Mulvey_VisualPleasure

“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” by Laura Mulvey

I. Introduction

A. Political use of psychoanalysis

B. Destruction of pleasure is a radical weapon

II. Pleasure in looking/fascination with the human form

A. Cinema offers scopophilia (p. 381)

1. looking itself is a source of pleasure; there is pleasure in being looked at

2. Freud: scopophilia –

a. one of the component instincts of sexuality, existing as drives quite independently of the erotogenic zones

b. taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze

c. example: children’s desire to see and make sure of the private and forbidden

d. instinct is modified particularly by the constitution of the ego

à extreme case: perversion such as Peeping Toms

3. Field of cinema (p. 382)

a. seemingly remote from the surreptitious observation of a victim

b. extreme contrast:

auditorium in the dark V.S. light and shade on the screen

c. conditions of screening and narrative conventions

à spectator’s illusion of looking in on a private world

d. spectator’s positions: repression of exhibitionism and projection of the repressed desire

B. Scopophilia in a narcissistic aspect

1. focus on human: face/body/relationship of human and surroundings

2. Jacques Lacan: mirror stage – the constitution of the ego

3. recognition overlaid with misrecognition: ego and ideal ego

4. an image constitutes: imaginary, recognition/misrecognition, identification à (furthermore,) first articulation of the I—subjectivity

5. the cinema’s fascinated structure allows temporary loss of ego

6. Stars provide a focus or center both to screen space and screen story --> impersonates the ordinary (p. 383)

C. Conclusion (p. 383)

1. Dichotomy – (both) (i) pursue aims in indifference to perceptual reality and motivate; (ii) motivate eroticised phantasmagoria [1]

a. scopophilic –

i. arises from pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight

ii. implies a separation of the erotic identity of the subject from the object on the screen

iii. a function of the sexual instincts

b. narcissism and the constitution of the ego–

i. comes from identification with the image seen

ii. demands identification of the ego with the object on the screen through the spectator’s fascination with the recognition of his like

iii. a function of ego libido

2. The cinema evolves an illusion of reality:

a. in reality the fantasy world of the screen is subject to the law;

b. sexual instincts and identification processes have a meaning within the symbolic order which articulates desire;

c. desire: the traumatic experience of castration

III. Woman as image, man as bearer of the look (p. 383)

A. The styled split: active/male V.S. passive/ female

1. Women are simultaneously looked at and displayed

--Woman displayed as sexual object is the leitmotif of erotic spectacle

2. The woman displayed has functioned on 2 levels: (p. 384)

a. As erotic object for the characters within the screen story

b. As erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium

3. A woman performs within the narrative

-- the gaze of the spectator and that of the male characters in the film are neatly combined without breaking narrative verisimilitude

B. Narrative structure: controlled by heterosexual division of labour

1. The man controls the film fantasy and also emerges as the representative of power.

2. The function of film – to reproduce as accurately as possible the so-called natural conditions of human perception. (p. 385)

C. Tension (p.385)

1. A mode of representation of woman V.S. conventions surrounding the diegesis (?)

a. The spectator in direct scopophilic contact with the female form displayed for his enjoyment

b. The spectator fascinated with the image of his like set in an illusion of natural space, and through him gaining control and possession of the woman within the diegesis

c. Problem:

i. the threat of castration/unpleasure

ii. sexual difference

d. Solutions: 2 avenues of escape from castration anxiety (p. 386)

i. Preoccupation with the re-enactment of the original trauma, counterbalanced by the devaluation, punishment or saving of the guilty object à Voyeurism (associated with sadism)

ii. Complete disavowal of castration by the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish

à Fetishistic scopophilia

2. Example (p. 386)

a. Hitchcock – oscillating between voyeurism and fetishistic scopophilia

i. Heroes

ii. Power relation

iii. Ideological correctness

b. Sternberg – uses fetishistic scopophilia

IV. Summery (p. 387)

l Psychoanalytic background concerned: pleasure and unpleasure offered by traditional narrative film.

l Scopophilic instinct V.S. Ego libido

l Image of woman (passive) V.S. gaze of man (active) – content and structure of representation with ideological significance demanded by the patriarchal order in its favourite cinematic form, illusionistic narrative film.

l Women in representation can signify castration, and activate voyeuristic or fetishistic mechanisms to circumvent this threst.

l Playing on the tension between film as controlling tim and space, cinematic codes create a gaze, a world and an object. à an illusion cut to the measure of desire

l 3 different looks associated with cinema:

1. a look of the camera – it records the pro-filmic event

2. a look of the audience – it watches the final product

3. a look of the characters at each other within the screen illusion

l The structure of looking in narrative fiction film contains a contradiction in its own premises:　 the female image, a castration threat, constantly endangers the unity of the diegesis and bursts through the world of illusion as an intrusive, static, one-dimentional fetish.

l The camera becomes the mechanism for producing an illusion of Renaissance spaceà(i) an ideology of representation that revolves around the perception of the subject; (ii) the look of the audience is denied an intrinsic force.

[1] This phantasmagoria (千變萬化的幻景) affects the subject’s perception of the world to make a mockery of empirical objectivity.

Work Cited

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”Evans, Jessica & Stuart Hall, eds.� Visual Culture: The Reader.� London: Sage, 1999.