Smelik, Anneke (1995) What Meets the Eye: Feminist Film Studies in Buikema, Rosemarie (ed. Mulvey was prominent as an avant-garde filmmaker in the 1970s and 1980s. She formulates two new models of spectatorship the pensive and the possessive spectator but neither of these are fully articulated in any convincing manner. Webism (1927; 1940). WebMoreover, Mulveys article participates in this project because it is doing something similar: presenting readers with the manipulative techniques which suppress the destabilizing There is an idea that exists, which is then translated into a form that demands to be deciphered but which can be properly understood only by a small group of critics who will come and explain to the general public the true message of any mode of address. The fault lies in Mulvey s necessary simplification, which subordinates critical insight to political expediency. hooks, b. Critical activity becomes a crusade against hypocrisy and oppression where the avant-garde (whether it be artistic or interpretive) is the only position from which an attack on the carapace is possible. "BFI Screenonline: Mulvey, Laura (1941) Biography", Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Film, Television and Screen Media MA at Birkbeck, University of London, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Laura_Mulvey&oldid=1147883880, Academics of Birkbeck, University of London, People educated at St Paul's Girls' School, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 2 April 2023, at 20:04. Finally, Mulvey cannot reconcile pleasure, or even life, and reality. ),The Female Gaze, p. 826. Significantly, this map does not necessarily For Mulvey, then, cinema functions much like the speech of the analysand on the psychoanalysts couch: what we see on the screen can be interpreted as containing a latent meaning that reflects the desires and problems of that cinemas contemporary society. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" helped to bring the term "male gaze" into film criticism and eventually into common parlance. Psychoanalytic interpretation of Biblical stories shows themes of castration anxiety present in Judaic mythology concerning circumcision. Interesting read, I was wondering if Mrs. Hitchcock had and any influence on roles of the females you identified in this film? The men need to act as the subject due to their castration anxieties, an idea she extrapolates from a reading of Sigmund Freud. Sarnoff, I., & Corwin S.M., (1959) Castration anxiety and the fear of death. In Mulveys view, male spectators project their look, and thus themselves, onto the male protagonists. Hie problem that faces the critic is difficulty itself. Curiosity, a drive to see, but also to know, still marked a Utopian space for a political, demanding visual culture, but also one in which the process of deciphering might respond to the human minds long standing interest and pleasure in solving puzzles and riddles. Taking issue with her understanding of fetishism, Lorraine Gamman and Merja Makinen argue that Mulvey tends to conflate the terms voyeurism and scopophilia with fetishism, and that these terms, at times, appear to be used interchangeably. The films discomfort with active female characters is only strengthened when one takes into consideration the duplicitous Madeleine/Judy. Castration anxiety is the fear of emasculation in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Mulvey is puzzled by the fact that both oppression and liberation may result in exactly the same aesthetic object and her proposed solution is that it is this puzzlement, this curiosity, this call to the process of deciphering, that will move us away from being transfixed by the fascination of the spectacle {ibid. At three times over the course of the film, Scottie is powerless to prevent the same horrific fate from befalling three different people: a fellow police officer, the real Madeleine Elster, and Judy Barton all fall to their deaths under his watch. A Feminist Introduction to the Humanities, p. 66-81. This enjoyment is, however, ambivalent, because of the castration anxiety engendered by the sight of In order to be able to sustain an intellectual project based on the moral worth of interpretive activity, the critic cannot interpret blindly but must have as a goal the elucidation of the real and of truth. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Scottie, who is meant to be our protagonist and a hero in the true masculine sense, is in fact the passive and over sensitive one. In Death 24x a Second, Mulvey shifts her attention to the freeze-frame, or the slowed image, and to the image of death. Midge has been there all along, but Scottie became so obsessed with his projection of perfection onto Madeleine that he failed to realize it. Lacan, J. Mulvey returns to the problematic of difficulty again and again throughout these essays. [1985]), is to a large extent dedicated to the skilled and satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure (Mulvey 1989: 16). The film was well received but lacked a "feminist underpinning" that had been the core of many of their past films.[19]. Black Looks: Race and Representation. (1980), Crystal Gazing (1982), Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (1982), and The Bad Sister (1982). Penis envy, in Freudian psychology, refers to the reaction of the female/young girl during development when she realizes that she does not possess a penis. Yet as history begins to repeat itself, the stereotypes that Mulvey criticizes in her essay begin to appear in rapid succession. Mulvey does not acknowledge a protagonist and a spectator other than a heterosexual male, failing to consider a woman or homosexual as the gaze. This dominant, patriarchal power divide is apparent in classical Hollywood cinema, but also in films of the slasher sub-genre. As Midge is not and will never be the subject of Scotties determining male gaze, a film so consumed by the importance of appearances has no place for her (62). This theme is explored in the story Tupik by French writer Michel Tournier in his collection of stories entitled Le Coq de Bruyre (1978) and is a phenomenon Freud documents several times. She commands the entire film solves the mystery, keeps Peck from cracking up and never gives up. If one were to apply Mulveys claims to these vertiginous gender relationships, certain things undeniably line up, but Mulveys complex argument still appears not complex enough to handle the spiraling and psychologically thrilling tale that unfolds. His women were multifaceted, as opposed to the empty headed pretties that were all the rage at the time. a good read. In the opening sequence, the elevator scene shows Clarice surrounded by several tall FBI agents, all dressed identically, all towering above her, all subjecting her to their (male) gaze.[10], Mulvey argues that the only way to annihilate the patriarchal Hollywood system is to radically challenge and re-shape the filmic strategies of classical Hollywood with alternative feminist methods. At least in the two cases above the characters seem to be hinting at another (loser) side to the stereotyped category of hero. investigated whether sex differences would be found in the manifestations of castration anxiety in their subject's dreams. Her bronze hair, crimson lipstick, and vibrantly green gown parallel her robust character. [12] Other critics pointed out that there is an oversimplification of gender relations in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Scottie, of course, is all too willing to be her knight in shining armor, even though his masculinity is far past its prime. The two never converse again in the rest of the film. The representation of powerful male characters is opposite to the representation of powerless female characters. This camera focuses and draws attention to the action of licking the hammer, which obviously has sexual connotations, seeming to comply once again with Mulveys Male Gaze Theory. When Scottie first lays eyes on Madeleine, he views her from behind, most of her back exposed by the elegant gown she wears to dinner with her husband and her hair perfectly pinned back in a bun, which in turn exposes the column of her neck, a particularly sensual body part. She gave no thought to what his feelings would be like when she created this perverse token of her love and affection for him, which causes her to seem somewhat detached from the plethora of emotions which Scottie experiences in excess. However, it is difficult not to be left with a certain sense of pessimism. In 19th-century Europe, it was not unheard of for parents to threaten their misbehaving sons with castration or otherwise threaten their genitals. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Despite being the films hero (or, perhaps, anti-hero), Scottie is heroically impotent due to his own acrophobia, a condition imposed upon himself which he is unable to overcome. When we first meet Madeleine Elster, she is the textbook example of passivity. In fact, this move on her part is so outlandishly active that he is insulted by it, telling her that the matter is not funny and quickly excusing himself from her apartment (Vertigo). Lots of Hitchs women were very intelligent. Webattention to anxiety about fragmentation, for example through castration. (2006: 191), Mulvey had expanded on the theme of curiosity, which is also an explanation of her own academic drive to see, in Fetishism and Curiosity (1996) and in what follows I will explicate some of her arguments of this book.3 Mulvey argues that if a societys collective consciousness includes its sexuality, it must also contain an element of collective unconsciousness (1996: xiii). Hitchcocks women strive to be three-dimensional, but ultimately, the universe in which the film takes place is unsure of how to coalesce the desire for independence with the inherently misogynistic society. The contemporary culture assumes that penis envy is the woman wishing they were in fact a man. In 1991, Mulvey returned to filmmaking with Disgraced Monuments, which she co-directed with Mark Lewis. stream If there is such a thing as the real world, the existence of which is manifest only in readings of the representations of that real world, how would one be sure that one has managed to find the real and correct interpretation of those representations and thus be able to claim knowledge of the real world? Mulvey writes: Psychoanalytic film theory suggests that mass culture can be interpreted similarly symptomatically. Its ironic that Sean Connerys character in Marnie is supposed to be the leading man/hero but he evilly rapes his wife. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance. This concept was first introduced by Sigmund Freud in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) and it refers to the pleasure gained from looking as well as to the pleasure gained from being looked at,[4] two fundamental human drives in Freuds view. : 261). The counterpart of castration anxiety for females is penis envy. WebThe male unconscious has two avenues of escape from this castration anxiety: preoccupation with the re-enactment of the original trauma (investigating the woman, demystifying her mystery), counterbalanced by the devaluation, punishment or saving of the guilty object (an avenue typified by the concerns of the film noir); or else complete Mulvey, however, goes on in her later work to develop her discussion of fetishism in terms of what she calls curiosity. Is it at all possible that a film made about straightforward, honest, hard-working, capable, independent, diligent, creative women who dont get into any kind of trouble or have any drama in their lives, because they are so sensible that they avoid it all, would be just dull and not dramatic? Then of course theres Notorious. Film. [8], Freud had a strongly critical view of circumcision, believing it to be a 'substitute for castration', and an 'expression of submission to the father's will'. [8], In another article related to castration anxiety, Hall et al. Nevertheless, it is clear that Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinemawill inevitably be remembered for its formulation of the male gaze. When the sculptures were shown in 1978 at the Mulvey attempts to move beyond this Freudian paradox by concentrating on the drive to knowledge, which she understands as the desire to solve puzzles and understand enigmas (problematically, perhaps, festishistic disavowal the act of believing two contradictory elements simultaneously is itself unsolvable in the traditional sense of arriving at a single conclusion). But we might more reasonably ask whats wrong with his men, given that theyre supposed to be the heroes. She is immediately much more active than Madeleine ever showed potential of being, telling Scottie that he has got a nerve, following [her] right into the hotel and up to [her] room! 2. According to Mulvey, this power has led to the emergence of her "possessive spectator." His movies point to the foibles and vulnerability of many of his characters, both male and female. Castration anxiety is a psychoanalytic concept introduced by Sigmund Freud to describe a boys fear of loss of or damage to the genital organ as punishment for incestuous wishes toward the mother and murderous fantasies toward the rival father. Based on Laura Mulvey's theory on male gaze, the analysis of the screening of the body in action films revolves around the aspects of narrative, and cinematography of the Salt films. According to Freud, when the infantile male becomes aware of differences between male and female genitalia he assumes that the female's penis has been removed and becomes anxious that his penis will be cut off by his rival, the father figure, as punishment for desiring the mother figure.[5]. Hes the main character but he doesnt have the qualities any sane person would qualify as heroic. The fact that a majority of movies are directed by men. He always has an attractive blonde in mind to play each role before he even starts filming. In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey characterizes the viewer of cinema as being caught within the patriarchal order and, in accordance with a certain feminist identity politics, postulates an alienated subject (ibid,:16) that exists prior to the establishment of such an order. The camera films women from above, at a high camera angle, thus portraying women as defenseless. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. Her argument centers around four key concepts: scopophilia (which can become fetishistic), the male gaze, anxieties associated with castration, and voyeurism. [19], Crystal Gazing exemplified more spontaneous filmmaking than their past films. In the metaphorical sense, castration anxiety refers to the idea of feeling or being insignificant; there is a need to keep one's self from being dominated; whether it be socially or in a relationship. Apart from briefly waxing philosophical on the potential of Alfred Hitchocks 1958 thriller Vertigo being a proto-feminist work, however, she does not give adequate consideration to two of the most significant aspects of the film: how does the films universe respond to women when they try to be above the male gaze and what would happen should the male character not be strong enough to exert his authority over the stereotypically objectified female characters? It is the importance of interpretation that lies behind Mulveys other, less frequent, metaphor in Fetishism and Curiosity: that of the hieroglyph, one of the meanings of which is a secret or enigmatical figure (OED). [4], In Freudian psychoanalysis, castration anxiety (Kastrationsangst) refers to an unconscious fear of penile loss originating during the phallic stage of psychosexual development and lasting a lifetime. It is because of this revolutionary strength and independence that the film ultimately does not know what to do with her. Hes absolutely and categorically lying to you. [17] Deceiving Lilith into believing newborn babies were a girl letting the boy's hair grow and even dressing him in girl clothes were said to be the most effective means to avoid her harm, until they were ritually circumcised on the eighth day of life as part of a covenant with God. Hitchcocks fetishistic need to mould such strong, morally upstanding men-folk in his films whilst literally rubbing dirt into the faces of anyone with a hemline is just dastardly. [] But Im here, it is a beyond heartbreaking moment, as her simple words mean so many things (Vertigo). Alfred Hitchcocks women in his films have always been a topic of discussion when you discuss his films. WebFilmmaker Laura Mulvey penned an essay for Spare Rib magazine in 1973 that speculated the artist suffered from castration anxiety. Vertigo makes a valiant effort to present fully developed, independent women who exert their power over men without being entirely sexualized; however, as the plot complicates with each repetition, this effort seems to get lost somewhere along the way. [8] The experimenters aimed to demonstrate that in the absence of a particular stimulus, men who were severely threatened with castration, as children, might experience long-lasting anxiety. Mulvey is also fascinated by the impact of digital technologies on the moving image but does not really explore this beyond the analogue possibility of freezing the image on screen. This approach seems uncannily to echo Mulvey s 1970s negative aesthetics approach that film as it exists should be destroyed, with only a vague sense of sentimental regret. She says in her paper that essentially any woman who enjoys movies like this is a masochist, which I think thats a little harsh, but I get what shes saying. Webcastration and nothing else. Mulvey, Laura. : 9) like a footprint or shadow. It later appeared in a collection of her essays entitled Visual and Other Pleasures, as well as in numerous other anthologies. It is in her book on Citizen Kane that Mulvey explores the pleasures of interpretation for its own sake and ends with the observation that there are two retreats possible: death and the womb (1992: 83). New York: Routledge. Mulveys essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema(1975) has had a major impact on the course of film scholarship. However, these are also his most criticized theories as wellmost famously by Karen Horney. [9][10] This view was shared by others in the psychoanalytic community, such as Wilhelm Reich, Hermann Nunberg, and Jaques Lacan, who stated that there is "nothing less castrating than circumcision! I love Stranger on a Train but the less said about the women in that film, the better. She considers telling Scottie the truth, even going so far as to write a letter explaining everything, which is in a way seeking the punishment or saving of the guilty object that Mulvey highlights in her definition of voyeurism (65). I dont know that I am answering any questions but this seems like a start. Awesome article! WebPerhaps the most notorious shot of the music video of Miley licking a hammer with her lips at the center of the screen. More specifically, Lacan points out, the gaze must function as an object around which the exhibition-istic and voyeuristic impulses that constitute the scopic drive turn in short, the Schwartz, Bernard J. Regarding Mulveys view of the identity of the gaze, some authors questioned Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema on the matter of whether the gaze is really always male. WebDiscussing the 'look' in cinema, Mulvey notes that 'in a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female' (Mulvey, cited in Thornham, 1999: 62). Likewise, the male gaze is the filter through which women are viewed in film and are styled accordingly in order to please the desires of the objectifying male subject (62). Meanwhile, Hollywood women characters of the 1950s and 1960s were, according to Mulvey, coded with "to-be-looked-at-ness" while the camera positioning and the male viewer constituted the "bearer of the look". (Ibid. She claims that, Themale unconscious has two avenues of escape from this castration anxiety: preoccupation with the re-enactment of the original trauma (investigating the woman, demystifying her mystery), counterbalanced by the devaluation, punishment or saving of the guilty object (an avenue typified by the concerns of the film noir); or else complete disavowal of castration by the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous (hence over-valuation, the cult of the female star). WebThis system of looks assumes narcissistic identification with the male protagonist of the narrative and voyeuristic enjoyment of the female object of the gaze. For Mulvey, Kiarostamis films appear to be an elegy for cinema itself, which is now in its final death throes. During the 200809 academic year, Mulvey was the Mary Cornille Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Wellesley College. WebAccording to Mulvey, the paradox of the image of woman is that although they stand for attraction and seduction, they also stand for the lack of the phallus, which results in castration anxiety. WebMulvey sees that it is necessary to understand and analyse the ideological precepts of contemporary culture, while also realizing that one should contribute to or intervene How can a supporting female character be more competent than our heroic male protagonist? N$OZD5L}-/ f'Ccz,\]M_:H`R=l2IwE%$YpyN`*:_dLZc%;m/ Three, the only way to evade conclusions one and two, for spectatorship to be liberated from patriarchal ideology, was via a film practice that operated in opposition to narrative cinema. This final reading of the hieroglyph would constitute the failure of the fetish and the final cracking of the carapace. The phrase male gaze occurs only twice in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1989:19,22) but has become the shorthand for describing the main point of the essay. On the other hand, females are presented as passive and powerless: they are objects of desire that exist solely for male pleasure, and thus females are placed in an exhibitionist role. As she approaches Scottie when they leave the restaurant, both Scottie and the viewer get a close up view of her profile and flawlessly pale, smooth skin, the pallid hue existing in stark contrast with the overpowering crimson of the restaurants walls. WebIn Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey argues that the physical absence of the penis from womens bodies creates castration anxiety in the men that gaze upon She speaks of the incontrovertible reality of intense human suffering and proclaims that the Gulf War did happen, in spite of what Baudrillard may claim (ibid. WebMulvey states, The male unconscious has two avenues of escape from this castration anxiety: preoccupation with the reenactment of the original trauma (investigating the woman, Castration anxiety is an overwhelming fear of damage to, or loss of, the penisa derivative of Sigmund Freud's theory of the castration complex, one of his earliest psychoanalytic theories. The "three different looks", as they are referred to, explain just exactly how films are viewed in relation to phallocentrism. For Mulvey, the process of the formation of meaning is quite straightforward. View his films with their cultural/ historical context in mind; realise theyre thrillers, so extrordinary people and behaviour are to be expected, and marvel at their technical brilliance. Your analysis is brilliantly constructed with great depth. : 250). These ideas led to theories of how gay, lesbian, and bisexual spectatorship might also be negotiated. She combines attraction with playing on deep fears of castration, hence [7], Within her essay, Mulvey discusses several different types of spectatorship that occur while viewing a film. This argument allows Mulvey to conclude: The fetish is a metaphor for the displacement of meaning behind the representation in history, but fetishisms are also integral to the very process of the displacement of meaning behind representation. [2] In Freud's theory it is the child's perception of anatomical difference (the possession of a penis) that induces castration anxiety as a result of an assumed paternal threat made in response to their sexual activities. In her afterword to a collection of essays on the new Iranian cinema Mulvey explicitly addresses the issue that her feminist stance in the 1970s is echoed in Islamic censorship of cinema: Islamic censorship reflects a social subordination of women and, particularly, an anxiety about female sexuality. According to Anneke Smelik, Professor of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Radboud University, classic cinema encourages the deep desire to look through the incorporation of structures of voyeurism and narcissism into the narrative and image of the film. Owen doesnt represent us. The idea was presumed that females/girls envied those (mostly their fathers) with a penis because theirs was taken from themessentially they were already "castrated". Thus, until a fan could adequately control a film to fulfill his or her own viewing desires, Mulvey notes that "the desire to possess and hold the elusive image led to repeated viewing, a return to the cinema to watch the same film over and over again. This truth lies beneath the carapace created by another (presumably evil) power. Webthe horror monster and Laura Mulvey's analysis of the iconography of the female form in narrative cinema shows them to be quite similar. [] Beat it! (Vertigo) All throughout this scene, she has her hand on the door, ready to shut Scottie out, and yet she never does, hinting at the disappointing weakness that the films universe will ultimately fall back on. % [6] In this same period, Dr. Kellogg and others in America and English-speaking countries offered to Victorian parents circumcision and, in grave instances, castration of their boys and girls as a terminal cure and punishment for a wide variety of perceived misbehaviours (such as masturbation),[7] a practice that became widely used at the time. The second "look" describes the nearly voyeuristic act of the audience as one engages in watching the film itself. Prove you are human, type cats in singular form below: How Time Loop Movies Have Avoided Their Own Groundhog Day, Platos Cave and the Construction of Reality in Postmodern Movies, Persona: A Journey through the Shadow in Ingmar Bergmans Masterpiece, Lost in Translation: The Sounds of Silence, Hollywoods Fascination with Silence and Horror, Cinematic Vampires: From Shadows to Spotlight. SW@+ G^\B~$y|3,Ij@#;D761nj+Fdc afvXagV6;cU9 l,ZtHq6$!M$auH\yWtb_zC1"9)hLJgsa}(r= 1 \tU6x&v? sw#~5A#dUFn5b;v(QErA(+ G6})R~:SsIbm&aXzCNoyZ3@&==hs|U\-O"CZy"} L0A T9WCf>%=s ^A;ArgJ1jr:~Oi5nF2Hvs4)85s=a1km V"!9U; [7], The main idea that seems to bring these actions together is that "looking" is generally seen as an active male role while the passive role of being looked at is immediately adopted as a female characteristic. Freud, however, believed that the results may be different because the anatomy of the different sexes is different. (1996: 118). Thus these forms of pleasure cannot be encompassed within our definition of fetishism. Webcastration anxiety: 1. a child's fear of injury to the genitals by the parent of the same gender as punishment for unconcious guilt over oedipal feelings; 2. fantasized loss of the penis by Ousmane Sembene, 1975) and Blue Velvet(dir. Mulvey suggests two distinct modes of the male gaze of this era: "voyeuristic" (i.e., seeing woman as image "to be looked at") and "fetishistic" (i.e., seeing woman as a substitute for "the lack", the underlying psychoanalytic fear of castration). The key distinction is between the active/male and As she leaves the sanitarium and tells the attending doctor that Scottie is still in love with Madeleine, even though shes gone, she bows her head and walks painstakingly slowly down an absolutely vacant corridor, a long shot executed with such melancholy that it is clear that not only is she walking out of the film at this point, she is also walking out of Scotties life. He reasoned that so long as the wives and sweethearts were interested in seeing the films, the husbands and boyfriends would shell out the ticket price. Thanks for the great comment! It is not the women who represent the threat of castration for Scottie, but it is he who enacts his own castration. David Lynch, 1986) to some of which she returns repeatedly throughout her writing. : xiv). Alfred Hitchcock. [18] These writings concerned themes such as male fantasy, symbolic language, women in relation to men and the patriarchal myth. I find the women in his earlier films are comparatively better. Her article, which was influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, is one of the first major essays that helped shift the orientation of film theory towards a psychoanalytic framework. Fancher, Raymond E. & Rutherford, Alexandra. A fantastic read. Clearly Mulvey hoped that her own films would be a part of this new cinema but it is evident from the continued dominance of traditional fiction film that the pleasures that she hoped to destroy keep coming back. It is in the early 1970s that Mulvey began to re-evaluate her relationship to Hollywood cinema, because of her greater involvement with feminism and, increasingly, psychoanalysis. Two, men cannot be objects; they cannot be gazed at, they can only look, and only at women (read: there is no such thing as a male spectacle). Elsaesser, T., Hagener, M. (2010). Applying this supposition to Vertigo does not entirely work. This anxious call to the real is a reflection of Mulvey s roots in second-wave feminism and the direct action of the womens movement in the 1970s and her own desire to bridge the gap between cinema theory and practice. But it then produces, as a result, a difficulty with the representation of women on the screen which has some unexpected coincidence with the problems feminists have raised about the representations of women in the cinema.

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