Visual Pleasure in Rape and Revenge

I think it is interesting to consider Day of the Woman alongside Mulvey’s theories. For instance, Mulvey writes, traditionally, “the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium” while “the man controls the film phantasy and also emerges as the representative of power in a further sense: as the bearer of the look of the spectator, transferring it behind the screen neutralize the extra-diegetic tendencies represented by woman as spectacle" Day of the Woman does seem to at first present Jennifer in such a way. However, I think the film potentially complicates this through its second half, wherein Jennifer enacts revenge upon the men. Sadly, I do think the film goes as far as it could (probably because it is still an exploitation film made by a man and not a piece of feminist provocation), but I do think there is something to be said about Jennifer retaliating against the male gaze via her retaliation against her rapists. It is not mere coincidence that she castrates one of them in one of the film’s most iconic scenes.

I do think Clover makes a great point when she claims that if such films were made by men, they would be “derided as male-bashing,” By cloaking some feminist attitudes in the guise of a gruesome exploitation film, Day of the Woman is able to speak to a larger audience, even if its message becomes more muddled and less progressive in the process. I would like to see an extreme feminist remake of Day of the Woman as an experiment, though. What would one change about the film in order to make its troubled and problematized extreme politics as clear and definitive as possible?