The primary text we focused on was taken from Laura Mulvey's academic essay 'Woman as image, man as bearer of the look'..
- Females are sexually objectified within cinematics
- Sexuality is tied into the narratives
- Women are displayed at 2 levels: an erotic object for the characters on-screen, an erotic object for the viewers
- Man acts as the main controlling figure with whom the spectator can identify
- Objectivity of women reinforces the males power - as a glamorous movie star
- Men can not bear the burden of being sexually objectified because they are there to further the story.
- Men are a mirrored projection of what the audiences fantasies about.
- The camera uses techniques to blur the line between fantasy and reality to immerse the audience which supports the voyeurism complex.
The article is in reference to typical 1940s cinema, hers more specifically to the role of women v.s man and how it is unequal
The supportive text was that of by J.Storey, more of a textbook analysis commenting on what Mulvey has discussed and then taking it further.
- "Her point is that popular cinema produces and reproduces the 'male gaze'."
- It produces 2 contradictory forms of visual pleasure - inviting scopophilia (sexual pleasure derived chiefly from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity), - promoting narcissism (excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance)
- Women are the object of male desire (male gaze), there for the enjoyment of men.
- Popular cinema has two main moments, moments of narrative and moments of spectacle the active/male is associated with the narrative and the passive female is the spectacle there for enjoyment.
Then a text proposed by Richard Dyer, takes all this further by analysing Mulvey again, not necessarily disagreeing with her point but also highlighting a criticism of how it works both ways in relation to males being objectified aswell.
- Dyer is homosexual himself so he is critiqued in having that different perspective - this argued as a good and bad point
- He's showing how in the film 'Picnic' it highlights how masculinity is marvelled at ('gazed' at) by females too.
- Multiple men in a scene have to be aggressive towards each other to not promote homosexuality.
- If men are sexualised in the film there erotic pleasure is broken because they are disinterested with the viewer, if they were sexualised it would be considered pro-feminist as they would become the passive/female losing their masculinity and dominance.
300 word summary triangulating the 3 texts..
Laura Mulvey, John Storey and Richard Dyer all offer interpretations of cine-psychoanalysis and gender roles in film (specifically to the 1940s). Laura Mulvey, a pioneering feminist film theorist, argues how films exemplify the 'male gaze' by both offering a male for the viewer to reflect on, and offering a female for the viewer to gaze upon and objectify. John Storey discusses Mulvey's view within a textbook for undergraduates, developing her points further revealing how 2 contradictory forms of visual pleasure are produced. The first inviting scopophilia (sexual pleasure derived chiefly from watching others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity), and the second promoting narcissism (excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance) thus supporting the theory of how cinema is encouraging the wrong mindsets within males. Richard Dyer then takes a contrasting approach through his own essay, and ask why it is assumed that the viewer will always be a heterosexual male? Dyer brings about the point of the audience potentially being homosexual or female, and identifies how the male body can also displayed and objectified on film in similar ways as a woman's is, using an example of the film 'Picnic', where the lead male is often marvelled over when topless on-screen. He also makes the point of heterosexual male-on-male desire being suppressed in the film industry by the male actors being overly "aggressive or threatening" in order to reflect their masculinity and dominance.
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