Male Gaze and the Sex Appeal of Women
Girl on a Motorcycle did not present any new ideas as far as the male gaze and phallocentrism. Everything presented in this movie regarding these two ideas can be seen in more recently made movies. While this movie took place in the sixties, the ideas put forth by it have not changed or evolved as much as the cinematic special effects have. While watching this movie in class I kept being reminded of the Austin Powers movies. While the movies do not share much in common but the time period in which most of them were suppose to take place, the way the women are portrayed seemed blaringly similar. Not only because of the similar clothes and hair styles but in the way that these beautiful women in skin-tight leather, fawn over men who are nothing spectacular, physically, mentally or emotionally. Men that have done nothing to gain their love or even respect from the way that they treat them are revered as gods, people who will take care of them and protect them. The women in these films are treated purely as sex objects, to add something interesting to the films, maybe even to give men something that they really desire, something that is not available in real life, something that exists only to entertain men sexually, never mentally or emotionally. The women in these films appear to be lacking something; they lack the control that the men in the films have. This could represent the fear of castration, or the idea that because women lack a phallus, they also lack the ability to be in control of themselves and their emotions, which makes them weak and easy sexual prey.