The film vignette "Armide", by Jean-Luc Godard, in the film Aria, combines techniques often employed by pornography with an "unreadability", so that, for some viewers, the film could be misconstrued as being pornographic.
Godard's film challenges the use of the male gaze as it relates to pornography and film in general. Mulvey explains how traditional film has structured this gaze:
In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy (sic) on to the female figure which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed. (808-809)Godard over-emphasises the voyeurism in his film, using it not just as a structure within the film but as part of the "narrative" of the film itself. While women pose nude for the bodybuilders/viewer, Godard inserts shots of particular bodybuilder's faces. In one of these shots, a key light accentuates one bodybuilder's eyes as he gazes off-screen. In another, the repetitive bobbing up and down of a man's head while he stares off-screen combines thrusting sexual imagery with a voyeuristic gaze. These shots comment on the male gaze, constructing them in what could be construed as eyeline matches between the gazes and the naked women. In this way, the film acts as a commentary on the medium of pornography while using the pornographic techniques of voyeurism at the same time. There are a number of images in the film alluding to sexual intercourse, such as the pumping up and down of various weights and/or bodies. There are voyeuristic aspects to the film where the women undress or overtly bear their bodies without seeming to be aware of the camera. A number of the concepts in the film are quite disturbing when taken out of context: violence (the image of the knife and its proposed use); the inter-titles used, such as "My greatest wish was that thou mightest lie dead"; objectification (the women posing in front of the men, and therefore "in front of" the viewer as well); degradation (the women scrubbing the floor on their hands and knees). All of these things point to the conclusion that this film is a pornographic film. Yet it is not, the clearest reason being that the film strives for a high level of articulation. Pornography relates to the viewer on an emotional level, while "art" is distinguished by relating to the viewer on an intellectual level. In fact, the film seems to criticise the very thing that it can be accused of being.
Godard does not give us the simplistic "man as voyeur, woman as object" version of the male gaze. He depicts vacillation on the part of the women between wanting the gaze (they try desperately to attract the men's attention) and not wanting it (the references to the hatred they feel). The attempts to use the knife and then the withdraw; the "oui/non" dialectic at the end of the film; the inter-titles -- these all contribute to this indecision on the part of the women. In this way, through elaborate, sophisticated articulation, Godard attempts criticism of the male gaze, not just outright approval, or, for that matter, condemnation. The viewer is forced to react to the connotative context, not just the denotative content, thus becoming absorbed in a fairly high level of discourse with the film. This type of discourse would not, and in fact could not, be engaged with pornography that appeals directly to the emotions, for pornography accepts and exploits the male gaze as a given. And it is here where the artistry of "Armide" is revealed, beyond any simple notion of nudity and objectification -- whereas pornography only serves as a conduit of the male gaze, "Armide", while maintaining itself on the cusp of pornography, reveals itself as art through its problematic questioning of the gaze.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Screen Vol. 16, No. 3. Rpt. in Film Theory: An Introduction. Ed. Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1990. 803-816.
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