Sex and film, the two have always coexisted, and women are usually at the forefront of that duo.
Salma Hayek is considered one of the sexiest women alive for her stunning looks and overly sexual characters. But what if all that eroticism was manufactured to make her seem like a sex object?
Communications Professor Steve Macek said that the male gaze frames the way we see women on-screen.
“I think one of the clues is whether or not what is being focused on is the face … or, say, certain erogenous zones in the body. Say there is a character on-screen and the camera is focusing on their backside or their chest or their groin or even their bare shoulder or something, that’s fetishistic,” said Macek.
Halle Berry is another example of a walking sexual figure in the 2000s and 2010s. She was the sultry Storm in the “X-Men” franchise; she was Bond girl Jinx in “Die Another Day” alongside Pierce Brosnan. Her work in “Monster’s Ball” even won her Best Actress at the 2002 Academy Awards.
In 2004, she starred in what is considered one of the worst films of all time, “Catwoman.” But this role is what solidified her fetishization in American cinema. Most of her roles, and Hayek’s, are about their bodies and their supposedly inherent sexual nature.
But what does that even mean? And is it a problem?
Film and Screen Studies Professor Chelsey Crawford said moments and roles like this are considered fetishization.
“Fetish is lust, is a desire that’s targeted toward something that doesn’t have anything to do with the individual,” said Crawford. “We (also) describe fetish as something that is unhealthy or taken to an unhealthy extreme.”
The overt fetishization of minority women, in particular, is continually present in modern film.
“I think conventionally, it’s far more customary now to have women of color to only exist as token sexual characters but I think it’s interesting that, from the perspective of whiteness, this can happen regardless,” said Crawford.
In a University of Exeter 2008 study by Jonathon E. Schroeder titled, “Fetishization,” objects or people who are fetishized “often symbolize control and release, power and helplessness, sexuality and infantilism.”
If thought about in this way, then the fetishization of minority women is a way for Hollywood directors and producers to control their identity off-screen and leave them helpless to objectification from audiences.
Macek said that “objectification is dehumanizing in and of itself so when somebody is valuing you just for your body or your looks you feel lessened. You feel like your identity is being denied and that’s especially hurtful and impactful for a group of women who have always been dehumanized in American history.”
Part of this can be attributed to the lack of representation in the directorial scene. In a 2019 Hollywood Diversity Report by the UCLA College of Social Sciences, only 1.3 out of every 10 film directors are of color and only 1.3 out of 10 film directors are female.
Crawford said this is part of the reason minorities and women are placed in a perspective of the white male gaze.
“There’s a very real question about the fact that only certain types of people are permitted to produce films in the United States and so the result is that every film is inherently viewed through the lens of whiteness, largely through the lens of masculinity and through the lens heteronormativity,” said Crawford. “If it’s a story involving a critical mass or predominant casting of white people, then that’s just a film for everyone and the people who can do films for everyone are white directors.”
Few movies have key characters that are women and people of color, unless the director is also a part of that minority group. An example could be the 2000 iteration of “Charlie’s Angels.”
Considering the film, which of the three women receives the least amount characterization and backstory information that is integral to the story and isn’t a subplot? The answer is Lucy Liu, the only minority main character.
She does earn a small B-plot that involves an interracial relationship, but that is glossed over and does not add anything important to the story itself. Furthermore, she fulfills the stereotype of the stoic, sexy, robotic Asian woman, which still makes itself present today.
Crawford and Macek agreed that there is a certain “rigidity” in the stereotypes of Asian-American women as two characterizations: the sexual, exciting, erotically aggressive woman, and the demure, passive schoolgirl.
Through the white male gaze, the excitement of the Asian woman, or any minority woman, lends to the lens of whiteness that creates the overarching control of fetishization.
“It’s all about representing, for whiteness, that people of color supposedly represent experience … they’re supposed to already exist with more knowledge of sexual practice just by being persons of color because that’s how whiteness … has been structured to view otherness,” said Crawford.
The embedded structure of “whiteness versus otherness” can create a norm that is harmful to those who do not fit into said norm.
“What is not white can be either completely eroticized and sexualized or rejected, monstrous and ugly, and there is no kind of in-between,” said Macek.
African American women tend to hold the brunt of hostility in the use of fetishization and dehumanization. Macek said that there are three categories these women are usually placed in: the passive and uneducated “Mammy,” the sex fiend “Jezebel” and the aggressive, emasculating “Sapphire.”
While the names for these stereotypes come from popular culture and sometimes racist depictions, it lends to a theory about black bodies, presented by Georgia State University’s Charleen Wilcox.
In said theory, there is a mask that people of color have veiled over themselves because of the “predetermined perception of (their) body because of racial stereotypes that help establish a racial hierarchy,” said Wilcox.
In essence, the theory states that people of color are fetishized because our culture leans on whiteness and white normativity to further emphasize differences between races.
This way of thinking can be applied to Latinas as well. From the hip shimmying and fruit-wearing Carmen Miranda to the sassy, cha-cha attitude of Sofia Vergara in “Modern Family,” sex is embedded into the Latina character.
Shortly after the beginning of the MeToo movement, Salma Hayek wrote an article in 2017 for the New York Times. It exposed her over-sexualization on the set of one of her most famous films, “Frida.” Harvey Weinstein produced the film and forced her to do things like “full-frontal nudity” and “getting naked with another woman.”
Macek responded to the article and said, “He was trying to force her to be a willing participant in her fetishization as a woman of color.”
This assertion of power through fetishization and sexual tension is all too common in Hollywood. But is there a way to change that?
Both Macek and Crawford agree that a culture shift needs to take place, however, they hold different ideas as to how we should do so.
Crawford said that at an institutional level, Hollywood will not change the ways they portray minority women “unless something significant has occurred to lead to a decline in the box office and earnings.”
“It seems like the film industry in the United States always has the excuse that it’s a mass media and they are just producing audiences and viewers with what they want,” said Crawford. “It’s Hollywood’s way of doing business.”
Macek, on the other hand, thinks that teaching children from a young age about the wrongdoings and inaccuracies of media will help diminish fetishization.
“There needs to be media literacy education and another thing that we need to address is the miseducation from the media in general,” said Macek.
The issue of fetishism in minority roles is unlikely to go away, but it can be prevented by proactively pointing out current issues. This would include having representation from all races, genders and sexualities.
When it comes to the issue of representation in all facets, and why we need it, Crawford put it in the simplest way she could: “When you’re not given the opportunity to look at different sides of an issue you side with the dominant version you are given. And that (caused) a lot of damage to individuals and to communities.”
