KEY FEMINIST THEORY BEHIND PROJECT THEME
LAURA MULVEY (1975) 'VISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CINEMA'
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| Still image from ‘Only Angels Have Wings’ (1939) Combined gaze of spectator and male protagonists in the film. |
‘SCOPOPHILIA’ AND ‘MALE GAZE’
The below text by Laura Mulvey
(1975) highlights the feminist theory behind my reasoning for wanting to
explore my chosen theme (reversal of gender stereotypes in media), giving me
more inspiration and further understanding on the notions of scopophilia and the male gaze.
Mulvey describes scopophilia
here – ‘there are circumstances in which looking itself is a source of
pleasure, just as, in the reverse formation, there is pleasure at being looked
at’ (p.8).
I want to challenge the ways women are looked at in
photography and other media. To what extent are these women portrayed in ways
only to be looked at for another’s pleasure? This is the central theme to my
final photographic project.
Freudian perspective: Freud ‘associated scopophilia with
taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious
gaze’ (p.8)
Male Gaze – ‘the determining male gaze projects its
phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly’ (p.11)
‘the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual
objectification’ (p.12)
This quote is also crucially central to my decision to
explore my chosen theme. If the male figure cannot be sexually objectified, why
is this? I will challenge that question through using a female model who
embodies everything that is socially considered masculine, through costume,
body language, lighting, and camera angle, to see to which extent this medium
is still sexualised by the audience. Or perhaps, the medium will not be
sexualised at all, exposing the fragility of the justification of sexualisation
and objectification in the first place.
‘The male protagonist is free to command the stage, a
stage of spatial illusion in which he articulates the look and creates the
action’ (p.13) – I will use a reversal of this role, supposed to be exclusive
to a male protagonist, by using a female subject model.
‘the spectator fascinated with the image of his like set
in an illusion of natural space, and through him gaining control and possession
of the woman within the diegesis’ (p.13) – my photographs will aim to confuse
this embodiment of power through the spectatorship of male characters by
employing a female as a the male
figure – inviting and challenging the viewer to rethink his imposition of his
own character on the content.
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| Film still from The Seven Year Itch, 1955 (Jean, V., 2013) |
Woman’s bodies in media are ‘stylised and fragmented by close-ups’ (p.14) –
Perhaps to explore the theme closer, I can produce several contrasting images
that do in fact portray a female figure as completely open and inviting of male
gaze, using close-ups of specific body parts, stereotypically/socially feminine
dress and warm lighting, to explicitly show the audience in plain sight
difference in reading the same subject, the same woman, the same person.
‘Psychoanalytic theory is thus appropriated here as a
political weapon, demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society
has structured film form’ (p.6).
Images:
Jean, V. (2013) The Male Gaze in Film. Available at: https://theworldisbutacanvas.wordpress.com/2013/10/06/the-male-gaze-in-film/ (Accessed 01 May 2019).
Mulvey, L. (1975) ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’, Screen, 16(3), pp. 6-18
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