Vertigo Feminist Theory

First film theorist Laura Mulvey she wrote Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema in 1975. She came up with the idea of the Male Gaze. The idea that the woman is passive and the male is active. So the woman is the image and the man is the bare of the look which very much indicates the man has the power of the woman. In vertigo this is evident within the first scene the Ernie’s Restaurant when Scottie goes to meet Madeline for the first time. Where they don’t actually meet, they don’t even make eye contact. It is very much active male and passive female. Madeline is there to be looked at, the soft focus, the romantic music, the green dress contrasting with the red interior of the restaurant. The Mis-En-Scene in the restaurant is crying out for Madeline to be an object of desire. In Hitchcock’s films the women often have a strong visual and erotic impact. It could be the nature of the film, that’s a whole different story but mostly talks about the women and also Madeline also in Vertigo. They have a ‘to be looked at’ ness. They are there to be looked at basically. Laura Mulvey also talks about the idea of scopophilia which is looking at the sort of pleasure. It’s a Freudian term that he came up with. It basically talks about the pleasure gained from looking at desirable objects, the object been women. And it kind of takes on the whole boundary between male/female desire, kind of sort of thing going on there. In terms of Mulvey? They are also interested in the idea of fetishisation of women, in Vertigo in the opening scene we experience this. Madeline or Judy is reduced to her lips and her eyes. They are very much objects of desire. Things that men look for in a woman. She is basically dismembered. Shes nothing else but her sexual attributes. Later on in the film when Scottie is trying to recreate Madeline through Judy, Scottie is very much constructing female ideal. Which he thinks is Madeline. Mulvey said male project their fantasy onto the female figure is styled