Task 11...

Laura Mulvey argues that the dominant point of view within cinema is masculine when there is a women concerned. Therefore this shows that the main point Mulvey is arguing is that we as the audience are positioned to be of the male gender as we see everything from their point of view. This then shows the Female to be a passive object and the male to be more active in a way. This can also link to the fact that she believes we are living in a patriarchal society.

Examples of this can be seen is classical Hollywood films. This is becasue typically the film will focus on a male protagonist in the narrative of the film, and assume a male spectator.

Traditional Hollywood films present men as being active and also controlling subjetcs, therefore treating women as passive objects.

Mulvey also argues that films objectify women in a certain way, therefore conforming to the theory of the male gaze. The male gaze suggets that men do the looking and the women are there to be looked at(They have the quality to- be- looked-at-ness).

Mulvey looks at two different modes of looking for the film spectator. The first one is the term called "Voyeuristic" which involves a controlling gaze that has associations with Sadism-pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt-assertig control and subjecting the guilty person through punisment. Therefore we look and control things we wouldn't normally have access to.

The second term is called "Fetishistic". This term describes the way in which a womens body part is being fetishised in order to conform to the male gaze, where women are portrayed as sexual passive objects. She argues that the female body is displayed for the male gaze in order to provide erotic pleasure(voyeurism).

The process of looking at the women involves the process of scopophilia. Mulveys theory links to Freuds psychoanalysis as the scopophilia term suggests that we as the audience have a certain desire to look at something. Mulvey also adapted her ideas from frued as he argues that there is a product of complex male fears revolving around castration anxiety(the fear of boys loosing their penis as they think this has happened to a girl). Mulveys also developed the work of freuds study of the unconscious by the fact that the infant male who is attracted to his mother is jealous of his father(oedipus complex).