About Us

Madeline Looks Back is a podcast dedicated to the female gaze. We explore books, television, film, articles, and other media created by women or that propose an alternative to the male gaze.

The name of the podcast is a nod to Laura Mulvey, who theorized that the institution of Hollywood and the classic Hollywood film promote a patriarchal culture. Mulvey uses the films of Alfred Hitchcock, particularly Vertigo, to demonstrate how the male gaze objectifies women and turns them into reassuring objects.

Madeline (a.k.a. Judy) is the object of the protagonist’s gaze in Vertigo. His insistence that she conform to his particular image of the woman he desires leads to her demise. While Madeline was an object to be viewed by the protagonist, today’s female auteurs of independent cinema give women the opportunity to look back through films that endow their female characters with a gaze, and thus agency, of their own.

Through the films of Jennifer Kent, Ana Lily Amirpour, Karyn Kusama, and other great directors who are telling stories about loneliness, grief, mental health, violence, motherhood, and more from a female perspective, Madeline can finally look back.

The female gaze is about more than women behind the camera. As feminist theorist Mary Devereaux argues, feminist film theory provides us with a new way of reading texts that challenges the dominant tradition. Deveraux acknowledges the “connection between how we represent our lives and lived experience itself.” If society takes the representation of women on screen as a reflection of who women can be in real life, then we need more complex representation. More women creating media means viewers can access more diverse representations of what it means to be a woman, or even a human.

The podcast is hosted by Veronica Penney and Nathalia Vélez Ryan.

Veronica holds Bachelors of Arts in English Literature and International Affairs from the University of Colorado Boulder, as well as a Master of Science in Data Journalism from Columbia University.

Nathalia Vélez Ryan attended Metropolitan University, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and a minor in Film Studies. She has a Master of Arts in English from the University of Colorado Denver.

Drop us a line.

madelinelooksback (at) gmail.com