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.