Film fascinates us
(engages our emotions) through images and spectacle.
Mulvey uses
psychoanalysis ‘to discover where and how the fascination of film is reinforced
by pre-existing patterns of fascination already at work within the individual
subject’= spectator.
She says she is using
psychoanalytical theory ‘as a political weapon’
Hollywood/mainstream/narrative
cinema manipulates visual pleasure.
It ‘codes the erotic
into the language of the dominant patriarchal society.’
Scopophilia- pleasure
in looking( Sigmund Freud 1905 in Three Essays’)
Examples of the
private and curious gaze: children’s voyeurism, cinematic looking.
The most pleasurable
looking= looking at the human form and the human face, figural looking. (psychic
patterns)
‘Woman as image. Man
as bearer of the look’
Pleasure in looking
split between active/male and passive/female.
Women connote’ to be
looked at ness)
The visual presence
of women ‘works against the development of a storyline, freezes the flow of
action in moments of erotic contemplation.’
The woman functions
as both erotic object for the characters within the screen story and erotic
object for the spectator within the auditorium (object of fantasy)
The spectator is led
to identify with the main male protagonist
No comments:
Post a Comment