ABSTRACT
Signs of male domination remind us that the film story has been constructed by men for male spectators. While female spectators may be part of the audience, as IZaplan argues in Women and Film) they must either identify with the woman as object or they must appropriate the male gaze. When Bathsheba announces that she has conceived, David does not respond to her, but sends for Joab, his trusted intermediary, and Uriah, the man he has wronged. In a narration that reveals nothing of the woman's response to the Icing, her silence reinforces the power relationship between the Icing and a woman brought to his bed. A male viewer might well share the narrator's voyeuristic pleasure in this scene, picturing the woman as enigma, as other, viewed as outside of male language in which deals are cut.
