UCL Discovery

Abstract

Ramón Salazar described his 2002 film Piedras/ Stones as ?la historia de cinco mujeres [...] contada desde el punto de vista de sus zapatos? (the story of five women [?] told from the point of view of their shoes). This comment, along with two highly personal and contradictory internet responses, forms the starting point for the present analysis of the way that the framing of women?s shoes in Piedras ?tilts? the heterosexual field of the gaze. Lacan?s well-known demonstration with Holbein?s, The Ambassadors, together with his (less well-known) analogy of the tattooed penis are used to illustrate the potential tilting of the field. This article argues that Piedras highlights the irrelevance of the heterosexual gaze and desexualizes the traditional celluloid fetish (woman/shoe), placing it back within the iconography of frustrated female desire in a way that provides an important part of the narrative of heterosexual difficulty in the film. It also suggests that, with the tilting of the frame, the heterosexual male usurps the fetishized and ?fatal? female role.