Summary of Laura Mulvey’s theory

Laura Mulvey (a feminist film theorist) came up with the theory of the “male-gaze”. The paper she wrote based on it was called “visual pleasure and narrative cinema” (1975)

Muvey believed that the spectator (audience) were positioned to see things from a male point of view “male gaze” therefore women were objectified (taking away their human qualities and turning them into an object so that their purely there to be looked at) as a result of this patriarchy would be reinforced. This could be because seeing women represented in that way would give the spectator pleasure( these pleasures may be erotic, voyeuristic, sadistic or scopophilic) but at the same time anxiety would be produced if an phallic object or fetish object (such as leather, whips, boots, stockings..) were not exposed because according to Freud by looking at a women in that way would make the man feel castrated which is a man biggest fear as that would be taking away his power. Furthermore, as men liked to have power could suggest why misogyny was introduced which could be for the reason that when men were younger they were controlled by their mothers and the factor that women have the ability to reproduce by giving birth could make them feel very very jealous.

Narcissism is used in cinema when we identify with the hero as that is how we would want ourselves to be ideally.

She made use of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. Freud was a psychoanalysist, who looked at the human mind and tried to interpret human behaviour, he came up with this theory around the 1900.

He used an iceberg to explain his theory. He stated the top of the ice berg which was about 1/10 was how conscious we were and then bottom of the iceberg which was 9/10 was our unconscious so how much we are not aware. For example he said our dreams was when our unconscious came out and when we have blurted out things which we were not meant to say or don’t know why we said. He used the term resistance for those who refused to accept his theory about the unconscious and repression for those who did not want to know.