Male Gaze in Fingersmith: How the Director's Gender Impacts the Visual and Narrative Style of Cinema about Lesbian

Research Article
Open access

Male Gaze in Fingersmith: How the Director's Gender Impacts the Visual and Narrative Style of Cinema about Lesbian

Xinyi Yue 1* , Zhihao Hu 2 , Junbo Yin 3
  • 1 Department of Media and Communication Study, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China    
  • 2 Department of Law, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China    
  • 3 Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Henan University, Kaifeng, China    
  • *corresponding author Xinyi.Yue23@student.xjtlu.edu.cn
CHR Vol.70
ISSN (Print): 2753-7072
ISSN (Online): 2753-7064
ISBN (Print): 978-1-80590-147-1
ISBN (Online): 978-1-80590-148-8

Abstract

In this paper, we study the impact of director's gender on visual and narrative style of cinema about lesbian from the perspective of the male gaze, by comparing Fingersmith(Walsh, 2005) and The Handmaiden (Park, 2016). Both films are based on the same novel, Fingersmith (Waters, 2003). The former is directed by a female director, while the latter is directed by a male director. This paper discusses studied objects from four aspects, in terms of intimacy, sexuality, betrayal and the closure of the films. Therefore, it concludes that even though male directors want to remove the male gaze when creating movies about lesbians, they still cannot fully avoid the influence of the male gaze, thereby illustrating the significant of gender as an influencing factor in this context. It is important to note that the concept of the male gaze, as discussed in this article, is employed to analyse the film as an aesthetic and ideological system, rather than as a biological criterion that focuses on the director's physical identity. This thesis will contribute to the research of male gaze in cinemas about lesbian.

Keywords:

male gaze, gender, Fingersmith, The Handmaiden, director

Yue,X.;Hu,Z.;Yin,J. (2025). Male Gaze in Fingersmith: How the Director's Gender Impacts the Visual and Narrative Style of Cinema about Lesbian. Communications in Humanities Research,70,76-84.
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References

[1]. Mulvey, L. (2013). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. In Feminism and film theory (pp. 57-68). Routledge.

[2]. Wheeler, K. L. (2017). Examining sex and climaxes in Blue is the Warmest Color and Carol.

[3]. Krauthaker, M., & Connolly, R. (2017). Gazing at Medusa: adaptation as phallocentric appropriation in Blue Is the Warmest Color. European Comic Art, 10(1), 24-40.

[4]. White, P. A. (1993). The uninvited: Cinema and the conditions of lesbian representability.(Volumes I and II). University of California, Santa Cruz.

[5]. Shamoon, D. (2021). Class S: appropriation of ‘lesbian’subculture in modern Japanese literature and New Wave cinema. Cultural Studies, 35(1), 27-43.

[6]. White, P. (1999). Uninvited: Classical Hollywood cinema and lesbian representability. Indiana University Press.

[7]. Lee, J. J. (2018). Queer Inventions: Rupturing Narrative Hegemony in Sarah Waters' Fingersmith. Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, 14(3).

[8]. Freud, S. (1983). The interpretation of dreams. In Literature and Psychoanalysis (pp. 29-33). Columbia University Press.

[9]. Cicek, F. (2012). From Margins to the Center Through the Film Lens: Gender and Turkish-German Cinema (Doctoral dissertation, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Indiana University).

[10]. Kim, S. Y. (2020). Unethical Adaptation: Indigenization and Sex in Chan-wook Park’s The Handmaiden (2016). Adaptation, 13(1), 1-12.

[11]. Stacey, J. (1988). Desperately seeking difference.

[12]. Muzart, T. (2022). Girlhood Through a Glass Queerly. Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 26(4-5), 481-489.

[13]. Wolfe, S. J., & Roripaugh, L. A. (2006). Feminine Beauty and the Male Gaze in The L-Word. MP: An International Feminist Online Journal, 1(4), 1-7.


Cite this article

Yue,X.;Hu,Z.;Yin,J. (2025). Male Gaze in Fingersmith: How the Director's Gender Impacts the Visual and Narrative Style of Cinema about Lesbian. Communications in Humanities Research,70,76-84.

Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.

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About volume

Volume title: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies

ISBN:978-1-80590-147-1(Print) / 978-1-80590-148-8(Online)
Editor:Heidi Gregory-Mina
Conference website: https://2024.icihcs.org/
Conference date: 29 November 2024
Series: Communications in Humanities Research
Volume number: Vol.70
ISSN:2753-7064(Print) / 2753-7072(Online)

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References

[1]. Mulvey, L. (2013). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. In Feminism and film theory (pp. 57-68). Routledge.

[2]. Wheeler, K. L. (2017). Examining sex and climaxes in Blue is the Warmest Color and Carol.

[3]. Krauthaker, M., & Connolly, R. (2017). Gazing at Medusa: adaptation as phallocentric appropriation in Blue Is the Warmest Color. European Comic Art, 10(1), 24-40.

[4]. White, P. A. (1993). The uninvited: Cinema and the conditions of lesbian representability.(Volumes I and II). University of California, Santa Cruz.

[5]. Shamoon, D. (2021). Class S: appropriation of ‘lesbian’subculture in modern Japanese literature and New Wave cinema. Cultural Studies, 35(1), 27-43.

[6]. White, P. (1999). Uninvited: Classical Hollywood cinema and lesbian representability. Indiana University Press.

[7]. Lee, J. J. (2018). Queer Inventions: Rupturing Narrative Hegemony in Sarah Waters' Fingersmith. Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, 14(3).

[8]. Freud, S. (1983). The interpretation of dreams. In Literature and Psychoanalysis (pp. 29-33). Columbia University Press.

[9]. Cicek, F. (2012). From Margins to the Center Through the Film Lens: Gender and Turkish-German Cinema (Doctoral dissertation, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Indiana University).

[10]. Kim, S. Y. (2020). Unethical Adaptation: Indigenization and Sex in Chan-wook Park’s The Handmaiden (2016). Adaptation, 13(1), 1-12.

[11]. Stacey, J. (1988). Desperately seeking difference.

[12]. Muzart, T. (2022). Girlhood Through a Glass Queerly. Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 26(4-5), 481-489.

[13]. Wolfe, S. J., & Roripaugh, L. A. (2006). Feminine Beauty and the Male Gaze in The L-Word. MP: An International Feminist Online Journal, 1(4), 1-7.