Wednesday 25 September 2013

James Bond male gaze

The James Bond franchise is a clear example of film objectifying females and forcing the audience to view females via the male gaze. The scene within "Die Another Day" when James Bond meets the character Jinx demonstrates my previous statement by the various ways the camera shows Jinx as she emerges from the sea; the shot has been edited to have a vignette effect when Bond is looking through the binoculars at her to make the audience focus on just her and to view her literally from Bond's eyes, as a male. The moment when she dramatically emerges from the water is shot close up and in slow motion. This has been done to, in a sense, force the audience to look at her body in the way that a heterosexual male would "check her out". 

After Jinx emerges from the sea, she dramatically struts up to her towel with exaggerated body movements at the bar where Bond is to dry herself off, but still having a full face of makeup somehow perfectly intact, this is a hyper-real representation of females, or even a representation of Bond's fantasy; how he sees her. 
As she does this, Bond begins to converse with her by saying "magnificent view", of course, he isn't talking about the surroundings, he is referring to her body, further objectifying her character.

They then begin to talk about predators and prey, Bond states that "Predators usually appear at sunset". After being asked why, he says "it's when their prey come out to drink", as Jinx ironically takes a sip of her Mojito. Of course, he is referring to predators as himself - the male, and the prey as her - the female, but rather than a predator feasting on their prey, he uses these statements as a form of innuendo. This also puts emphasis on how the male has been constructed to be a powerful being - more so than the female. Males are also seen as active and set the narrative/scene and females are seen as passive and go along with it, or continue the narrative. This is typical of a patriarchal spy film.





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