SSC Film Studies

Get Carter - Glenda

Women in this film, specifically Glenda are shown solely as objects to men for both information and sexual pleasure. We see Glenda running on orders from  Kinear and this shows that her motivation to do her work is him, not for her own benefit which shows that these women are controlled by men.

Carter is also using her, to sleep with her for sexual pleasure but then afterwards for information to benefit him. During the montage scene, we see Carter viewing Glenda, looking from above down her top and at her legs but we never see any of these types of shots from her point of view which is the films directors way of saying that these women do not have a relevant point of view, they are only allowed to see what the men see and as the audience, we get the same view. We are forced to view the women as objects for sexual pleasure which supports laura Mulvey's view that in fils, we are forced to view women from the point of view of a hetrosexual male.

Glenda is here on the orders of Kinear so that means that kinear owns her body and her sexuality and can use it for his own benefit, whether she wants to or not. This means that her sexuality serves men and isn't for her own purposes.



In the scene with Kinear, Glenda is telling Carter some really important information about this bosses but it is glossed over and we hear a diagetic conversation about a gamble instead. This shows that women, no matter what they say are viewed as irrelevant and non helpful. This information could have changed the course of the entire film if Carter had actually listened to her because he would have realised that his bosses were setting him up.

She is wearing a very revealing outfit, low cut and with a high slit. This proves Laura Malvey's theory of 'The Male Gaze' in which a women in a film is used as an erotic object for the characters within the film or as an erotic object for the spectator within the audience. In this case, her outfit is used so the audience can get pleasure from her as it has no relevance to the narrative.

Also in this scene, we see Kinear order Glenda to get Jack a drink and she does without hesitation showing how in the 1970's society, women were still viewed as there to serve men and not independent in their own right. Even when she has done what he's asked, its not good enough and she gets punished for making a mistake. This represents the view men held women in in the 1970's that they are second class citizens who can't do much right, therefore, need a man. This shows that in the seventies, it was still very much a patriarchal society in which men were superior.