With Love,
Daniela Rodriguez
Characters act as an introduction to womanhood for a young girl. What does it mean to have iconic and empowering female characters be written by men? What does it mean to subvert the male gaze as a female artist? Is everything we do as women an automatic subversion or are we constantly playing with a double edged sword? With Love, is a short film that focuses on my relationships with female personas. While using stereotypical imagery that emphasizes the aesthetics of girlhood, I construct my own persona, just like the many women I have admired. I chose the medium where women characters are portrayed the most: film. This creates a space for voyeurism and allows for the recontextualization of songs that play into the ideas of femininity. Within the world I designed, I am choosing to challenge and subvert the male gaze through performance.