Heroines of the Gaze: Gender and Self-Reflexivity in Current Espionage Films

Abstract

The two female spies central to the movies The Long Kiss Goodnight (Renny Harlin, USA 1996) and Shining Through (David Seltzer, USA 1992), indicate that it is time to re-scrutinize Laura Mulvey's now famous analysis of gender-specific ways of looking in Hollywood cinema. Spys - male or female - need to be good observers and usually they are also in possession of optical devices extending their visual capabilities and hence their visual power. Psychoanalytical approaches, however, fail to explain such a character: the female spy provided with optical devices and weapons cannot be explained away as a phallic and therefore 'false' woman, but transgresses the binary logic by means of her ability to form assemblages with weapons, special devices and hings found.