Monday, December 11, 2006
Task 11
Summary of arguments of Laura MulveyMulvey declared her intention to make ‘political use’ of Freudian psychoanalytical theory in a study of cinematic spectatorship. Mulvey argues that various features of cinema viewing conditions facilitate for the viewer both the voyeuristic process of objectification of female characters and also the narcissistic process of identification with an ‘ideal ego’ seen on the screen. She declares that in a patriarchal society ‘pleasure in looking has been split between the active man and the passive female’. She also talks of the female being the object of the male gaze. This is reflected in the dominant forms of cinema. Conventional narrative films in the ‘classical’ Hollywood tradition not only typically focus on a male protagonist in the narrative but also assume a male spectator. As the audience is constructed as the male, they are forced to identify with the male character and see through his perspective. Women are presented as the image and the mean as the bearer of the look. In response to Freudian ‘castration anxiety’ Mulvey has 2 modes of looking: voyeuristic and fetishistic.
Laura Mulvey theory in Pretty Persuasion
First look at Pretty Persuasion and you would think that this is a female dominated film and therefore they are the dominating sex. This could be partly true as it is female dominated but a closer look and you will realize that the authoritative roles in the film are those played by males: the lawyer, the teacher, the judge and so on, which gives them the overall power in the film.
In Pretty Persuasion, at one point in the film there is a scene where Elizabeth, a young, pretty, blonde girl is on stage in her drama class and her teacher (who happens to be male) asks her to imagine that she is alone in her bedroom and asks her to do whatever she would do behind closed doors in the privacy of her own bedroom. As the young girl closes her eyes, she starts to undress herself in front of the teacher and her class mates. This allows the male and the audience (who are constructed as male, and therefore forced to identify with the teacher) to be a voyeur and look at things they usually wouldn’t. The young female has become a object of the male gaze and also a form of looked-at-ness.
The fact that there are many pretty girls in the film allows the audience to look at the film fetishistically, the other mode of looking distinguished by Laura Mulvey. Because there are so many pretty girls in the film allows the audience to look and fetish. Fetishistic looking, she suggests, leads to overvaluation of the female image and the cult of the female movie star.
Sherish at 11:09 AM