Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (Shunya Ito, 1972)“The concept of looking back at the male gaze and b
Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (Shunya Ito, 1972)“The concept of looking back at the male gaze and becoming an image in conflict with the routine domination of the prison system and the male violence over women’s bodies in movies of this genre, is most resonant in the first of the series, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion. In this film, Scorpion is presented as this angel of death whose karmic justice will be wrought by her own hand. She is constructed with similarities to the ghostly harbingers of Masaki Kobayashi’s moral horror anthology, Kwaidan. […] There rises a feeling of danger that makes the film exciting, honest and bare. As if Kaji is in a battle with the movie itself for her own space and agency in the confining bars of one of genre cinema’s most vile subgenres, but don’t women always find a way to create their own home in a world that’s less than kind to us? We do, and so does Meiko Kaji in the subgenre, and Scorpion in the film. With the deliberate intention of foregrounding an audience conduit through the eyes of Kaji, the camera amplifies her ability to break through the male gaze and create an environment of her own invention. […] Kaji’s ability to so completely realize the emotional vitality and anger exclusively through the use of her eyes deeply resembles Maria Falconetti’s performance as Joan of Arc. Both carry the complete image and narrative of the film through an ocular dexterity that crystallizes what audiences should be feeling.” (x) -- source link
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