“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another...One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”
The task during this elective was to produce a film no longer than 20seconds using only 2 sources. This film was created using clips from the well known film 'Lolita' and the reality TV show 'Girls next door' based on life in the playboy house. When I started this, I knew exactly that these were the clips that I wanted to use before even finding them on the internet. I chose to use Bridget Marquadt jumping out of the cake due to the context behind that clip; during that episode it was Hugh Heffner's birthday...her present to him was her jumping out of a birthday cake in lingerie. I feel that this is a very good representation of the male gaze theory 'men watch, women watch themselves being looked at'.
Everything about this scene in the episode is based around that Bridget is aware how Heff will see her, and her actions around her birthday present are a product of that. I also chose to feature the sound from this episode in my film, as I think the girly laughing and noises are also a good representation of her being aware how male eyes will see her. Lolita was chosen, as I find when watching the film, once aware that Humbert is interested in her. Lo's actions are all done with that in mind and she uses this to get what she wants and manipulate him...she's always aware that he is surveying her. I chose to use close up shots of this film as I wanted to draw away the focus of a younger girl with an older man, as although this is what the original story is about, it is not apart of what I am investigating.