Issue 37
Vanishing Points

Dismantling the Voyeur’s Intrusion: The Position of the Gaze in the Films of Chantal Akerman

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  • Ariadna Moreno Pellejero
Ariadna Moreno Pellejero
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Bio
DOI: https://doi.org/10.63700/1046

Published 2024-01-31

Keywords

  • Chantal Akerman,
  • Voyeur,
  • Gaze,
  • Feminisms,
  • Gender Studies

How to Cite

Moreno Pellejero, A. (2024). Dismantling the Voyeur’s Intrusion: The Position of the Gaze in the Films of Chantal Akerman. L’Atalante. Journal of Film Studies, (37). https://doi.org/10.63700/1046

Copyright (c) 2024 L'Atalante. Journal of film studies

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This article explores alternatives to the voyeur’s gaze represented in the arts through some of Chantal Akerman’s films in which the director dismantles such a gaze usually associated with certain intrusion and secrecy in moments of intimacy and eroticism of women in the plastic, literary and visual arts, and that still today raises reflections around the gaze in cinema, mass media or social networks. The studies on Akerman’s cinema have given importance to gender issues, self-representation, hyperrealism or postmodernity in her films, without focusing on the reflection around voyeurism, fundamental in her ethical and aesthetic approach on how to look the other and how to present herself. In this article, we will approach the position of the gaze in the director’s cinema, focusing on the films Hôtel Monterey (1972), Les Rendez-vous d’Anna, (1978), and La Captive (2000), with which we will analyse how Akerman approaches and presents the other of herself, how she confronts the character-voyeur or evidence him to the people on the other side of the screen.

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