Laura Mulvey

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Mulvey incorporates the Freudian idea of phallocentrism into "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". Using Freud's thoughts, Mulvey insists on the idea that the images, characters, plots and stories, and dialogues in films are inadvertently built on the ideals of patriarchies, both within and beyond sexual contexts. She also incorporates the works of thinkers including Jacques Lacan and meditates on the works of directors Josef von Sternberg and Alfred Hitchcock. [8]

Within her essay, Mulvey discusses several different types of spectatorship that occur while viewing a film. Viewing a film involves unconsciously or semi-consciously engaging the typical societal roles of men and women. The "three different looks", as they are referred to, explain just exactly how films are viewed in relation to phallocentrism. The first "look" refers to the camera as it records the actual events of the film. The second "look" describes the nearly voyeuristic act of the audience as one engages in watching the film itself. Lastly, the third "look" refers to the characters that interact with one another throughout the film. [8]

The main idea that seems to bring these actions together is that "looking" is generally seen as an active male role while the passive role of being looked at is immediately adopted as a female characteristic. It is under the construction of patriarchy that Mulvey argues that women in film are tied to desire and that female characters hold an "appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact". The female actor is never meant to represent a character that directly affects the outcome of a plot or keep the story line going, but is inserted into the film as a way of supporting the male role and "bearing the burden of sexual objectification" that he cannot. [8]

As a filmmaker

Mulvey was prominent as an avant-garde filmmaker in the 1970s and 1980s. With Peter Wollen, her husband, she co-wrote and co-directed Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974), Riddles of the Sphinx (1977 – perhaps their most influential film), AMY! (1980), Crystal Gazing (1982), Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (1982), and The Bad Sister (1982).

Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons was the first of Mulvey and Wollen's films. In this film, Mulvey attempted to link her own feminist writings on the Amazon myth with the paintings of Allen Jones. [19] These writings concerned themes such as male fantasy, symbolic language, women in relation to men and the patriarchal myth. [20] Both filmmakers were interested in exploring ideology as well as the "structure of mythologizing, its position in mainstream culture and notions of modernism." [19]

With Riddles of the Sphinx, Mulvey and Wollen connected "modernist forms" with a narrative that explored feminism and psychoanalytical theory. [19] This film was fundamental in presenting film as a space "in which the female experience could be expressed." [20]

AMY! was a film tribute to Amy Johnson and explores the previous themes of Mulvey and Wollen's past films. One of the main themes of the film is that women "struggling towards achievement in the public sphere" must transition between the male and female worlds. [20]

Crystal Gazing exemplified more spontaneous filmmaking than their past films. Many of the elements of the film were decided once production began. The film was well received but lacked a "feminist underpinning" that had been the core of many of their past films. [20]

The last films of Mulvey and Wollen as a team, Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti and The Bad Sister revisited feminist issues previously explored by the filmmakers.

In 1991, Mulvey returned to filmmaking with Disgraced Monuments, which she co-directed with Mark Lewis. This film examines "the fate of revolutionary monuments in the Soviet Union after the fall of communism." [20]

See also

References

  1. Murphy, Robert (25 July 2019). Directors in British and Irish Cinema: A Reference Companion. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN   978-1-83871-532-8.
  2. "Staff for 2008–09: Laura Mulvey". wellesley.edu. Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Wellesley College. Archived from the original on 30 December 2008.
  3. 1 2 Kolker, Robert (2004). "Digital Media and the Analysis of Film". In Schreibman, Susan; Siemens, Ray; Unsworth, John (eds.). A Companion to Digital Humanities. Oxford University Press . Retrieved 7 May 2022.
  4. A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, edited by Sharon L. James, Sheila Dillon, p. 75, 2012, Wiley, ISBN   1444355007, 9781444355000.
  5. Freud, Sigmund: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Basic Books 1962.
  6. Jackson, Ronald L. II (ed.), (2010). Encyclopedia of Identity. SAGE Publications.
  7. Smelik, Anneke (1998). Feminist Cinema and Film Theory. In Cook, P. (ed.), The Cinema Book, p. 491-504, Edition: 3rd and revised edition.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Mulvey, Laura (Autumn 1975). "Visual pleasure and narrative cinema". Screen . 16 (3): 6–18. doi:10.1093/screen/16.3.6.
  9. 1 2 Lacan, J. (1953) Some reflections on the ego. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 34, 11–17.
  10. Smelik, Anneke (1995) What Meets the Eye: Feminist Film Studies in Buikema, Rosemarie (ed.), Women's Studies and Culture. A Feminist Introduction to the Humanities, p. 66-81.
  11. Elsaesser, T., Hagener, M. (2010). Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses. New York: Routledge.
  12. Rodowick, D. N. (1991). The difficulty of difference: psychoanalysis, sexual difference, & film theory. New York: Routledge.
  13. Gamman, L. (1988). Watching the Detectives. In L. Gamman & M. Marshment (Eds.), The Female Gaze, p. 8–26. The Women’s Press Limited.
  14. Hines, S. (2018). Is Gender Fluid?: A Primer for the 21st Century. Thames & Hudson.
  15. 1 2 hooks, b. (1992). Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press.
  16. Mulvey, Laura (2005), "Preface", in Mulvey, Laura (ed.), Death 24 x a second: stillness and the moving image, London: Reaktion Books, p. 7, ISBN   9781861892638.
  17. 1 2 3 Mulvey, Laura (2005), "The possessive spectator", in Mulvey, Laura (ed.), Death 24 x a second: stillness and the moving image, London: Reaktion Books, p. 161, ISBN   9781861892638.
  18. 1 2 Jacobus, Mary (1978). Women Writing and Writing about Women.
  19. 1 2 3 O'Pray, Michael (1996). The British Avant-Garde Film, 1926–1995: An Anthology of Writings . University of Luton Press. ISBN   978-1860200045.
  20. 1 2 3 4 5 "BFI Screenonline: Mulvey, Laura (1941–) Biography". screenonline.org.uk. Retrieved 4 March 2016.

Further reading

Laura Mulvey
Laura Mulvey Fot Mariusz Kubik July 24 2010 06.JPG
Mulvey in 2010
Born (1941-08-15) 15 August 1941 (age 83)
Academic background
Alma mater St Hilda's College, Oxford