The second feminist wave in the 1960s has influenced feminists to increase their ideology against patriarchy in almost all areas. One of the areas which made women very vulnerable is the issue of women in cinema. This is based on the assumption that Hollywood traditional movies have a strong gender bias and position women as subordinate (Marshment, 1997: 126). Therefore studying the representation of women in narrative cinema became a big issue due to the film fascination which could affect the spectators.
Mulvey in her seminal essay ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’ tries to reveal the Hollywood misogyny which has its visual manipulation in the mainstream of narrative cinema. Using Freudian and Lacanian works of psychoanalysis, she argues that Hollywood traditional cinema represented the ideas and values of patriarchy and oppressed women by ‘male gaze’. Women were led to become erotic objects by ‘fetishistic scopophilia’ and ‘voyeuristic sadism’. By this, using psychoanalysis is appropriate as a ‘political weapon’ to criticism women and film.
To support her argument, she explains that due to women’s ‘lack of phallus’, men see them as strangers. This assumption led to ‘castration anxiety’ and the belief that women are dangerous (p. 746). Rather than being as a threat, men ‘deified’ them and associated them with beauty and sensuality. So it could be considered that film techniques, point of view, mainstream, camera moving, editing, and light and all varieties of sound led to sexist ideologies. With her lack, a woman is passive and a man is active. As a consequence, a woman became an object of ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ and a man a looker (p. 750). In this context, women bear the meaning, but men create the meaning. To reinforce her view, Mulvey states that ‘narcissism’ was planted in Hollywood narrative cinema. In this case, most movies put a male protagonist as the central character who has control and power over women. By ‘sadistic voyeuristic’, women were sentenced twice by her spectators and male characters. Thus, the audience cannot reject ‘male gaze’ because all ‘mise-en-scene’ are men. Mulvey concludes her seminal essay by the statement that it was hard to escape from ‘fetishistic scophopilia’ and ‘voyeuristic sadistic’ over women in the traditional Hollywood films (p. 755). To destroy the patriarchy ideology she proposed ‘deconstruction’ by making free sexual objectification in film, remove voyeurism and by distancing male spectators and the female character (p. 756). This can gain for women active involvement in all aspects of movie making.
When I read Mulvey’s work, it seem to me that it was written for special readers such as feminist and film scholars and not for general readers. This is because she has used many concepts about psychoanalysis and feminist concepts. I found also that her seminal essay contains radical claims and political statement regarding women’s oppression. In my opinion this is very ‘provocative’ and ‘utopian’. For example, she ignored the heterogeneity of spectators and movies themselves for her political purposes. By her strong statements it seems that she ‘condemns’ the Hollywood traditional movies.
Despite some critiques of her work, Mulvey received credit for her well-presented work which is systematic, concise and clear in explanation. She also gets a point as a one of the first feminists to bring to the psychoanalysis approach to the issue of women in film. Her work also continues to be influential.
References
Marshment, M. 1997, ‘The picture is political representation of women in contemporary popular culture’, in Introducing Women’s Studies, 2nd edn, eds. Victoria Robinson & Diane Richardson, London, MacMillan, pp. 125-151.
Mulvey, L. 1992, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema (1975)’, in Film theory and criticism: Introductory readings, eds. Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen and Leo Braudy, New York, Oxford University Press, pp. 746-757.
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