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Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Laura Mulvey


            Laura Mulvey's take on the "male gaze" in cinema in her essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" relies on psychoanalytic theory to highlight the role of the patriarchal subconscious of society in films, as well as the threat of castration in the presence of a female character in the midst of a male-dominant storyline. Her main argument centers on the assertion of the objectification of women in Hollywood narrative films. Mulvey writes that the characterization of female characters in these films is solely based on the opportunity to provide a pleasurable object of viewing for male spectators, whether through the eyes of the male characters, or through the eyes of the actual male audience. She goes on to state that the cinematic gaze that is presented to the audience is always a masculine gaze, and women are always the object of viewing, but never portrayed to be the bearer of the gaze.
             Mulvey addresses Freud's theory of scopophilia to supplement her arguments on the mechanism of objectifying the images on the screen. The pleasure that arises from subjecting someone to one's private gaze is utilized and provided by cinema to satisfy such urges. Additionally, the Freudian theory on the Ego plays a relevant part in Mulvey's article when she mentions the developmental period in which the child develops the self-awareness that is achieved from recognizing itself in a mirror, thus constituting the crucial ego. The pleasurable phenomenon of identifying with the character shown on screen is rooted in these underlying narcissistic needs. Mulvey's article and its statement on the psychoanalytic side of spectatorship highlight the fundamental role of the spectator in Hollywood cinema. Based on this idea, the presentation of the characters in film is arguably developed with the spectator in mind.


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