The Bat Gaze

So still on my The Batman kick and looking at things I noted about the film I wanted to write about that I thought really added to the film. The way it uses the male gaze in the film, I think, is very interesting. There are three scenes where the film plays with its cinematography and gender it’s used. To start, the film has two different types of narrative camera shots that I could divide out. There were probably more, but I would have to do another thorough viewing to establish that. There are Character shots and narrator shots. Character’s cameras are shots that are or copy a character's vision or mental picture of the scene. Narrator shots are the shots that the director needs the audience to see. In the beginning shots, the audience is in the male gaze of the Riddler being predatory to his victim. Thus, the film calls out the male gaze as predatory within the cinematography. We have this visual telling for when the movie wants the audience to be aware of the predatory nature of the male gaze. We get our next collection of scenes when the batman is investigating. We switch to Batman’s camera seeing the world how he sees it. When he is interrogating the Penguin, we are introduced to our only woman character, Selina Kyle. We get a classic male gaze shot of him looking her up, which, because we established earlier that the male gaze is predatory is uncomfortable to be in for the conscientious viewer. Later, Batman follows her home and spies on her in a scene mirroring the Riddler, establishing at this point in the film that the Riddler and Batman are similar in some ways, in particular, how they are predatory creatures. The final scene in this three-beat is when we move to Selina Kyle’s camera. We move out from the male gaze. Note that this is not a predatory act nor a prey act. When we are in their camera, we have more shots of women than in most of the film, but they are not sexualized by the camera but viewed as people first. The Batman is forced into this camera with the audience. This is a step of change for him. He is subject to what he was doing to Selina earlier in the film, and it makes him uncomfortable. I cannot remember fully, but I do believe that from now on when in Batman’s camera, the view is less predatory than it was.

             I am not claiming that The Batman is a feminist film, but its use of the camera says a lot about the characters and what message it is trying to communicate.

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