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“Visual pleasure and narrative cinema” by Laura Mulvey

First of all, before focusing on the content of a controversial essay
such as “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema”, it is considered efficient to
take a look at the author who worked on it
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Mainly, she believed that the feminine figure in the classical Hollywood
cinema and on screen was considered as an object of desire in order to
provide a pleasurable visual experience for men derived and arised from
different mental mechanisms , quoting her lines : “there are two distinct
modes of the male gaze of this era: "voyeuristic" and "fetishistic"
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The author’s discussion is highlighted by a psychoanalysis theory also
called a "political weapon" to demonstrate how the patriarchic subconscious
of society shapes our film watching experience and cinema itself
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More precisely, Laura Mulvey
writes about two slightly distinguished mental mechanisms related to
pleasure and concern particularly the male subject, yet both forms have
been discussed and analyzed by Freud
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In simpler terms, it is the pleasure
derived from subjecting someone to one's gaze
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According to the author, these mechanisms are structured within a
film storyline
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In other words, the viewer’s
“objectifying gaze” is directed by the camera looking at the woman which
indirectly leads us to the idea that a woman “is meant to be looked at”
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In fact, a man’s
attraction is related to a “deep fear of castration”, in order to escape he
tends to “demystify” the female figure or through a “fetishization of her”
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This essay was brutally attacked for
“reinforcing heterosexuality and on the other hand for assuming a passive,
un-negotiating viewer”

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