This document discusses the 2016 film The Neon Demon and Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". It provides an overview of Mulvey's thesis on how mainstream cinema serves patriarchal interests through the male gaze and objectification of women. It then examines how The Neon Demon reflects and challenges these concepts through its portrayal of the protagonist Jesse and use of visual techniques like voyeurism, exhibitionism, and fetishistic scopophilia. Key questions are raised about how the film critiques or participates in the male gaze and what it reveals about gender, horror and the monstrous.
This document discusses the 2016 film The Neon Demon and Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". It provides an overview of Mulvey's thesis on how mainstream cinema serves patriarchal interests through the male gaze and objectification of women. It then examines how The Neon Demon reflects and challenges these concepts through its portrayal of the protagonist Jesse and use of visual techniques like voyeurism, exhibitionism, and fetishistic scopophilia. Key questions are raised about how the film critiques or participates in the male gaze and what it reveals about gender, horror and the monstrous.
This document discusses the 2016 film The Neon Demon and Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". It provides an overview of Mulvey's thesis on how mainstream cinema serves patriarchal interests through the male gaze and objectification of women. It then examines how The Neon Demon reflects and challenges these concepts through its portrayal of the protagonist Jesse and use of visual techniques like voyeurism, exhibitionism, and fetishistic scopophilia. Key questions are raised about how the film critiques or participates in the male gaze and what it reveals about gender, horror and the monstrous.
This document discusses the 2016 film The Neon Demon and Laura Mulvey's 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". It provides an overview of Mulvey's thesis on how mainstream cinema serves patriarchal interests through the male gaze and objectification of women. It then examines how The Neon Demon reflects and challenges these concepts through its portrayal of the protagonist Jesse and use of visual techniques like voyeurism, exhibitionism, and fetishistic scopophilia. Key questions are raised about how the film critiques or participates in the male gaze and what it reveals about gender, horror and the monstrous.
Setting the scene (I) • What is The Neon Demon (TND) [about]? • What is “Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema” about? – Can you identify Mulvey’s thesis statement and/or any of her supporting arguments? – Are there any critical concepts or terms that Mulvey deploys in constructing – and arguing for – her analysis of mainstream Hollywood cinema? • How does TND reflect, address, challenge, and/or extend the concerns raised by Mulvey? Setting the scene (II) • How do film and television – as “advanced representation systems” – make meaning? How is meaning conveyed? • Quoting Mulvey: “The magic of the Hollywood style at its best … arose, not exclusively, but in one important aspect, from its skilled and satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure.” • Re-re-wind: How does cinema manipulate – or, less pejoratively – frame what we see on the screen? – The position, angle, and movement of the camera – Lighting, as well as the use of filters and lenses to produce color – Composition – Editing (specifically: the use of cuts to transition between sequences) – Set design – Special effects – Make-up, hair, and costuming – Performance “Visual Pleasure/Narrative Cinema” (Mulvey) • Cinema is an advanced representation system; the technological qualities of film production allow for more complex forms of signification. • Mulvey, drawing on psychoanalytic theory, seeks to explain how (classic/mainstream) cinema serves the interests of the patriarchy by showing how “the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form.” – Key quote: “[This paper] takes as starting point the way film reflects, reveals, and even plays on the straight, socially established interpretation of sexual difference which controls images, erotic ways of looking and spectacle.” • Ultimately, she wishes to destroy the existing mechanisms by which the spectator derives (phallocentric) pleasure from looking, in order to (re)appropriate film as a “political weapon.” Interlude: the mirror stage • Our lives begin in the realm of the Real/the Imaginary, and we pass through the mirror stage on the way to entering the Symbolic. • The moment of (mis)recognition or “split” produces both a sense of control (through recognition) and alienation (as the result of misrecognition) as it negotiates this fundamental question of difference. This sets the stage for “the future generation of identification with others.” • Crucially, both Freud’s and Lacan’s theories survive as metaphors – or myths (and not as factual accounts) – that help explain how social constructs and beliefs are culturally understood/maintained. • According to Mulvey, the movie screen acts in a similar way by (a) mimicking the process of ego formation and (b) supplying the (male) spectator with images of women that need to be unpacked in the service of the patriarchy. • The language of film and the cinematic apparatus work in tandem to have women function as the Other to the male Self (i.e. both the [male] spectator and their idealized screen surrogate). “Visual Pleasure/Narrative Cinema” (cont’d) • At the core, the power of the cinema lies in the pleasure derived from looking, or scopophilia (both active and narcissistic scopophilia). • In a patriarchal society, this pleasure “has been split”: man looks, while woman is (only) looked at. Woman’s cinematic representation accords to and reinforces “her place [in society] as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.” • The (ideal/implied) spectator is forced to identify with the male protagonist (his screen surrogate/ego) and adopts his male gaze. Female characters exist as the erotic object of both. – How is the spectator forced to identify with the male protagonist? • While the protagonist is the subject of the narrative and drives the action, the woman serves only as an (erotic) object – as spectacle – an object whose sexual difference, which is most pronounced in the castration threat (her lack), must somehow be contained/integrated into the narrative. – What role(s) do female characters usually play according to Mulvey? – What, in turn, characterize men’s representation in film? “Visual Pleasure/Narrative Cinema” (end) • The male unconscious has “two avenues of escape”: devaluation/voyeurism or overvaluation/fetishistic scopophilia. • Mulvey distinguishes between three looks: the look of the camera, the look of the audience, and the look of the characters at each other. – What is the relationship between these three looks? Why does it matter? • According to Mulvey, only by “free[ing] the look of the camera ... and the look of the audience into ... passionate detachment” can this spell be broken. Discussion/review questions • What are some of the criticisms that could be levelled at Mulvey’s theory? Where does her theoretical frame fall short, and how are its flaws related to the difference between address and reception? • Cite examples (i.e. scenes) from The Neon Demon that illustrate the concepts of – scopophilia – exhibitionism – the male gaze – to-be-looked-at-ness – voyeurism – fetishistic scopophilia • In what way(s) do the male characters in TND function as (im)perfect stand-ins for Mulvey’s (ideal/implied) spectator? • Assess the feminist credentials of TND by tracing Jesse’s characterization and actions; does she (re)present a challenge to Mulvey’s conceptualization of Hitchcock and/or Sternberg’s female protagonists? • What is TND ultimately about (i.e. who is the titular “neon demon”?), and how does the plot directly speak to Mulvey’s concerns? • In the final analysis, does TND critique the functioning of the male gaze or does it knowingly participate in – and fall victim to – its trappings? The cinematic apparatus The male gaze To-be-looked-at-ness/objectification To-be-looked-at-ness/voyeurism (1) To-be-looked-at-ness/voyeurism (2) To-be-looked-at-ness/voyeurism + objectification Exhibitionism Fetishistic scopophilia The female gaze The female (gaze), punished Scene analysis Teaser: gender, horror and the monstrous • Dixit Laura Mulvey: “[Woman’s] alien presence then has to be integrated into cohesion with the narrative.”