Returning the Gaze: The Character of Vera in 'The Skin I live' in by Pedro Almodóvar
Abstract
In this essay, the dialectic between male and female gaze in movies is studied through the analysis of the character Vera in Pedro Almodóvar’s La piel que habito [The Skin I live in] (2011). The movement of the camera, its angles and takes are what materially establish a gaze and construct characters in films. The notion of male gaze developed by Laura Mulvey in the 1970s is considered, as corresponding to the objectification of female characters for masculine pleasure. This notion is supplemented with Jill Soloway’s definition of the female gaze as an attempt to counter this perspective. Through Vera, who is a transsexual character, Almodóvar challenges and breaks this dialectic while thematizing an enlarged notion of femininity capable of establishing a queer gaze.
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