Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze

359 Pages·1997·17.384 MB·English

by  E. Ann Kaplan

63190 cover.indd 1 12/18/06 12:16:49 PM
Looking for the Other

Looking for the Other
Feminism, Film,
and the Imperial Gaze
E. Ann Kaplan
Routledge
New York & London
Published in 1997 by
Routledge
29 West 35th Street
New York, NY 10001
Published in Great Britain by
Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane
London EC4P 4EE
Copyright ©1997 by Routledge, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or here
after invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage
or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kaplan, E. Ann.
Looking for the other : feminism, film, and the imperial gaze / E. Ann Kaplan.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-91016-1 (CL). - ISBN 0-415-91017-X (PB)
1. Women in motion pictures. 2. Minority women in motion pictures. 3.
White women—Attitudes. 4. Men—Attitudes. 5. Racism in motion pictures.
6. Feminist theory. I. Title.
PN1995.9.W6K25 1996
791.43’652042-dc20 96-31257
CIP
For Marty
For Trudie, who is 90 years old

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...... . . . . . .. ix
Preface .............................................. xi
Part I: Backgrounds: Theories of Nation, Psychoanalysis and
the Imperial Gaze .................................. 1
1. Travel, Travelling Identities and the Look ................ 3
2. Theories of Nation and Hollywood in the Contexts of
Gender and Race ................................... 27
3. Hollywood, Science and Cinema: The Imperial and the Male
Gaze in Classic Film ................................ 56
4. Darkness Within: Or, The Dark Continent of
Film Noir ..... ................................ 99
Part II: Travelling Postcolonialists and Women
of Color .......................................... 133
5. Travelling White Theorists: The Case of China ............ 135
6. “Can One Know the Other?”: The Ambivalence
of Postcolonialism in Chocolat, Warrior Marks
and Mississippi Masala ............................... 154
7 “Speaking Nearby”: Trinh T. Minh-ha’s Reassemblage
and Shoot for the Contents ............................ 195
8. “Healing Imperialized Eyes”: Independent Women
Filmmakers and the Look 218
9. Body Politics: Menopause, Mastectomy and Cosmetic
Surgery Films by Rainer, Tom and Onwurah ............. 256
Afterword: Reversing the Gaze, Yes: But Is Racial
Inter-Subjective Looking Possible? ..................... 292
References ........................................... 303
Index ................................................ 323
Acknowledgments
I want first to thank my graduate and undergraduate students at
the State University of New York, who bore with me as I struggled to
articulate my ideas teaching this material over the past few years, and
from whom I learned a great deal The multicultural context for my
lectures and our discussions allowed for a diversity of responses and
opinions from which we all benefited. I want particularly to thank the
graduate students whose names are mentioned in several chapters as
contributing to my thinking in constructive ways: Debjani Banerjee,
Dicla Kogacioglu and Hilary Aquino.
I want also to thank the Japanese students and faculty who listened
to my lectures in 1995 and 1996 at Josai International University,
Waseda University, Yokahama Women’s Forum, Kyoto Women’s
Center and elsewhere. Presenting this multicultural work in those
cross-cultural contexts enabled me to hear myself differently, to be
heard differently and to develop my ideas in new ways. I learned from
the questions people asked and the insights people offered. Thanks
especially to Hiroko Yamazaki for coming with her film Juxta to one
of the lectures, and for agreeing to be interviewed. Similar thanks go
to Claire Denis, Pratibha Parmar, Yvonne Rainer and Trinh T Minh-
ha for coming to The American Center in Paris to show their films
ix