lesbians: *are having lesbian sex in a korean movie that renounces male sexuality as gross and objectifying by literally explicitly stating so through text and camera lense*
sarah, the midwestern feminist with terf bangs: m a l e g a z e
THANK YOU
Also I saw some people complaining because the director is male… If they had done just a tiny little bit of research they would know that Park Chan-Wook took all measures to make it as comfortable and ‘intimate’ as possible for the two actresses: all male crew members were away, in fact there was only one female staff member present in the room during in the sex scenes, even Park himself wasn’t there!!
From Vice:
We had all the male members of the crew leave the set — even the DP and the operator — and we would use a remote hand to remotely control the camera. For that day we hired a female boom operator. Next to the set we prepared a private room so the actors could take a rest between shooting. It would be dimly lit and it would have candles and wine and some snacks so they would really relax and take time out if they needed to. During the shoot I try not to be greedy, and if I think I’ve got it, I quickly move on to make sure I only do one or two takes. On the days I would shoot like this, all the male crew members thought it was Christmas, because they didn’t have to work.
From The Film Stage: (rape mention cw)
Park Chan-wook: You know how important these reading sessions, that Hideko is part of, are for this film? These scenes are designed to literally show what “male gaze” is, and, in a very palpable manner, it shows you what the violence of gaze can do. Even if Hideko was wearing layers of kimono, it doesn’t matter; she might as well have been exposed in the nude in front of those men. So, rather than touch her, these men are meters away from the stage where she’s giving the reading — but, in these reading sessions, they might as well have been gang-raping her. So for a filmmaker who is trying to make a film about the violence of male gaze, and to make a movie that is a criticism of these kinds of violent male gaze, really, how careful we have been and how much thought we have put into designing these scenes of Hideko, who’s been the subject of such violent male gaze all her life.
When she finds her true love and has this moment of love, and makes love, how careful would I have been not to make that moment yet another object of voyeuristic male gaze? To depict a woman as having sexual desires, in a frank manner — to be showing a nude female body, and show it in a beautiful way — does that automatically make this fall into the male gaze category? I think that’s where the problem begins, and this kind of thought, in itself, is a “male gaze” of looking at this issue.
