Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema - 1975 - Laura Mulvey

This publication explores the fascination with film and its characters through the eyes of someone feeling trapped within the patriachal society. Mulvey develops the penis as embodying the male's heroic action & a more perfect self. Because she has no penis, the castrated woman needs to cause action through the male, promoting her sexuality and floundering about, unable to save herself.

Hollywood cinema is restricted by itself, needing to flow towards what is most popular and idolized. Artisan, independent cinema, on the other hand, can now create and challenge assumptions & obsessions of mainstream movies, but "can still only exist as a counterpoint". What Hollywood does arises from its ability to produce "skilled and satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure". Mulvey focuses on the visual, voyeristic pleasures, and less of the audio track, the orchestral score, and sound effects. The image, the focus of the lens, moving the camera around, and editing set the medium of film apart from the arts of photography and radio. And in Mulvey's context, sound mearly re-inforces the visual pleasure.

Mulvey claims her purpose is to destroy pleasure and beauty [of films] through analysis (IB). She does take the fun out of it ;) Through dry technical analysis of common cinema structure, she not only points out observations, but adds deroggatory and uncomfortable terms to each act of feeling pleasure. Eroticism, voyerism, sadism, scopophilia, and narcissism. Each observation agreeable, but the terms used seem to be there to place blame and shame upon the movie watcher. I sense her anger at the contents of these partriachal films, her frustration at women allowing men to act in their stead. But through the complex development of our societies, males have needed to take on certain responsibilities that child-bearing women would be less effective at (and viceaversa). I find more acceptance in the current situation of the world, but also find comfort in the fact that I, and many other women, stand up for ourselves, act in our best interest, and can be a hero. Of course with my being a lesbian the typical roles of male and female tend to skew. The energy consuming act of child-care is more equally distributed, the idea of phallus and caustration embodied within each partner. But I believe heterosexual individuals show more balance in these areas than Mulvey gives credit. Female heroines are there in film, seen with both their sexual bodies and their ability to act for themselves. And, as counterpoint, male heroes are present in film with their sexual bodies and their ability to act for themselves. But still, Mulvey's point is well taken, because there is a dominace of male leadership in life and film.