Page 207 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

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and Spectatorship complicates and, at the same time, opens up the future research
agenda.
In the second half of her book, Mayne presents a series of case studies meant to
build upon her theoretical reflections. However, since she has abandoned apparatus
theory’s overarching indictment of Hollywood for more ‘specific local studies’,
her own work lacks the excitement of such totalizing conclusions about the
operation of power and ideology today. The chapters take up in turn the major
issues of spectatorship: textual analysis, intertextuality, reception, and subcultures
as critical audiences. In general, the chapters constitute a series of thoughtful
explorations, but they never resolve the question of the relation between textual
power and the audience’s resistance to any one set of imposed meanings.
Chapters 5, 6, and 7 present a series of close readings of cinematic texts and the
various commercial discourses which form a permanent penumbra to Hollywood’s
stars. Against apparatus theory, Mayne argues that the gendered spectator positions
constructed in films are more multifarious than the simple dichotomy of active
male viewer and passive female spectacle. Furthermore, she draws explicitly on
post-structuralist theory to assert that cinematic texts are necessarily contradictory
and open to varied interpretations. However, films also attempt to police their own
meanings, deter illicit readings, and establish closure. Thus, despite her criticism
of apparatus theory, Mayne reaffirms a determinacy and, hence, power to the film
text.
Chapter 6 is an intertextual analysis of the variegated commercial discourses
involved in the production of Bette Davis as a star. Attention to a range of texts
typically functions to undermine the idea of a single hegemonic code imposed upon
the viewer. Here Mayne paradoxically points to a unitary narrative that seems to
transverse the diverse representations surrounding Bette Davis. From her multiple
starring roles to fan magazine gossip to autobiographical accounts, Bette Davis
often assumes the image of a more active female. But, while both apparatus theory
and its critics might valorize such an image of female self-determination, Mayne
suggests they need to reflect upon the content and goals of such activity. In the
case of Davis, her assertive autonomy often takes the form of rivalry and
competition with other women.
Chapter 7, labeled an investigation of ‘white spectatorship’, scrutinizes the way
race still operates as a powerful signifier in Hollywood’s fantasies for an audience
that is implicitly white. In her fascinating discussion, Mayne suggests that Blacks
function, in part, as signs of an inclusive redemptive community and, in part, as
liminal figures, marking boundaries and transitions. Since the nineteenth century,
African-Americans have been depicted in commercial popular culture as the sign
of the primitive, still in tune with their raw instincts (see Rogin, 1992), As carriers
of this surcharge of primitive energy, they are often invoked in such films as
Ghosts and Field of Dreams to reinvigorate a rationalized white civilization that
has lost its expressive and imaginative powers. Feminist film theory has long
recognized that the assumed viewer for Hollywood’s movies is male. Now Mayne
points out that not only is the viewer gendered, but he is also implicitly white.