Whatever, Woman on a Motorcycle is about as Liberating as Easy Rider.
"Men, that is, turn 'the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous'."
Laura Mulvey.
Woman on a Motorcycle is easy to understand as very phallocentric film that debases women as objects, and places power with the male spectator, and the technology of power. Indeed the camera work supports Mulvey's claims as it captures images of Marianne Faithfull and codifies them with explicit meanings of sexuality.
No doubt the glances exchanged between all the males in the film and Marianee Faithfull are loaded with a multitude of meaning in themes of domination, and all that blah blah.. but...
To me context needs to be notated with this film to appreciate how liberating the film can be understood.
First, the film takes place in Europe, and considering that most women had gained suffrage in France in the later part of the 1940's, the social roles and expectations of women were (and more than likely still are) different than they are in the US.
Additionally, the interior monologues were written by a
Whilst Rebecca's interior monologues may be taken as campy and innocuous, paving the way for future generations of sexually active, image conscious females, who attempt to use their sexuality as a means to obtain power, and respect, there are noticeable paradoxes in Rebecca's monologues. Namely how she recognizes that her sexuality is her undoing, but at the same time her primary motivation. Indeed Rebecca austerely notes "I know my body is all you care about." In which reading the film using Mulvey's theories, which place primacy on the image of the woman, and how those images can be understood. Girl On A Motorcycle does not try to present a liberating image for women because in the context of the film, there is no where for Rebbecca to be free, akin to the struggle of the protagonists in a film that was made a year later, Easy Rider . Yes, Rebecca's nihilism can be seen as immature, and its self destructive qualities may have more resonance when thinking of not Rebecca's death as a personal tragedy, but rather as the only means in which Rebecca could find freedom in such a patriarchal society, a society where Rebecca believes, "I have no identity."