Get Carter women - Liam Tomkins

Glenda

In 1975 Mulvey published ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, an article about the representation of women in film and literature. She believes that films are shown from the perspective of a heterosexual male, ‘The Male Gaze’. She believes that women server two purposes in film, to provide an erotic object for characters within the film and provide an erotic object for the audience. The character of Glenda shows this.

Men use Glenda as an object for sexual pleasure. Kinnear uses her as a tool to distract and persuade people visiting him so that he can manipulate them to do what he wants. A man controls everything that Glenda does, Kinnear tells her to have sex with Carter, so she does. The only power she seems to have is her sexuality, even this is controlled by men. She is literally an object used by men for pleasure. She is told what to do by men but isn’t listened to when she has something to say. Her voice is often drowned out by men in the background, signifying that she is of a lower status than the men.

We never see a shot from the female point of view, meaning that men are not sexualized in any way, body shots and close-ups of men would not be appealing to the majority of cinema go-ers, who are heterosexual males. We also never see Glenda getting any sexual pleasure, showing that she is not seen as a person and instead an object for the pleasure of men. The audience take pleasure in viewing the close ups of Glenda’s body, showing that she is also an object for the audience’s benefit. As well as being an object for men, Glenda is also a servant to men, reflecting how men viewed women in the 1970s.