Killer Joe and Gender Representations

Critical observations of unbalanced representations of gender In William Friedkin’s “Totally twisted deep-fried Texas redneck trailer park murder story” Killer Joe Freeman 1 British film theorist Laura Mulvey has spent her career using psychoanalysis to uncover pre-set molds and social expectations about gender and sexuality, to interpret classic Hollywood films. Mulvey has argued that there are three ways in which gender is represented within Hollywood cinema. First, she argues that women lack control and meaning, thus fueling their desire for the penis and power of a man.
She also states that women exist as a silent opposition to the dominant man (a child-bearing subject merely in relation to). Last, this essay will argue that women are meant to carry no significance of their own but acting as merely a threatening obstacle for the male to “overcome” or re-work (Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, 1975). Laura Mulvey and her views on female representations and gender roles within Hollywood films still prevail with fundamental relevance in modern Hollywood cinema.
This essay will underline the truths of Mulvey’s observations by using William Friedkin’s violently obscene farce Killer Joe (2011) to argue that Mulvey’s article, no matter how outdated, can still be used to address prominent and modern examples of unbalanced sexual representations within Hollywood cinema. On the surface it may seem very obvious that the men have the power in this film due to how the women are represented and treated.

But, as Killer Joe unfolds the question is whether it is the women with the power, or just an obvious desire for power fueled by their lack of meaning, control, and a phallus, as Mulvey has mentioned in previous years. The first man we see in the film is young and weak, wet, vulnerable, locked out of the trailer and getting violent. He is verbally demeaning towards his younger sister Dottie as if it were her fault that he is locked out, and her purpose to wake up and let him in.
Dottie Smith is the first female we see, and becomes a central subject for the ruthless male – she Freeman 2 lacks authority, lacks independence, and her fetal position is an obvious symbol for needing nurturing from a stronger being. Dottie is made to appear lonesome, without companionship or passion. As she lies there, Friedkin intends to focus on Dottie’s innocent aspects, such as her belongings: dollhouses, stuffed animals, pink curtains, teen-pop heartthrobs taped to the walls, although the young woman in the bed appears to be too old for such childish decor.
The second woman we see is placed directly in front of the camera by her unruly crotch. Her face appears after we become acquainted with her lower half, with makeup smeared down her cheekbones and her nipples exposed from under a thin sweat-stained shirt. The first two women in this film are polar opposites (one a fragile blonde virgin who sleeps with stuffed animals, and Sharla, an older brunette women a little too comfortable with her sexuality).
This difference expresses to us that this story will focus hugely upon the different aspects of woman as a representation, and highlight that Laura Mulvey’s views on women are still incredibly relevant throughout Friedkin’s film. Mulvey also mentions that the act of looking is a source of pleasure for the male scotophil. The explicit placement of the camera exhibits these women and their features to the audience as sexual spectacles while it solicits our attention, shapes our opinions about women to make “erotic lookers” out of us, and creates an unevenly distributed “power to look” (Mulvey, 1975).
The young male, Chris Smith, is hardly phased by his step mothers exposed vagina in his face because it is insinuated that he has either seen it before, seen many others like it before, or that she is so disgusting to him that her crotch means nothing to him sexually or even in regards as a human being. Chris is allowed to expose himself while urinating while Sharla yells for him to close the door. Chris’ penis is allowed to be exposed to women as a sign of power Freeman 3 and manipulation, while a woman’s exposed vagina is a sign of weakness, objectiveness, and sleaziness.
After all of this, she grabs a beer from the fridge before putting any clothes on. She is an over sexualized woman, a sexual spectical, while also appearing to be very masculine in her actions, which is to assume that certain actions and characteristics of both male and female are set in stone to shape our expectations of gender in Hollywood cinema. The beer before pants, the over exposure of her body, and the way Sharla speaks to her step-son are all actions that a man might follow through with, and she does this in a way that expresses her desire for authority, for a penis like the men she obviously idolizes.
Sharla and Chris physically fight as if they were both men – she desperately wants to fit into their world, but she is cast away like an unusable piece of meat once her duty to grab them beers has been filled. At thirteen minutes we see Dottie practicing Kung-Fu to a Jet Li movie on the television, which is an example of her wishing she were stronger, wishing she had the ability and the “balls” to fight against evil when in reality she is more like a play-thing for her Father, Ansel Smith, Chris and for Joe Cooper.
Women lack control, yet they desire it, desire the power of the dominant male gender, and Killer Joe establishes the female characters in the same way that Laura Mulvey had expressed this view in 1975 as being an underlying representation of women throughout Hollywood cinema. Mulvey also argues that women exist as a mere childbearing relation to the male, as a silent opposition that is not a gender of it’s own, but a male-like figure lacking in its significant source of superiority: the phallus.
Essentially, social constructions would argue that women are born more naturally gentle and nurturing because of their ability to breed, while men are naturally born with more acceptable aggression, enabling them to Freeman 4 “protect” their gentle mate (Media and Society 5th ed. , 350-351). Thirty-four seconds into the film we have heard a zippo lighter, purposeful footsteps, and a shotgun cocked and blast before we are shown anything, visually. From those sounds alone, the film carries a grunge-country, plaid-wearing, sweaty-man undertone that never ceases to leave the screen.
An angry storm, angry pit-bull and a sloppy trailer park establish the setting of the film, forewarning us that this is a “mans” film, and is anything but clean. Ansel and Chris, father and son, are talking about Dottie’s virginity as if she has not lived out her purpose to society yet until she finally gives it up. The inheritance of Dottie’s mother Adele went to her scumbag boyfriend Rex before her daughter, (whom we find out she tired to kill as a baby). This expresses that women will always fall to the feet of the male superior, as Mulvey has mentioned.
Ansel and Sharla talk about Dottie sleeping with cowboy-in-black Joe Cooper for the first time as if satisfying him sexually will benefit the family. They force her to get a dress, look pretty, because “If she don’t know what’s expected of her, she might disappoint him! ” (Sharla, Killer Joe). Mulvey’s idea that women are merely objects for childbearing is hugely represented when Dottie finally stands up for herself at the end of Killer Joe, kills her family in an act that could only come from the confidence of carrying a child and a loaded phallus.
Sharla loses all invisible phallic confidence that she once had, when Joe kicks the shit out of her. Sharla never wanted kids – she was never a woman with the maternal instinct, therefore she carried no significance or necessary female attributes that satisfied the man. Sharla tries to overcome the obligations of her gender by cheating on her husband with a younger man, but the photo proof of their sex life backfires on her when Joe uses her bold promiscuity against her as if it were her duty as a woman to be gentle, easily Freeman 5 anipulated, and loyal – only the men are allowed variety. Like this essay has stated, Friedkin’s Killer Joe is an obvious expression of Laura Mulvey views on the male-authoritative being objective towards women and their abilities as human beings outside of their ability to reproduce. Which brings this essay to the third statement, which emphasizes that women are meant to carry no significance of their own as a lone-standing gender, but as Laura Mulvey indicates, act as a threatening obstacle for the male to “overcome” or re-work into something acceptable, and useable.
Regine-Mihal Friedman, author of educational article Invisible Metamorphosis (2012), proves in her modern film analysis that the on-screen representation of sexual violence against women has always been a customary theme of cinematic narration, not only in Hollywood as Mulvey mentions, but within international cinema as well. Ansel Smith of Killer Joe is constantly in the “dog-house” because of Sharla. She wears the pants, carries the symbolic penis in the relationship and she likes it that way. It is her relationship with Corvette Rex that makes her feel dominated, and she appreciates both aspects of her relationships.
When Sharla is with Ansel she can have the power and the penis, and while she is with Rex she is able to figuratively and literally lay back and be taken and overcome by the penis. Chris comes to live with Ansel and Sharla because of his relationship with his mother, Adele, and her empowerment over him, causing the reoccurring question throughout the film “did you hit her, again? ” (Ansel, Sharla, Killer Joe). For some reason, Chris and Ansel feel entitled to a cut of what Dottie is inherited, again, taking the power away from the phallus-longing female.
Chris feels like he is getting back at his mother for everything she did to him and his sister Dottie. Instead of taking the blame for his own mistakes, every one of Freeman 6 his problems falls on Adele, and she must die because of it: active male, female problem solved. Dottie appears nude in a dream that Chris has about her where she slips her robe off to reveal her naked body, but instead of giving him sexual favors, she holds her fists up and stands in a fighter position as if to say “I am woman, hear me roar! He wakes up terrified, either because of his incestuous dream, or because a supposedly passive female is attempting to overpower his role as the active male – could be both. Again, this proves that a male audience needs to look voyeuristically to maintain power, anonymity, creating an erotic mystery to having seen without being seen (Mulvey, 1975). When Dottie officially becomes Joe’s retainer for the lack of payment by the Smith family, she is officially in Joe’s hands, whatever he says goes, whatever he needs and craves (including her virginity) he claims, and takes.
Her body is his to construct, his to mold into something acceptable, something that fits into his life, and fits over his dominance, his penis, forever like a piece of clay. Dottie is easily pressured into sleeping with him and becomes “comfortable” in the black dress when Joe offers her flowers and a “heartfelt” story about his youth. She is no longer the feisty Jet Li wannabe that Joe once saw her as; Dottie has allowed Joe to “fix” her, to impregnate her, and to make her existence purposeful.
Sharla, the overly confident manipulative whore who believes that she can do, say, get away with anything is put in her place when she makes Joe Cooper ejaculate in his pants while sucking on a KFC chicken wing held to his crotch. To overpower the women you must make her bow down to you, suck you off (suggestively), while waving a piece of chicken (your dominance) in her face. The film concludes with Clarence Carter’s Strokin’, a song that could tell you a lot about Laura Mulvey’s views on themes
Freeman 7 of sexually dominated women throughout Hollywood cinema as a whole, and precisely, Freidkin’s Killer Joe. Killer Joe has taught us many things: If the women want the penis so bad, we should give it to them, that a pregnant women is a powerful women but only if she is literally holding a big deadly penis in her hands (cocked and ready to blow bullets at you), and that if you take that penis away, she is nothing but an annoying piece of KFC being waved in your face, begging for significance.
Film theorist Laura Mulvey’s three views regarding a woman’s need for the male phallus, their obligation to reproduce, and that women are never exceptional creatures until the man makes them so, has been proven to appear in both classic and modern Hollywood cinema. William Friedkin’s obscene murder-story Killer Joe is an undeniable example of how Laura Mulvey’s ideas are still very apparent when observing unbalanced representations of gender throughout Hollywood Cinema. Freeman 8 Works Cited
Killer Joe. Dir. William Friedkin. Perf. Matthew McConaughey. Voltage Pictures, 2011. Film. Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Screen (Society for Education in Film and Television), 16:3 (Autumn 1975): 6-18. O’Shaughnessy, M. , & Stadler. (2012). Media and Society Fifth Edition. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1999) Friedman, R. -M. (2012). Invisible Metamorphoses, Studies in Documentary Film, 6:3, pp. 273–290, doi: 10. 1386/sdf. 6. 3. 273_1