Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
- Laura Mulvey's essay (1975) discusses the sexual imbalance in visual pleasure, where the male gaze is active and the female figure is passive.
- The male gaze projects fantasy onto the female figure.
Male vs. Female Roles
- Males actively look and derive pleasure, while women are objects to be looked at.
- Women exist to satisfy male desires and pleasures.
Cinema and Spectatorship
- Cinema creates an illusion of looking into a private world.
- Spectators repress exhibitionism and project desires onto performers.
Scopophilia
- Scopophilia is pleasure in looking, specifically of a sexual nature.
- Looking at a separated object or character produces pleasure.
- Exhibitionism and voyeurism are projected onto screen performers.
Identification
- Identification involves recognizing a character similar to oneself.
- Spectators identify with the male hero, who is not an erotic object.
Narrative and Spectacle
- Spectators identify with the male hero; females are objects of scopophilic pleasure.
- Male hero drives the narrative; women are associated with spectacle for display.
Male Hero vs. Female Object
- Male hero is a coherent entity in three-dimensional space, driving the narrative.
- Woman as an object is external to the narrative, decomposed into partial objects, and frozen in two-dimensional space.
- Man is the subject; woman is the object.
- No female position to identify with.
Woman as Signifier of Lack
- Woman is the sign of castration, arousing pleasure and castration anxiety in men.
- Two ways of managing this:
- Voyeurism: Taming, unveiling, demystifying, and punishing the female figure.
- Fetishistic scopophilia: Idealizing the female figure as an incomparable beauty to cover any perceived lack.
