Mulvey's essay uses psychoanalysis to discover the
patterns of fascination that have molded us. It uses psychoanalysis as
a political weapon to uncover the ways in which patriarchal society has
structured the sexual subject. This essay takes as a starting point the
way in which cinema Hollywood style represents sexual differences ad sexual
pleasure.
According to Mulvey, the patriarchal
society is a phallocentric society. This means that it recognizes the male
gender and the sexuality of men as the dominant norm. But phallocentrism
depends, in Freudian terms, on the image of a castrated woman. This
image gives order to the world, that is to say, the male dominated conception
of society, postulates a masculine subject at the core of all social interchanges,
including language itself. Since women represent the absence of a penis,
she embodies the fear of castration which is so fundamental for the
constitution of the male subject.
Mulvey is saying that language
as a symbolic system presupposes some kind of reference to itself just
as say, a computer program includes some reference to its identity and
procedures. Yet, in the linguistic sphere, it is
the male gender the one with power over the word, and it is presence
and signature is that which sustains our linguistic order. Thus, Mulvey
says:
"The paradox of phallocentrism in all its manifestation
is that it depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and
meaning to its world." She adds that the idea of woman as lack (of a phallus)
drives the production of meaning. The symbolic order of phallocentric culture
asserts itself through the image of the castrated woman. Women exist
only in relation to castration, or to castration fear, or a source of maternal
nurturing. Her child, is the only way in she can participate in the Symbolic
Order. Mulvey says:
Women then, stands
in the patriarchal culture as a signifier for
the male
other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out
his phantasies and
obsessions through linguistic command by imposing
them in the
silent image of woman still tied to her place as a bearer of
meaning. (140)
Cinema as a system of representation poses the question
of the form and manner in which the collective subconscious structures
ways of seeing and pleasure of looking. Mainstream
Hollywood cinema has represented the erotic realm using the language and
images of the patriarchal culture. It satisfies and reinforces the masculine
ego and represses the desire of women.
Cinema offers a number of possible sensual
pleasures, among them, scopophilia, or love of looking and its opposite
the pleasure derived from being be looked at. Mulvey relies on
Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality because in these essays
Freud says that scopophilia is one of the components of sexuality.
Although scopophilia responds to our sexual drives, its existence is independent
of the erotogenic zones. Scopohilia is part of our sexuality because through
it we derive erotic pleasure. Scopohilia is also associated with taking
people as objects, and to subjecting them to a curious gaze. Freud's says
that this pleasure from looking at others is present in children. Thus,
children manifest voyeuristic tendencies in their "desire to see
and make sure of the private and the forbidden (142)" Also, Freud associates
scopohilia with pre-genital auto-eroticism. All these psycho-sexual processes
are fundamental for the formation of the ego.
According to Mulvey, the screen plays with
our scopophilia and voyeuristic phantasies. It give us a world in which
to submerge in which our gaze wonders free. The audience also represses
its exhibitionism and projects the repressed desire to the performer.
Cinema, she feels, satisfies our basic need for pleasurable looking.
It also develops scopophilia in its narcissistic aspects. We love looking
at ourselves in a narcissistic fashion. The conventions of mainstream cinema
focus attention in the human form. The space, the stories the scales are
anthropomorphic, that is to say, adjust to the human form. In film our
scopophilia and our narcissism intermingle for our needs for likeness and
recognition. Cinema plays for the audience a function
similar to the joyous encounter of an infant with his/her image in the
mirror. This encounter is fundamental for the formation of identity (Lacan's
mirror)
Mulvey says that the mirror phase occurs at time when the child's desire
of movement is bigger that his actual motor capabilities. His images in
the mirror is, for the child, more complete and perfect that his body since
his body still cannot move as he desires. In a way the recognition
the child has of his image in the mirror is a misrecognition. The ego in
the mirror is not the real one but an ideal one. Yet, that image
is re-introjected as an ego ideal gives rise to the future identification
with others. This mirror moment in which identity and subjectivity are
born predates language.
For Mulvey, this encounter of the child with is image is the matrix
of the imaginary, that is to say, of all the mental images and representations
we will form. But at the very core of that which allow us to form images
to interprets the world, there is a process of recognition
and misrecognition of ourselves. This is a moment in which there
is a collision between what we see and the way we see ourselves. Previous
to the recognition of his/herself in the mirror the child was fascinated
by the mother's face and his surroundings but had no clear self-awareness.
there is both joy and despair in the recognition of our individuality,
joy because, we discover ourselves, despair, because we are severed from
our attachment (engulfment) to our surroundings. By the same token, the
screen works as a mirror for us. It probably plays with that primeval sense
of joy of individuality and despair of separation of the moment of image
recognition. While watching the screen we simultaneously lose the ego while
we reinforce our ego. also, in the persona of stars and the star system
in general function to produce ego ideals.
There are, then, two contradictory aspects in the act of deriving pleasure
from the screen: 1.the scopophilia aspect
or the act of deriving pleasure from looking at another person as an object
of sexual stimulation, 2. the narcissistic identification with the image
in the screen. Active scopophilia implies a separation from the erotic
object on the screen, narcissistic identification demands identification
with the object on the screen through the spectator's fascination with
the recognition of his/her likeness. Active scopophila derives from sexual
instinct, narcissistic identification with ego libido or sexual wants and
processes associated to the ego.
Mulvey goes on to say that in our society pleasure of looking shows the
very imbalance of the patriarchal system. The male gaze is active and the
female gaze is passive. Women, in the world of images ,are displayed as
sexual objects. The presence of women is an indispensable element in spectacle.
Traditionally, the displaying of women in the world of cimema has
functioned at two levels. 1. as erotic object for male characters in the
screen story, and 2. as an erotic object for the spectator in the auditorium.
The active male gaze/ passive male gaze dichotomy
also affects the narrative structure of movies. The narrative prevents
the male figure from the burden of objectification. Hence, men need to
make things happen, they are active, they forward the story. The man controls
the film phanstasy and is the representative of power as the beraer of
the look. The man carries this look behind the screen into the film.
The spectator identifies with the male protagonist and projects his look
to this protagonist that he takes to be his like or his screen surrogate..
Mulvey says that "the power of the male protagonist as he controls events
coincides with the active power of the erotic look both giving a satisfying
sense of omnipotence." (145) A male movie star who is
a glamorous does not have characteristics of the erotic object of
the gaze but is looked at as 'the more powerful ego conceived in the original
moment of recognition in front of the mirror." (145)
From the point of view of pyschoanlysis, the female figure is presented
in images as a lack of phallus. She represents the castration thereat.
Although men enjoy looking at the female figure, she also signifies the
anxiety of castration . The male unconscious has different avenues to deal
with these anxieties. The male unconscious can re-enact the original
trauma of castration, investigating the woman, exploring her body, demystifying
her mystery. This is done through fetishistic scopophilia, that is
to say by making of the body of woman something satisfying in itself.
The other avenue is making her, like Eve, the bearer of the guilt.
This second avenue is typical of film noir. In film noir the anxieties
of the often immature masculine hero are blamed on a femme fatale.
The gaze that assigns guilt is more like voyeurism because in this case
the male asserts his control and subjects the guilty femme fatale to punishment
or forgiveness. This is usually associated with sadism. This sadistic side
fits well with narrative because sadism demands to take control, to make
things happen, something that the apparently goes well with traditional
representations of masculinity.