Popular Culture Review Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1991 | Page 40

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The Popular Culture Review

tampering with universality, feminism or the author's integrity, even
when none actually occurred. Dolan's approach insults the audience
by not ascribing them any discriminatory powers (beyond enjoying the
perception of the mainstream), whatsoever. There is a need for a
counterbalancing argument.
Such a counterbalance can now be found within feminist film
theory, and the developments in theatrical criticism have lagged
behind the more inclusive and liberal approach of the feminist film
critics. These latter critics have now gone a stage beyond that
exemplified by Mulvey: by revealing the limitations of approaching
feminist film criticism from the point of view of disavowing every
element of the dominant, mainstream cinema. These critics have now
turned their attention to the way in which women used the main
stream cinema as a means of communications, despite its inherent
barriers and obstacles.
Feminist critics have been giving increasing attention to what
Lucie Arbuthnot terms "readings against the grain."(13) Arbuthnot
herself has suggested, for example, that the film Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes (1953) contains a systematic undercutting of dominant
ideological themes (such as heterosexual marriage), and suggests
some resistance to female objectification-even though the film may
have been directed with the typical male audience member in mind.
In other words, the film—which, incidentally, has been seen by huge
numbers of people-can be viewed in two ways. It is at once a piece of
generic, hegemonic propaganda, as well as a subtle, subversive
expression of feminism. Critics Maria La Place and Judith Mayne
reached a similar conclusion about the film Craig's Wife (1936).(14)
Writing about the well-known melodrama Stella Dallas (1937),
Linda Williams found that the film's central character is essentially
a grotesque parody of femininity.(15) Williams argued that Stella
Dallas was a film that searched (through the methodology of
exaggerated characterizations that intentionally undermine the
film’s credibility as a piece of domestic realism) to locate spaces
whereby women could speak to each other within an infrastructure so
outwardly dominated by patriarchy.
Similar interpretations have been made of more contemporary
films. Robin Wood, for example, has eloquently argued that the
"generalized crisis in ideological confidence" that characterized the
decade of the seventies can be read clearly in the ideological