Neale
argues that the process of identification of the viewer with an image in
the screen is not as simple as the idea that men identify with male
characters and women
with female characters. This is is so because desires are part of
the identification process, and desires are always fluid and mobile.
Neale sees two
basic forms of identification with the image on the screen:
1. narcissistic identification,
and, 2. identification by contemplation. In narcissistic
identification, the
viewer, mainly the male viewer, sees on the screen an image of himself
as powerful and omnipotent being. In
the persona of the hero, the male viewer sees his ideal ego. This
also applies to the female viewer. She also sees her ideal ego in
the persona of the female protagonist. Neale adds that narcissistic
identification might explain the quiet personalities of some heroes,
since language implies coming out of the boundaries of the self and
reaching out to the other.
Narcissistic images
in 'male' genres are often in contradiction with societal laws.
Narcissistic authority, which often reminds us of the characters of
John Wayne and James Dean, seems to find itself at odds with social
institutions such as marriage. The narcissistic hero often refuses
to integrate into society by not marrying. It must be noticed that
marriage is the ticket for insertion of the narcissistic male into the
domestic sphere. The domestic sphere is the sphere of women.
But, their presence on the screen seems to threaten all narcissistic
authority.
The
other form of identification is contemplation. Contemplation makes
the hero on the screen an object of the male viewers' gaze. "The image,"
Neale says, "is a source both of narcissistic processes and drives and
inasmuch as it is other, or object-oriented processes and drives."
(89)
Neale believes that "it is not surprising
that the 'male' genres and films involve sado-masochist themes, scenes
and phantasies or that male heroes at times can be marked as the object-of
-an-erotic-gaze." ( 90)
According to Neale,
identification by contemplation might explain why in 'male'
genres, violent scenes often present the mutilation of the masculine
body. Supposedly, this annulment of
the masculine body through mutilation is meant to suppress and eliminate
homoeroticism. The fear of the sexual desires that might
be present if the male viewer could contemplate the body of male
characters causes the repression of the displaying of the male body in an
erotic way. Thus, referring to Mann's
films Neale says: "The mutilation and sadism so often involved in Mann's
films are marks both of the repression involved
and of a means by which the male body may be disqualified, so to speak,
as an object of erotic contemplation and desire." (90)
LOOKING AND SPECTACLE !
Mulvey, in her article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," argues that there are two ways of looking at the screen. These are: the active male way of seeing and the passive female way of seeing. The male gaze is usually voyeuristic. The voyeuristic gaze is marked by the distance between the seer and the seen. It might give way to sadistic tendencies or acts. The voyeuristic gaze gives power to the seer, that is, the seer has power over the seen. That power might lead him to hurt the other. The voyeuristic-powerful look is also active. That is precisely why it might lead to violent actions over the seen. This type of look is frequently present in the films of Alfred Hitchcock.
Neale believes that the active
voyeuristic look can be see in 'male' action genres such as Combat Films
and
Westerns. The battles and the struggles of the heroes imply "that
the male figures on the screen are subject to voyeuristic looking, both
on the part of the spectator and on the part of the male character." (93)
This is often revealed in the fighting scenes or gun battles. The
male figures become objects of the voyeuristic-active look of other
men. If this voyeuristic look becomes
fixed, as when the heroes of a Western
give each other aggressive looks just before the fighting begins, the
male heroes become fetishes. Obviously,
this
look is not directed at the masculine bodies because the cinematic image
represses the erotic desire for the male body. Instead the
festishistic
look is fixed on the actual scene of combat or fight. In these scenes
of ritualistic combats and fights, the narrative is stopped so that
we, the viewers, can "recognize the pleasure of the display." (93)
Fetishism then, tries to abolish the
gulf between the seer and the seen created by the voyeuristic look.
The fetishistic look is the opposite of the voyeuristic look. The fetishistic
gaze is captivated with what it contemplates. The voyeuristic
look is curious, active and wants to know.
The fetishistic gaze has as an avenue
what Neal and Mulvey call "fetishistic
scopophilia," that is, when physical beauty (in this
case of the female body)
becomes something satisfying in itself.
The woman, or rather, the self of the woman,
can
be separated from her body; the female character is depersonalized while
the camera fragments her body because it is looked at as beautiful
in itself. The male body is usually not represented in the
this way. This is so because the predominant gaze is male.
The psychic processes
that accompany the images of men that we see on screen are then:
identification, voyeuristic looking and fetshistic looking.
Neale
agrees with Muvley that mainstream cinema
is implicitly male. This explains why the erotic elements involved
in the
relationship between the male spectators and the male images are
absent or repressed. In cinema, males are tested and women are
investigated. Masculinity is an ideal, and as such is known, but
femininity, for the male gaze, is a mystery that its voyeuristic desire
has to decipher.
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