The Power of the Female Gaze in Sally Potter’s Thriller, Orlando and The Tango Lesson

• Main Authors: Hui-Yin Chung, 鍾慧盈
• Other Authors: Jui-Chi Liu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/96301540432950550848

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 藝術研究所 === 94 === This thesis focuses on three of Sally Potter’s movies- Thriller, Orlando and The Tango Lesson. It will explore the movies’ mise-se-scène, performance, light, sound, narrative context and movement of camera in terms of psychoanalytic theory, visual theory, and gender theory. Throughout the project, I analyze the power of the female gaze in Potter’s films as a query power, cross-gender power, and newborn power. In the first chapter, I consider how each leading character faces inequality by querying and looking at different objects. The first power of the female gaze expresses not only the strength of the querying but also raises the consciousness of inequality between men and women. In the second chapter, I will explore the multiple displacements of sex, sexuality, and gender in Potter’s films. The second power of the female gaze addresses gender issues with an ambiguous attitude instead of a dualistic and phallocentric one. The third chapter discusses the endings in each film which give each leading character different new lives. Mimi understands the operation of gender ideology and changes her fate to be a new woman. Orlando and Sally use the pen and camera to create works. The third power of the female gaze is the power of changing the self and creating art. The power of the female gaze in Potter’s films is the process of querying, crossing gender, and giving birth. The power of female gaze is actually a gender ideology of an open mind and no permanent best standard.