Who’s looking as whom? Lucy/Luce: the ‘new’ woman in the ‘New’ World

ABSTRACT

In Emanuel Crialese’s film Nuovomondo/Golden Door (2006), the seemingly independent British citizen, Lucy, migrates from Sicily to the United States alongside the Sicilian Mancuso family because Lucy must be betrothed to a man. This paper examines Lucy’s character and her agency and analyzes how she develops into a feminist figure. Beyond exploring her feminist qualities, this piece illustrates how she, in fact, controls the male gaze, which challenges Laura Mulvey and E. Ann Kaplan’s approach to gaze theory. Through her agency, she, the female character, leads Salvatore Mancuso and his family to the New World.

KEYWORDS:

• Feminism
• mediterranean cinema
• gaze theory
• Italian
• Italian-American
• migration studies/diaspora studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Bell hooks. Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics.

2. For a thorough, semiotic reading on the conceptualization between the Old World and the New World in Nuovomondo, see Anthony Julian Tamburri’s ‘Old World versus New, Or, Opposites Attract: Emanuele Crialese’s Nuovomondo,’ pages 92–128.

3. It is unclear as to why Lucy is traveling through Sicily to arrive in the U.S. Anthony Julian Tamburri believes that because she is a lady of the night, her work brought her to Italy for some reason. See a later footnote.

4. For his complete reading, see Anthony Julian Tamburri, ‘Old World Versus New. Or, Opposites Attract: Emanuele Crialese’s Nuovomondo’ in Re-Viewing Italian Americana: Generalities and Specificities on Cinema. Tamburri offers a semiotic reading of various critical signs, particularly noteworthy for the migrant and the migrant experience and addresses how the semiotic perspective adds value for considering such a dangerous journey to the U.S. Tamburri explains the semiotic importance of ‘magical’ objects – giant carrots and chickens, golden-lined streets, rivers of milk, and even the snakes – presented within the film and how they function as symbols that attract the ‘Old World’ mentality to explore the ‘New World,’ seen in numerous scenes, particularly once arrived at Ellis Island and the Mancuso family is forced to pass a variety of logic ‘games’ in order to gain entry to the U.S.

5. In addition to Anthony Julian Tamburri, see Peter Carravetta’s After Identity: Migration, Critique, Italian American Culture. In particular see ‘Existence, Migration, History’ and ‘One: Con/Texts Before the Journeys: Migration, Narration, and Historical Identities.’

6. In her piece, Heyer-Caput also includes a lot of historical information on the realization of the film, including content from Martin Scorsese who heavily promoted the film in North America.

7. Returning to the importance of nature in Crialese’s opus, another critical symbol revisited in his cinema is water. One of the more recent and unparalleled readings exploring this motif is by Elena Past, who asserts that the directors’ use of Islands, and the Mediterranean Sea itself exposes narrative qualities through an ecocritical reading. While Past provides a powerful and convincing reading, equally engaging is Crialese’s emphasis on and promotion of women, even within its direct relationship with the feminist symbolism of water; in fact, this theme is present in three of his films: Nuovomondo, Respiro, and Terraferma. Yet, Past, like others, has yet to associate Crialese’s use of water and its role within feminist thought.

8. It is interesting to see how the emigrants are being ‘examined’ prior to boarding the ship in Palermo. The scene is shot practically in the dark, suggesting its occurrence at an underpass or alley of sorts. ‘Doctors’ are trying to warn emigrants that they will be sent back for certain issues, including the youngest Mancuso for being a mute. They try to sell the family a medicine to cure him even though it’s a hoax. The comparison to the doctor’s examination on Ellis Island is noteworthy.

9. Discussion with Anthony Julian Tamburri both at Middlebury College, June 2010 and after.

10. Discussion with Anthony Julian Tamburri both at Middlebury College, June 2010 and after.

11. Anthony Julian Tamburri (2011, 200).

12. It can obviously be argued that Italians, and in particular Sicilians can in fact have red hair, however, red hair is rarely used to define the Mediterranean woman. In this sense, her character is already introduced as ‘other.’

13. Often the Italian woman is defined by her hair as in Monica Bellucci’s role in Malena, as she continually dies it to gain sexual favor or is scalped by the women of her own town after the liberation of Italy from the Nazis, or some of the Italian divas including Claudia Cardinale, Sofia Loren, and Gina Lollobrigida, all noted for their glamour, fashion, makeup, and hair.

14. See Marie-Christine Michaud, ‘Nuovomondo, Ellis Island, and Italian Immigrants: A New Appraisal by Emanuel Crialese.’ “Female immigrants especially underwent strict checks: the American government wished to avoid the coming of prostitutes and women who could not make a living, fearing that they would either become publics charges or resto to prostitution. This is the reason why, generally speaking, among Southern- and Eastern-European migrant flows, unaccompanied women were expected to be sponsored by relatives, friends, or fiancés who would fetch them upon their arrival.” (41).

15. It is important to remember that Rita and Rose went to Fortunata for help with their stomach pains, underscoring their belief in ‘magic’ and scocery.

16. See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble and Undoing Gender.

17. I cannot say that she remains completely independent of man, that would be an exaggeration and overstatement. Rather, she is coconscious of her situation, remains honest, and through her honestly and frankness controls the situation.

18. It is important to note that gaze theory has roots in art history. Many cite John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (Berger 1972) as a preliminary text. Born out of psychoanalysis, the voyeuristic cinematic gaze became significant in the 1970s, paying attention to both Lacan and Hegel. Some of the most notable early Lacanian critics include Christian Metz 2006), Mulvey 2000), and Teresa de Lauretis (1984, 1987).

19. At this time, I would like to clarify that Laura Mulvey published a later piece in response to the male gaze, ‘Afterthoughts on “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” inspire by Dual in the Sun’ in Framework 6:15–17 (1981) and later reprinted in Visual and Other Pleasures. Additionally, she wrote Afterimages: On Cinema, Women and Changing Times. I do however want to inform the reader that Mulvey never retracted her belief in ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ but rather explored spectatorship differently, ‘I still stand by my “Visual Pleasure” argument, but would now like to pursue the other two lines of thought.’ (Mulvey 2009, 31).

20. E. Ann Kaplan in E. Ann Kaplan 2000, 120–121.

21. Mulvey’s framework assumes a ‘classic film spectator’/ ‘classic narrative cinema’ and generally excludes any type of ‘gendered’ spectator. For more information on the gendered spectator, see Caroline Evans and Lorraine Gammon, ‘The Gaze Revisited, or Reviewing Queer Viewing.’

22. The following denotes the sequences of the gaze in this scene: Salvatore/ Lucy -> Salvatore/ Salvatore -> Lucy/ Salvatore -> Lucy/ Lucy -> Salvatore/ Direct eye contact/ Lucy notices his children/ Salvatore – – first milk scene.

23. See Kevin Newton, ‘Waltz: Definition & History.’ https://study.com/academy/lesson/waltz-definition-history-quiz.html

24. Salvatore dice, ‘Ma dov’è quest’America?/But where is this America?’ (Crialese, 2006).

25. Crialese, 2006.

26. Jonathon Cohen, ‘Why Milk and Honey.’ http://www.umc.sunysb.edu/surgery/m&h.html 23 July 2010.

27. Jonathon Cohen, ‘Why Milk and Honey.’ http://www.umc.sunysb.edu/surgery/m&h.html 23 July 2010.

28. Jonathon Cohen, ‘Why Milk and Honey.’ http://www.umc.sunysb.edu/surgery/m&h.html 23 July 2010.

29. Anthony Julian Tamburri. Discussion in The Italian American Experience, Middlebury College, Summer 2010.

30. Leon Brenner, ‘The Significance of the Phallus’ on Psychoanalysis and Philosophy in Berlin. https://leonbrenner.com/2018/01/21/the-significance-of-the-phallus/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ryan Calabretta-Sajder

Dr. Ryan Calabretta-Sajder is Assistant Professor and Section Head of Italian and Associate Director of Gender Studies at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where he teaches courses in Italian, Film, and Gender Studies. He is the author of Divergenze in celluloide: colore, migrazione e identità sessuale nei film gay di Ferzan Özpetek (Celluloid Divergences: Color, Migration, and Sexual Identity in the Gay Series of Ferzan Özpetek) with Mimesis editore and editor of Pasolini’s Lasting Impressions: Death, Eros, and Literary Enterprise in the Opus of Pier Paolo Pasolini with Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, and co-editor of Theorizing the Italian Diaspora: Selected Essays with IASA, Italian Americans On Screen: Challenging the Past, Re-Theorizing the Future with Lexington Books, and Italian Americans on the Page (under review).

His research interests include the integration of gender, class, and migration in both Italian and Italian American literature and cinema, as well as teaching Italian language and culture through Digital Humanities and Virtual Reality. In Spring 2017, he was awarded one of four Fulbright Awards for the Foundation of the South to conduct research and teach at the University of Calabria, Arcavacata. He is currently working on two authored, book-length projects, one exploring the Italian American gay author Robert Ferro who died of AIDS complications in 1988 and the second on the Algerian Italian author Amara Lakhous.

He is currently the President of the American Association of Teachers of Italian, President of Gamma Kappa Alpha, the Italian National Honors Society, and founding editor of Diasporic Italy: Journal of the Italian American Studies Association.