Med 5 Cw Task 11
TASK ELEVEN

Mulvey

Laura Mulvey, a typical feminist had based her study on the most famous work of ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema during 1973. What this really was about was the work of Hollywood films, and how the males were seen to be the main protagonist. This can be seen to be very ironic at the fact that looking at today’s generation females are seen to be the main protagonist as the audience can identify with them and relate back to them, however this was one of Mulvey’s aim in her study. She added on to say that the audience become familiar with the males protagonist by identification, admiration and aspiration.

Adding on to this, she also saw the relationship of gender and the text of the film and how the audience had perceived the female characters to be. Mulvey quotes: ‘women in film are simply objects for the ‘gaze’ of the protagonist/ male audience’.

The ‘male gaze’ simply means when females are seen to be sex objects, and in movies are only there to be looked at. Sigmund Freud used the concept of ‘Scopophilia’ which means looking at something and getting the pleasure out of it. This can be linked back to my study, as I can easily mention the male gaze, looking at Provoked, we see Aishwarya to be the main protagonist as she gets abused by her husband, hence, during the scene of her getting raped by her husband ‘ Sopophilia is seen, we as the audience (male) enjoy watching this happen even though Aishwarya is not portrayed to be a sex symbol.

Developing this on to a further step, Mulvey looked back at the Hollywood film, males were seen to be protagonist from the male audience view point, and saw the female to be passive. Adapting to this matter Mulvey examined the fact that this look can be seen in two ways, one ‘Voyeuristic’ this means when females are seen to be beautiful and the other as ‘Fetishistic’ this means when females are seen to be sexual.

Overall, looking at masculinity as a whole, it can be argued that males lack power, and the only power they really use towards the feminist is the ‘Phallic’ this simply refers to a male’s penis. In action movies, males are always seen to be dominant as we are living in a ‘Patriarchal Society’. A gun can easily be a Phallic symbol, so can a sword, a cucumber and so on. Hence if the males get ‘Castrated’, simply meaning chopping of a male’s penis which means taking away their masculinity means that they are losing power. So it can be seen that males are really not seen to be dominant and superior.