Lecture 22 11/25/2013
Lecture 22 •
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11/25/2013
She suggests there’s something else at work here • She links it back to childhood by saying that a hypothetical viewer at a film is like a child, subjects to a mirror state – sees that image in the mirror as whole • All its life the child desires that image The anxiety created by the female image she goes back to Frued’s castration anxiety – the feeling of fear and awkwardness that the women cannot possess the penis • The core of her argument is how this anxiety is dealt with by different film makers and the viewer “Destruction of pleasure ..” • she says if women are to escape the bonds of patriarchy they work to destroy our pleasure in film • she says film is deeply pleasurable • She says that obsessiveness is precisely what has to be broken down, that’s what keeps women attractive • “This article will discuss the interweaving of that erotic pleasure in film, its meaning and its central place of women, it says that analyzing pleasure or beauty destroys it that is the point of the article” Especially women but also men should critique their pleasure “Satisfaction and reinforcement of the ego…” • She seems to be really aggressive about this pleasure should be completely destroyed • It is possible to replace it with a different pleasure maybe but she is saying no you cant Basic idea to this essay – we feel pleasure by looking – scopophilia • Has nothing to do with eroticism • In it’s roots the pleasure in looking is pure, unconnected with libido Freud associates this especially with children • Their voyeuristic activities to see the private and forbidden • Children are profoundly interested in anatomical differences • He says they see sexuality as something very damaging to the mother o Children see the mother as being wounded or hurt during sex She makes distinction between scopophilia and perversion • Scopophilia is natural and more or less accepted by society • The classic image of a voyeur is usually an older man watching a younger women
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It is clearly an activity not approved of by society, it is a criminal act and yet she suggests that watching film is a form of voyeurism that is sanctioned by society “What is seen on the screen is manifestly shown But the mass of mainstream film and the conventions within which it has consciously evolved portray a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically in different presence of the audience producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their fantasy” • “Darkness of the theatre • Film is really being shown but there to be seen, illusion of looking into the private world • Projection of repressed desire onto the performer” • In the theatre it’s quiet, you’re not supposed to make noise or talk to each other – you’re repressed • You’re not supposed to do anything in response to the film o Not screaming in horror films • You are repressed as a member of the audience and you’re watching something on the screen lit up which is also very intimate o Seen in Hitchcock – you see a city camera moves closer to a building and goes to a window and into the window and you see a couple having an adulterous affair o Mulvey and others choose Hitchcock because he’s one of the first to make this link between film and voyeurism We want to watch other people but we are not allowed too, film gives us this opportunity “Lacount has described how the moment when a child recognizes its own image in the mirror… misrecognition as superior projects this body outside itself” • Theory of the mirror stage • Suggests that desire is created very early and desires completeness and perfection • Our lack of power over our bodies or motor skills • Makes the link between this and film – if you’re sitting watching a film clearly you’re a b it like the child looking into the mirror • The people in the film are desirable and we cannot have that • Interesting point about Mulvey has to do with our new habits of watching, she’s writing at a time when families went to a theatre to watch together now most people watch everything at home and don’t watch continuously. This is a large deviation from Mulvey’s thesis o If everyone’s watching films differently what happens to the idea of voyeurism, are we less voyeuristic or more because we are doing it in the privacy of our bedrooms and no one can see us
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“apart from extraneous similarities between film and mirror the cinema has structures of fascination strong enough to allow temporary loss of ego while simultaneously reinforcing it” • You identify with that person on the screen “Cinema has distinguished itself in the production of ego ideals through the star system for instance, stars provide focus or center both to the screen space and screen story where they act out a complex process of likeness and difference the glamorous impersonates the ordinary..” “Scopophilia arises from pleasure in using another person as object… object on the screen” • When you’re watching a film there’s to processes taking place simultaneously • 1. Separating yourself from the screen to use it as object of pleasure 2. Identifying with what’s happening on the screen • Man watching a women – see women as object of desire but then identifying as the man “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking is split between active male and passive female … constitute to be looked at ness” • She suggests that this is what it means to be a women, women’s destiny is tied in with being looked at • Slightly depressing for women – can never escape this objectifying erotic look o Always being looked at by men and also by women as erotic, criticized for not coming up to certain norms o Lose out in professional status • As long as films remain intact women’s status will not change – her argument • She says every time you watch a film like this you unconsciously absorb the pattern of looking and women’s situation wont change unless we change that “An active passive heterosexual division of labour has similarly controlled narrative structure… male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification “ • Women become focus of gaze and men not looked at push the narrative forward, they are always energetic, imaginative • “Man controls film strategy and also emerges as representative of power in a further sense: as the bearer of the look of the spectator, transferring t behind the screen to neutralise the extra diegetic tendencies represented by women as spectacle” • “As spectator identifies with main male protagonist… sense of omnipotence” • If you are a man you are getting straightforward pleasure by looking at the screen but also getting pleasure when the main man looks at the women with pleasure “The female figure poses a deeper problem she also connotes something that the look continually circles around but disavows: her lack of penis implies threat of castration and hence pleasure” • Counterintuitive that women represent a threat but it’s firmly believed in psychoanalysis
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“Ultimately the meaning of women is sexual difference, the visually ascertainable absence of the penis, the material evidence is based on the castration complex essential for the organization of entrance to the symbolic order and the law of the father. Thus the woman as icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men, the active controllers of the look always threatens to evoke anxiety it originally signified. The male unconscious has two avenues of escape from this castration anxiety” • “How do filmmakers, men in general, escape from this anxiety.. preoccupation with reenactment of original trauma.. “ • Women on the screen generate deep anxiety, deal with it through psychoanalysis: o The man says I am going to forget about my castration anxiety by investing in image of beauty Grace Kelly would fill the screen and there would be a long sequence where the image of the female was just there o Instead of admiring women’s beauty you break her down and analyze her motives and display her as ordinary or conniving • “The other avenue, voyeurism has associations with Satanism … punishment or forgiveness: • Hitchcock is famous for making his heroines suffer • He was attractive to many of his leading women but he didn’t see him as attractive so he acted out his fantasies in film • According to Mulvey in his films there isn’t much scopophilia, the film moves towards deconstructing her to being ordinary or seductress In his films the women is broken down and the man is shown as triumphant • American Beauty • The film comes to the haunt and he is fantasizing her – scopophilia • Later in the film she is in the house with him and he’s been crying and he has the option to sleep with her and instead of sleeping with her he decides not too, more importantly in Mulveys terms he sees her as ordinary she in fact says there’s nothing in the world as terrible as ordinary and he says you are not ordinary but he sees her as so on some levels by that point in the film her fetitish qualities have been broken down, she’s a school girl she’s crying and she feels ordinary • The women is demystified and that becomes the more enduring way of dealing with the anxiety • As long as she is inaccessible and extraordinary he wants her, but now that he has her and she’s inaccessible and ordinary he doesn’t want her o We desire which we cannot have • The film explores both options o Scopophilia
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o Voyeuristic devaluation of the women In Today’s films when women take up the screen it happens to be paradotic • Cameron diaz comes into the bank and his friend says look at her and the film slows down and the camera slowly comes down her body and the music changes but it’s obviously paradotic we “ re supposed to laugh at this throwback • In today’s films we rarely have this long sequence of prolonged scopophilia “Look is central to the plot oscillating between voyeurism and fetitishtic fascination cinematic and non cinematic” P 49 “in analysis of rear window Douchet takes the film as a metaphor for the cinema. Jeffries is the audience the events in the apartment block opposite correspond to the screen. As he watches, an erotic dimension is added to his look, a cenral image to the drama. His girlfriend Lisa has been of little sexual interest to him, more or less a drag.. when she crosses the barrier between his room and the opposite block their relationship is reborn erotically… he also sees her as a guilty intruder threatening her with punishment and thus finally given the opportunity to save her. captor of images” Rear Window – Hitchcock • Film about voyeurism • Central figure is a man called Jeffries and he has broken his leg and he is stuck in his apartment and all he can do is look at people • He is also a photo journalist and he uses this equipment to spy on people • First he sees a couple that his wife is sick and the couple fight and he sees one morning that the wife has disappeared and he sees the man going out with packages and he thinks that he killed the wife and is taking out in sections • As he gets more and more obsessed with this he begins to draw in the other people in his apartment, his girlfriend lisa argues with him and tells him it’s disgraceful to spy on other people and he defends himself by saying he’s not harming anyone • Within the film he does good and finds out that the man has killed his wife, he also interview with another women who is depressed and takes a lot of pills to kill her self and he calls the police to save her • There’s a defense of voyeurism here as he is helping people • Interesting scene – shift from fetitishtic scopophilia to something else – mulvey’s point is that the man doesn’t care for his wife even though she’s beautiful as long as she is on his side of the building he’s not interested but when she goes to the other side of the apartment he finds her very interesting and when she comes back to his room he looks at her with a loving look and now he finds her attractive • The fact that when she’s dressed up in her gown he’s not interested but when she enters the frame he is interested
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Later when she becomes part of his fantasy Jeffries falls in love with her, before then she is not Fetitish scopophilia – Lisa is asking if he likes her outfit, it is only a few seconds long and then it is interrupted by a scream When she enters the frame of his fantasy when he looks at her across the way through his lens he is now interested in her When the voyeur is looked at the pleasure disappears, when the man looks back Jefferies is terrified and backs away from the window The scene inacts the position of the film viewer, Jefferies is watching but can’t do anything – Mulvey makes the point that when we’re watching a film we can’t do anything about it we are just watching it unfold
Link rear window back to what mulvey says about it, especially the protagonist enacting role of watcher of the film and also the fact that the erotic relationship changes when lisa goes across the street and enters the lens
11/25/2013
11/25/2013
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11/25/2013
She suggests there’s something else at work here • She links it back to childhood by saying that a hypothetical viewer at a film is like a child, subjects to a mirror state – sees that image in the mirror as whole • All its life the child desires that image The anxiety created by the female image she goes back to Frued’s castration anxiety – the feeling of fear and awkwardness that the women cannot possess the penis • The core of her argument is how this anxiety is dealt with by different film makers and the viewer “Destruction of pleasure ..” • she says if women are to escape the bonds of patriarchy they work to destroy our pleasure in film • she says film is deeply pleasurable • She says that obsessiveness is precisely what has to be broken down, that’s what keeps women attractive • “This article will discuss the interweaving of that erotic pleasure in film, its meaning and its central place of women, it says that analyzing pleasure or beauty destroys it that is the point of the article” Especially women but also men should critique their pleasure “Satisfaction and reinforcement of the ego…” • She seems to be really aggressive about this pleasure should be completely destroyed • It is possible to replace it with a different pleasure maybe but she is saying no you cant Basic idea to this essay – we feel pleasure by looking – scopophilia • Has nothing to do with eroticism • In it’s roots the pleasure in looking is pure, unconnected with libido Freud associates this especially with children • Their voyeuristic activities to see the private and forbidden • Children are profoundly interested in anatomical differences • He says they see sexuality as something very damaging to the mother o Children see the mother as being wounded or hurt during sex She makes distinction between scopophilia and perversion • Scopophilia is natural and more or less accepted by society • The classic image of a voyeur is usually an older man watching a younger women
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•
•
It is clearly an activity not approved of by society, it is a criminal act and yet she suggests that watching film is a form of voyeurism that is sanctioned by society “What is seen on the screen is manifestly shown But the mass of mainstream film and the conventions within which it has consciously evolved portray a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically in different presence of the audience producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their fantasy” • “Darkness of the theatre • Film is really being shown but there to be seen, illusion of looking into the private world • Projection of repressed desire onto the performer” • In the theatre it’s quiet, you’re not supposed to make noise or talk to each other – you’re repressed • You’re not supposed to do anything in response to the film o Not screaming in horror films • You are repressed as a member of the audience and you’re watching something on the screen lit up which is also very intimate o Seen in Hitchcock – you see a city camera moves closer to a building and goes to a window and into the window and you see a couple having an adulterous affair o Mulvey and others choose Hitchcock because he’s one of the first to make this link between film and voyeurism We want to watch other people but we are not allowed too, film gives us this opportunity “Lacount has described how the moment when a child recognizes its own image in the mirror… misrecognition as superior projects this body outside itself” • Theory of the mirror stage • Suggests that desire is created very early and desires completeness and perfection • Our lack of power over our bodies or motor skills • Makes the link between this and film – if you’re sitting watching a film clearly you’re a b it like the child looking into the mirror • The people in the film are desirable and we cannot have that • Interesting point about Mulvey has to do with our new habits of watching, she’s writing at a time when families went to a theatre to watch together now most people watch everything at home and don’t watch continuously. This is a large deviation from Mulvey’s thesis o If everyone’s watching films differently what happens to the idea of voyeurism, are we less voyeuristic or more because we are doing it in the privacy of our bedrooms and no one can see us
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“apart from extraneous similarities between film and mirror the cinema has structures of fascination strong enough to allow temporary loss of ego while simultaneously reinforcing it” • You identify with that person on the screen “Cinema has distinguished itself in the production of ego ideals through the star system for instance, stars provide focus or center both to the screen space and screen story where they act out a complex process of likeness and difference the glamorous impersonates the ordinary..” “Scopophilia arises from pleasure in using another person as object… object on the screen” • When you’re watching a film there’s to processes taking place simultaneously • 1. Separating yourself from the screen to use it as object of pleasure 2. Identifying with what’s happening on the screen • Man watching a women – see women as object of desire but then identifying as the man “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking is split between active male and passive female … constitute to be looked at ness” • She suggests that this is what it means to be a women, women’s destiny is tied in with being looked at • Slightly depressing for women – can never escape this objectifying erotic look o Always being looked at by men and also by women as erotic, criticized for not coming up to certain norms o Lose out in professional status • As long as films remain intact women’s status will not change – her argument • She says every time you watch a film like this you unconsciously absorb the pattern of looking and women’s situation wont change unless we change that “An active passive heterosexual division of labour has similarly controlled narrative structure… male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification “ • Women become focus of gaze and men not looked at push the narrative forward, they are always energetic, imaginative • “Man controls film strategy and also emerges as representative of power in a further sense: as the bearer of the look of the spectator, transferring t behind the screen to neutralise the extra diegetic tendencies represented by women as spectacle” • “As spectator identifies with main male protagonist… sense of omnipotence” • If you are a man you are getting straightforward pleasure by looking at the screen but also getting pleasure when the main man looks at the women with pleasure “The female figure poses a deeper problem she also connotes something that the look continually circles around but disavows: her lack of penis implies threat of castration and hence pleasure” • Counterintuitive that women represent a threat but it’s firmly believed in psychoanalysis
•
“Ultimately the meaning of women is sexual difference, the visually ascertainable absence of the penis, the material evidence is based on the castration complex essential for the organization of entrance to the symbolic order and the law of the father. Thus the woman as icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men, the active controllers of the look always threatens to evoke anxiety it originally signified. The male unconscious has two avenues of escape from this castration anxiety” • “How do filmmakers, men in general, escape from this anxiety.. preoccupation with reenactment of original trauma.. “ • Women on the screen generate deep anxiety, deal with it through psychoanalysis: o The man says I am going to forget about my castration anxiety by investing in image of beauty Grace Kelly would fill the screen and there would be a long sequence where the image of the female was just there o Instead of admiring women’s beauty you break her down and analyze her motives and display her as ordinary or conniving • “The other avenue, voyeurism has associations with Satanism … punishment or forgiveness: • Hitchcock is famous for making his heroines suffer • He was attractive to many of his leading women but he didn’t see him as attractive so he acted out his fantasies in film • According to Mulvey in his films there isn’t much scopophilia, the film moves towards deconstructing her to being ordinary or seductress In his films the women is broken down and the man is shown as triumphant • American Beauty • The film comes to the haunt and he is fantasizing her – scopophilia • Later in the film she is in the house with him and he’s been crying and he has the option to sleep with her and instead of sleeping with her he decides not too, more importantly in Mulveys terms he sees her as ordinary she in fact says there’s nothing in the world as terrible as ordinary and he says you are not ordinary but he sees her as so on some levels by that point in the film her fetitish qualities have been broken down, she’s a school girl she’s crying and she feels ordinary • The women is demystified and that becomes the more enduring way of dealing with the anxiety • As long as she is inaccessible and extraordinary he wants her, but now that he has her and she’s inaccessible and ordinary he doesn’t want her o We desire which we cannot have • The film explores both options o Scopophilia
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•
o Voyeuristic devaluation of the women In Today’s films when women take up the screen it happens to be paradotic • Cameron diaz comes into the bank and his friend says look at her and the film slows down and the camera slowly comes down her body and the music changes but it’s obviously paradotic we “ re supposed to laugh at this throwback • In today’s films we rarely have this long sequence of prolonged scopophilia “Look is central to the plot oscillating between voyeurism and fetitishtic fascination cinematic and non cinematic” P 49 “in analysis of rear window Douchet takes the film as a metaphor for the cinema. Jeffries is the audience the events in the apartment block opposite correspond to the screen. As he watches, an erotic dimension is added to his look, a cenral image to the drama. His girlfriend Lisa has been of little sexual interest to him, more or less a drag.. when she crosses the barrier between his room and the opposite block their relationship is reborn erotically… he also sees her as a guilty intruder threatening her with punishment and thus finally given the opportunity to save her. captor of images” Rear Window – Hitchcock • Film about voyeurism • Central figure is a man called Jeffries and he has broken his leg and he is stuck in his apartment and all he can do is look at people • He is also a photo journalist and he uses this equipment to spy on people • First he sees a couple that his wife is sick and the couple fight and he sees one morning that the wife has disappeared and he sees the man going out with packages and he thinks that he killed the wife and is taking out in sections • As he gets more and more obsessed with this he begins to draw in the other people in his apartment, his girlfriend lisa argues with him and tells him it’s disgraceful to spy on other people and he defends himself by saying he’s not harming anyone • Within the film he does good and finds out that the man has killed his wife, he also interview with another women who is depressed and takes a lot of pills to kill her self and he calls the police to save her • There’s a defense of voyeurism here as he is helping people • Interesting scene – shift from fetitishtic scopophilia to something else – mulvey’s point is that the man doesn’t care for his wife even though she’s beautiful as long as she is on his side of the building he’s not interested but when she goes to the other side of the apartment he finds her very interesting and when she comes back to his room he looks at her with a loving look and now he finds her attractive • The fact that when she’s dressed up in her gown he’s not interested but when she enters the frame he is interested
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Later when she becomes part of his fantasy Jeffries falls in love with her, before then she is not Fetitish scopophilia – Lisa is asking if he likes her outfit, it is only a few seconds long and then it is interrupted by a scream When she enters the frame of his fantasy when he looks at her across the way through his lens he is now interested in her When the voyeur is looked at the pleasure disappears, when the man looks back Jefferies is terrified and backs away from the window The scene inacts the position of the film viewer, Jefferies is watching but can’t do anything – Mulvey makes the point that when we’re watching a film we can’t do anything about it we are just watching it unfold
Link rear window back to what mulvey says about it, especially the protagonist enacting role of watcher of the film and also the fact that the erotic relationship changes when lisa goes across the street and enters the lens
11/25/2013
11/25/2013
