The Piano
The Piano does not stand out as a feminist film to me. This is mainly due to the fact that Ada and Flora are seen more as property than individuals. I believe that as a director Jane Campion focused more on the piano and Ada and how they travel through this journey together, than she does on relationships between the men and women in the story (a possible result of the movie having a female director).
In The Piano, there are many examples of male gaze: from man to woman, from woman to man, and from human to object (the piano). As I learned from this week’s readings, male gaze is not just a man looking at a woman, and the film The Piano male gaze is used to objectify the women in the film. The piano is gazed upon by all of the characters in the movie; it is seen as only an object which will only speak when told to. The gaze is then seen from Baines towards Ada and from husband towards Ada. In both cases Ada is seen as an object for men to control which is seen as a mirroring of the gaze upon the piano. The oppression of women is also supported by the time setting being in the colonial era; it is a time in history when women had few if any rights at all.