The term ‘female gaze’ has acquired widespread currency in recent times; the paper analyses the show Fleabag, popularly lauded as a series exemplifying the female gaze to expand the scope of the female gaze beyond the narrow definition of a female counterpart for the ‘male gaze,’ through a psychoanalytic analysis of the text, drawing on Kaja Silverman's framework of identification and gaze. As a postmodern text, the research scrutinizes the subjectivity of the character ‘fleabag,’ examining how she is constituted in the field of vision in relation to the concepts of look, gaze, and the screen. Lacan describes the camera as a metaphor for the gaze in Four Fundamental Concepts, and existing within a particular socio-political and historical context, specific values are concomitantly attached to the camera/ gaze (Lacan as cited in Silverman, 1996, p. 132). Against this background, the paper attempts to explore how far the female gaze and the female look/eye (of the spectator and the protagonist) redefine and restructure “heteropathic identification” (identifying outside the self ) of the spectator with the characters as well as the identification between the lovers in the show, promoting “active gift of love” (Silverman, 1996, p. 23, p. 78).

Authors:
Malavika K Pradeep, English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), India

About the Presenter(s)
Malavika K Pradeep is a third-year research scholar and a Junior Research Fellow at English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU).

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