The Chauvinistic Male Gaze of Dance Girl Dance

In the movie Dance Girl Dance, Judy plays a kind-hearted ballerina who is consistently overshadowed by the overly burlesque character Bubbles. I felt it cruel that Bubble decided to add Judy to her act simply as a pawn for the male audience to mock and disrespect. Judy is portrayed as a respectful and ambitious young woman. I believe this is why she decided not to leave this part in the play. She had been mocked and in the shadow of Bubbles for far too long, and she was not going to settle for making little or no money any longer. She decided that even if she was made shame of, at least she was able to make a living from what she desired to do, to dance.

I felt compelled to be sympathetic towards Judy’s predicament, however Judy proved to be a stronger character than I had originally imagined. She inherently turned the male audiences own misogynistic ignorance on them. She had spent many shows being laughed at and mocked because she was unwilling to show her skin like bubbles was so popular for doing during the show. She subverted the male gaze by shouting out to the audience how ignorant and pathetic they were for viewing women in this manner.

This resulted in a shockingly positive response from the predominantly male audience. They ended up cheering her for it because they realized the follies of their ways, and that she as correct. Their behavior was inappropriate, petty, and disheveling to say the least. This once frail and shy girl had now blossomed into a strong, independent woman who was not afraid to stand against the wind and face adversity with bravery.

VERTIGO

According to the properties linked to scophophilia, a unidentified viewer gets sexual pleasure from a sole form of visual stimuli. This could in tern account for the number of rolls in cinema throughout history and today that objectify women. Women throughout history have held these submissive, passive rolls that leave the viewer to percieve them as creatures of beauty, not of intellect. The film Vertigo is a classic example of how women are objectified and used as sexual objects.
A consequence of such objectification can be the expectancy of schema's in romantic relationships. By watching films like Vertigo, young viewers or those who are inexperienced in such relationships relate what is being perceived on film to their own life, therefore creating a unrealistic expectation of such.
As a overview of this film, I feel that Vertigo entices a unrealistic expectation of women, their rolls in society and their rolls within a relationship. Beauty is portrayed as a major factor connecting it with love and it basically being the major component of Scotty's obsession with Judy, which is very repulsive in my opinion. The submissiveness of Judy's character is also a huge part of the film and how Hitchcock controls his female characters, both Judy and the woman who was Scotty's "friend". All together Alfred Hitchcock's portrayal of his female characters produces a false sense of reality and expectations in women, beauty and romantic relationships as a whole.