i don't know bullshit about dance and i can't even do the splits but this was the most beautifully choreographed and executed dance i have ever seen in my life. kudos to the actresses too because WHAT THE FUCK
sure.. two girls kissing while the boyfriend watches is on paper the most male gaze shit ever. HOWEVER, if it was shot for the male gaze, the camera would be on their bodies, you'd watch the kiss through his eyes and the scene would be about his pleasure.
instead it's all just faces and hands. the boy gets 1 shot from his pov, he never looks like he's into it and that aint sexy music.
this is the lesbian gaze too btw. the scene is about what that kiss feels like for anya and elise, the good and the bad. it cares way more about what it does to them than what it does to the boy. he's out of focus even when anya is kissing him. and it ends on anya, looking in the direction elise left, so conflicted and confused and fucked up.
it's preposterous that queer women can't show the full range of their sexuality on screen without it getting called male gaze. men are going to fetishize two women no matter how it's shot. if that's the bar no lesbian sex scene ever passes it and we're back to sexless lesbians. what matters is who the scene is about and who it's for.
the term ‘male gaze’ keeps getting thrown at #thebody mostly over the butt shots and the jacuzzi scene, so i broke them down shot by shot.
so the male gaze is a woman shown through a straight man's eyes for his pleasure. the term literally exists to describe how men look at women. a close up of a body is how film says a character wants someone. we're just used to that someone being a man.
what this IS is the lesbian gaze (pls look it up) it's a mutual gaze between two women. each one is both the subject and the object of the look and of the desire.
watch the two scenes in the video. elise's butt is LITERALLY a narrative device in this show. it's chekhov's ass. in ep 2 anya looks at elise and she's so ashamed bc she can't even admit to herself that she wants her. by ep 7 they've been together and elise looks right back at her and anya's like 'yeah. i want you.' the guilt is GONE. now it's mutual.
then there's the jacuzzi scene 🧵
The evolution of fandom is so interesting to me bc people used to do full on crossover fics of their most random ass ships and fandoms and now fans can’t even handle someone asking their mutuals if they watched a show without immediately trying to mass quote. Its sad.