in Blonde Venus and Desperately Seeking for Susan

As audiences, we subconsciously identify the male protagonists and take female as spectacle during the film watching, due to the social function of narrative films. (Turner 72)1 Thus feminists have been slashing the objection of female body in "male gaze" in the narrative films over the decades. Male gaze is in term of the fetishistic scopophilia and sadistic voyeurism. Fetishistic scopophilia deals with male visual control over females for the aesthetic presentation, which influence the presence of female body in films. And sadistic voyeurism is the erotic gaze in pains, which shapes the female characterization in films. Thus, the female characters in narrative films share the common pattern Ð beautiful and fragile, in other words, not intellectual and dependent on men.

Nevertheless, Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus and Madonna in Desperately Seeking for Susan smash this pattern. They breaks the rule first by being the leading characters in films and such concentration of the female protagonist also means the depiction of male as peripheral to the plot. ( Turner 171)2 Another breaking-rule is their char

And within the narrative film's social function (Turner 72)8, we naturally identify with the conventions what our society and films unconsciously install in our minds. Under living in this male dominant world, we have been educated to accept male superiority and female subordination so it's easy for audience to read Desperately Seeking for Susan in male gaze regardless gender difference. Such reading irritates feminists and they condemn the initial societal negative message attached to Susan by MadonnaÐ material girl image.

"Your body is a battleground." Barbara Kruger's motif fits for Madonna's case.

There is great contradiction. On the one hand, Madonna exposes her body for challenge male gaze to take female body as the sex object while she takes female body as nature and share the beauty of it. On the other hand, Madonna fulfills male gaze and their voyeuristic desire to see the object. She may fall into the trap of male expectation of female sexuality.

Though in the opening sequences of the Blonde Venus begins with the naked blondes' swimming, what audiences enjoy watching is not the stripped body itself but the way it is presented. The art is in seeming. This pattern carries tremendous pleasures through the Blonde Venus, we appreciate Marlene's legs from the perspective of identifying

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Approximate Word count = 2570
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)