Fraiming women : examining the male gaze in Nadine Labaki's films

Abstract

This study explores the representation of women in Nadine Labaki’s films: Caramel (2007), Where Do We Go Now (2011), and Capernaum (2018). It examines the three films via Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze and analyzes the position that the female occupies in the narrative structure and their treatment within the cinematic discourse. This thesis aims at proving that although Nadine Labaki is often referred to by critics as a feminist filmmaker dealing with women’s issues, obsessions, concerns, and difficulties, as they face patriarchal society, her image, form, narration, and cinematic écriture complies with masculine voyeuristic standards. This research reexamines the psychoanalytic theory derived from Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan that Mulvey uses to support her notion of the patriarchal gaze. It adopts the discourse analysis technique to investigate the three movies written, acted, and directed by Labaki through the lens of male gaze theory with its three parameters: the narrative, the characters, and the form (cinematic écriture). In addition to discourse analysis, the researcher triangulated the data with two interviews conducted with key informants well-versed in film critique and cinema expertise. The findings uncovered the feminism in the characters and narrative of Labaki’s first two films, while the male voyeuristic cinematic écriture has been found in the three films under-study. Finally, the interviews further proved Labaki’s use of camera framing to give the voyeuristic impression.