’s also hard not to think that they cast a woman with a rocking body instead of a young girl partly because they were worried that guys wouldn’t turn out for a female-driven story” (“A Radical Female Hero From Dystopia”). The Hunger Games, which was a film that was filmed so the woman was not an explicitly sexualized figure, shows that the male gaze is still powerful enough to turn Lawrence into a sexual object, regardless of the camera. The audience in the theater and characters within the film actively observe her through a masculine viewpoint, no matter what role she takes.

In conclusion, Katniss shows that women will be objectified regardless of what role they take in the film. Katniss is an example of a strong, active, and masculine woman in The Hunger Games, a modern day film, yet she is still seen as the object of male pleasure, is forced into the passive participant in her own narrative, and is subject to a dominating gaze. Even in a film which is celebrated for its strong feminist values and depiction of women, the male gaze and masculine domination still retain their power.

 

An earlier draft of this essay was read by Austin Barr.

I have written this essay in the style of Ellen Willis.

 

 

Works Cited

“A Radical Female Hero From Dystopia.” The New York Times, The New York Times,

mobile.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/movies/katniss-everdeen-a-new-type-of-woman-warrior.html.

Brook, Tom. “Culture – How the Global Box Office Is Changing Hollywood.” BBC, BBC, 21

Oct. 2014, www.bbc.com/culture/story/20130620-is-china-hollywoods-future.

Dargis, Manohla. “’The Hunger Games,’ Based on the Suzanne Collins Novel.” The New York

Times, The New York Times, 22 Mar. 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/movies/the-

hunger-games-movie-adapts-the-suzanne-collins-novel.html?scp=5&sq=hunger%2520ga

es&st=cse.

Lauzen, Martha M. “It’s a Man’s (Celluloid) World: On-Screen Representations of Female

Characters in the Top 100 Films of 2014.” 2015, womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/files/2014_Its_a_Mans_World_Report.pdf.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Media and Cultural Studies:

Keyworks, 2001, pp. 393–404.

Moore, Suzanne. “Why The Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen Is a Role Model for Our Times |

Suzanne Moore.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 27 Nov. 2013,

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/27/why-hunger-games-katniss-

everdeen-role-model-jennifer-lawrence.

Robbins, Ted. “Harvey Weinstein Scandal May Prompt A Sea Change In Hollywood.”NPR,

NPR, 18 Oct. 2017, www.npr.org/2017/10/18/558477340/harvey-weinstein-scandal-may-

prompt-a-sea-change-in-hollywood.