Womens role in cinema - notes

Valie Export
-Austrian Artist
-Tap and Touch Cinema
-Performed from 1968 to 1971 in 10 cities
-Performed when the development of feminist film theory began
-performed in public on the streets, inviting men, women and children to experience the peice
-A peice of street performance art in which she wore a 'cinema' (box) around her upper naked body so with a curtain covering the entrance so that her body could not be seen but could be touched by anyone who reached through the curtains to experience the artwork.
- Tap and Touch Cinema looks womens role in film and how they are objectified.
-A comment on how male roles in film move the plot forward and the women in films are either bad or require saving, causing them to be a hindrance. Often the 'prize' the lead male role receives for saving the female is sexual.
-Looks at the use of traditional gender steriotypes in cinema to create characters the veiwers can relate to. Also looks at the Male Gaze in cinema in which the women is veiwed as the object of desire rather than the man being an object of desire as well as the woman, which reinforces veiws that its ok to sexualise women and that women do not feel desire as much as men.