![]() ![]() Neo looks, and the Agent’s gun points directly at the camera, aligning the three looks (author’s screen grab).The woman in the red dress walks past Neo, also locking eyes with him (author’s screen grab).Neo looks, and in the next shot the police officer returns his look (author’s screen grab).A false eyeline match suggests that this symbol for “stop” is what Cypher sees (author’s screen grab).Cypher’s “elevator eyes” emphasize how he objectifies Trinity (author’s screen grab). ![]() Cypher is in focus as Trinity’s exit functions as an in-camera wipe effect (author’s screen grab).Cypher and Trinity continue speaking in two shots (author’s screen grab).Cypher and Trinity speak, as the scene cuts back and forth between them (author’s screen grab).A reverse shot shows Trinity noticing Cypher watching her (author’s screen grab).Trinity closes the door, revealing Cypher (author’s screen grab).Something catches Neo’s attention, and the film cuts so we see what he sees (author’s screen grab).A classic screen siren distracts the protagonist in The Matrix (1999) (author’s screen grab).Instead, The Matrix gives us something very different-a set of symbols deconstructing this formal device and warning us to think carefully about how we look. ![]() We anticipate indulging in the visual pleasures of narrative cinema. When we see the male character looking, we expect to see what he sees. Like the earlier cut, there’s a playfulness to this moment generated from the audience’s knowledge of how the male gaze is supposed to work. Here, the red silhouette and red dress evoke the bloody specter of castration and are eventually superseded by a phallic symbol: the gun. The symbolism here is almost comically on the nose, for the male gaze is designed to diffuse the anxiety provoked by the image of the castrated woman. The cut reveals that the woman in the red dress was actually Agent Smith all along, not a sexy screen siren but, similar to the police officer, another representative of the law. When the looks of the character, camera, and spectator are aligned, this pretense that the actress is not aware that she is being watched permits the audience to indulge in the pleasures of sadistic voyeurism.įigure 12: Neo looks, and the Agent’s gun points directly at the camera, aligning the three looks Although the camera isn’t aligned with Cypher’s perspective, this moment encapsulates a power dynamic that is central to the male gaze: the fiction that the actress on screen is unaware of being watched by the character within the film or the audience outside the film. As she closes the door, a shot framed from behind Trinity reveals that she is being watched by Cypher. Trinity leaves Neo’s room, deep in thought. Initially, the sequence uses formal techniques to reveal how the male gaze is structured and to convey its disquieting sadism. Instead, it begins when Trinity drops off some food beside the sleeping Neo. But this seductive character, reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe, isn’t where the sequence begins. This sequence introduces the protagonist Neo to the infamous “woman in a red dress,” a computer simulation designed to be maximally appealing to heterosexual male desire. The Matrix accomplishes this through a sequence toward the middle of the film that takes audiences from the reality of the rebel ship to a training simulation built to resemble the oppressive artificial world that is the film’s namesake: the matrix. It also reveals the crucial importance of form in structuring-and deconstructing-the male gaze.įigure 2: Something catches Neo’s attention, and the film cuts so we see what he sees As a result, the film offers a feminist cinematic experience produced through, rather than against, the formal strategies of dominant, popular cinema. Moreover, it does so through exploiting the very techniques that produce the male gaze in cinema: shot reverse-shot editing patterns that can be used to align the camera and the audience’s perspective with the diegetic look of the male character. Through close reading a sequence from The Matrix, I show how the film examines, mocks, and punishes the male gaze. This claim is only potentially counter-intuitive, for although The Matrix may appear at first glance to be addressed primarily to teenage boys, it is part of a filmography that Cael Keegan has shown is powerfully and compellingly trans, queer, and feminist. This time, I’ll be arguing that the male gaze is interrogated and policed in the Wachowski sisters’ sci-fi blockbuster The Matrix (1999). ![]() Now, I want to look at another potentially counter-intuitive iteration of the gaze. In my first column for Flow, I discussed how the Magic Mike franchise-which might appear to cater to heterosexual female desire-serves as a powerful demonstration of the persistence of the male gaze in popular cinema. Figure 1: A classic screen siren distracts the protagonist in The Matrix (1999) ![]()
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