By doing this, the producers are knowingly portraying Halle Berry's character Jinx through the eyes of James Bond, and therefore through the perspective of a male. Because of this, Jinx is now looked at as an object, and this is supported by Laura Mulvey's theory in her essay 'Visual pleasure and the narrative cinema'. When editing, the vignette effect puts Jinx at the centre of Bond's attention, and the character is now looked at through the eyes of the male character (one of three ways of looking defined by Mulvey), rather than by individual audience members.
Along with this, the slow motion effects used in editing as Berry's character exits the water further objectify the female character, without the audience even having much of an understanding as to who she may be. This also allows the camera to linger on the character (and her body) for longer than in a regular motion, and therefore objectifying her, allowing the audience's view of her body to last even longer. With this, other actions allow us to understand the exaggeration involved in her exit from the water. By throwing her hands up as she walks to wards the shore and skimming her hands along the water, Halle Berry accentuates her breasts and gives the scene a more sexual (and sensual) undertone, creating an even more intense visual pleasure from the audience, satisfying their scopophilia. During this scene, a mid shot is used to allow the audience to appreciate both Jinx's facial expressions and the movements of her body, and with any other characters from the scene missing, she is alone in the shot, with all focus and all thoughts (of both the male character's who's eyes we are supposedly looking through, and the audience) on her only.
One her exit from the water, the shot flips to Bond's reaction and back again to the female character, where she is out of the water and walking towards Bond. Here, she looks especially groomed considering she has just walked out from being under the water. This creates an ideology in both male and female audience members, leading them to believe that this is the norm and the standard 'ideal' woman after being in the sea.
By constructing and coding the female character in this scene, from something that can be argued as unrealistic, the producers have allowed the representation of the female character to be as they (probably male) would expect from a woman. As 82% of media creators are male, the likelihood of the producer of Die Another Day being female is slim, and therefore the ideals created in this film (in relation to male expectations of the female character) will be predominantly patriarchal. Other factors, for example the bikini worn by Jinx, the way that she exits the water, thrusting her hips in a non-realistic manor and even the way that she dries herself with the towel on the deck (barely at all, dabbing herself, too in a non-realistic way with the towel a couple of times) will have also been determined by this majority.
The non-diegetic music used on Jinx's exit from the water (which was already playing at the start of the clip being analysed) became extremely exaggerated and intensified as her movements and these to aspects put together create and extremely mysterious, romantic and fantasised scene.
Beth, we need further context of the vignette and binoculars, you havent quite explained enough detail of that section of the scene.
ReplyDeleteThe slow motion point is well justified to answer the question, well done. You also have a good use of media terminology well done. You have gone into great detail on a very small section of the text, this is what we want, good work.