Mulvey's Concept Of Scopophilia in Film example essay topic

Mainstream Hollywood cinema has for decades represented an erotic realm by using language and images of our patriarchal culture. It has satisfied and reinforced the masculine ego and repressed the desire of women. Feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey's essay, 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' published in 1975 has proved to be one of the most influential articles in the whole of contemporary film theory. Mulvey's essay is heavily invested in theory.

The essay makes use of Freudian psychoanalytic theory (in a version influenced by Jacques Lacan) to not only highlight sexual differences and pleasures within cinema but to discover the patterns of fascination that have moulded us. She used it to ground her account of gendered subjectivity, desire, and visual pleasure. Mulvey has used psychoanalysis as a political weapon to uncover the ways in which patriarchal society has structured the sexual subject within cinema. It is cities as "the founding document in feminist film theory" (Modles ki 1989), as providing "the theoretical grounds for the rejection of Hollywood and its pleasures" (Penney 1988), and even as setting out feminist film theory's "axioms" (Silverman, quoted in Byars 1991). (1) In this essay in intend to briefly summarise Mulvey's essay and highlight what I consider to be her key themes and how they relate to psychoanalytic theory and perspectives of feminism criticism. In the second half of this essay I will apply these main themes from Mulvey's essay to Michael Powell's 1960 classic horror film, "Peeping Tom".

Mulvey begins her essay by saying that the patriarchal society is a phallocentric society. I believe this means that it recognises the male gender and the sexuality of men as the hegemonic norm. However, phallocentrism depends, in Freudian terms, on the image of the castrated woman. This image gives some sort of order to the world that the male dominated conception of society, suggests a masculine subject is at the core of all social interchanges.

Since the woman represents the absence of a penis, ('lack' of phallus) she highlights the fear of castration. This is important for the foundation of the male subject. Women are second-class citizens, allowed only to participate in the male 'symbolic order' through having a child that is nurtured to accept the 'symbolic' norm. One of Mulvey's first key themes is to do with the 'cinema' offering a number of sensual pleasures. She notes that Freud had referred to scopophilia - the pleasure in looking at other people's bodies as erotic objects. Mulvey further extends Freud's notion.

In psychoanalytic theory 'scopophilia' is defined as, "a basic human sexual drive to look at other human beings, a conscious and concentrated way of looking that causes particular feelings of lust and satisfaction that are not directly related to erotogenic zones". Scopophilia is associated with taking people as objects, and subjecting them to a curious gaze. This gaze is not just 'curious' it can be callous or 'dangerous'. The subject of the gaze is unaware they are being 'looked' upon; therefore it is different to the voyeuristic gaze because the subject cannot control it. Scopophilia is also concerned with the atmosphere under which films are watched.

Laura Mulvey says, "the extreme contrast between the darkness in the auditorium (which also isolates the spectators from one to another) and the brilliance of the shifting patterns of light and shade on the screen helps to promote the illusion of voyeuristic separation. Although the film is really being shown, is there to be seen, conditions of screening and narrative conventions give the spectator an illusion of looking in on a private world". Because we are in the darkness of the cinema it is obvious that we can look without either being seen by those on screen or by other members of the audience. According to Mulvey the screen plays with our scopophilia and voyeuristic fantasies. It gives us a world in which to submerge and allow our gaze to wonder free. Cinema, she feels, satisfies our basic need for pleasurable looking.

It also develops scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect. The conventions of mainstream cinema focus attention in the human form. In film our scopophilia and narcissism intermingle for our needs of likeness and recognition. Mulvey says that cinema plays for the audience a function similar to the encounter a child has with his / her image in the mirror. This leads me to talk about Mulvey's second key theme. 'The Gaze' is a theme, which ultimately begins at the 'mirror phase'.

Mulvey describes the mirror phase as a time when the child's desire of movement is bigger than his actual physical capabilities. The child's image appears to himself more perfect and complete than it actually is. Mulvey describes this encounter with the child's image as the 'matrix of the imaginary,' or of all the mental images and representations we will form. In a way the recognition the child has of his image in the mirror is mis-recognition, as the imagined 'real' is always somewhere completely un accessable (such as the mirror's reflection).

The image in the mirror is not a real image but an ideal one. However, this is also the same for us as audiences because the screen works as a mirror for us. While watching film we simultaneously lose the ego while we reinforce it. Therefore, there are two contradictory aspects in the act of deriving pleasure from 'Gazing' at the screen. The first is the scopophilia aspect of looking at an object of sexual stimulation and the second is the narcissistic identification with the image in the screen. Mulvey then goes on to say that in our society pleasure of looking shows the very imbalance of the patriarchal system.

The male gaze is active and the female gaze is passive. Women, in the world of images, are displayed as sexual objects. The presence of women is an indispensable element in spectacle. Traditionally, the displaying of women in the world of cinema has functioned at two levels. The first as an erotic object for male characters in the screen story, and second, as an erotic object for the spectator in the auditorium. The active male gaze / passive male gaze dichotomy also affects the narrative structure of movies.

The narrative prevents the male figure from the burden of objectification; therefore, men need to make things happen. They are active and they help bring forward the story. The man controls the film phantasy and is the representative of power as the bearer of the look. The man carries this look behind the screen into the film.

The spectator identifies with the male protagonist and projects his look to this protagonist that he takes to be his like or his screen surrogate. Mulvey says that, "the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look both giving a satisfying sense of omnipotence". A male movie star who is glamorous does not have characteristics of the erotic object of the gaze but is looked at as "the more powerful ego conceived in the original moment of recognition in front of the mirror". Mulvey stated in her essay that the gaze can only ever be directed at the female, however, three years later Mulvey accepted that her original account could now be construed as inaccurate and agreed that the gaze could account for both male and female.

For example, Brad Pitt in Fight Club is the object of the gaze; he brings satisfaction to the female viewer and male viewers who see themselves as him. From the point of view of psychoanalysis, the female figure is presented in images as a lack of phallus. She represents the castration threat. Although men enjoy looking at the female figure, she also signifies the anxiety of castration. The male unconscious has different avenues to deal with these anxieties and can re-enact the original trauma of castration, investigating the woman, exploring her body, and demystifying her mystery. This is done through fetishistic scopophilia, meaning that we make of the woman's body something satisfying in itself.

The other avenue is by making her the bearer of the guilt (typical of film noir). The gaze that assigns guilt is more like voyeurism because in this case the male asserts his control and subjects the guilty female to punishment or forgiveness. This is usually associated with sadism, which affects the narrative by demanding control, to make things happen. Through summarising Mulvey's essay I have touched on what I believe to be her key concepts: scopophilia and voyeurism, narcissism, the mirror phrase, the male gaze, the 'lack'. Mulvey's essay also discusses the Oedipal Complex, the imaginary and the symbolic, desire and screen theory all of which are essential theory for feminist film studies. Now I shall discuss some of Mulvey's key concepts in relation to Michael Powell's "Peeping Tom".

In films attitudes towards women are clear. The connection between movies and pleasure in looking, or what Freud called scopophilia is also clear. In movies, this kind of looking ranges widely from innocent enjoyment of women as spectacle to more pathological mechanisms, like voyeurism and its sadistic consequences, where women are violated and / or brutalized. A startling example of this is the influential horror film "Peeping Tom" (1960), by British director Michael Powell, which equates filmmaking with male aggression.

The story is a character piece, a fine psychological study of a voyeuristic serial killer who happens to be a cameraman, and his obsession with the girl next door. There is a deep sense of humanity and pathos in the characterisation of Mark Lewis. Undoubtedly, this subversive approach was a key ingredient in the bitter controversy. Peeping Tom was more about the compulsion of the viewing and filmmaking process than the murders.

A dark, hysterical film, Peeping Tom examines the madness resulting from a childhood under extreme surveillance. This theme is central to the film and as examples of Mulvey's essay. It is Mulvey's essay taken to the extreme. Mulvey's concept of scopophilia is important in this film because it coats every scene with morbid desire. Peeping Tom takes scopophilia to the limits. Voyeurism becomes obsession.

In the film the gaze not only penetrates, it kills. Peeping Tom is not voyeuristic in the sense that his victims know their fate, because they don't. They allow Mark to watch them and enjoy the experience right up to the crucial last minutes. Mark is a soft-spoken murderer, who carries a lethal camera. A metal spike is attached to the tripod leg, mounted alongside a rounded mirror. Marks camera not only records the death of his victims, he confronts them with the reflection of their own ugly panic before death.

Mark returns after each incident to his reclusive quarters to screen and savour the rare moments again. What provokes Mark's obsession is, in fact, the impossibility of capturing the precise point when his beautiful victims are simultaneously dead and aware of it. This impossible moment, which Mark would freeze in time frames, is the virtual moment when consciousness meets oblivion. Within Peeping Tom the look (The Gaze) is central to the plot. Throughout the film we are faced with scenes of confusion and a child screaming, this is a result of Marks childhood as he remembers it and the horror of always being under surveillance by his father. This is important to the theme because of the repercussions and also ties in with Lacan's account of the mirror stage.

Mark was often frightened by his father, faced with hundreds of reflections and images of himself. As a result, Mark as he works watches Helen and most of the film is centred around who Mark is watching. We are given Marks point of view through what Mulvey called 'subjective camera, whereby we see what the hero sees. Helen to Mark is the ideal woman, however, his fascination with women and the prostitutes he kills randomly make the viewer think that Helen is special too because we are presented with Marks point of view. This looking position causes tension because it makes the viewer feel uneasy, we question what he is doing, when he is spying we are spying with him. We as the audience share his fascination and compulsion to watch the women and in extreme cases watching him kill his helpless victims.

We want to know who's going to be next and how he is going to 'get' Helen. Even the intense scene when Helen's blind aunt 'feel's his gaze, and we know as spectators that mark wishes she could see because without her sight she is worth nothing to Mark. The gaze is also relevant in Peeping Tom because Mulvey talks in her essay about the active male being the bringer of action. For example, when he is with Helen, without his phallic symbol, (his camera) he appears normal and kind, if a little uneasy.

However with this object he brings action to the film and is not normal. We can also apply Mulvey's concept of fetishistic scopophilia, described by Freud as, "autoerotic: narcissism, when the object of the look is one's own body - or reflection". The situation we are placed at in the cinema is exactly the situation that allows for this pleasure to take place. However, this situation is further exemplified within Peeping Tom because we are watching Mark watch the reflection of the women as they die and as he plays back the tapes that he is recorded. He often within the film turns off the lights so we are not only faced with a cinema screen but a screen within a screen and made to feel part of all the wrong. To conclude, Mulvey has generated widespread debate as a result her essay.

Her feminist views have highlighted cinema and brought the female character to the forefront of cinema, for all the right reasons!! Constructed views of gender have changed the way women are viewed in mainstream cinema by challenging traditional film theory and putting a feminist spin on things. A way, which can only be seen as moving forward in today's modern society. BIBLIOGRAPHY &

Bibliography

1 Cook, Pam et al. The Cinema Book December 1999 (Feminist Film Theory) Routledge 1992, The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality. Reference to: Mulvey, Laura 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' Powell, Michael "Peeping Tom" John Schlesinger "Far from the Madding Crowd" Mulvey, Laura website: web.