They Promised Liberation and They Provided Fetishized Female
In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness." Mulvey 39-40
In the film, Girl on a Motorcycle, this idea of exhibitionist and passive female was an incredibly transparent reality. Despite the fact that Rebecca is “taking” control and leaving on her motorcycle, she is repeatedly put in the passive, gawked position of woman. A notable part of the movie where Rebecca is experienced as a sexual object is when she first puts on her full-body leather motorcycle suit. Rebecca, who maintains a seemingly naked body throughout the film, puts on this layer of skin that proceeds to just barely fit her breasts, leaving them out for an easy glace and sexual arousal. The suit is also created perfectly for “woman,” having a glitzy (and easily accessed) zipper and a yet glitzier belt, presumably purchased by her lover.
Throughout the film Rebecca is maintained as a sex object. While she is riding her motorcycle her face often has the look of sexual satisfaction, creating fetishism in context of a woman on a motorcycle and of sexual deviance (due in large part that she, the woman, is taking a lover). When Rebecca is resting in the grass on the side of the road, the camera is mounted on top of her and placed at eye level, putting the viewer in control. The positioning of the camera and Rebecca’s orgasmic facial expressions put the viewer in a sexual situation with the fictional character, the male gaze at its finest.
In the film Rebecca is leaving her husband, who is portrayed as a castrated man, being passive and helpless as a man. This is why Rebecca is leaving him, because unlike her lover, her husband is unable to fulfill the position of “man” that she needs. He is unable to control his classroom of unruly students and he is unable to control Rebecca, in fact he’s oblivious to her doings and whereabouts. Rebecca is searching for somebody to control her, not very liberating.
This film does not provide a liberating female perspective. It places a woman in “control” for the voyeuristic man to fetishize over, which creates the opposite of any liberating ideals, the woman as object. Time and time again the film provided the male gaze, it put the man in control of Rebecca, of the woman.