The objective of this essay is to analyze the construction of Rudolph Valentino’s effeminate cinematic characters in the early 1920s Hollywood cinema, specifically case studying three films, namely, Camille (1921), The Sheik (1921), and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). Through textual analysis, it would illustrate how these characters were crafted in terms of three pivotal aspects: melancholic romanticism, ethnic exoticism, and meticulously designed aesthetics, which together foster the sense of otherness and objectification that imitate the common situation of womanhood, and thus evoked profound resonance among female spectators. Through referring to the gaze theory of Laura Mulvey and the mirror theory of Jacques Lacan, this essay would further distinguish the male and female gaze, arguing that Valentino’s on-screen presence facilitated a reversal of the conventional looking pleasure and created a unique form of female gaze that mirrored their subjective projection and the experience of being gazed upon. This positioning of Valentino’s characters as both the object and the embodiment of feminine sensuality and suffering also symbolizes the self-awareness and empowerment in female spectatorship.
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Yue Chen (2024) studied this question.
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