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Women in action movies: Empowered role models or chicks with guns?

meaning.
One useful question raised by the debates around photographic images of women is how we differentiate a feminist political opposition to these images from a more traditional revulsion at the portrayal of aspects of the body that are normally kept hidden from public view. In terms of logical consequence to the recognition that sexuality and desire, subjectivity and meaning are all constructed in language, Godeau gives as example Jacques Lacan's infamous statement that woman does not exist (La femme elle n'existe pas). On this argument leads Godeau's comment "any conceptualisation of the "real" woman is logically both unknowable and unspeakable. Whatever, Laman's statement is: human beings become perceived and represented as objects.


In prefacing a discussion of the photographic work of Francesca Woodman, Godeau's argument is that Woodman's work announces neither a manifestly political agenda nor a specifically feminist orientation. Woodman's photography are serially conceived, themes and motives circulate, are elaborated, modified and reworked. Her work bears cryptic texts and shards of narrative or description. Woodman's three themes explored by Godeau are: First, staging of herself as the model for herself, (the artist), second, the constant insistence on the woman's body as both as sight (a spectacle) and a site (of meaning, desire, projection) and last as she appears to have grasped, and taken as the very substance of her work, the operations of fetishism as they are mobilised in the metamorphosis of female flesh into image (fetishism).
Godeau said that there is a sense in which all three of Woodman's themes are integrally related, indivisibly bound. Looking and arresting the looking produce her pictures, like those of any photographer. In placing herself, her body, in front of the lens, Woodman does in fact collapse the distinction between seer and seen, subject of the gaze and object of it, artist and model. The power of Woodman's images, their intensity and their beauty, does not in any case derive from their compatibility with theoretical ideas. Woodman's images in fact are focused on the woman's eyes and trying to reconstruct what a man sees. Mulvey contended that the male is unconsciously reminded of the traumatic moment when he recognised sexual difference.
Question's raise from many of the angles of looking at Woodman's images: "Do women see differently, be it as artists or spectators?". Godeau called "psychological delineation" what Woodman


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Women in action movies: Empowered role models or chicks with guns?

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