Untitled Film Stills
Cindy Sherman subverts traditional stereotypes of femininity. For her series of Untitled Film Stills, she acted as both model and photographer, disrupting the typical viewer/object relationship and appropriating the male gaze. Sherman poses herself in ways that echo famous films and female roles of the 1950s and ‘60s. However, by inserting herself into these popular film tropes she is able to better dissect them and, through the use of costumes, wigs, and staging, she highlights the fallacy of their depiction--thereby reclaiming the female image. Sherman does not consider these to be self-portraits, because she catalogs a variety of familiar female types and has in the process metaphorically stepped outside of herself. In Untitled Film Still #65 has an implicit threatening quality as she is seen looking over her shoulder at an ominous male figure in the shadows at the top of the New York Public Library stairs. #11 is more evocative of Hollywood melodramas as she has thrown herself on her bed longingly in her nightgown and pearls, clutching a tissue as the clock reads 11:20.