Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"

Hey hey hey everyone, back again. Today

I'm going to talk about Laura Mulv's

essay visual pleasure and narrative

cinema in which she develops the idea of

the male gaze and scophilia. Pretty

important terms in the history of film

studies and psychoanalysis. But before

jumping into that, if you want to follow

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don't waste any more of your time with

that stuff. Let's jump into this short

essay. So the short form of this already

short essay is to say that cinema

specifically narrative cinema reflects

the real world and it reflects the

social relations found in that world and

this happens

not only in terms of the content seen on

the screen. So there needs to be some

relationship there that is we need to be

watching something that we can recognize

otherwise we wouldn't be able to have

any kind of connection to it. But also

the cinema fosters a kind of innate

desire for looking for viewing. What

Mulv calls borrowing from Freud in the

psychoanalytic tradition scophilia the

desire to look to see. So now we have

two forms of the cinema here. That is we

have what is presented on the screen but

also what that screen necessitates and

that is viewers who are watching. Now,

Mul says that both of these things, both

of these sites, the screen and the

viewer are extensions of the social

order. And for her, as she very clearly

demonstrates and she's very correct

about, that order is an undoubtedly

patriarchal one. So, what happens on the

screen and the relationships within the

screen and the acts of viewing are going

to be extensions of that patriarchal

order. So she deploys psychoanalysis to

try to understand this because for her

these patriarchal inclinations of the

cinema and of viewing fall under the

radar because they've become so

naturalized. They are by and large they

fall into our societal unconscious. So

we need psychoanalysis to reveal this

aspect of the cinema to reveal this

aspect of viewing which could then serve

as a means to look at the broader social

sphere at large. Now this patriarchal

order plays itself out in very specific

dynamics between men and women and as

psychoanalysis tells us that is Freudian

psychoanalysis and leanian

psychoanalysis in the dynamic between

men and women is found a fear of

castration. Now, what is that? And it's

a big thing to unpack here in just a few

minutes, and I'll try to be as brief yet

as precise as I can. For Freud, men

experience a perpetual fear of the

thought of being castrated, which they

see in women by not having a penis. So,

they witness this and say, "Oh,

something has happened to women that we

must make sure does not happen to us."

Now, this translates into men exerting a

great deal of dominance not only over

the world but over women as well. And

we're going to develop this a little bit

as we go on. This happens in two primary

ways. But for now, let's just put that

on the back burner to say that in this

patriarchal psychoanalytic

configuration,

men feel the urge to protect their their

fallus by exerting control, exerting

domination over the world to mitigate

that threat to try to as the possibility

of that happening. But interestingly the

only way it is possible to develop an

identity in terms of having a penis

there must be a correlative other in the

terms of in terms of a lack that is

women lacking a penis in order against

which to measure ones lack of lack that

is the state of having a penis not being

castrated. So for that reason, men are

dependent upon women as castrated to

justify and to maintain their own

position in the world. that is a largely

privileged one that is able to exert

certain controls within what Mulv takes

from psychoanalytic theory in the

symbolic order which pertains to the law

to institutions to ideology that follows

from the law of the father and the name

of the father that automatically assumes

a fallentric order a privileging of the

fallus which is then extended throughout

all of society. So through women being

castrated through this I'm using the

term symbolic here colloquially not in

the way I just said it but in this

symbolic castration of women transforms

women into a sight of desire into a

sight of possibility because in the

experience of lack there can then be

inputed onto women limitless possibility

limitless potential a void that men seek

to fill. Now, she's going to elaborate

this on more in a minute, but as I kind

of intimated, this happens in two

possible ways. Either the woman is seen

as a sight of mystery that has to be

unearthed and kind of understood. So I

like to think about this in terms of the

classic trope of the fem fatal. This

kind of mysterious woman who comes in

and out of the narrative almost

half-hazardly that it is the man's

obligation to understand and to tame and

control which often happens in these

stories with a fem fatal and the male

protagonist end up in a relationship of

some sort. But another way that this

plays itself out is by turning the woman

into an object of desire by through the

act of looking and domination that turns

the woman not into an active participant

in the production of meaning and the

production of but rather as a passive

recipient of meaning that is imparted

upon them by the patriarchal order. So

it turns women into an object of desire

for men's pleasure who have who occupy

an active role in this patriarchal

framework. Now this is this is an

example of scophilia which is a desire

to look an act that turns the object

being looked at into an object of

desire. Now, not only is the object

itself a kind of object of desire, but

the act of looking becomes desirable as

well, where looking takes on a kind of

fetishistic form in itself, where it's

something quite exciting, not only by

turning something into an object, by

being able to do that through looking,

presents an avenue for the command of

that object in ways that might otherwise

not be permitted or might not be

available. And here we might think of

some examples like the peeping tom who

has a desire to look at somebody without

their consent and how in that looking

although they aren't necessarily hurting

the person they're looking at if it's

happening in secret it is still

nevertheless an act of domination of

that person's body of that person's

autonomy and privacy which in itself

operates as a kind of mode of excitement

for the peeping tom or the voyer and the

cinema fosters ers this kind of setting.

So if we think of the cinema or just the

movie theater, you go to the movie

theater and sit in these atomized chairs

that have these very often very rigid

arm very rigid armrests kind of blocking

you off from everyone around you and

your gaze is fixed forwards on the

screen and you don't see anyone around

you especially in the way that the seats

are are leveled so that you just are

looking at a screen. Now you occupy a

kind of private zone there and you are

being streamlined into the private lives

of people on the screen. You are assume

you assume this position of the voyer

who is looking at the screen who is able

to enact this fantasy of looking at what

is not supposed to be looked at or what

is supposed to be private. But as I said

earlier the cinema has to reflect our

world to some extent. It has to be

something that viewers recognize or else

there wouldn't we wouldn't be able to

foster a kind of connection with with

with what happens on screen. So the

cinema is instrumental not only in

producing these objects of desire and

for satisfying a desire to look but also

in the formation of the ego as if we

take the ego in the most basic sense to

be our sense of self who we are as a

human. And this comes about through

gradual phases within psychoanalytic

theory where we have examples like the

mirror stage where to put it really

quite simply a child is looking at a

mirror and they have their mother

present potentially or some kind of

other figure who says this is you know

this is you on your own and this is the

first moment the child sees themselves

as separate from their mother. Now what

we see on the screen opens up more of

that possibility. But on the screen

there is represented not only what we

desire but more of what we desire. What

Freud calls the ego ideal. That is we

see on the screen not only what we want

to dominate and control and violate in

terms of viewing but also who we want to

be. Now the these ideal figures serve as

templates for people within any kind of

social setting to live up to and try to

to try to become. So here we are

presented with a contradiction of the

screen in the cinema where on the one

hand it is meant to present objects of

desire that we don't associate with but

that we actively try to dominate and

control but on the other hand the cinema

presents images that are meant to serve

as ego ideal subjects. As I've been

presenting this, I've been deliberately

koi in who this Wii is, who this we are.

And Laura Mulv is quite clear that when

we were talking about the possibility of

having a kind of resonating relationship

with the images on the screen, with

these ego ideals, we are referring

primarily to the relationship between

male viewers and the screen. Now she

says in a footnote that of course there

are films with women as protagonists and

she says she doesn't have time here to

really uh undergo that or to really

discuss that. But to just put it quite

simply why that's not a a counter thesis

to what she's saying. Women protagonists

often have to follow a certain script.

And one of those scripts is that they

often have to be thin white women. So

women on the screen might certainly act

as an ego ideal for women viewers and

that can be empowering. But at the same

time there are certain unwritten rules

that come to be formed through hegemonic

institutions that impose upon these

possibilities certain limitations. that

is being thin, being normatively

attractive, being white that restrict

the real potential that is afforded to

people on the screen and to viewers who

might relate to what happens on the

screen. But I want to caveat this by

also saying that the issue is a lot more

complicated than I think Mul dedicates

time to. It's just a short essay. We

can't expect that she was going to go

through all of these different routes.

But largely what happens in this

interaction and what happens within the

screen among the characters is that

women frequently occupy passive

positions whereas the men are active.

Men assume the most commanding positions

within the narratives and by extension

male viewers have more subjects with

which they can relate to then exert

their own desire for control upon other

people within the world. just mirroring

what they see on the screen which as I

said earlier the screen has already been

mirroring the society at large. So

there's a kind of reciprocal

relationship here. Now remember how I

said there were two ways in which women

can be treated either as an object of

desire or as a kind of mystery that has

to be solved in terms of like the fem

fatal. Well, Move says that this issue

comes up most prominently when we begin

to interrogate any desire that can be

attached to castration because

castration is obviously not a good or

pleasurable thing. So, how then can

desire be associated with it? Well, it

comes down to always commanding that

thing that is castrated so that the

castration can't be repeated against

men, but also to reduce any possible

mystery of the women characters that

might exist outside of the normative

domain of the patriarchal structure to

bring them always back to that

structure. So that deviation is limited.

It only happens in small doses but

always resolves back into the system at

large. So she goes through a few

examples here of film to explain this

and I don't want to go present them all

because that would take I would have to

explain the plots. So I just want to

present one and that is Hitchcock's Rear

Window. And if you don't know the film,

it was parodyied by The Simpsons where

Bart breaks his leg and he can only

amuse himself by looking out his window

at the telescope and he eventually sees

what appears to be a murder happening

next door. Now, in the film, similar

thing occurs. The protagonist, I believe

he breaks his leg, um, is confined to

his bed into a wheelchair and has to

just amuse himself by looking out the

window where he unfolds a kind of murder

occurring across the street. So in that

moment it might appear or in that film

it might appear as though the man

assumes a passive role. He's not

physically mobile but even in that

immobility he assumes this role of the

commanding figure within the film and he

is opened up to so much by virtue of

that. He is the hero at the end of the

day and he attains all his power through

this act of looking through this

fetishistic scophilia by looking next

door. And there's this kind of added

subplot where he's having a he kind of

struggling with his with his wife. But

as soon as she goes next door or across

the street to where these events are

unfolding and he looks at her through

that gaze, then their relationship sort

of gets corrected again. How the act of

viewing can reinscribe the proper the so

the psychoanalytic proper dynamics of

that society of that relationship so

that the man can reimpose his control

over the woman woman who can then retain

the subordinate position to the man and

then they can live happily ever after.

And of course, Move laments all of this.

And it's an issue that we must all

confront, especially when we begin, and

she wrote this in the mid70s, when we

begin to think about the possibilities

of cinema, what it could do to

transgress these prejudices, to

transgress these kind of unconscious

impulses towards these patriarchal

structures. Now adopting psychoanalysis

to oppose the patriarchy is kind of

ironic because psychoanalysis is in bed

with the patriarchy. So we have to ask

how effective is appealing to

psychoanalysis at actually drawing

attention to these things. And I don't

have an answer to that. Just leave your

answer in the comments. But she

concludes by saying that with this move

to a possible new cinema, one that is

going to oppose these classic

structures, you might come with a

sentimentalist regret where on the one

hand there is a desire, yes, to move

beyond what had happened, to regret that

history there, but also to recognize

that there was a lot of magic in that

period of classic Hollywood narrative

similar, classic Hollywood narrative

cinema as well, and how it conditioned

much of what society is and very odently

reflected that society. So, that's how

she leaves it here and that pretty much

covers it. If there's anything I

excluded, I'd love to hear about it or

anything I mischaracterized, I'd love to

hear about it. You know how to do it.

Uh, if you like what I did, like, share,

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time. And take care.