Imagendering II

16      Elizabeth Hills' term assemblage offers an escape from the circular argumentation of such an approach (44). For her, it is no longer a question of which organ a body has at its disposal, but rather what it is that the corresponding body produces, what connections it makes and what it does. In connection with special devices and weapons, the body can form associations or assemblages. The focus of such a new mode of subjectivity lies in the dynamism. Whereas in a psychoanalytical model the heroine's losing her weapon even once would indicate "instability of ownership" and thus lack of phallus, with Hill's approach this must not have more pejorative implications than the male hero's losing his weapon (Dole 97).[8]By making this claim Dole is ultimately limiting herself to the psychoanalytical model. In line with Hills' stress on temporary alliances it is unimportant where Charly takes her telescopic sight and/or weapons from. However, if a woman with a weapon, or any active and aggressive woman, from a psychoanalytical point of view is been regarded as a false woman or a disguised man, then the element of falsification or of disguising should be looked at more closely - even when refusing such a view. And this is where Marie Ann Doane's term masquerade, from her essay "Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator" which appeared in 1982, does come in. Doane suggests that the representation of femaleness is to be understood as a masquerade, just as identification by a female audience with a male position was described as transvestism. Whether intentionally or simply in effect, masquerade carries the accoutrements of femaleness to extremes, thus duplicating the representation. This contains a disturbing effect for the image of the woman: "By destabilizing the image, the masquerade confounds this masculine structure of the look. It effects a defamiliarization of female iconography" (Doane 26). Moreover, in the business of espionage, the element of masquerade is part of the job, as a result of which female spies with their femaleness as masquerade always possess a duplicated representation (Schlüpmann 138 and Horvilleur 148).

17      Jeffrey A. Brown points out that Judith Butler also uses masquerade as a starting point in her discussion on gender as a cultural construct (53, 56).[9]In Butlers approach masquerade is not restricted to femininity as Neroni claims (193-194, Endnote 4). See also Brood and Benthien/Stephan. The element of construction and consequently the instability of the gender category is apparent in the parodistic staging of gender in drag performances. In his reading of Butler, Brown draws attention to the fact that drag performances can support essentialist perceptions of gender. This is based on an audience's knowledge of the original gender of the performer, and on the fact that transgressing gender borders is depicted as something comic or tragic (55). This critique does not quite apply to Butler in that, with its examples of gender parody, it does not confine itself only to drag: "The notion of an original or primary gender identity is often parodied within the cultural practices of drag, cross-dressing, and the sexual stylization of butch/femme identities" (174). Moreover, in drag performances there is also something like a doubling of representation when, for example, a woman plays a man who is playing a woman.[10]See Venus Boyz (Gabrielle Baur, CH/USA/D 2002) or older films that include variations of this theme such as Viktor und Viktoria (Reinhold Schänzel, D 1933) and the remake Victor; Victoria (Blake Edwards, USA 1982).

18      Accordingly, the action heroine allegedly disguised as a man is not to be read as a false woman but rather as a means to challenge traditional gender roles. In The Long Kiss Goodnight this challenging is not just due to the presence of a muscular and armed heroine, but also because the heroine has power of gaze at her disposal. This gets especially clear towards the end of the film. In collaboration with the criminals, the CIA plans a bogus terrorist attack, hoping to thereby being granted more money from the Congress following this incident. Also, in order to be able to blackmail Charly, they arrange for Charly's daughter Caitlin to be kidnapped. For their part, Charly and Mitch want to rescue Caitlin and want to prevent the attack. They succeed to free Caitlin, but in the shooting that follows she runs away and hides in a truck. Under the cover of darkness, Mitch tries to seize the truck that also contains the bomb intended for the attack. Charly, who is monitoring the situation through her telescopic sight, is in radio contact with Mitch and advises him where he should shoot, as well as supporting him with a few well-aimed shots. The camera assumes Charly's point of view, and accordingly, the image adopts a greenish colour and is intersected by the cross hairs of the telescopic sight. As we have already seen in the opening credits, the gun and the camera combine behind Charly's gaze, which is at the same time deadly and life preserving.

This configuration is the exact inversion of two comparable excerpts from the following films: Entrapment (Jon Amiel, USA 1999) with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery, and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Simon West, USA 2001) with Angelina Jolie. In each of these films the male protagonist possesses the optical device used to direct the female protagonist's movements.

19      In The Long Kiss Goodnight, notions of female scopophilia and control of the gaze are addressed directly and self-reflectively when Charly retorts to her main adversary, the father of her daughter who is trying to kill Charly and their daughter: "You're gonna die screaming and I'm gonna watch!'" At the end of the film she puts her "promise" into practice, thus reversing one of the conventions of horror films by casting the gazing murdering character as a woman, and the screaming dying victim as a man (Brown 57-58). The scene, with a touch of biting commentary, portrays Charly hanging onto a cable in front of a hoarding with a prominently displayed advert depicting a happy family (see fig. 8).