How do the representations of women in Get Carter reflect the time in which it was made?

How do the representations of women in Get Carter reflect the time in which it was made?

In Get Carter there are three main characters, which are female. At the time when this film was made was at the time of the ‘Swinging Sixties’. This was the time when women were said to shed the skin of the 50’s traditional housewives and become fully fledged independent women who could enjoy sex as they wished without fear of pregnancy (the introduction of the contraceptive pill in 1963) and not feel that if they did get pregnant that they would have to get married and drop any careers or ambitions that they had. However in get carter this was not shown with the characters Edna, Glenda and Anna.

The first character that I will analyse is Anna in the scene where Carter talks to her over the phone. This scene shows her lying on the bed in her underwear, and then later without her bra, and touching herself while on the phone with Carter. This scene clearly proves the ‘Male Gaze’ theory, which was published by Laura Mulvey in a book called ‘Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema’. It states that women in film are dominated by a heterosexual point of view. It also says that women are passive and only hold back the narrative and distract the active male protagonist. Mulvey believes that that when watching films all audiences must view film from the Hetero-male gaze and that female characters only serve two purposes:

1.     As an erotic object for the characters within the film and

2.     As an erotic object for the spectator.

This is clearly shown in this scene with Anna as Carter, being on the other side of the country, cannot see her and so the only purpose to show Anna on the bed is for the audience’s pleasure. At this time me knew female characters being erotic objects, which reflects the view on society. Each show of Anna only shows a portion of her body and never the full thing. This shows her being ‘Fetishized’ and is done for the pleasure of the viewing audience. Another point, which shows her, as being only there for the viewing audience is the position of the camera as it, shows her bare chest and head. The camera is positioned between her legs, which is a very intimate place for a POV shot and serves no other purpose than to show her in a voyeuristic way. Carter also instructs Anna, demonstrating his power over her and his masculinity by being able to pleasure her with only his voice. After this scene, Anna doesn’t appear again on screen, showing that she has served her purpose by pleasuring the audience.