Male gaze in Hong Kong Adult films

“ According to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome, the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man.” (Berger, 49)

          In fact, men control still dominates the world. Film industry is not an exception. Films present men as active, controlling subjects and treat women as passive objects of desire for men in both the story and in the audience, especially in adult movies. Such films objectify women in relation to the controlling male gaze and do not allow women to desire sexual subjects in their own right. In highly commercialized Hong Kong, the film industry only aims at the market. To explain the objectification of woman in cinema, we can use the Hong Kong Adult Film industry as an example.

First of all, we should explain the term “male gaze” to make our discussion more concrete. “The term ‘the male gaze’ has become something of a feminist cliché for referring to the voyeuristic way in which men look at women (Evans & Gamman 1995,13)

In a word, male gaze is the objectification of women as sex object. As we all know, men and women look in different way. Generally speaking, “Men look at women and Women watch themselves being looked at.” (Berger, 45-47).

Berger argues that in European art form the Renaissance onwards women were depicted as the object of being seen by a male spectator. He advanced the idea with the highly realistic depiction in oil paintings and later in color photography. Because the ideal spectator is assumed to be male, the image of the woman is designed to flatter him. This tradition tells us that male monopolize the role of the spectator.

To this, Feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey, accompanied with Post-structuralist Claire Johnston, who greatly affected by Walter Benjamin’s idea, wrote “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis[1] and Jacques Lacan’s concept of Mirror Stage[2], they make political use of idea of voyeurism and fetishism to study cinematic spectatorship and to criticize the masculine hegemony in Hollywood cinema.  She approached the cinematic mechanism from the point of view of Freud and Lacan and giving a definition to the women as an object. Mulvey states,

“Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look: In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/ male and passive/ female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at ad displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness…… Hence the split between spectacle and narrative supports the man's role as the active one of advancing the story making things happen.  (Mulvey, 116)

The pleasure of men is the only aim in the mainstream cinema, in the eyes of Mulvey.

“The cinematic codes of popular films are obsessively subordinated to the neurotic needs of the male ego (Mulvey, 115)”

In films, man is the Lord who controls the development of the story. And women can just be the supporting role.

“Conventional narrative films in the classical Hollywood tradition not only typically focus on a male protagonist in the narrative but also assume a male spectator... ... Traditional films present men as active, controlling subjects and treat women as passive objects of desire for men in both the story and in the audience, and do not allow women to be desiring sexual subjects in their own rights.” (Mulvey, 114)

That means men just uses their power to construct the women image, for sexual needs. On the other hand, female character does not represent the reality. Same, the female audience can only get the pleasure of watching films from temporary transvestism. In the process of sex displacement, women will think that she is the one of male characters, and so they can get the same pleasure as men does.

In fact, Mulvey’s notes came from Freudian concepts of (infantile) scopophilia. In freud’s point of view, scopophilia is the pleasure of looking at the other people bodies (others) as sex objects. Theorist Stephen Neale also tried to give scopophilia a quote:

“Scopophila, a drive which has the look as its object of desire, is evidently of crucial importance to the cinema. It is a drive that is dependent upon the maintenance of a distance between subject and object.”(Neale, 33)

Mulvey declares that scopophilia has been split between voyeuristic and fetishistic two modes of looking for the film spectator:

Voyeuristic and fetishistic, which Mulvey presents in Freudian terms are referring to male castration anxiety.

“Voyeuristic looking involves a controlling gaze” (Mulvey 1992, 29).  

            According to her sayings, Hitchicock’ s masterpieces, “Vertigo” and “Rear Window” are the best demonstration of the word “voyeurism”. Peeping is the major action in the detective movie. The camera lens are representing the gaze of the actor, inviting viewers to join the voyeur game. In fact, the darkness of the cinema auditorium is another source of voyeurism. Besides the screen, spectators see nothing in the auditorium. The match-box-alike environment is good for voyeurism. As a result, the power of the male --- a protagonist and spectator was formed.[3]

 As for the concept of Fetishism, it involves the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous. This builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself. The erotic instinct is focused on the look alone Fetishistic looking, she suggests, leads to overvaluation of the female image and to the cult of the female movie star. Mulvey argues that the film spectator oscillates between these two forms of looking

To conclude Mulvey’s theory, there are three types of male gaze in “ Film Noir”. The first one is the gaze of camera lens. The second one is the gaze from the male audience and the last one is the gaze of the movies’ characters. Her theory helps us a lot indeed to study and analyze the cinematic spectatorship. 

Two waves of Adult movies in Hong Kong

Briefly explained the term male gaze, let us examine the degree of male gaze in Hong Kong cinema. As we know, Hong Kong cinema is well known for its market-oriented feature. Since the majority of the audiences are male, the films in Hong Kong dominate by male gaze.

In Hong Kong, there are two “waves” of Adult Film.  In 60s, there is a “Sex Revolution” in the West and a lot of Adult films were produced. Under the Western way of Education, Hong Kong people are open to new things. In addition, with the competition from Television, the film industry had to attract the male audience by producing sex films.  Bruce Lee’s deaths in 1973 made Kung Fu movies no more popular and gave rise to the blooming of soft core. At that time, “the Shaw Brother’s company” produced a lot of adult movies at that time. At the same time, there were so many famous directors producing porn. The most critical example is “ The Bamboo House of Dolls” and “Virgins of the Seven Sea” made by Gui Zhihong in 1974.

Unfortunately, they are just products of male gaze. In these two films, there were both eastern and western nude perform the sex acts. The former one depicts western women in concentration camp during the Japanese Occupation. This kind of “reviving manhood in the name of Nationalism. ”Practices also appear in the Kung Fu movies. For example, in “the Way of the Dragon” by Bruce in 1972, there were also some nude western dancers too. Until now, the featuring of the foreign porn stars, especially those from Japan are stil popular in Hong Kong Cinema. Maybe we can simply name this the “Chinese male gaze”.

In fact, at that time, most sex films followed a formula  -- a girl was raped by the gangsters and forced to be a prostitute. Humiliated, the girls took revenge on those bad guys with violence, with the aid of male lead. Zhang Sen’s “Bald headed Betty” in 1975 was the best example of this formula. After that, both the “Big Sister” series and the sex comedies by Lu Qi also follow this success formula. Either Chen Ping in “big sister” series or Ai Di and Ling Dai in Lu’s films also act as senior prostitute and made use of their sisters. In a word, the main theme of such films is not the story of women but the nudity of the stars. It is no doubt that such formula aimed at pleasing the male audience.

In 1990s, the second wave of adult film in Hong Kong came. The big breast of Amy Yip attracts all the male audience. Though she never shows their whole body at all, her films were still so popular. “Sex and Zen” in 1991 broke the box office record of adult film. Then, famous actresses like Veronica Yip, Loetta Lee, and Shu Kei also joined the battle of adult film and successfully attracted a great deal of audience. With the victorious experience of those girls, there were a number of adult films casting the female stars like Pauline Chan, and Ellen Chan. The voyeurism of Hong Kong people widely spread at that time. They all want to se the nude body of the famous actresses. However, at the same time, even if the sex films were hit, the porn actors were sill being ignored. The male only acted the puppet when the nude girls were the only selling point of such films.

At the same time, there were so many sadism films in Hong Kong. Abnormal sex and rape were main elements of the films. The porn stars were beaten up when they were being raped. Also, there were so many films talking about the banned sex stories from Qing Empire. In these films, strange sex toys were used to violate the female. All in all, in the second trend of adult films in Hong Kong, both the voyeurism and sadism were the dominant ideas of such films.

Other features of Adult films in Hong Kong

         Generally speaking, in the world of adult film, we can find three types of people. Hong Kong Adult film is not an exceptional case.  The first one is the “beautiful” porn star. They just need to take their clothes off and show their nude body off. They are responsible to fulfill the voyeurism of male audience only. They are the women on spotlight. For example, Veronica Yip and Amy Yip were the selling point of the adult films even though they do not show their whole nude body. They are the targets of voyeurism, just as Mulvey said. Usually, they act as students, models, teachers and career girls with uniform and play the sex shows to fulfill the fetishism of male.

            Another one is the common porn actress. They have to in charge of the sadism sex performance. They have to be raped, beat or even killed in the films. Also, the camera lens will only catch up their fragmented nude body pieces and painful faces during the shows.  They always fulfill the sadism idea of the men. The last type is the male porn actor. They are only puppets. In commercial film, nude male will seldom be seen as an erotic sex object, but female. (Tony Leung Ka Fai in “The Lover(1990)” is an exceptional case only.) Sex is the pronoun stands for women only. Nude women are important element of love scene whereas penis seldom appears in the screen. It is all because of the male gaze.

               Furthermore, when there is love scene, the main focus is always on the female side. Male is ignored at that time. The subjective lens helps the audience enter the world of movies. The audience may think that they are the men who are making love with girls when he can only see the face of porn stars. But the same case never happens to porn actor since the male porn actor is always out focus and always out focus and always described as ugly men.

Rape in Hong Kong Cinema

          Rape is another element of Hong Kong Adult cinema. To attract the male audience, rapes usually occurred in Hong Kong movies. In the series of “Rape by the Angel” produced by Wong Jing, the rapists use drugs and violence to show their reinforce their sexuality. They also beat the girls up or even kill them. The camera lens always focuses on the victims’ painful faces. In fact, the women being raped are usually described as weak innocent schoolgirls. (Of course, another common image is sexy women.) 

                 On the other hand, the rapists are usually influenced by their evil teen experience such as abuse by mother or insult by other female. Raping is the way to release their psychological pressure only. What the rapist does is “illegal” but “inevitable” or “reasonable”. All of these show that the male-dominated production team always tries to justify the sexual crime. The best example should be “Super rape” (1994)! Its original name is “Legal Rape”. It is talking about how a “rapist expert” carries out his serial rape plan. Interestingly, just like the other episode of “Rape by the Angel”, the victims need the aid from their nudity and a male hero to take revenge. As Mulvey said, sadism represents “pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt-asserting control and subjecting the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness.” The men want to show their power through assaulting female. And rape is the most direct way to fulfill their dream.

Problems of Mulvey’s theory

           Using Mulvey’s theory helps us a lot to understand the Hong Kong Adult Cinema. Nevertheless, it is a naked truth that her ideas are full of controversial arguments.  Many film theorists objected her spectatorship and male gaze concepts because of its heterosexuality assumption. They do agree that there are more spectator angles than the male gaze. Teresa de Lauretis (1984) does believe that there should be a double-identification in terms of gaze. Woman spectator reads both passive (feminine) and active (masculine) point of view. Kaja Silverman (1980) even argue that there is only one gaze which both male and female can share. In the past few decades, women directors have broken through the phallocentric film industry to produce so-called feminist movies. All of the above show that the real situation is changing.

              However, patriarchal domination still get rids of dominant views of women in commercial films. Exploitation and objectification of women is still governing the cinema. To satisfy their sexual desire, male audience continues to seduce women in the narrative. Existing gender stereotypes reinforced, as a direct result. It comes to us that Mulvey’s theory, especially those reinforced by Michel Foucault’s gender theories, still works nowadays; even the world is rapidly changing.

                It is no doubt that sex is basic desire of human being. On the other hand, cinema, based on the concept of Bazin, is a tool to record the real life of people. Adult film is a good way for us to know the real process of human sex. However, under male gaze, we can hardly know the real sex life through the cinema. Hong Kong’s male-dominated film industry surely cannot get rid of the male gaze trouble.

Reference

Caroline Evans and Lorraine Gamman (1995). 'The Gaze Revisited, Or Reviewing Queer Viewing'. Burston & Richardson:

Douglas Kellner (1994). Baudrillard : a critical reader.Oxford : Blackwell.

Dudley Andrew (1990). André Bazin. New York : Columbia University Press.

Fredric Dannen and Barry Long (1997). Hong Kong Babylon. Hong Kong: Faber and Faber

 Hong Kong Provisional Urban Council (1999). Hong Kong cinema in the eighties: a comparative study with western cinema. Hong Kong : Provisional Urban Council.

Kaja Silverman(1980): ‘Masochism and Subjectivity’, Framework 12: 2-9

Kenneth Clark (1956). "The Naked and the Nude." The Nude. Princeton: Princeton University Press,

John Berger (1972): Ways of Seeing. London: BBC/Harmondsworth: Penguin

Laura Mulvey (1993). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Contemporary Film Theory. London: Longman,

Laura Mulvey (1989): Visual and Other Pleasures. London: Macmillan

Stephen Neale (1980). Genre. London: BFI.

Teresa De Lauretis(1984): Alice Doesn’t. Bloomington: Indiana University Press

http://www.theory.org.uk/