“the Presence of Woman Is an Indispensable Element of Spectacle in Normal Narrative Film, Yet Her Visual Presence Tends to Work Against the Development of a Story-Line, to Freeze the Flow of Action in Moment of Erotic
“The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story-line, to freeze the flow of action in moment of erotic contemplation” (Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”). Discuss the significance of this observation in relation to one or more narrative films.
Laura Mulvey’s essay appeared for the first time in “Screen” in 1975 and immediately created quite heated debate that continues also today. It explores the objectification of women in classical Hollywood cinema or indeed any cinema conforming to that style of narrative.
Laura Mulvey based her essay on psychoanalysis, using work of Austrian neurologist and psychotherapist Sigmund Freud and his follower Jacques Lacan as a tool in constructing her ideas on representation of women in films. The points she specifically focused on where scopophilia, otherwise known as pleasure in looking and Lacan’s mirror phase, essential part of developing ego. According to his theory, the infant confronted with its own mirror reflection, recognises itself but also perceive the image as more sophisticated and developed than it is in reality, overestimating its own physical abilities. Laura Mulvey compares that first experience with a mirror, to the way the audience in the movie theatre perceive an image on the screen as their own perfect reflection. In other words, recognition of a human form on the screen tricks the brain into identifying with a protagonist which is our ego ideal. Above all, she assumes the position of a heterosexual male viewer caught in a society driven by outdated (wrong?) model based on patriarchal order where the female form is a “male other”, a castrated outcast who can only ever be “...bearer, not maker, of meaning.” It is worth adding that patriarchal order is assumed by the society unconsciously.
Position of a woman in film is therefore reduced to the role of a performer existing only
Laura Mulvey’s essay appeared for the first time in “Screen” in 1975 and immediately created quite heated debate that continues also today. It explores the objectification of women in classical Hollywood cinema or indeed any cinema conforming to that style of narrative.
Laura Mulvey based her essay on psychoanalysis, using work of Austrian neurologist and psychotherapist Sigmund Freud and his follower Jacques Lacan as a tool in constructing her ideas on representation of women in films. The points she specifically focused on where scopophilia, otherwise known as pleasure in looking and Lacan’s mirror phase, essential part of developing ego. According to his theory, the infant confronted with its own mirror reflection, recognises itself but also perceive the image as more sophisticated and developed than it is in reality, overestimating its own physical abilities. Laura Mulvey compares that first experience with a mirror, to the way the audience in the movie theatre perceive an image on the screen as their own perfect reflection. In other words, recognition of a human form on the screen tricks the brain into identifying with a protagonist which is our ego ideal. Above all, she assumes the position of a heterosexual male viewer caught in a society driven by outdated (wrong?) model based on patriarchal order where the female form is a “male other”, a castrated outcast who can only ever be “...bearer, not maker, of meaning.” It is worth adding that patriarchal order is assumed by the society unconsciously.
Position of a woman in film is therefore reduced to the role of a performer existing only