Laura Mulvey: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

Film acknowledges and enforces ‘straight, socially established interpretation of sexual difference’ pg 14

Film and cinema has been  ‘structured’ by male/men society

Scopophilia – pleasure in looking

Freud – Scopophilia is ‘one of the component instincts of sexuality’ pg 16

Cinema setting encourages people to play on voyeuristic fantasy. You become separated or individualised in the dark room.

Women  are changed/styled to fit the ‘male gaze’

Appearance is chosen so that it attractive/interesting to men. Asking to be looked at.

‘in herself the woman has not the slightest importance’ pg19 Budd Boetticher

Woman displayed has only 2 functions

-          As erotic object for characters

-          As erotic object for the viewers

Realism is not lost in the film when the gaze of the spectator and the male are combined.

Man = ideal ego

Woman = erotic

Man is not there to bear burden of sexual objectification. His role is to control and advance the story

Women is displayed for the enjoyment of men and for their gaze.

Cinema enables shifting the emphasis of the look.

Film has depended in voyeuristic active/passive mechanisms. Woman = Passive Male gaze= Active

 

Mulvey, L. (1989) Visual and Other Pleasures. Basingstoke: Macmillan.