Gone Girl, Vertigo and Mulvey

I recently watched Gone Girl in theaters, and I realized that the movie had many stylistic similarities to Vertigo. However, I think Gone Girl both agrees and challenges Mulvey’s “male gaze”. It also appears to point out that gender (and ultimately marriage) are performative, just like Butler claims.

In the opening scenes of Vertigo, there is a picture of a woman’s eye gazing at the audience. This is similar to Gone Girl, where Amy Elliott turns to gaze at the audience as well. The pictures of these two scenes are below.

However, both are very different in how they are presented. What could this mean? I think that the Vertigo reinforces the male gaze. The shot just features an eye – just a body part. This is in line with the body part objectification that Mulvey discusses in her essay. At first, The image from Gone Girl appears to fit the same mold. The scene is Amy’s husband looking at her, wondering about her. However, the rest of the movie suggests to me that this shot is meant to suggest otherwise.

If you haven’t seen Gone Girl yet, please don’t read any further (spoiler alert!). Amy Elliott spends the first half of Gone Girl as the perfect woman. She’s blonde, beautiful, poised – everyone loves her. The camera often focuses on her face a little longer than any other character. She is shown in a bathtub and having sex.  She is deemed “America’s Sweetheart” by the media when she is kidnapped. Her picture is shown many times by the media and for the viewer, forcing the audience to fixate on her. Her parents even write children’s books about how perfect she is. The audience falls in love with Amy, thinking her a victim, suggesting that we are viewing her through the male gaze.

However, quite the contrary turns out to be true – we find out that Amy was never kidnapped and that she had manipulated the whole situation from the beginning. In fact, she has manipulated the viewer into viewing her through the male gaze in the first place. When she reveals her “true self” to the audience (when she is in hiding), she is never seen in a “beautiful” or “sexual” way again. In fact – she is quite repulsive. She gains weight, has bruises on her face, her hair is a mess, and she’s even covered in blood a large part of the movie. The male gaze no longer exists, and we see this character for who she actually is. I remember watching this part of the movie and feeling disgusted by the sympathy I had for her at the beginning – it’s almost like the director was trying to subvert the male gaze and make the audience realize how disgusting and deceiving it can be. I don’t think any viewer likes her by the end of the movie.

Coming back to the scenes I discussed above, I think the Gone Girl scene puts Amy in a position of power, not in a male gaze. This shot shows her whole face, not just an eye. The last scene shows her gazing at the audience just as she had originally – which suggests she is gazing at you – she is the one really in control. We know that she is watching Nick’s every move. This repetition of showing the same shot of her at the beginning and the end bring new meaning, reinforcing the idea that Amy is in control.

Audrey Elliott

There are constant themes throughout the movie about how marriage is performative. Amy’s husband has to “act” in front of the media to bring Amy home. He has to “act” around his friends when he is having an affair. Amy and him “acted” like the perfect boy or girl so that they could attract each other. She becomes the “cool girl”, even though that’s not her at all. He had to act the part of the husband (and her, the innocent wife) and the end of the move, although he feared for his life.