Bearing the Beyond: Women and the Limits of Language in Stanley Cavell — Page 7:
31 In the next paragraph Cavell writes how in The Philadelphia Story the thematic question of whether this woman is made of flesh and blood or whether she is a (distant) goddess is formally inflected by the camera's studying of Katharine Hepburn's body — preferably in the presence of water, for example, when she produces a trained dive into the swimming pool. I refer to these passages because they seem to present us with the idea that the creation of the woman through the camera is a technical version of the creation of the woman through a male gaze.
32 Yet things are more complex. First, according to Cavell, the camera exposes allegedly "naturally" the "feminine aspect of the masculine physiognomy (and though I am for some reason more hesitant about his, the masculine aspect of the feminine)" (Pursuits 224). He links the intuition that the camera reveals the opposite sexual nature of its human subjects with the following two ideas. On the one hand, the camera reveals "an otherwise invisible self" (Pursuits 224). The camera and its focus on human bodily expression can present us with images of the potentials of the human self that are not usually seen, or not open to the "normal view." For example, the distinctions of societal order (in clothes, reputations, etc.) are not relevant for the eye of the camera. "It is this property of film that allows, say, Fellini to discover in the face of a contemporary Roman butcher the visage of an ancient Emperor" (Pursuits 158). On the other hand, the luminosity of the objects presented to the camera, points to an "inherent self-reflexiveness or self-referentiality of objects filmed" (Pursuits 224). The objects participate in their representation: the camera is not completely in control of the creative act. Moreover, the presence of those objects on the screen refers for Cavell to their absence. They point to the possibility that in the presentation of human beings on screen we are also confronted with what is absent or invisible in their gendered desire — something like the "other side" of each gender.[7]"The reflexiveness of objects harks back, in my mind, to the earlier claim in<em> The World Viewed</em> that objects on a screen appear as held in the frame of nature, implying the world as a whole. The sexual reflexiveness of human beings would accordingly suggest the individual as expressing humanity as such, what in <em>The Claim of Reason</em> I call the internal relation of each human being with all others" (<em>Pursuits</em> 225).
33 Secondly, the gaze of the camera should not be seen as fixed and fixing. Cavell produces a list of powerful gazes of woman on screen, transforming men on screen with their look. He ends this list with "Mae West delivering her line running, 'Come up and see me' — precisely unimaginable, I take it, as an offer to be gazed at dominatingly" (Contesting 124). Cavell invites us to imagine that these women are empowered to "instruct the camera in its ways of looking — to, say, the extent that men can be instructed" (Contesting 125). Thus the gaze of the camera is not conceived as the "appropriative, unreciprocated gaze of men," but rather in line with the creative and reciprocating gazes of the men in the comedies of remarriage themselves (Contesting 123). Moreover, some of the films present one partner in the leading pair as surrogate director. For example, "in Lady Eve it is the woman who directs the action (as it is in Bringing Up Baby); the man is her audience, gulled and entranced as a film audience is apt to be. In It Happened One Night it is the man who directs, and the woman is not so much his audience as his star" (Pursuits 107). Thus, it is not clear whether the gaze of the camera presents a point of view of a male or female director.
34 In sum, the content of the comedies as well as the camera work present us with a complex of agency: the female stars expose themselves to the objectifying gaze of the male viewers while returning this gaze and claiming reciprocity. In so doing they subvert the logic of objectification and introduce the viewing man and the audience into a web of reciprocity. This subtle play of gazing in the comedies supports the mesh of verbal exchanges, which creates and acknowledges a vision of community in mutual participation. The comedies therefore in form, verbal exchanges, and content create an alternative vision to the skeptical objectification of desire and knowledge.
Bearing the Beyond
Visualizing the Sublime
35 It is clear however from this presentation that in Cavell's reading the female stars bear a special burden and posses their own power for moving the skeptical viewers out of a desire structured on the model of objectification into one structured on the ideal of participation. They have to bear the risk of exposing themselves to a partner who may or may not see them outside the confines of skeptical desire and knowledge. They need a man who is capable of revealing his own limitations, like Walter who declares in the movie His Girl Friday "that his own power is only mortal, without certainty, without insurance" (Cavell, Pursuits 180). The leading men in the comedies are thus not only enabling transformation in their partners. They acknowledge for themselves the need for change and the acceptance of finitude.