Laura Mulvey - Visual pleasures: Triangulation and referencing

In order to do a precise triangulation and Harvard referencing it's important to identify at least 5 contextual facts about the writer, 5 key points in the text and 5 key quotes.


Contextual facts about Laura Mulvey

- Doctor in Law and Literature
- Feminist
- Avant-garde filmmaker
- Screen theorist
- Professor
- Lacan/Freud influences (Psychoanalysis)
- Written in 1975 (When sexual equality and women's lib were more controversial topics)
- Mulvey's most famous book


Key points in the text

- Phallocentrism of male character castration
- Scopophilia in film and audiences
- Ego-libido
- Fetichism
- How culture reflects society + its inequities
- Women as object (to-be-looked-at-ness)
- Male active, women passive
- Patriarchy
- Male gaze


Key quotes

'the woman as icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men' (Mulvey, 2009 [1975]: 22)

'fetishistic scopophilia, builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself ' (Mulvey, 2009 [1975]: 22)

'She is no longer the bearer of guilt but a perfect product, whose body, stylised and fragmented by close-ups , is the content of the film and the direct recipient of the spectator's look' (Mulvey, 2009 [1975]: 23)

'the female image as a castration threat constantly endangers the unity of the diegesis and bursts through the world of illusion as an intrusive, static, one-dimensional fetish' (Mulvey, 2009 [1975]: 26)

Triangulation:

Mulvey breaks down the patriarchal subconscious that is reflected in films. The pleasure in looking (scopophilia) that the audience experiences is explained by the fetichism of having the privilege of looking at a woman in ways that in reality wouldn't be possible, being the woman the object to be look at and satisfy the male gaze. The woman is objectified, used for the visual pleasure of the men, showing parts of her body in close-ups. The man's troubles and desires are the main storyline, whilst the woman is only orbits around him in a passive role. He actively participates in the reality created in the film, where she is just an enjoyable distraction.

Storey is supporting Mulvey's statements about the activeness of the male in opposition to the women's passiveness. In the text, he explains the Oedipus complex makes impossible for the men to fulfil their lack. Far from contradicting Mulvey, he proposes a solution where the male can be visually pleased without objectifying a woman.

Dyer analyses the sexualisation of males in film. More particularly, William Holden in Picnic. Dyer claims Holden is sexualised by his athletic physique through feminine coded positions but telling heroic anecdotes. He also mentions the relation between males and females in film. There is a pleasure of masochistic relationship where the female is the star and fills male's ego. He observes that despite what Mulvey claims about the woman being the victim, she is the one retaining the control of this masochistic contract where he will never have her. Therefore the male does not just play a passive role, but an active one where, as Dyer says, he suffers as well.