Communications and Media

Laura Mulvey was born in 1942. She studied at St. Hilda College in Oxford. Her area of interest is in the media and film studies. As part of her career, she worked at British Film Institute, after which she took a lecturing position at the University of London. She has a done quite a considerable amount of work in the course of her career, the most notable among these being Visual Pleasure and narrative Cinema which she did in 1973. She intended to employ psychoanalysis in the discovery of the manner in which film fascination is reinforced by fascination patterns which are pre-existing within individual subject as well as social formation which moulded him. It starts from the manner in which films reflect, reveal and play on straight interpretation that has been socially established on sexual difference that controls images, spectacle as well as erotic conducts of looking. In order to challenge first cinemas she focused her studies on the past cinemas. She wanted to understand how cinemas had been in the past and how cinema magic had been working for all that time. After gaining a better understanding, she would formulate a theory based on her own understanding. Psychoanalytic theory comes as a weapon used politically to demonstrate the manner in which patriarchal society unconscious has been able to structure film form.

Phallocentrism paradox in its manifestations depends on castrated woman image in giving order as well as meaning to the world around it. There is the idea a woman is standing as a lynch pin in the system her lack produces what is referred to as the phallus which is a symbolic presence, her desire to make good out of the lack is what phallus signifies. The writings which have recently been done on the area of psychoanalysis as well as cinema has never been able to lay significant emphasis on the significance of the representation of female form in a more or less symbolic order whereby, castration and no other subject is spoken in the final resort. In a summary, we realize that the role played by a woman in patriarchal unconscious formation can be explained in two aspects. First of all, the woman symbolises the threat posed by castration though, she lacks a real penis. The second aspect involves the raising of her child into symbolic. Provided this has taken place, her meaning in the course of the process ends. Her meaning does not stay long enough to reach the legal or the linguistic world. The only thing that remains of her is the memory which lies between maternal plenitude memory and the memory associated with lack.

The desire of a woman is linked to her image as the one who bears a bleeding wound, her existence can only be related to castration and she cannot be able to transcend it. She then uses her child as the reason of her personal desire to have a penis. She imagines that this is a condition which will make her enter the symbolic. She has to choose between giving the word way in a graceful manner and struggling to keep her child an imaginary half-light. The woman has to stand in a culture of patriarchy. She is tied within the symbolic order where a man is able to live his fantasies as well as obsessions by the means of linguistic command through their imposition on a womans silent image that is bound to the position of being the meaning bearer and never the meaning maker. This feminist analysis arouses great interest, a beauty under phallocentric order experience frustration. The women feel that they are challenged and have to find ways of combating unconscious language when they still exist in patriarchal culture. For them, there is no other alternative other than employing psychoanalysis among other methods in the examination of patriarchal culture. There are still a number of important female unconscious issues which psychoanalytic theory does not take into consideration. Some of them are female infant sexing and the way she relates to the symbolic, a mature woman who is a non-mother, the vagina, among others. Despite the fact that it does not encompass all the issues, psychoanalytic theory remains a very crucial theory that can aid in the understanding of the patriarchal culture.

In the course of time, cinemas have really changed from what they used to be. It no longer follows the monolithic system which required great investment in terms of capital. The most notable examples were those from classical Hollywood from 1917 to 1950s. Technological advancements as well as changes in the economic situation have led to great changes in cinematic production. In current times, cinematic production can be artisanal or capitalistic. All these changes have made the development of alternative cinema possible. In as much as Hollywood tried to be self-conscious as well as ironic, it operated within the concept of mise-en-scene that reflected the ideological concept that the cinema entailed. Alternative cinema has made it possible to come up with cinemas which are radical in the political and aesthetic senses and are able to provide plausible challenges on the ideas in which the mainstream films are based. This does not necessarily mean that that the classical Hollywood cinemas were not moral. This is only to highlight the fact that the society which was credited to such kinds of production had psychical obsessions and hence alternative cinema has to stress on that testing the basis of such obsessions and the underlying assumptions. It is now possible to produce avant-garde cinemas, both in the political as well as the aesthetic aspects, only that its existence has to be based on a counterpoint.

The magic that characterize classical Hollywood style must have arisen from one main aspect How they were able to manipulate visual pleasure through skilfully to achieve satisfaction. Without any significant challenge, the mainstream film was able to code erotic into the linguistic aspect of the overruling patriarchal order. In the context of classical Hollywood cinemas, which were highly developed, the subject could only be alienated through these codes. Laura feels that the best alternative is supposed to leave the past but not necessarily rejecting it, in a bid to transcend the oppressive forms and breaking with pleasurable expectations to come up with a new desirable language.

The cinema is able to offer a variety of pleasures. One among these pleasures is the scopophilia. There are occasions when one finds pleasure in looking only. The reverse form of this pleasure is that of being looked at. Freud had pinpointed scopophilia as a sexuality instinct which was able to exist as a drive independent of erotogenic zones. He felt that this could be likened to taking another person for an object by subjecting the individual to curious as well as controlling gaze. His examples were centred on the voyeuristic actions of children they always long to see the private and forbidden. There is always the curiosity to see the genitals of other people. Scopophilia is active in this kind of analysis. There are factors which modify instincts among them is the ego constitution, though its continued existence forms the erotic foundation of pleasure which comes as a result of viewing people as objects. When it gets to the extreme extents, it con turn into perversion that may lead to obsessive voyeurs as well as a peeping Toms, who feel sexually satisfied through watching, in a sense that is active controlling, another person as an object .

The mainstream film, as well as the conventions from which it has evolved manifests a world that is hermetically sealed and is able to unwind in a more or less magical way, such films are able to play with the voyeuristic fantasies of their audience. Voyeuristic separation is also promoted by the extreme contrast as a result of the difference in auditorium darkness and the light as well as shade patterns which are brilliantly portrayed at the screen. Despite the fact a film is being shown, or is supposed to be seen, the screening conditions as well as the narrative conventions, leads to an illusion that a spectators is looking at it in his private world.

The cinema does not only satisfy primordial wish related to pleasurable looking, but also develops scopophilia in a narcissistic perspective. Mainstream films, also known as the classical Hollywood films, lay great emphasis on human form. The scale, the space as well as stories are anthropomorphic. The curiosity and wish to stare intermingles with recognition human face, the body, the relationship which exists between human forms and the surroundings, as well as the persons visual presence within the world. Jacques Lancan is credited with an explanation of ego constitution and the importance of the moment a child is able to recognize its image in the mirror. During this period, the child has greater physical ambition than his mental capacity and the child feels that the mirror image is more complete than his physical self. There is thus a combination of recognition and misrecognition recognition comes in the sense that the image is a reflection of their physical bodies while the misrecognition is portrayed when the child feels that the image is superior to his physical body. In a number of occasions, from this defining moment, the child will be fascinated merely by looking at the mother since he links it to his self awareness.

The lovedespair that exists between a given image and self image is what has been intensely expressed in films and has led to joyous recognition in cinema audience. The mirror and the screen may be similar but there is a big difference in the sense that the cinema has fascination structures that are able to make a person temporarily loose his ego while it reinforces it at the same time. Scopophilia has been established to be a consequence of perceiving another individual as a sexual stimulation object through sight. Another pleasurable structure which is set by mainstream films is the narcissism and ego constitution, which arise when an individual identifies himself with the screened image he has seen.  There is the separation of the subjects erotic identity from the screen object, also known as active scopophilia, and identification with the screen object ego through the fascination of the spectator. The former aspect deals with sexual instinct while the latter, ego libido.

Due to sexual imbalances that characterize the world, pleasure that arises through looking can be split into two main groups, the male who are sometimes deemed to be the active, and the female, generally passive. Male gaze is able to project its fantasy on female form . In traditional exhibitionist, women play the part of being looked at and at the same time displayed, their appearance greatly coding erotica as well as visual impact. The woman is exhibited as a sexual object becoming the leit-motif of an erotic spectacle.  In narrative films, the woman usually has to be present. However, her visual existence normally works against story line development, to freeze action flow in erotic contemplation moments. She has to be integrated within the narrative so that cohesion can be achieved.

In classical Hollywood films the woman was portrayed as an erotic object to both the male characters in the film and to the audience. In the context of show-girl, a womans gaze at a male character and at the audience can be skilfully combined without interfering with the verisimilitude of the narrative. There is a great erotic impact associated with a performing woman which is able to drive male audience into the world of their own. This can be seen when Marilyn Monroe first appeared in The River of No Return. Another notable example is the time when Lauren Bacall sang in To Have or Have Not. Narrative structures have always been controlled by an activepassive labour division. Male figures lack the ability of being sexually objectified. The story normally takes place in a manner such that the man takes an active role in story forwarding while the woman takes the supportive role. The man appears to be controlling fantasies in the file and emerges a power representative.

The narrative within a film normally revolves around a well known protagonist male actor that a spectator is able to identify with. The screen surrogate of the actor is normally portrayed in a way that she leads to erotic instincts which the spectator can project from the protagonist male actor and have the feeling of omnipotence. The male actor is portraying some elements of perfection and not necessarily to act as an erotic object. The film is able to ensure that the conditions are as close to the natural conditions as possible. This is achieved through camera technology and movements as well as editing which brings the film closer to reality. The female actress is portrayed to be the property of the protagonist male actor. Her eroticism is limited to the male protagonist actor alone. The spectator is also able to have her by virtue of identifying with the male protagonist.

In the context of Vertigo, as well as Marnie and Rear Window, there is oscillation between fetishistic fascination and voyeurism. In Vertigo, Hitchlock explores identification process which is normally associated with correct ideologies and morality. His hero is the policeman. In Marnie, the hero in a very dominant male, who has money and wields great power. In both these cases the actors are driven into compromised circumstances by virtue of their erotic desires. The woman is turned into a mere sexual object by voyeuristic gaze and the actors ability to subject other people to their will. Hitchcock was skilful in exploring the identification process in his film by ensuring that subjective cameras were used from the protagonists perspective, this makes the spectators share the uneasy gaze he has.

Vertigo is basically woven around the things Scottie can and those that he cannot see. In the context of Vertigo, Scottie has an erotic obsession and despairs in the process. Scottie portrays voyeurism when he fell in love with a lady he had been following severally without uttering any word to. The sadistic part of the film is portrayed when he quits his job as a lawyer and becomes a police officer. He stalks the lady and falls in love with her image which seems very perfect and beautiful. Vertigo focuses much on the active looking and the passivelooked at due to their sexual differences and the male emerges the hero.

Laura Mulvey was able to clearly demonstrate the manner in which films objectify women to play the supportive role in films. They are viewed as objects and are supposed to arouse erotic desires in male spectators. Male actors are taken to be very perfect in nature and the films usually give some protagonist male actor moral aspects which ensure that he wins the desires of the spectators. The spectators normally operate from the point of view of the protagonist male actor and together they make the woman surrogate in the move theirs. Laura Mulvey was very active in championing for the respect of ladies in the film industry.