Gaze Theories: The Change And Shape Of American Women In The1960s And1970s

It was an important period for Feminism Movement andHollywood’s development in the1960s and1970s. Thesecond wave of feminist movement outbreak, and a largenumber of women began to enter society to fight forindependence of economic and ideological; At the sametime, Hollywood completed the bonding of European newcurrent of movie thought and native feature, enteringanother boom period. In the20years, a lot works thatreflects the social background appeared-such as midnightcowboy, The Deer Hunter，Kramer Versus. Kramer, andThe Graduate，etc; Even after the1980s, there were stillworks reflecting on this era-such as Platoon，Born onthe Fourth of July and Forrest Gump. Facing the obviousachievements that the U.S. women had obtained, theseworks still continued the love to Hollywood "angel" and"evil woman"，and there was an obvious distortion with thefemale existence situation in the1960s and1970s.Someworks were aware of the female ’s new change at that time,but they suppressed and denied the change by a speciallanguage machining. Hence,the objective of this article is tostudy the American female images on Hollywood screen in the1960s and1970s，we try to analysis the oscar-winningfilm by feminist analysis method and get the female imageson silver Hollywood screen at this period.This article study the oscar-winning films by thetraditional female film criticism theory, and try to get theAmerican female image on Hollywood screen in the1960sand1970s.Just as what Beauvoir think,"the man reformthe face of the earth, create new devices and newinventions, and creat the future，but on the other hand,women have always been an original" otherness "image.She was watched by the man，and always are object ratherthan subject". The Hollywood movies very understand theimportance of the female’s beauty to increase film‘sbeauty，they maintained movie’s "watch" and "be watched"gender rights by a specific rhetoric, figured a series of "suppressed and pronographpy image of women". AlthoughAmerican women obtained great improvement in theeconomic, political and life in the second wave offeminist movement in the1960s and1970s, they stillcouldn’t avoid the fate of being chemicaled in Hollywoodfilms, falling into" being watched " object, and continue towalk on the road of " otherness ". Overall, the American women were still keep the "otherness" image inOscar-winning movie in the1960s and1970s.Laura Mulvey is a famous British feminist filmtheorists. She put the gender difference into the field ofmovie study in her article，Visual Pleasure and NarrativeCinema，it put forward some " visual pleasure " by thereappear of female image in the film. By this analies we seethe movie cater to social natural desire, customs and theinfluence of unconscious gender to structure and form inthe patriarchy society. This article will combined thefeminism perspective and text interpretation, try toanalytical work narrative pattern and language mechanismuseing the three men’s watch mode in Laura Mulvey’s "gaze theory".The analysis which is closer to the way of thefilm elements present and the whole interpretation of textwill help us more completely understand the Americanfemale image on silver screen in the1960s and1970s. Atthe same time,we can also make a meaningful inspectionalto Laura Mulvey ’s "gaze theories" by the practice.