More or less, it's all dude-oriented for classic cinema as far as viewing goes. Recall a classic movie made in the 1950s, the dude is usually the main character that we are supposed to relate with. If it's a female, she is disturbed or evil, or perhaps deformed in some way or another. When a woman appears on screen, she arrives in only 2 ds. I'm talkin, time stops, pretty music might come in, longer shots of her beautiful face and hair and dress....the man is often tripped up by her beauty, as is the viewer and the camera man. We are almost in a dreamlike state. When she exits, time goes on in a normal, linear fashion and the story continues. As a female spectator, you are forced to want to place yourself in the mans shoes for perspective. You are attracted to her, you enjoy her beauty, and you feel as though you are wearing the male character's emotions. This, according to theory, suggests that we must become transexual in order to enjoy or properly view the film. This is merely how classical cinema is made, not some freudian stuff I stuck in here. If the female is a main character, you feel shame or something of the like, because something is wrong with her. You feel insane, out of the right mind, or bad, or like you are a bad person (character.) So its all like, really femininly constricting, right? Thing is, I grew up on this shit an choked it down 24 hours a day for years. Now my Grammas kinda insane. I can attribute her narrow view of her role in this world to the male gaze and the spectatorship theory in her beloved everlasting classic cinema.
My grandma eloped at age 14 in 1962, against my great grandmother's will. She had a very shortened childhood, and she left it's official state quickly to leave behind all the shame that came with the awkward pubescent years of baby fat and secondary opinions. Since age 8 she was allowed to make 2-3 dresses a year. This is when she became a designer in our minds (I say this because she never really left the realm of this small countryside family life, even to this day.) Since age 8 she had also become quite the "Pumpkin" as her older brother and his friends liked to call her. Still to this day she reflects on the hurt that these comments gave her with rash comments and a deep inner pain (strangely). When she became thirteen these extras moved to her E-sized breasts, and she suddenly became popular (she usually reflects here with a big grin and dreamy eyes.)
She hadn't any girlfriends anymore, she always says, 'cause they were too cliquey and jealous of her male attention. Her husband to be was one of them, a senior who snuck up and nailed her in the women's lockeroom.
She became pregnant, hence the elope. She was reluctantly let go by our family to live in a home with him. I am excluding a lot of tangents here where she would normally go into the dresses which she designed and wore for these various glamorous occasions, of course. She always says my Great Grandma wouldn't let her keep the child if she had stayed, but everyone knows that this isn't true at all. Great Grandma is always and forever seen as a disregarding and unsympathetic evil mother, even now after her recent death, in Grandma's eyes.
She was hoping for the excitement of the current "female dream." She wanted to cook and sew, make love, and go to dinner parties. She ended up with nothing quite like her 2 dimensional ideal. Her husband became a murderer, a wife-beater, and a child abuser who impregnated her two more times before she even left her hospital bed.
She had my mom first. She got a prescription to Valium, and would pass out for days sometimes in front of a Cary Grant film on repeat, her romance novel at her side and a pack of marlboro reds scattered about her lap. During this time, John was bringing home his motorcycle gang to supervise my mom and her sister. Grandma escaped from her reality in the screens of these classical films. She ignored reality very bluntly.
She let this happen until mom was afraid she wasn't breathing one day and called Great Grandma for help, at age five I believe. Grandma got taken in an ambulance and was put on some other, less dangerous pills. She went through with a divorce, I really don't know what happened there, its very unclear to anyone who wasn't directly involved as it was very awful, I'm sure. I know John has been in prison 3 times since and he likes guns a lot. I try to never come in contact with him in every respect.
The good news here is that my mom ended up pretty cool, and my Grandma did end up remarrying a wonderful man, Tom Case, eventually (he passed away just this past October. It was quite a chapter.) Grandma never learned how to work outside of childcare and handicap-care, and Grandpa worked as the Budweiser rep for Michigan. This was probably the only time in her life which she really got to show off--- at these huge parties he'd get invited to. She had such wonderful leather leggings, to die for really. They were a good looking, nice acting, traditional and loving couple. She fixed him every meal and he went to work every day while Grandma did the laundry and watched her movies, and smoked her cigarettes. And every night after dinner they'd eat icecream and pick out more classic movies to watch. My Grandma's eyes would swell whenever the female characters danced across the screen. She did everyones hair and made everyones clothes. My mom and her would always team me up before my events like prom or whatever, I could trust them until I felt I became better with their teachings.
After Grandpa died last year, she just seems to be losing a lot of support. She still hasn't learned the trades of money keeping and making. She doesn't understnd hurting someone else out of her own realm of existence; she doesn't understand or even see when she favors one daughter over another, or when she's being very rash about a descision. As deep and experienced as she is, she only knows how to display it like a soap opera. She can only read tragic or beautiful, and this is all that she understands anymore. She never had a chance to grow up. I don't think her schema ever wandered far out of her Classic film structure anyhow, even in her late forties. You just can't stop her when the conversation rolls to a beautiful description of a woman's adornment. And it happens in every conversation.
When she was my nanny for years growing up, I'd watch on average 3-4 classic cinema films a day with her. At night, for music, we'd pick out our favorite sounding one to play while we fell asleep, to mask Grandpas snoring. I heard them in my sleep, I drooled over them by day and discussed their ensemble compositions by afternoon. I grew up, I watched Nick at Nite instead of Saturday Morning Cartoons. I left the channel on TCM all day instead of MTV or what the hell ever. I would even constantly compare myself to the female characters in classic films often, particularly when going through tough times. It seems right to me, very ME if you know what I mean. It comes most naturally to me, these classical viewpoints teeming with luxurious and restricting female forms.
And it comes very naturally to me to understand viewing a female's beauty in a dream-like state, like flashes of eye-candied auras or moments in time you will never forget, exactly what she wore and how her hair was parted just so, how time just stops when you feel such pretty, everything I wanted to see and simultaneously be (on the contrary) since forever. Like fashion photography or psychedelic music. Things I like are like this.
I have no reason to think that I've got issues with female independence, I've obviously learned from my Gradma's story...and my mother's, and now my own. It just becomes rather uprooting when you suddenly realize what you've been surrounded with for so long. It also explains a lot, particularly my Grandma, the person I probably have loved most in the entire world. It hurts a little, really. But I've come to the conclusion that the effects of Classical cinema on my life has indeed, for the most part, been positive; maybe weird.
I am in a dream when I'm shopping, when I'm getting dressed. I'm in a dream when I'm looking at pretty women and pretty art and pretty patterns. But I think that this makes my image ideals so much more fine-point. I'm a natural when it comes to building a woman out of a dream. I am an expert at seeing the dream within a woman, and I always know how to pull the dream out of you when I see you...
Cathleen Case, 1980's
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