1.1 Introduction
The historic power of the pregnant womanâs gaze to distort the imagination is likely as powerful as the male gaze of cinema and visual media, with its perceived ability to objectify, or unconsciously distort, oneâs body-image. From Greek antiquity until the early twentieth century in Europe and North America, a pregnant womanâs gaze was thought to hold the power to corrupt the bodily appearance of the foetus within and distort paternal perception, effects that were often believed to result from her looking at works of art (Huet 1993; Shildrick 2000; Brownlee et al. 2001; Ellis 2017). The pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles thought that a pregnant woman gazing upon statues could influence the appearance of the foetus; father of modern surgery Ambroise ParĂ© was convinced the pregnant uterus had imaginary power, while subsequent Rationalist and Enlightenment thinkersâincluding Descartes, Voltaire, Diderot and Hegelâlikewise accepted that the maternal gaze could form a literal impression onto the foetus within as a result of gazing at a desired or feared object (Huet 1993; Toor 2007; Terrall 2012). Belief in the reality of the maternal imagination was not universal, however, and debate about their potential was at its height in Europe in the first decades of the eighteenth century, the final stages of the European and American witch-hunts (Shildrick 2000; Toor 2007). The persecution of witches can be linked to belief in the maternal imagination, as their alleged crime was a corruption and manipulation of the victimâs body-imageâwith the ability to manipulate and visually castrate a manâs self-image of his penis being one of a witchâs more arresting powers (Sprenger and Kramer 1971; Rodnite Lemay 1992). Concomitant with both the witch-hunts and heightened debate about the theory of the maternal imagination is the rise of proto-cinematic inventions including the trick mirror, magic lantern and camera obscura and the hoped-for power of visualising technologies that, like cinema today, could suspend the spectatorâs disbelief in an illusion (Stafford 1993).
This book will argue that the historic belief in the power of the pregnant womanâs imagination to manipulate and literally impress an appearance onto the foetus, as it intersects with the witch-hunts as well as the rise of proto-cinematic inventions, can be linked to the male gaze and the manner in which film theory has developed psycho-sexual theories of the unconscious to argue that cinematic representation can corrupt and distort the spectatorâs body-image, especially in a gendered sense. The maternal imagination and early modern witchcraft are haunted by a literal-mindedness towards images (Stafford 1993). We can find an analogy with this literal-mindedness in the idea that misogynist film and media representations can erase an original body-image perspective and ensure the continuation of the patriarchal unconscious, as succinctly described by feminist poet and political activist Robin Morgan: âWe have no bodiesâŠbecause they are defined, posed, abused, veiled, air-brushed or metaphorised by menâ (in Grey 2011). Another perspective onto the totalising power of the patriarchal unconscious is given in the words of feminist film scholar Mary Ann Doane: âThe supreme achievement of patriarchal ideology is that it has no outsideâ (1980: 50). While the psychoanalytic model of feminist film theory has had enormous and important impact on our understanding of cinema and other forms of visual media, both inside and outside the academy, this book will argue against the literal-mindedness of the common sense image of objectification by developing the early modern history of the maternal imagination and the witch-hunt to question the terms on which the patriarchal unconscious has been constructed.
Common sense, for Gilles Deleuze, is a category of recognition tied to the philosophical reliance on a sense of the implicit, the presuppositional and the natural (1994). Deleuze thus distinguishes common sense from the act of thinking, where the latter is not a natural given but something that requires theorisation, argument and provocation. His provocation is that we should not assume we are naturally or automatically thinking when we are having thoughts: âIt cannot be regarded as a fact that thinking is the natural exercise of a faculty, and that this faculty is possessed of a good nature and a good will. âEverybodyâ knows very well that in fact men think rarely, and more often under the impulse of a shock than in the excitement of a taste for thinkingâ (132). Deleuze argues that challenging common sense does not, in this respect, come naturally to the mind and that it thus demands questioning on the basis of what is claimed âin principleâ and ânot on the basis of empirical objectionsâ (135).
The prism of the early modern history of the maternal imagination and witchcraft allows us to rethink principled presuppositions about the patriarchal power of cinema and media. Two intersecting common sense principles are called into question here. The first principle, generally taken as a given within film and media theory, is the belief in the ubiquity of visual culture and its pedagogical impact (Jay 2002). In its broadest sense, cinema and media is typically understood to shape perception of reality to the extent that there is no objective reality outside of mediated visual culture (Jay 2002). As described by cultural studies scholar Douglas Kellner, visual culture is a âprofound and often misperceived source of cultural pedagogy: [Media] contribute to educating us how to behave and what to think, feel, believe, fear, and desire â and what not toâŠmedia are forms of pedagogy that teach us how to be men and womenâ (2011: 7). In relation to film theory specifically, this opens onto the question of how theories of perception generate presuppositions about the relation between the body of the spectator and the cinematic image (Elsaesser and Hagener 2015).
In particular, the principle of a patriarchal ideological powerâwhich can usurp the spectatorâs internal perception of their sense of selfâintersects with the common sense image of the organising and determinative role that cinema and broader visual culture is thought to play in shaping our perception. Necessitating continued theorisation, debate and discourse to undermine the objectifying power of the male gaze over the body, the study of body-image is a field of inquiry common to both the humanities and the sciences.
In the sciences, the notion of objectification exists in psychology and psychiatry as a theory that understands the internalisation of anotherâs perspective as forming the primary basis for beliefs and views about the self (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997). In the humanities, the theory of the psycheâs image of the body usurped by cinema and media was originally developed through theories of the subject and depends on psychoanalytic theories of the unconscious, as well as the Marxist theory of commodification (Mulvey 1975, 2013; Doane 2013). The limits and problems with the use of the psychoanalytic unconscious to surmount the theory of the male gaze have been acknowledged, passionately interrogated and challenged through numerous critical responses, notably in reception theory, which understands the spectator as an individual and as the product of cultural, material and historical forces beyond capture by the psychoanalytic model (Stacey 2013; Staiger 2000); feminist phenomenology, which aims to capture a spectatorâs embodied response to a film (Sobchack 1992); and the queer gaze, which troubles the sexed dichotomy of the original male gaze (Evans and Gamman 1995). However, the assumption of an implicit patriarchal power that requires critique arguably remains common sense and unchallenged by the historical perspective offered by the early modern prism of the imagination that can question the terms on which the patriarch...