Film Opinion: I Feel Pretty...But Only In Slow Motion

Amy Schumer’s latest comedy I Feel Pretty, has come under widespread (and not unjustified) criticism for treating a perfectly average women with derision for believing herself beautiful.

However, in looking at the visual language that I Feel Pretty uses to convey beauty and confidence, the film becomes a clear example of the often-ludicrous nature of cinema’s male gaze. Coined by Laura Mulvey, the term ‘the male gaze’ refers to the act of depicting the world and particularly women from a heterosexual, masculine point of view, where women are depicted as objects of male pleasure.

One scene in I Feel Pretty shoots a newly confident Renee Barrett in slow motion, strutting and twirling though a lobby in heels and a mini-skirt, obviously feeling good about herself. In the film, this scene is meant to be funny because Renee’s deluded self-confidence is at odds with her average appearance (because average-looking women shouldn’t feel attractive, get it? No, nor do I).

But what the scene unwittingly highlights is the ludicrous way filmmakers often portray women, period. Like Renee in this sequence, female characters are routinely shot from the legs up, the camera scanning up the woman’s body so that she isn’t introduced as a complete human being, but a collection of body parts to be ogled. Michael Bay is a particular fan of this technique.

Beautiful women are also often presented in slow motion, so the audience has more time to objectify them – think of Natalie Portman walking down the street in slow motion in Closer, while men turn to ogle her, or Mena Suvari’s slow-mo dance in American Beauty (now made eminently more creepy given that the scene portrayed now-disgraced Kevin Spacey as lusting after a minor).

Slow-motion is only more commonly used during action sequences with male characters – but there, we’re not slowing down the action to admire what the men look like, but what they’re doing. Men get to act, women get to stand there and look pretty – or walk, if they’re lucky.

The slow-motion strut scene seen in I Feel Pretty, which echoes similar post-makeover slow-mo struts from The Devil Wears Prada and She’s All That, also highlights the singular way in which women’s confidence is portrayed.

Meanwhile, on-screen it’s often indicated that men’s confidence comes from their sense of strength, capability, intelligence and/or success. A woman who is secure in herself must be given The Establishing Scene: here she is, striding along in high heels and flipping her hair like she’s on a catwalk – a confidence entirely rooted in her appearance! These visual techniques underscore the difference in how men and women are treated on-screen – and how women watching films are forced to constantly view themselves as objects. Noted critic John Berger summarised it nicely in Ways Of Seeing when he wrote “Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women, but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”

The #MeToo movement has highlighted how women are viewed and treated off-screen, while the #TimesUp initiative aims to achieve gender equality in the amount of women represented both behind and in front of the camera. But equality isn’t just about increasing the number of women on-screen; it’s also about examining how they are portrayed and viewed. If the camera itself becomes our entry into a cinematic world, it’s worth paying attention to what it’s focusing on.