GWSS Spring 2008 Section A

This movie deceptively tries to show the agency and feedom of a woman taking to the road and embracing her sexual self, however, the overwhelming presence of the "male gaze" and the phallocentric narrative negates any understanding of female control and liberation. Throughout the film, Rebecca (both by the cinemetography and narrative) is manipulated and degraded by phallocentricity. Her motorcycle takes on a male identity and is used to control her narrative and sexuality throughout the film. The bike, the men she encounters, the dialogue, the camera angles and her inaction/reaction to these things enforces her role as an object and not an actor/agent. The camera focuses only on rebecca's body and desirability and the script reads like a male fantasy novel. Lines like "you ought to tell me to shut up and do what you want to do" and "if you weren't so reasonable I wouldn't be such a bitch" reiterates Rebecca's male centered dialogue and obejectification.

Some of my classmates have understood the end (rebecca's death) to be the only positive action in the film. It is my opinion that the end only reinforces the phallocentricity of the film by depicting an out-of-control sexual woman, thus reiterating an assumption that anglo women must be asexual and suboordinate to be considered worthy of success and happiness. This movie was disturbing to me as it did the opposite of being liberating to women during a time that was so full of feminist action and progressive thought. Perhaps it was used as a counter attack against the feminist movement itself.