Phallocentrism in "Girl on a Motorcycle"
Girl on a Motorcycle hypothetically sounds liberating. A defiant, rebel woman takes off in the night to reunite with her lover, strong and powerful on her motorcycle. Sadly this is not the case. This film is steeped in phallocentrism from the very beginning. Rebecca is fetishized by the male gaze from the moment she climbs out of bed naked (in stark contrast to Raymond who is sleeping cozily in his pajamas) and zips up her black leather suit. The camera, which coincides with the male gaze, take on a voyeuristic position, watching in the middle of the night, as they zoom in on her curvacious female parts being squeezed into her leather outfit. Phallocentrism is maintained soon after as she climbs atop her motorcycle that she is only capable of driving because Daniel has taught her, as well as bought for her. Without his instruction and gift she would be immobile. Thus the male figure, " is free to command the stage...of spatial illusion in which he articulates the look and creates the action" (Kaplan 128). The rest of her journey is continuously fraught with male oppression and reassertion of the female character as passive, unable to move the narrative along. In an almost anamalistic dominance, as if she is the prey, Rebecca instructs Daniel, "skin me." He possess the power, he provides the action, he takes away her identity. She recognizes this and to no avail, he treats me like a slave; he knows i'm not free." Nevertheless, "the sexualization and objectification of women is not simply for the purposes of eroticism; from a psychoanalytic point of view, it is designed to annihilate the threat that women (as castrated, and possessing a sinister genital organ) poses (Kaplan 121). By positioning the male gaze as dominant, the threat of the castrated woman, the "other", is removed. By allowing females, and particularly Rebecca, to have no identity, the fear of castration is no more.