Glenda

What is the function of Glenda if the narrative of Get Carter?

The role of Glenda is that she is a sexual object to be desired and used and controlled by men. She is a victim of the mens sexual desire and her purpose is literally to be used by men as she is a prostitute owned by kinnear.

There are many scenes if the film when Glenda is used and abused by the men. One of the key scenes is when Carter enters Kinnear's house and Glenda is surrounded by men and is the only female in the room. Glenda is represented as weak and abused, her only power is her sexuality as she tried to seduce Carter into putting her glass on the table and this works, however her sexuality is still controlled by the men in the room especially Kinnear. Glenda is used to gratify men as even her body language is sexually appealing to them. Throughout this scene her voice is drowned out by the men around her even when she has important information to tell, this signifies her lower status and her unimportance to them as a female. Also when she tried to get Kinnear's attention he completely ignored her and continues to talk about the game he is playing showing she is there to be seen and not heard as if he knew what she was talking about she would more than likely be abused and violated. This scene inks to the visual pleasure and the narrative cinema theory devised by Laura Mulvey in 1975, this theory states that because society is dominated by the male point of view and males are active in society whereas females are passive that an audience are forced to view females from a heterosexual point of view and or the male gaze. In this scene we gaze at Glenda as Carter does and she her as only a sexual object there to please and gratify men, this suggests that in 1970 men only saw women as erotic objects and less than themselves or second class citizens.

Another scene where Glenda is represented as an erotic object for the audience and the characters within the film is the car scene. Throughout this scene we see that Glenda is only shot in fragmented body shots, never a full shot of her, this signifies she was never seen as a person and dehumanises her. We as an audience only see her as Carter views her and how the director intended her to be saw, in addition to this we never see body shots of Carter we see his back, face and arms, (this is because it would not be visually appealing to a heterosexual male audience) whereas we see Glenda's legs, knees, hands, chest, back, bum, face and many other body parts. Another signifier is when they sleep together as it is against her will is at the end when we finally she her full face she looks in some ways dead and or mentally traumatised. Not once in this scene do we see Carter from a female point of view it is all in a male point of view where she is fetishised and desired. Another key element to this scene would be where Carter views different parts of her body and the shots cut to him and Glenda in bed, it seems as if he is fantasising about it but only as the scene progresses we realise he got what he wanted and it wasn't a fantasy it was actually happening. This scene reflects that men do things to women whereas women have things done to them, this is an accurate representation of the time the film is placed as we know that female liberation had not fully taken action and men still had control over women and their sexuality with or without the pill. This also links to visual pleasure and the narrative cinema theory as we see that she is fetishised and that she is only viewed from a male perspective, we never view the world from a females perspective it is always male, we are compelled to view her as a sexual object and nothing more.