Mulvey Reading Essay

Bridget Jone's Diary

In this film the protagonist Bridget (Renee Zelweger) is the opposite of of the ideal women who is depressed with her life and goes on the search for Mr right as she is fed up of being lonely. She has two different choices one guy called Daniel (Hugh Grant) and another Mark ( Colin forth) and they both are complete opposite so we see her trying to please both as she struggles to keep up with Marks humble and reserved manner and Daniels as the wild hunk.

Bridget come across as bit of a spinster who doesn't take care in appearance and always looks miserable so challenges the male gaze as shes someone you wouldn't really notice. She reinforces the dependent female as she is lonely and her biological clock is ticking so in that sense you need a man. When she puts on her granny underpants shes is not fetishized and we can tell that she is not the ideal person to be sexually obejectfied and she has confidence issues and she says ' I shall not be paranoid with weight' as that is her lazy way of dealing with her weight issues. This reinforces that women are too into their appearance and think they should look a certain way to find a man so it injects into the females audiences head that this is what we should aspire to and they also come across as shallow and vain so could be seen as narcissist. When the scene of her and Daniel comes up, the audience take part in scopophilia and staring at each other is intra diegetic although most of it is the spectators gaze. The scene where she arrives at the party dressed up in the black bunny outfit would appeal to men' fantasy's so reinforces the need to please them therefore we live in a patriarchal society as they play up to the expectations of being a woman. Furthermore this could assume that the audience is male as the woman is self degrading herself and the male gaze is on Bridget. However the female gaze is also on Daniel when there is a scene of them together in bed but suggests that the male gaze is more imporant as Bridget is in the foreground and Daniel is in the background. Female audiences can have personal identification as well as escapisim.