Laura Maulvey's essay on "
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" can be considered a feminist work of
criticism on the process of self-identification. The essay explains the
interconnection of the spectator's subjectivity with the cinematic text
established by Freudian psychoanalytic theories.
Mulvey's intention to unfold and reveal the phallocentrism structured in the
unconscious of patriarchal society manifests itself primarily and demonstrates
the castration anxiety of male spectators to the lack of phallic power of
female characters in the visual text. Her interpretation of the castration
threat raises the problematic identity of women's objectified bodies through
its fragmentation in the voyeuristic reflection of male spectator sexual
desire. In other words, a woman's body stands in the image as the bearer of the
meaning and poses the question of the unconscious structure of male fantasies
and desires.
Malvey develops her discussion on seeing and pleasure throughout the concept of
alternative cinema as she states in her writing: 'The alternative cinema
provides a space for a cinema to be born which is radical in both a political
and an aesthetic and challenges the basic assumptions of the mainstream
film" (Screen, 200). The erotic representation of the images in the
dominant patriarchal order to satisfy visual pleasure is attacked and
criticized by Mullvey to establish a new language of expectations as she
continues to observe:
"The satisfaction and
reinforcement of the ego that represents the high spirit of film history
hitherto must be attacked. Not in favor of a reconstructed new pleasure, but to
make way for a total negation of the ease and plenitude fiction film. the
alternative is the thrill that comes from leaving the past behind without
rejecting it, transcending outworn or oppressive forms, or daring to break with
normal pleasurable expectations to conceive a new language of desire as Mulvey
states in her writing: (Screen, 200).
Freudian scopophilia which is associated with voyeurism and a curious gaze to
see the forbidden places and things as Peeping Toms continues to exist In
Mulvey's discussion on the spectator voyeuristic fantasy to offer the same
narcissistic aspect of the male gaze. Simultaneously, the Lacanian emphasis on
mirror image for a child to recognize his ego gives rise to Mulvey's future
remarks in her article: " Important for this article is the fact that it
is an image that constitutes the matrix of the imaginary, of
recognition/misrecognition and identification, and hence for the first
articulation of the 'I' of subjectivity" (Screen, 201).
Reinforcing ego while at the same time, forgetting the world of ego is
perceived and experienced by the spectator creates a complex process of
self-identification through which the objectifying the sight to satisfy the
sexual stimulation and develop the narcissistic ego function as the crucial
dichotomy for the spectator's fascination with his life and sexual fantasies.
The tension and contradiction between the eroticized form of the world imposed
by the mechanism of libido or instinctual drive and self-preservation of ego
allows the possibility of interweaving between the instinctual and perceptual
reality with the realm of imaginary. Therefore, the point of reference
returns to the woman as represented image: " In a world ordered by sexual
imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and
passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female
figure which is styled accordingly" (Screen, 203). According to Mulvey,
the combination of the narrative and the spectacle creates an erotic display
window of the screen to please the male gaze and signifies the woman's body as
the sexual object which is similarly eroticized through the gaze of the male
characters and the protagonists within the screen:
"Traditionally, the woman
displayed had functioned on two levels as erotic object for the characters
within the screen story, and as the erotic object for the spectator within the
auditorium with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the
screen" (Screen,203).
This presence of the woman figure on the screen which is passive, not active
heterosexual is manipulated and controlled by the ideological domination of
Hollywood classic films and the studio system controlling the narrative and
aesthetic structure of the cinematic text.
The coincidence between the gaze of the male protagonist who controls the
narrative and the erotic look of woman figure within the screen to satisfy him
and the gaze of the male spectator characterizes the omnipotent characteristic
ideal ego of the active male figure. Therefore, the male protagonist in the
story can control the narrative better than the spectator as Mulvey states in
her writing:
"The character in the story can
make things happen and control events better than the subject/spectator,
just as the image in the mirror was more in control of motor coordination. In
contrast to the woman as an icon, the active male figure (the ego ideal of the identification
process) demands a three-dimensional space corresponding to that of the mirror
recognition in which the alienated subject internalizes his representation of
imaginary existence...The male protagonist is free to command the stage, a
stage of spatial illusion in which he articulates the look and creates the
action" (Screen, 204).
Mulvey suggests that the mechanism of possession of the woman figure within the
diegesis for the male star alone as the narrative progresses emphasizes the spectator's
desire to possess her too as she tells us in her writing: " By means
of identification with him[male protagonist], through the participation in his
power, the spectator can indirectly possess her too" (Screen, 204).
The castration threat and anxiety which is originally signified by the woman's
sexual difference and her lack of phallic power evokes the male spectator to demystify
her mystery and disavow that threat by substituting her as a fetish object
which transforms her into physical beauty. The result is voyeurism which has
associations with sadistic pleasure through the process of punishment and
forgiveness. At the end of her essay, Mulvey's exemplary discussion refers to
Hitchcock's and Von Sternberg's cinematic representation of the images which
goes into the investigative side of their psychoanalytic formalistic school for
the narratives and the aesthetic styles. She insists on the absence of the gaze
of the male character in most of Sternberg's narratives as she indicates in her
article:
"The most important absence is
that of the controlling male gaze within the screen scene. The high point of
emotional drama in the most typical Dietrich film, her supreme moments of
erotic meaning, take place in the absence of the man she loves in the
fiction...The male hero misunderstands and, above all, does not see"
(Screen, 206).
In Hitchcock's narrative and aesthetic style, the presence of the male gaze
controls the temporal and spatial elements of the story: "In Hitchcock, by
contrast, the male hero does see precisely what the audience sees...Moreover,
in these cases the hero portrays the contradictions and tensions experienced by
the spectator...the look is central to the plot, oscillating between voyeurism
and fetishistic fascination" (Screen, 206). Mulvey never
clearly explains the alternative forms of spectatorship such as the theorizing of
the female gaze among the female spectators and the validity of her discourse
through intellectual history raises many questions such as 'How the female gaze
can be represented and interpreted throughout the cinematic text while the
theoretical sexual; specification can be inherited from the feminist standpoint?'
Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema Screen
Journal. Vol.16, No:3, Autumn 1975.
By: Morad Sadeghi
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