Phallocentrism and the Male Gaze
“Sometimes it’s instinct to fly,” Marianne Faithfull’s seemingly rebellious Rebecca thinks aloud at the beginning of Girl On A Motorcycle. “I’m not going to feel guilty!” Finally, you think, the 1960s sex kitten prototype gets her just desserts! How can this film NOT be liberating? It wasn’t often during that era that a restless housewife was given screen time to abandon her dead-end marriage and indulge her need for speed. In between threats that she’ll “turn [herself] on” and that “Rebellion’s the only thing that keeps you alive!” mantra, we appear to be off to a great start. That is, until you learn where this leather-clad lady’s only road leads—yep, to a guy. An aggressive, borderline abusive jerk who clearly has no interest in Rebecca beyond having sex with her. We first learn this when he—get ready—rapes her in her ski lodge hotel room while her fiancée sleeps soundly a skip away. When our heroine starts musing that she “comes to life” when with him and that she knows her body is all he cares about, it suddenly feels like we’ve taken a very wrong turn indeed.
Ultimately, Girl On A Motorcycle depicts a woman manipulated, degraded and, eventually, destroyed by phallocentricity—it is in no way a liberating portrait of sexual freedom or personal independence (especially from the opposite sex). The film is shot completely with a male gaze in mind, turning Rebecca into a subordinate object to be cornered and gawked at. There’s T & A galore as she dons a leather catsuit (with, naturally, nothing on underneath), straddles her motorcycle from all angles, lets her breasts fall out, and has oodles of rigorous extramarital sex. Even when she’s not shown in flesh-and-blood form, Girl On A Motorcycle gives us shots of a gas pump slowly easing into her bike’s tank to keep things "sexy". I also found one student’s mention of the border scene totally accurate: her liberty must be given permission, but not before the patrolmen have had their eyeful. She must sit and be sexually scrutinized before freedom can be attained. By the film’s grim but predictable ending, even Rebecca’s motorcycle, a vehicle so still so uncommon for women to control, feels like another tool of oppression, a phallus she deems “he” and must ride to “find herself.” Rebecca needs men to shape her identity—we all know one. Throughout this whole movie, I couldn’t help but think of a close friend of mine who constantly adopts the habits of and makes excuses for the asshole guys she falls way too hard and way too fast for. Her conclusive death, to me, is not positive or liberating in any way—it simply reinforces the film’s central concept that all women will inevitably be punished for their independence.