Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema: Comprehensive Study Notes
Analysis of Dorothy Arzner’s Films and the Critique of Representation
The Image and Male Ideology: In Arzner’s films, the woman is presented as an “image” articulated to meet the demands of male ideology.
Case Study: Merrily We Go To Hell: * The Mock Love Scene: A scene involving characters Gerry and Claire enacting a mock love-scene before imaginary cameras, watched by Joan, emphasizes the function of the image in “holding representation at a distance.” * Visual Framing: Gerry and Claire are framed in a doorway during a kiss, initially seen from behind Joan. The mock-kiss transitions into a “real” one, causing the mock-directors to shout “Cut!” * The Reversal Shot: When Gerry and Claire notice Joan, a reverse shot shows Joan from behind Gerry. She is framed in the doorway, transformed into an “image” of an embittered, frustrated woman. * Effects of Reversal: This reversal implicates the audience in the pleasure/pain of voyeurism while preventing identification by reminding the audience of the process of fabricating images. * Dialectical Play: The film utilizes a “montage of interventions” to assert the text as a process of dialectical play between image and narrative.
Intervention as Feminist Critique: Arzner’s work shows how narrative interruptions and ironic reversals can call into question the cinematographic forms through which ideology fixes the spectator’s place.
Conceptual Definitions: * Patriarchal Ideology: Refers to patriarchal laws governing society and producing contradictions (as explored by Juliet Mitchell in Psychoanalysis and Feminism, ). * The Fetish Structure (Heath): Representation in cinema is often based on the Freudian structure of the fetish, where the woman is the locus of the problem of recognition and disavowal of the threat of castration; she is “the empty space which must be filled.” * Diegesis: The self-contained fictional world of the film. * Capitalization of Concepts: Terms like “TRUTH” or “REALITY” (capitalized in the text) indicate that these are specifically constructed concepts rather than natural, universal givens.
Introduction to Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Objective: To use psychoanalysis as a “political weapon” to understand how the fascination of film is reinforced by pre-existing patterns of fascination within the individual and social formations.
Phallocentrism and the Female Figure: Phallocentrism depends on the image of the castrated woman to provide order. Her “lack” produces the phallus as a symbolic presence.
The Two-fold Function of Woman in the Patriarchal Unconscious: 1. She symbolizes the threat of castration by her actual absence of a penis. 2. She raises her child into the symbolic realm.
Woman as Signifier: In patriarchal culture, woman stands as a signifier for the “male other.” She is the bearer of meaning, not the maker of meaning. Man lives out his fantasies through linguistic command over the silent image of woman.
Feminist Interest: Psychoanalysis helps feminists reach the roots of oppression and understand how the status quo of the patriarchal order is maintained, even if it does not yet fully address issues like the sexing of the female infant or maternity outside the phallus.
Destruction of Pleasure as a Radical Weapon
Historical Shift in Cinema: Cinema has moved from the monolithic capitalist system of Hollywood (exemplified in the , , and ) to include artisanal production made possible by technological advances like film.
Alternative Cinema: A radical counterpoint to mainstream film that challenges basic assumptions and the formal mise-en-scene of dominant ideology.
The Attack on Beauty: Mulvey intends to analyze pleasure and beauty to destroy it. The goal is to negate the “ease and plenitude” of narrative fiction film to make way for a new language of desire.
Mainstream Coding: Hollywood skillfully manipulated visual pleasure, coding the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order to provide a glimpse of satisfaction to the alienated subject.
Pleasure in Looking and Fascination with the Human Form
Scopophilia (Voyeurism): * Defined by Freud in Three Essays on Sexuality as one of the component instincts of sexuality existing independently of erotogenic zones. * It involves taking other people as objects and subjecting them to a controlling, curious gaze. * Initially associated with childhood curiosity regarding the forbidden (bodily functions, genitals, the primal scene).
Cinema’s Voyeuristic Structure: * Mainstream film creates a hermetically sealed world that is indifferent to the audience. * The darkness of the auditorium isolates spectators, while the brilliance of the screen promotes the illusion of looking in on a private world. * Spectators repress their own exhibitionism and project repressed desire onto the performer.
Narcissism and the Ego (Lacan’s Mirror Phase): * The moment a child recognizes its image in a mirror is crucial for ego constitution. * The child sees the image as more perfect than its own physical capacity allows, leading to the creation of an “ideal ego.” * This recognition/misrecognition constitutes the “I” or subjectivity. * Cinema produces ego ideals, notably through the star system, where glamorous stars impersonate the ordinary.
The Dichotomy of the Look: * Active Scopophilia: Separation of the erotic identity of the subject from the object on screen (sexual instincts). * Narcissistic Identification: Demand for identification of the ego with the object on screen (ego libido).
Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look
The Active/Male and Passive/Female Split: * The determining male gaze projects fantasy onto the female figure. * To-be-looked-at-ness: Women are styled as exhibitionist objects for strong visual and erotic impact.
Narrative and Spectacle: * In traditional narrative film, the presence of woman is indispensable for spectacle but acts as an “alien presence” that breaks the flow of action and narrative diegesis. * Buddy Movies: A recent trend (noted by Molly Haskell) that dispenses with the woman altogether to focus on active homosexual eroticism between male figures to carry the story.
The Unification of Looks: The device of a “show-girl” (e.g., Marilyn Monroe in The River of No Return or Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not) allows the gaze of the spectator and the male characters to be unified without breaking the fictional world.
The Male Role: * Man is the bearer of the spectator's look. * The male protagonist is a figure in a landscape, an active agent who forwards the story and controls events. * The spectator identifies with the male hero as a more perfect “ideal ego,” gaining a sense of omnipotence through the hero's command over spatial illusion (aided by deep focus and invisible editing).
The Threat of Castration and the Male Response
The Paradox of the Female Figure: While woman is an icon for enjoyment, she also connotes the lack of a penis, evoking castration anxiety.
Avenues of Escape for the Male Unconscious: 1. Voyeurism/Sadism: Investigating the woman, demystifying her, and ultimately punishing or saving the “guilty” object. This is typical of film noir and linear narrative. 2. Fetishistic Scopophilia: Turning the represented figure into a fetish object to make it reassuring rather than dangerous. This involves overvaluation and the cult of the female star.
Case Studies in the Look: Sternberg and Hitchcock
Josef von Sternberg: * Focused on the pictorial space rather than narrative. * Produced the “ultimate fetish” through Marlene Dietrich. * His films often lack a controlling male gaze within the scene; the woman stands in direct erotic rapport with the spectator. * Visual field is often reduced by lace, steam, or foliage to promote one-dimensionality.
Alfred Hitchcock: * Uses both voyeurism and fetishistic fascination as central plot points. * Rear Window: Jeffries represents the cinema audience; the apartment block acts as a screen. Lisa becomes erotically interesting only when she crosses into the