‘The woman displayed [on screen] has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium’(Mulvey, 841,1999). This particular quote from Mulvey is perfectly embodied through the 1957 Charles Walters film ‘High Society’. Grace Kelly not only was another golden girl of the classic Hollywood golden age, but she was also a creation to be looked at in awe and wonderment. Within the movie Kelly plays Tracy Lord, a wealthy and beautiful woman who is desired by many men around her. She indeed was an erotic subject for the male characters within the story. The scene which bodies Mulvey’s idea of cinema building the way a woman is to be looked at, is the scene in which
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The song is building the way she is to be looked at by idolising the woman (Tracy Lord), and calling her a sensation. This song is not only an erotic song between the two characters but an erotic song for the spectator’s in the audience and Grace Kelly. The song is prompting the audience to see Kelly as this sensational spectacle, asking for her to be looked at as pure light of beauty. As Macualay Connor longs for Tracy Lord, the audience longs for her as well. A post written in response to Susan A. Glenn’s book ‘Female Spectacle’, talks about the theory of which that the ‘viewer is assumed to be a heterosexual male, and the female body is rendered as an object of sexual desire which the viewer ogles’(Kairos, 2014, pg 1). This theory certainly applies to ‘You’re Sensational’ scene, not only through the points explained above but due to a line in the song ‘making love is quite the art, what you require is the proper squire to fire your heart’. This line talks about making love, and in turn talks about Tracy lord and her body, that would make the making love turn into ‘art’. As the quote explains, through this line of the song her female body becomes an object of sexual desire for the viewer to lust and long
The song is building the way she is to be looked at by idolising the woman (Tracy Lord), and calling her a sensation. This song is not only an erotic song between the two characters but an erotic song for the spectator’s in the audience and Grace Kelly. The song is prompting the audience to see Kelly as this sensational spectacle, asking for her to be looked at as pure light of beauty. As Macualay Connor longs for Tracy Lord, the audience longs for her as well. A post written in response to Susan A. Glenn’s book ‘Female Spectacle’, talks about the theory of which that the ‘viewer is assumed to be a heterosexual male, and the female body is rendered as an object of sexual desire which the viewer ogles’(Kairos, 2014, pg 1). This theory certainly applies to ‘You’re Sensational’ scene, not only through the points explained above but due to a line in the song ‘making love is quite the art, what you require is the proper squire to fire your heart’. This line talks about making love, and in turn talks about Tracy lord and her body, that would make the making love turn into ‘art’. As the quote explains, through this line of the song her female body becomes an object of sexual desire for the viewer to lust and long