G.I. Jane (1997)

The recent film G.I. Jane (1997), directed by Ridley Scott, combines the familiar with the supposedly daring. On the one hand, this is the familiar story of a military recruit working through the rigors of training. On the other, the film wants to be seen as daring and controversial because the main character is a woman fighting to be accepted in a male military unit. The film seeks to be consciously feminist in that is represents the female as more than just something "to be looked at." However, the film may wish to challenge traditional stereotypes, but in its own way it merely creates a new one. The film fails in its intent because it is dealing not with real people and issues but with stereotypes at every level, and it substitutes several male film stereotypes for the prevailing female stereotypes or merges the two into a new combined stereotype.

There is one way in which the film itself both challenges a prevailing female stereotype while at the same time giving in to the creation of a new one. The conventional wisdom in Hollywood holds that only male stars can bring people into movie theaters, and this is reflected in the number of films with male leads that are made as opposed to those with female leads. It is also reflected in the types of films that are made--action films predominate over any other genre--and in the salaries paid to the stars--male stars earn considerably more than female stars. It was not always this way, and indeed female stars were a vita

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er. The male power structure in Washington works to support the male power structure in the military and to protect it from the "threat" posed by a unisex military. The filmmakers set up a contest between the female Senator and the new cabinet member, with Lt. O'Neil being the test case who will determine which side wins. In truth, this is not the way the contest goes, for O'neil is a sacrificial lamb who is supposed to make political points for both sides without really shaking up the power structure or introducing real change. Similarly, the filmmakers have also created a similarly false contest for the viewer. What the film appears to be at first is a story championing women not as objects but as human beings, but the film in fact objectifies this woman openly to attract an audience. Mulvey explains this by citing scopophilia as explained by Freud: Originally, in his Three Essays on Sexuality, Freud isolated scopophilia as one of the component instincts of sexuality which exist as drives quite independently of the erotogenic zones. At this point he associated scopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze (Mulvey 748). In the film, the men in training subject O'Neil to

Category: Film - G