Heroines of Gaze. Gender and Self-Reflexivity in Current Espionage Films
1 In the history of the spy movie genre, women have served mostly as little more than "window dressing." At least this is the conclusion that Tom Lisanti and Louis Paul come to in their work, Film Fatales. Women in Espionage Films and Television, which appeared in 2001. Despite this initially one-sided statement, the authors go on to outline four different types of heroines. The first type, the helpful spy, supports the hero with her fighting skills and may, as an exception, even be central to the action. The second type, the innocent, becomes the quasi-reluctant spy who burdens the hero with her ignorance; she helps to maintain the tension of the film by her need to be repeatedly rescued. The two remaining types are to be found on the side of the adversary: either the spy who because of her love for the hero sides with him, or the incorrigible fiend (Lisanti/Paul 14-16).
2 Then again, despite this differentiated categorization, Lisanti and Paul's talk of "window dressing" implies that the presence of these women generally serves a voyeuristic purpose and that they are unable to return the gaze. This view corresponds to Laura Mulvey's now famous analysis of the gender-specific ways of looking in Hollywood cinema that she had put forward in 1975 in her essay, "Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema": "In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female" (19). What Mulvey was saying was that spectators identifying with characters in films, male protagonists act as "bearers of the look," whereas female protagonists serve merely as spectacle - on both levels: within the narrative and for the audience. The female character's visual presence tends "to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation" (19). While the male characters, as bearers of the look, neutralize these extradiegetic tendencies of the female spectacle by pushing the story along (Mulvey, "Visual Pleasures" 19-20). Consequently, according to Mulvey, the cinema establishes and serves only the scopophilia of the male members of the audience, while the visual pleasure of the female members of the audience remains unconsidered. These structures, however, conflict with the career profile of the female spy. Spies need to be good observers, therefore they usually possess optical devices, such as night-vision equipment, telescopic sights, cameras, etc., that extend their visual capabilities and consequently their visual power. As a result, such characters, when female, might present a potent key to reverse traditional ways of looking in cinema.
3 Optical devices as mentioned above not only present visually attractive props for the camera, they also form a kind of connection with the camera by introducing a self-reflective quality, as can be seen in early crime films (Schlüpmann 115). The same holds true for the espionage film in general as crime film and espionage film can be regarded as closely related genres (Brockhaus-Enzyklopädie 12: 510). There is, nevertheless, a slight difference in character typology: in contrast to police officers or detectives, a female spy can deviate further from postulated norms and is allowed to demonstrate a more violent behaviour (Dole 94).
4 Let us now turn to the factor of self-referentiality in more detail. I agree with Robert Stam's understanding of the term "reflexive art", that is, an art form that calls attention to its status as a construct by inviting the audience to examine its design and materiality (1). Of course, reflexivity cannot only affect the visual level of espionage films, but also that of the narrative, as the character of the female spy alludes to the literary stereotype of crime fiction narrator, whereupon the manifested gender reversal provides a possibility for self-reflexivity of the narrator's position (Schlüpman 136).
5 In my analysis of interrelated aspects of gender and self-referentiality in espionage films, I will focus on the first kind of the female spy - the helpful spy. I have chosen as examples the following two films: The Long Kiss Goodnight (Renny Harlin, USA 1996) and Shining Through (David Seltzer, USA 1992). My aim is to examine in the light of Laura Mulvey's theories the degree to which the potential of inversion has been realised and the resulting self-reflective elements. Although The Long Kiss Goodnight as a secret agent film and Shining Through as an anti-Nazi film belong to different sub-genres, they are related by their moments of self-reflective questioning of gender roles.