The Desire to Desire: The Woman s Film of the 1940s (Theories of Representation and Difference)

Description

"Brilliantly argued and lucidly written... the definitive psychoanalytic account of the repression of woman in Hollywood cinema." ―Tania Modleski

"... complex and challenging... " ―The Women"s Review of Books

"... magnificently ambitious... some of the most original and intelligent essays in film theory today." ―Journal of Modern Literature

"... deeply commited to the psychoanalytic approach... " ―Contemporary Sociology

The Desire to Desire traces the way in which female spectatorship is specified primarily by its lapses or failures, arguing that the women’s film simultaneously asserts and denies female desire, attributing to the woman only an impossible gaze.

What is female spectatorship? When Hollywood films are geared for an audience of women, what ideals do they tend to promote? How should feminist theory contend with the image of women that the cinema passes on? In The Desire to Desire Mary Ann Doane responds to these questions, focusing specifically on "woman s pictures" of the 1940s. She argues that while most of the films she discusses are conceived through lenses that are masculine in nature, feminists attempting to critique these films should not dismiss them as sexist or attempt to develop a way of seeing that is simply the opposite of the one handed down. Instead, Doane offers a critique of vision itself, contrasting the way the camera views the women in these films, the way the films female characters look out onto their worlds, and the way the Hollywood movie industry manufactures images that it expects female audiences to consume.