Cassidy Mc Cormick Laura Mulvey reading report PDF

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Essay written for Hoi Cheu's Rhetoric of Film and Image class on semiotics ...

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“VISUAL AND OTHER PLEASURES” BY LAURA MULVEY

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“Visual and Other Pleasures” by Laura Mulvey: Reading Report Cassidy McCormick Laurentian University

“VISUAL AND OTHER PLEASURES” BY LAURA MULVEY

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In "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Laura Mulvey utilizes psychoanalytic theory as a political weapon, demonstrating to readers the function of women in the unconscious of patriarchal society, which structures cinema itself. Woman “first symbolizes the castration threat by her real absence of a penis and, second, thereby raises her child into the symbolic” (Mulvey 14). Mulvey continues on to explain that women stand in as a signifier for the male other within patriarchal culture, and are bound by a symbolic order where man lives out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic command, imposing them on the silent image of women who is tied to her place as a bearer of meaning, not a maker of meaning. Mulvey argues that because film is such an advanced system of representation, language and the unconscious alike, the structure of mainstream film is a reflection and reinforcement of the prevailing patriarchy structured by man’s desires. Therefore, an alternate kind of film which represents a different societal structure would be much more appealing to feminists. Mulvey states that mainstream film is very dependent on visual pleasure in two types: Scopophilia and narcissism. Scopophilia, which is basically voyeurism, is derivative of Freud’s theories of taking other people as objects through scopophilic gaze, and narcissism is derived from Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage in which one is seeking to identify with a self-like image. The pleasure that is experienced through these forms of visual aid can be threatening, and what crystallizes this paradox is women as representation. Essentially, the point in which Mulvey is conveying is that women in mainstream film serve the purpose of being looked at by men. Female characters play a role within the narrative as an object of desire, being both desirable to those watching the film and to those who play alongside her. With a male protagonist, the audience can associate themselves with his character. In this system, Mulvey states that the woman’s image is one of paradox and can evoke fear over

“VISUAL AND OTHER PLEASURES” BY LAURA MULVEY

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man’s fear of castration, an anxiety which her image originally signified. Mulvey says that, in order for this anxiety to be avoided, the woman’s image is subconsciously seen with either fetishistic scopophilia or sadistic voyeurism. Like we watched in Hitchcock’s film “Rear Window,” the film revolves around a dominant male figure, Jefferies, which the viewer can identify with. Jefferies condition, a broken leg that has confined him to a wheelchair in front of his window, puts him in such a position in which he has to be scopophilic. Jefferies being bound to his seat as a spectator to what goes on in his apartment block opposite to the screen and Jeffries renewed erotic interest in his girlfriend Lisa when she crosses barrier of the spectator side and the block opposite puts him right in the fantasy position for the cinema audience. The usage of psychoanalytic theory in Mulvey’s article explains man’s fascination with how women are represented in cinema and how it interacts and caters to his subconscious which has been culturally determined....