The Power of Possibility? How do we identify with on-screen anonimity?

“If soaps refuse to allow us to condemn most characters and actions until all the evidence is in (and of course it never is), there is one character whom we are allowed to hate unreservedly: the villainess, the negative image of the spectator’s ideal self. Although much of the suffering on soap operas is presented as unavoidable, the surplus suffering is often the fault of the villainess who tries to ‘make things happen and control events better than the subject/spectator can’.”
(Tania Modleski, “The Search for Tomorrow in Today’s Soap Operas. Notes on a Feminine Narrative Form.” Film Quarterly 33:1 (1979) 12-21, citation: 15/ 32 in version found on BlackBoard)

The quote above serves to illustrate how spectator and screen can negotiate different relationships and how these different relationships lead to different experiences of power and pleasure. More specifically Modleski seeks to argue that the viewer does not necessarily need to identify with a male protagonist and a concomitant sense of power, as argued by Mulvey. Rather, Modleski argues, the viewer can also experience a loss of power by identifying with multiple characters. Furthermore, as seen in the quote above, the viewer can vent frustration about a lack of real-life power through hate of the villain, who is envisioned as trying to overcome the weaknesses that the viewer experiences. Modleski thus seeks to broaden the possible relationships between viewer, identification and the screen and thereby also consider new ways in which looking leads to experiences of power and pleasure. However, she limits herself by positing that this villainess is female and thus someone trying to overcome not just any human weakness, but “traditional feminine weakness”. The villainess is not just the “negative self-image” of any viewer, but of the female one. Thus, even though Modleski allows for a wider range of identifications of the female viewer with cinema/tv, she keeps a certain essentialism alive by not investigating the ways in which a female viewer would, for example, identify with a male or even non-gendered villain. Does one necessarily have to identify with a gendered character to make looking pleasurable?

To illustrate this question one could look at the series “Pretty Little Liars”. In this show four female friends are watched, threatened, and attacked by an anonymous person who they also suspect of killing their friend Alison. This person goes by “A” and although A knows everything about the girls, the girls have great difficulty in uncovering who A is. Much like a soap series, the show offers multiple identifications (although the four main characters are all female and appear to portray different ‘types’ of femininity) and an ending is constantly postponed due to an endless stream of plot twists and interruptions that inhibit a proper conclusion. More interestingly, however, A is much like the villainess in the sense that A causes a great amount of excessive suffering, yet, A remains invisible. In fact, part of the riddle is finding out the gender of A, so one can narrow the list of suspects. This, however, appears to be impossible, because A’s actions never leave a “gendered mark”; anyone could be capable of doing what A does. This disembodiment of A appears to contribute to sense of danger A rouses. A is always a step ahead, knows all, sees all and controls our gaze. Yet, A is never seen. In a sense this problematizes the idea that the viewer gains pleasure from experiencing a certain sense of power (or a legitimated loss thereof) through identifying with enacted gender roles and the senses of self they excite. The lack of knowing who is the one in control appears to put the viewer, regardless of gender, in the same helpless position as the girls harassed in the series. In a sense, because we lack knowledge of, amongst other things, the gender of the one who is in control, we also lack a sense of identification that could relieve the tension the situation of “not knowing” incites. At the same time, we are more capable of identifying with the girls, because we are almost as ill-informed as they are.

In sum, the ungendered, invisible criminal makes it possible to question the ways in which pleasure in looking is engendered. For if both men and women cannot perceive the gender of the threat, is it either the lack of gender or the possibilities the lack creates that arouse excitement in the viewer? In other words, if the identification between viewer and viewed is not self-evident and clearly gendered, what happens with the pleasure of watching? Is it merely the excitement of not knowing or the way it allows the viewer to project a variety possibilities that serves to provoke pleasure? Is it the lack of power in knowledge or the power of possibility that we experience as pleasurable?