Notes

1. Linda Williams, “Introduction,” in Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 4.
[return to page 1]

2. Joey (Jill) Soloway, “The Female Gaze: TIFF Master Class,” ToppleProductions.com, September 11, 2016, https://www.toppleproductions.com/the-female-gaze.

3. Alysia Abbott, “Joey (Jill) Soloway Goes Completely Transparent in a New Memoir,” The New York Times, October 29, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/29/books/review/she-wants-it-jill-soloway.html.

4. See Zeba Blay, “How Feminist TV Became the New Normal,” HuffingtonPost.com, June 18, 2015, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/18/how-feminist-tv-became-the-new-normal_n_7567898.html; Neha Kale, “Are we entering the golden age of the female gaze?” DailyLife.com.au, August 25, 2015, http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-culture/are-we-entering-the-golden-age-of-the-female-gaze-20150824-gj6fkr.html; Cynthia Littleton, “Jenji Kohan Leads Band of Female Showrunners Breaking TV’s Old School Rules,” Variety, August 4, 2015, https://variety.com/2015/tv/news/jenji-kohan-female-showrunners-shonda-rhimes-1201555729; Nell Scovell, “The Golden Age of the Female Gaze is Actually a Rerun,” The New York Times, September 12, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/opinion/sunday/the-golden-age-for-women-in-tv-is-actually-a-rerun.html; Melissa Silverstein, “Embracing the Female Gaze,” IndieWire.com, July 30, 2015, http://www.indiewire.com/2015/07/embracing-the-female-gaze-203000.

5. Seth Abramovitch, “‘Lines Got Blurred’: Jeffrey Tambor and an Up-Close Look at Harassment Claims on ‘Transparent,’” The Hollywood Reporter, May 7, 2018, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/lines-got-blurred-jeffrey-tambor-an-up-close-look-at-harassment-claims-transparent-1108939; Christi Carras, “‘Transparent’s’ Trace Lysette on Accusing Jeffrey Tambor of Sexual Harassment: ‘It Was Hell,’” Variety, August 7, 2018, https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/transparent-trace-lysette-jeffrey-tambor-sexual-harassment-1202898144.

6. Soloway, “The Female Gaze.”

7. Paula Kamen, “Transparent’s Joey (Jill) Soloway on Inventing the Female Gaze,” Ms. Magazine, last modified November 6, 2014, http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/11/06/transparents-jill-soloway-on-inventing-the-female-gaze.

8. Thanks to William Carroll for this suggestion.

9. Soloway, “The Female Gaze.”

10. Boys Don’t Cry, directed by Kimberly Peirce (1999; produced by Hart-Sharp Entertainment, IFC Films, and Killer Films and distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures).

12. Jack Halberstam, “The Transgender Look,” in In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York: NYU Press, 2005), 88.

13. By Hook or By Crook, directed by Harry Dodge and Silas Howard (2001; Steakhaus Productions).

14. Halberstam, 94.

15. Carol, directed by Todd Haynes (2015; produced by Number 9 Films, Film4, and Killer Films and distributed by Studio Canal and The Weinstein Company).

16. Moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins (2016; produced by A24, Plan B Entertainment, and Pastel Productions and distributed by A24).

17. Black Mirror, Series 3, Episode 4, “San Junipero,” written by Charlie Brooker and directed by Owen Harris (2016; Netflix.com).

18. Halberstam, 87.

19. Nate Jones, “Joey (Jill) Soloway Calls for ‘Matriarchal Revolution’ in Film,” Vulture.com, July 28, 2015, http://www.vulture.com/2015/07/jill-soloway-calls-for-matriarchal-revolution.html.

20. For a detailed account of this period, see Judith Mayne, “Feminist Film Theory and Criticism,” Signs 11, no. 1 (Autumn 1985): 83.

21. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Film Theory and Criticism, eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 711.

22. Mulvey, 719.

23. Mulvey, 713.

24. E. Ann Kaplan, “Is the Gaze Male?” in Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (London: Methuen & Co., 1983), 28.

25. Kaplan, 29.

26. Gaylyn Studlar, “Visual Pleasure and the Masochistic Aesthetic,” Journal of Film and Video 37, no. 2. (Spring 1984): 21.

27. Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator,” in Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1992), 21.

28. Soloway, “The Female Gaze.”

29. Judith Mayne (“Paradoxes of Spectatorship,” in Cinema and Spectatorship [New York: Routledge, 1993], 77-103) provides a number of correctives to these totalizing assumptions, demonstrating that the cinematic apparatus does not necessarily function as efficiently as theorists suggest; that cinema’s relationship to ideology is not deterministic; that the appropriateness of psychoanalysis as theoretical tool must be interrogated; and that no reading is purely dominant or oppositional, but that all readings are negotiated.

30. Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 294.

31. bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992), 116.

32. hooks, 129.

33. Chris Straayer, Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies: Sexual Reorientation in Film and Video (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 3.

34. Williams, “Introduction,” 5.

35. Williams, “Introduction,” 18 (emphasis original).

36. From producing a series of short films by queer and trans creators (see Chris Gardner, “Joey (Jill) Soloway, Lena Waithe Partner With Condé Nast's LGBTQ Platform for Short Film Series ‘Queeroes,’” The Hollywood Reporter, June 5, 2018, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jill-soloway-lena-waithe-partner-short-film-series-queeroes-1117173), to a nationwide book tour with their new memoir She Wants It: Desire, Power and Toppling the Patriarchy (London: Ebury Press, 2018) that features “talks, thought leaders, and fist-pumping debates” between Soloway and a number of feminist authors, artists, and activists (“Events/Appearances,” SheWantsItBook.com, accessed November 21, 2018, https://shewantsitbook.com) to their production company’s diverse investments in publishing, musicals, television, and more, Soloway is a prominent presence in the current media landscape.

37. In “The Female Gaze,” Soloway describes Mulvey’s theory thus: “Mulvey names three parts of this gaze—the person behind the camera, the characters within the film itself, and the spectator. Wow. Okay doing this deep research for one second on the internet—makes me realize that the Male Gaze emanates out from the center of that triangle. Holy shit it’s like an actual triangle with energy SHOOTING OUT FROM THE CENTER OF IT.”

38. For example, in “The Female Gaze” they contend that patriarchal cultural production is a response to the fact that “women bleed without dying.”

39. Soloway, “The Female Gaze.”

40. Kamen, “Transparent’s Joey (Jill) Soloway on Inventing the Female Gaze.”

41. Martha M. Lauzen, “The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women on the Top 100, 250, and 500 Films of 2016,” The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, January 2017, https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/2016_Celluloid_Ceiling_Report.pdf

42. “Joey (Jill) Soloway on The Female Gaze | MASTER CLASS | TIFF 2016,” YouTube video, TIFF Talks, September 11, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnBvppooD9I.

43. Soloway, “The Female Gaze” (emphasis original).

44. Soloway, “The Female Gaze.”

45. Mulvey, 716. [return to page 2]

46. Halberstam, 86.

47. Halberstam, 86.

48. Halberstam, 88.

49. Halberstam, 88.

50. Halberstam, 18.

51. Halberstam, 92-96.

52. Halberstam, 94.

53. Irina Leimbacher, “Hearing Voice(s): Experiments with Documentary Listening,” Discourse 39, no. 3 (2017), 292-318. [return to page 3]

54. Leimbacher, 292.

55. Laura U. Marks, “Haptic Visuality: Touching with the Eyes,” Framework: The Finnish Art Review 2 (2004), 80.

56. Marks, 81

57. Leimbacher, 292.

58. Leimbacher, 293.

59. Mulvey, 719.

60. Leimbacher, 293.

61. Marks, 80