Roger Vadim’s Barbarella (1968) was made during the evolution of the feminist movement. One could possibly suggest that this was a reaction from patriarchy to the women's liberation movement; if they weren't going to be victims, then they would have to be objects. This Hollywood science fiction narrative sends out many stir ups on the male gaze, which I will elaborate later. Barbarella, played by the sex symbol of the 1960’s Jane Fonda (Eric, 2000), represents the human race was set on a mission to find Durand-Durand. Durand-Durand, played by Milo O’Shea, is a missing scientist who holds a thread to planet earth. Set in the year 40,000AD, Barbarella encounters men during her mission and even goes about sexually pleasing them by engaging in sexual-like activities with them in order to get her closer to Durand-Durand.

In the opening credits, we see Barbarella te

Gertrud Koch, one of the feminist film theorists, also noted that women could also enjoy the image of female beauty in the film. With the vamp being exported from Europe and integrated into the Hollywood cinema, it revitalizes the female spectator the pleasure experience of the mother as the love object in early childhood. Koch perceived the vamp being a phallic woman rather than a fetishized woman, meaning the female spectator could now identify themselves with the woman in the film thus denying the male gaze (Cook & Bernick, 1999).

Moving onto the analysis of the active/male and the passive/female and how this is essentially exists in a classic film narrative. Using the Oedipal complex, Freud found a way which he can elucidate a child’s acquisition of ‘normal’ adult sexuality. Freud was mainly concerned with the male child’s Oedipal phase, which according to Jacques Lacan, is the latter stage of the mirror phase.

Some topics in this essay:
Freud Id, Jacques Lacan, Cook Bernick, Richard Allen, Jacques Lacan’s, Gertrud Koch, Laura Mulvey, Gloria Revelle, Milo O’Shea, Roger Vadim’s, mulvey 1975, male gaze, hayward 2002, mirror phase, film theorists, cook bernick 1999, cook bernick, bernick 1999, ego ideal, studlar 1985, cowie 1997, feminist film theorists, object ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ studlar, studlar 1985 cook, ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ studlar 1985,