2.

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

-Laura Mulvey
Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film
theorist. She is best known for her essay,
"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"
written in 1973 and published in 1975 in
the influential British film theory journal
Screen. It later appeared in a collection of her
essays entitled Visual and Other Pleasures, as
well as in numerous other anthologies. 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
Caura Mulvey psychoanalytic framework. Prior to Mulvey,
film theorists such as
Jean-Louis Baudry and
Christian Metz used psychoanalytic ideas in their theoretical accounts
of the cinema. Mulvey's contribution, however, inaugurated the
intersection of film theory, psychoanalysis and feminism.

In her essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" Laura Mulvey

urilizes psychoanalytic theory, especially the concepts of Freud and Lacan
as a "political weapon to demonstrate how the patriarchic subconscious of
uctures the film form and shapes our film
watchingexperience.
In a patriarchal, phallocentric symbolic
order, woman is the bearer, not
maker of meaning. ACCording to Mulvey, psychoanalysis allows a way to
patriarchal unconscious that is
interrogate the structured like a language.
She that since film 1s an advanced system of representation,
the structure mainstream
of film reflects and reinforces the prevailing
patriarchy which is structured by the esires of man.
126 Introducing Film Studies

Mainstream film coded the erotic into

the
dominant patriarchal order. Muvey discusses the language of the
erotic pleasure in film, its meas and of
in particular the centrol that
interweaving
of the image of woman. n In the era of classical Hollywood cinema,
place
place
viewers were encouraged to 1aenuiy
who were and still are
With the protagonists of the
in order to provide
overwhelmingiy male. Moreover women film, are
pleasurabIe visual experience for men. In used
a
:

traditional exhibitionist role, women are looked their

their appearance coded for
at and displayed, with
can be said to connote
strong visual and erotic
impact so that they
sexual object for erotic "to-be-loOKed-at-ness". Woman was
displayed as
spectacle.
Mulvey identifies two manners in which
produces pleasure. One is "scopophilia" or Hollywood cinema
one is "voyeurism" and the second
"narcissism". These two manners arise
mechanisms. Scopophilia is derived from from different mental
Narcissism is derived from Lacan's the theories of
Freud and
instinct is the theory of the mirror stage.
pleasure
Here the audience as
derived from looking at Scopophilic
another as sexual object.
an 'voyeur
object of sexual stimulationgets pleasure in using another person as
other hand, one through sight. In Narcissism, on the
the screen. Both attempts to
identify with a represented character on
mechanisms
subject, for whom the woman represent the mental desires of the male
is just an object.
In world of sexual
a

between active/male
and
imbalance, pleasure in looking has been
split
are there topassive/female. In other words, in
film women
be mainstream
structures its gaze as masculine. looked at by men. The
The cinematic gaze has narrative film
a masculine both by means always proauce
of the
hero and
through the use of the identification produced with the male
projects its fantasy on to camera. The determining 'male
the female form is which styled gaze
Traditionally,
the woman accordingy
as erotic object for displayed has functioned two levels:
oby
object for thethe
characters
racters within the screen
screen story, and
on

as spectator within
sexual object.
a in the auditorium. Both story, and rotic as

be unified The device

vice of the
auditorium. Bothn look at woman
the show-girl allows the two looks
within the technically show-E break. A woman performs to
within narrative withouout any apparent Awoman
characters innarrative, the gaze perform
characters in tthe
h e fil

film,
E

a rare
e:
of the spectator and that of the
gaze of the
male

neatly
combined without breaking narratve
The film
narrative PPorts the man's role as the active one of
forwarding the
flm fantasy andstory,
supports the man
um
ale making
also n g things happehappen. The man controls the
emerge
ges as the representative of
of power. This is
power.
 Selected Film Essays-Analysis 127

nade possib ssible through the processes set in motion by structuring the
film around a main controlling tigure with whom the spectator can
dentify. As the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, as
he controls events, coincides with the active power of the erotic look.

The narrative of the Hollywood film presents woman as object tor

the combined gaze of spectator and all the male protagonists in the film.
She is isolated, glamorous, on display and sexualised. But as the narrative
progresses, she fals in love with the main male protagonist and becomes

his property, losing her outward glamorous characteristics, her generalised

sexuality and her shOw-girl connotations; her eroticism is subjected to
the male star alone. By means of identification with him, through
participation in his power, the spectator can indirectly possess her too.

Mulvey discusses several different types of spectatorship that occur

while viewing a film. Viewing a film involves unconsciously or semi-
consciously engaging the typical societal roles of men and women. The
"three different looks," as they are referred to, explain just exactly how
films are viewed in relation to 'phallocentrism. The first "look" refers to
the camera as it records the actual events of the film. The second "look
describes the nearly voyeuristic act of the audience as one engages in
watching the film itself. Lastly, the third "look" refers to the characters
that interact with one another throughout the film.

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. It
IS under the construction of patriarchy that Mulvey argues that women
in film are tied to desire and that female characters hold an "appearance
coded for strong visual and erotic impact". The female actor is never

heant to represent a character that directly affects the outcome of

plot or keep the line going, but is inserted into the film as a
story
ana Dearing the burden of sexual
Y of supporting the male role
objectification" that he cannot.
that promotes the active/
Cinema is built upon a patriarchal system
iarchal lines. Mulvey argues that the
passive division of power along
ASive division Hollywood system is to radically
only way to annihilate the patriarchal
of classical Hollywood
challenge and re-shape the filmic strategies
She calls for a new 'feminist avant-
wIth alternative feminist methods. Te the
ne
pleasure of
narrative pleasure classicai
of classICal
garde' filmmaking
H Timmaking that would rupture
olywood filmmaking.
128 Introducing Film Studies

Mulvey believes that analyzing pleasure or beauty destroys it.

Therefore in her article she takes it as her main intention to rip apart
coding of beauty and destroy erotic pleasure by analysing it. She also
wanted to conceive 'a new language of desire
by attacking and breaking
with normal pleasurable expectations of the spectator.