The Male Gaze in "Girl on a Motorcycle"
In Girl on a Motorcycle, the motivation for the entire story is the motorcycle. The motorcycle itself is introduced into the story as a phallic object, I think Rebecca describes it as "strong" and "fast". She even refers to it as a "he". This occurs at the beginning of the film and because of this, all plot motivation from then on out stems from a very phallocentric base, the motorcycle. We are continually remimded that it is not normal for a woman to be riding a "man's machine". It is important that she receives the motorcycle as a gift from her lover, Daniel, because she quite obviously treats the motorcycle as she would treat her lover. The motorcycle essentially takes hold of her as she rides it and she is not the one in control. Besides the motorcycle being the motivation for the plot, Marianne Faithfull's female body is constantly being fetishized. From the first scene when she gets up naked and zips up a skin tight body suit as the camera does the classic pan up the body shot, objectifying her body in a way that turns it iinto a sex object (and not by any means as a site of liberation). All of the shots of highly sexualized sections of her body (always shown while she is straddling the motorcycle) work to separate her into different pieces or objects of sexual desire. These different shots do not allow for one, whole cohesive body that can be understood as a person. She can only be understood in terms of her different, sexualized body parts. All of these points speak to an underlying phallocentrism in the film that very clearly marks sexual difference. The female is objectified while the male is given power. The one man in the film who does not objectify Rebecca is "not man enough" while the one that does-- she keeps crawling back to.