Method of Contextualising and Analysing...
- Look up context about author(s), time it was written, reasons for, explanations, background work, qualifications etc
- then analyse text... find key points and pair with quotes
- then find other relevant texts about same topic, by same author, about same author etc
^ thats the method to academic writing
Visual and Other Pleasures
Mulvey. L (2009 [1975]) Visual and Other Pleasures. Basingstoke
About Laura Mulvey
Mulvey is a British feminist theorist that has published essays on topics including feminism and the objectification of women in cinema. One of her most well known essays titled Visual and Other Pleasures helped shift the orientation of film theory towards a psychoanalytical framework.
Key Points
- Scopophilia
- this essay looks at scopophilia in film and its audience
- how culture reflects society and its equalities
- women as object, almost incidental to the film
> "in herself the woman has not the slightest importance"
- active/male and passive/female - sexual imbalance
> pleasure on looking has been split between...."
- to-be-looked-at-ness
Cultural Theory and Popular Culture
Storey J (2006) Cultural theory and popular culture. Prentice hall, USA
Key Points
- Laura Mulvey
- view on popular films from feminist psychoanalysis
- the ‘male gaze’
- image of women (i) object of male desire
- scopophilia - pleasure of looking, using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through site
- cinema produces two contradictory forms of visual pleasure
- first invites scopophilia
- second promotes narcissism
- Freudian terms, the separation is between pleasure of looking at another person as an erotic object and forming identification processes
- sexual imbalance - men look and women exhibit - both playing to and signifying male desire
- women crucial to pleasure of male gaze
- concludes that the pleasure of popular cinema must be destroyed on order to liberate women
Stars and Audiences
Storey J (1986[2006]) Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society.
Key Points
- Spectatorship theory sees the moviegoer as an identity produced exclusively in how the organisation of looks construct a position which addresses members of the audience ??
- difficulty with theory - ‘spectator’ suggests cinema is only visual pleasure, ignoring the aural effects of film
- another difficulty - way on which spectatorship theory would cast the moviegoer as the passive product of meanings which are already determined onscreen ??
- moviegoers do respond actively as individuals producing a diversity of responses
- research into TV audiences has provided different ways of understanding viewers
- context of social relationships - e.g. those at work or in the family, are influential in how people view television
- In a family watching Rocky III, father identifies himself with Stallone with his role as a union representative at work and sees himself fighting for his family.
- identification is therefore seen to be the result of multiple social positions
- Spectatorship theory dominates readings of relationship between audiences to film stars.
- Laura Mulvey’s theory ^
- Classic narrative cinema continually organises looks which centre on a woman as spectacle
- spectators or moviegoers are positioned according to the pleasures of male desire
- although narrative films continually include looks directed at the male body and also looks between male characters
- Steve Cohan considers how the film constructs a look that eroticises William Holden’s body which is is contradicted by elements of the star’s image.Holdne’s character continually removes his shirt, whilst female cast each look at him erotically, objectifying male body
- Studlar’s account of masochism suggests how the image of the female star can represent a power found in performance which transforms the pleasure and control of the male gaze
- severe limitation of all spectatorship theory is that it hypothesises the positioning of moviegoers without researching if moviegoers occupy those positions
Triangulation and critical analysis
In an extract I looked at of an essay first published in 1975, Laura Mulvey explains her theory behind scopophilia. This is a term to describe the act of looking at something in an erotic manor, in particular, evidence of this in film and its audience. One of the first points made demonstrates the difference between male and female roles in film, "In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female" (Mulvey 2009 [1975]: 19). Mulvey's theory attacks the film industry by saying that the women's role in film is to be an object for which the audience and male actors to look at where as the male role is to look at the females in an erotic way, thus creating an imbalance in gender roles. This point is also made in another academic essay written by Mulvey and featured in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. In this essay, Mulvey argues that "men look and women exhibit 'to-be-looked-at-ness' - both playing to and signifying male desire" (Mulvey in Storey J (2006). This further proving Mulvey's point about gender inequality within the roles of actors/actresses in cinema. In her essay, Mulvey then goes on to explain how the objectification of women in films is almost incidental to the film plot itself, Budd Boetticher puts it as "in herself, the woman has not the slightest importance" (Boetticher in Mulvey 2009 [1975] : 20). Mulvey then goes on to talk about the source of the problem being that "women displayed as sexual objects is the leitmotif of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to strip tease" (Mulvey 2009 [1975]: 19).
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