VARIETY

THE PLEASURE IN LOOKING

Bette Gordon

The appeal of the cinema lies in its visibility, its “being-there-to-be-looked-at” quality. The pleasure of looking has been much discussed in film theory: not what we see, but how we see, how pleasure is structured by the film’s text. Film plays on voyeuristic fantasy, portraying a hermetically sealed world that unfolds magically indifferent to the presence of the audience. Although film is produced to be seen, the conditions of screening, for example, the darkened theater, and other narrative conventions give the spectator an illusion of looking in on a private world. The pleasurable structures of looking in the cinema arise from multiple sources: the pleasure of using another person as an object through sight and subjecting their image to a curious and controlling gaze, and also through narcissism and identification with the image seen, for example, with the images of perfect Hollywood stars.¹

From a feminist perspective, the pleasure of looking in the cinema has been connected with the centrality of the image of the female figure. This has involved an exploration of the way in which sexual difference is constructed in cinema, the way in which the gaze is split (men look, women are looked at), and the representation of female pleasure. It is this notion of female pleasure which interested me when making my film, Variety. Pornography becomes a site of feminist exploration into what it has to say about desire, what kind of fantasies it mobilizes, and how it structures diverse sexualities.

In focusing on female pleasure, I am not interested in uncovering a “feminist visual erotica,” but in attending to the relation between desire and representation. Feminists have been suspicious of pleasure promoted in the cinema, dependent as it is upon the objectification of the female body. Consequently, we have avoided dealing with sexual pleasure in film. The insertion of the questions posed by fantasy provides a point from which to begin, and a challenge to the notion of sexuality as a fixed identity. In fact, it is precisely the gap between sexual fantasy and sexual identity that provides a place for exploring a number of issues which surface at the intersection of feminism and film. As I am concerned with the processes of construction in cinema, it is worth the risk of exploring female fantasy and pleasure.²

The film is concerned with watching at all levels, as the fictional narrative of the young woman’s voyeurism becomes a metaphor for the way that men watch women not only in pornography but in all cinema. Christine works in a pornographic movie theater as a ticket-seller and becomes obsessed with watching one particular male client. Gradually succumbing to her curiosity, she begins to follow him. Her obsession is voyeuristic, and in this sense can be seen as pornographic. But in this case, the traditional male role (male as voyeur, woman as object) is reversed, positing the woman as voyeur, in an attempt to locate female desire within a patriarchal culture.

Working inside the ticket-seller’s booth, Christine watches and listens to the activities of 42nd Street. As the images and sounds of the area and of her job increasingly affect her, she is less able to discern between actuality and fantasy. Indeed, she begins to construct an elaborate fantasy about the man she has chosen to follow, and that fantasy parallels her detailed descriptions of the movies she watches more and more frequently in the theater. Similarly, the organization and structure of the sex industry is made to parallel the organization and structure of another, more commercially respectable industry—one she discovers by following that man. He leads her to the Fulton Fish Market, Yankee Stadium, the Staten Island Ferry, and the Jersey Shore. His activities seem clandestine, but the narrative never reveals the nature of his involvements.

Christine would like to be a writer, but takes a job as a ticket-taker in a pornographic movie theater. She chooses what is easy and illegitimate rather than what she most wants to do, since she can’t imagine supporting herself through her writing.

The ticket booth is a central image in the film: it is a transitional place, in between the theater and the streets. She is not completely involved in the sex industry, since she is not a dancer or a porno movie actress; she is a ticket-taker and could either leave the sex industry or move more deeply into it. I did not want her to be perceived as a victim. The ticket booth also provides her with a vantage point: she views men and their sexual desire as they enter the theater. She observes many, not just a few; they become commonplace and demystified.

In Variety, pornographic films become extreme examples of mainstream Hollywood cinema. Both employ the voyeuristic mode to exploit women as objects of male fantasy and male desire. Rather than make a film that uses explicit sex to explore these issues, I am interested in raising various questions: How does the cinema produce and construct certain prescribed sexualities and marginalize others? Since pornography doesn’t tie women’s sexuality to reproduction, to domesticated couples, or exclusively to men, does it offer other possibilities for women?

Pornography is not a monolithic construction but consists of a variety of practices operating across various institutions, places, and times and therefore is open to intervention. The codes and conventions which characterize particular pornographic representations, construct sexual difference, and order ways of seeing can be analyzed. I am interested in interrupting the conventions of dominant culture by twisting them around. This calls attention to the process of construction by making the viewer aware of ideas, images, and representations—where meaning comes from. The point is that the prevailing representation is not a given, not a natural phenomenon. Interruption of dominant forms leads the viewer to more active interaction with the material rather than passive consumption.

I try to intervene with the way in which the dominant culture presents ideas. My work is in the mainstream, but I insert questions and discomfort into images, narratives, and stories. Other filmmakers are interested in creating a separate or alternative feminist erotica. I am not, since that alternative suggests marginality—the “other place” outside of culture that women have already been assigned. I don’t want to maintain that out-sideness.

In addition, dominant forms are expert at incorporating and co-opting marginal forms, so working from a place outside of male culture is no guarantee of autonomy. I prefer to work within and through the existing culture by challenging it, especially its constructions of sexuality which pervade not just representation but many other domains, for example, the family and law. Pornography provides one more place to investigate how sexuality is constructed.

Recent film writing and theory have suggested that the basic condition of cinema is voyeurism—an exchange of seeing and being seen—so that the cinema manages to be both exhibitionist and secretive. These active and passive components of voyeurism, which are part of the cinema in general, are the focus of Variety.

I am interested in investigating fantasy and pleasure, especially how they are constructed in culture and therefore in cinema.

Christine’s boyfriend is an investigative reporter. He is researching an article about the Fulton Street Fish Market. He talks about his work, and as usual, she only listens. Then she begins to speak, and her speech takes the form of describing the movies she sees and eventually her fantasies. At first, he expresses his discomfort, because men become anxious when they hear women speak of their sexual desires. He is more threatened by her sexuality than her possible competition with him in investigating the story. (The man she is following appears to have some connection to the Fish Market.) Later, she tells her boyfriend her fantasy about a woman who takes a hitchhiker home with her. The hitchhiker observes her having sex with a snake and then with a tiger. He wants to join in. . . . Her boyfriend becomes mute. He doesn’t speak any more; her speech takes over his, reversing the dominance of male speech.

We never see the pornographic movies; we hear only Christine’s description. This is an approach opposite to the one used by Not A Love Story, which utilizes pornographic images and the same lure that pornography uses: “This film contains graphic material which may be objectionable.” Moreover, the focus on Christine’s description of and reaction to porno films raises the question of individual subjectivity: the viewer interprets and gives meaning to representations, which are far from uniform despite the conventions of culture.

Christine’s fantasies become more elaborated the longer she works in the movie theater, as she is surrounded and confronted by new sexual images. Speaking of fantasies is taboo in our culture, even to those close to you, for example, a lover. Although the language of desire may be male, Christine’s articulation of sexual fantasy represents a new and radical activity. The film suggests that women, even in patriarchal culture, are active agents who interpret and utilize cultural symbols on their own behalf.

There is no representation of Christine having sex in the film. She has sex by speaking it and by voyeuristically following the patron. She describes what she sees on the screen at first, but goes on to describe what she wants to see, constructed from her own desire. There is a power struggle going on between Christine and her boyfriend and the male patrons at the theater. She speaks her fantasies, which silence men: they can’t deal with her desire being spoken.

She follows the anonymous client into a porno bookstore, losing sight of him momentarily, and begins to browse through the magazines. An elaborate exchange of looks takes place: men look at her; she looks at them, looking at women, looking. . . . She is out of place in the porn store, a male space. Men often leave when a woman enters an adult bookstore because they are caught in the act of looking.

Three looks operate in mainstream cinema: (1) characters in the film look at each other; (2) the camera looks at what it films; (3) the viewer looks at the screen. Paul Willemen suggests that pornography contains a fourth look: an observer looks at the viewer of pornography, catching him in a taboo act. The fourth look could be the superego or the threat of censorship, directed at the pornography’s illicit place in the culture. A woman in a porn store represents the fourth look and so makes men uncomfortable. Other men are complicit, but a woman is not. She is supposed to be the object of their gaze.³

Christine is a viewer of men and male activities througout the film: at the fish market, at a baseball game, at a porn store. She stands out as a viewer of male space and terrain.

She dresses up for herself in a costume worn in one of the porn films. Instead of displaying herself on the stage or screen, she looks at herself in the mirror, like a child experimenting with her mother’s lipstick. She relates to her own image in the mirror, looking up close and turning around.

Christine follows him by train to Asbury Park, New Jersey, taking a room at the motel at which he stays. She waits for him to leave his room, which she enters via the shared balcony. She searches through his suitcase—the most sexual and pornographic act in the movie—and finds only shaving cream, a shirt, an address book, and a porn magazine. By collecting these bits of information, she attempts to construct who he is. Suddenly, she hears a car pulling up and escapes back into her own room.

After following him, she returns to work and watches a film. She imagines a different image on the screen: her own in the motel room. The man enters the room and approaches her as she sits on the bed; he comes closer; she looks; he looks; he takes out his wallet. It’s all in slow motion, since it is not real.

He remains unaware that she is following him. Finally, she calls him on the telephone and confesses, “I’ve been watching you.” We do not hear his side of the conversation, but he appears to express doubt, since she says, “I followed you into the store on Broadway. You know which store. No, it’s not a matter of money.” They agree to meet at the corner of Fulton and South Streets: the final scene shows a dark, rainy corner. She doesn’t show up; he doesn’t show up.

Heterosexual pornography substitutes a look for a touch. It maintains a desire for gratification while never allowing direct gratification. The viewer cannot have the man or woman on the screen. The viewer remains unfulfilled.

The narrative enigma of my film is never completely explained, thereby suggesting a relationship with unfulfilled pornographic desire—for pornography offers fantasy and sustains desire for ever-promised, but never found gratification. It guarantees that no representation will ever satisfy desire while maintaining a desire for the representation itself.⁴

The script for Variety was written in collaboration with Kathy Acker.