Vegabond...feminist counter cinema
"-to show how her filth is accrued and her clothing diminished; and the last memorable trace on her body, the red stains, is the last to receive elucidation (Hayward, French Film)." Firstly, the way in which Mona is dead lying in the ditch does not display any form of sexual desire like the deaths of most women in films so that even in her death a woman must resume beauty. Further, Vegabond does not place specific attention to images such as the male gaze so that we as the viewers may see and create our own meaning and visions rather than be forced to think in one narrow way that the film creator tries to shove down our throats as feminist Jutta Bruckner was saying in the same article. The women's beauty are not overtly stressed so much and even when Dr. Landier is shown partially nude in the bath tub the scene does not seem overly sexualized but completely normal. I do however find it not suprising that the only nudity we saw was that of a woman which perhaps was to prove a point. Although many of the men who had run into her along the road had talked of her as though she was rather beautiful her image and way of dress did not stress any particular body parts that a man didn't have as well such as her hair and eyes. When the men spoke of her it was more the fact that she was a female loner that excited them. The main character Mona in this film was portrayed much differently than the woman on a motorcycle. Also, to go along with not only the images of Mona but her attitude and the scene where she spits out of the camper and other scene where she keeps rubbing the snot from her nose with her sleeve do not follow the gender norms of a patriarchal society.