Again, also a very intelligent woman. The counterpart of castration anxiety for females is penis envy. Her curves are the main focus, and additionally, dressed in white, she represents the innocence and purity ascribed to typical submissive female characters. This camera focuses and draws attention to the action of licking the hammer, which obviously has sexual connotations, seeming to comply once again with Mulveys Male Gaze Theory. Sirk, 1959), Psycho (dir. Critics of the article pointed out that Mulvey's argument implies the impossibility of the enjoyment of classical Hollywood cinema by women, and that her argument did not seem to take into account spectatorship not organized along normative gender lines. It has been theorized that castration anxiety begins between the ages of 3 and 5, otherwise known as the phallic stage of development according to Freud. Alfred Hitchcocks women in his films have always been a topic of discussion when you discuss his films. Tags: Abbas Kiarostam, Angst essen Seele auf, Citizen Kane, Death 24x a Second, Douglas Sirk, Duel in the Sun, Feminism, Feminist Film Theory, fetishism, Fetishism and Curiosity, Film Theory, Imitation of Life, King Vidor, Laura Mulvey, Laura Mulvey Male Gaze Theory, Laura Mulvey Theory, Literary Theory, Lorraine Gamman, Male Gaze, Male Gaze Films, Male Gaze Theory, Mark Lewis, Merja Makinen, Michele Aaron, Morocco, Peter Wollen, Psychoanalysis, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, scopophilia, Spectatorship: The Power of Looking On, Visual and Other Pleasures, voyeurism, Xala, Miss World competition held in Londons Royal Albert Hall in 1970, Lesbian Film Theory and Criticism Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Homi K Bhabha and Film Thoery Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy, Photography and Film Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Modernism, Postmodernism and Film Criticism Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Third (World) Cinema and Film Theory Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Psychoanalysis and the Cinema Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Body Language in Harold Pinters Plays Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Jacques Derrida's Structure, Sign and Play, Analysis of Virginia Woolf's A Room of Ones Own, Analysis of Alexander Popes An Essay on Criticism. This understanding of meaning as being on two levels (the conscious and the unconscious) is one that permeates Mulvey s thinking and is fundamental to her understanding of curiosity. Castration anxiety is a psychoanalytic concept introduced by Sigmund Freud to describe a boys fear of loss of or damage to the genital organ as punishment for incestuous wishes toward the mother and murderous fantasies toward the rival father. From the direct action of a stage invasion, Mulveys analysis of films informs her own film-making practice in the 1970s and 1980s. In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. Penis envy, and the concept of such, was first introduced by Freud in an article published in 1908 titled "On the Sexual Theories of Children". To account for the fascination of Hollywood cinema, Mulvey employs the concept of scopophilia. The representation of powerless female characters can be achieved through camera angle. This leads her to the conclusion that, since she is interested in the cinemas ability to materialise both fantasy and the fantastic, the cinema is phantasmagoria, illusion and a symptom of the social unconscious (ibid. I love Stranger on a Train but the less said about the women in that film, the better. [7], Within her essay, Mulvey discusses several different types of spectatorship that occur while viewing a film. As she approaches Scottie when they leave the restaurant, both Scottie and the viewer get a close up view of her profile and flawlessly pale, smooth skin, the pallid hue existing in stark contrast with the overpowering crimson of the restaurants walls. Another point of criticism over Mulveys essay is the presence of essentialism in her work; that is, the idea that the female body has a set of attributes that are necessary to its identity and function and that is essentially other to masculinity. Mulvey also explores Jacques Lacans concepts of ego formation and the mirror stage. WebIn Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey argues that the physical absence of the penis from womens bodies creates castration anxiety in the men that gaze upon Many of the elements of the film were decided once production began. Increasingly her work has reflected her interest in death and the Freudian compulsion to repeat. Despite her claims to the contrary, it is obvious that Midge is still in love with him and she is not subtle in the slightest about this fact. [24] The researchers hypothesized that male dreamers would report more dreams that would express their fear of castration anxiety instead of dreams involving castration wish and penis envy. Furthermore, Mulvey explores the concept of scopophilia in relation to two axes: one of activity and one of passivity. This anxious call to the real is a reflection of Mulvey s roots in second-wave feminism and the direct action of the womens movement in the 1970s and her own desire to bridge the gap between cinema theory and practice. Instead, viewers today exhibit much more control over the films they consume. : 250). According to Cohler and Galatzer, Freud believed that all of the concepts related to penis envy were among his greatest accomplishments. According to Mulvey, this power has led to the emergence of her "possessive spectator." Everything about Madeleines appearance in these two moments connote[s] to-be-looked-at-ness. On a first viewing, it appears as though Madeleines character is very limited, for she is viewed entirely from Scotties love struck perspective. She also incorporates the works of thinkers including Jacques Lacan and meditates on the works of directors Josef von Sternberg and Alfred Hitchcock. This burnt-earth policy is complicated by Mulvey s own contention that Hollywood is not as straightforwardly monolithic as she makes it appear here, butVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinemashould be understood as a polemic rather than as a nuanced argument. . Not only does the male gain pleasure from looking at the female that is being displayed, but he also suffers from castration anxiety, which can be relieved in one of two ways. Teresa Wright is fantastic in the role, one of my favorites. Mulvey's most recent book is titled Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (2006). (1994: 179) However, it is not necessary to go down this rather absolutist route around the definition of the fetish in order to say that Mulvey s insight that women tend to be treated as sexualized objects in Hollywood films does not really require the clumsy psychoanalytic mechanism of scopophilia/voyeurism (and Gamman and Makinen go on to say that they feel that Mulvey actually means objectification rather than fetishism; ibid. Freud, Sigmund. Ousmane Sembene, 1975) and Blue Velvet(dir. When Scottie asks her if she knows anyone who knows about the history of San Francisco, she is willing to drop everything to help him. [24] They further hypothesized that women will have a reversed affect, that is, female dreamers will report more dreams containing fear of castration wish and penis envy than dreams including castration anxiety. Apart from briefly waxing philosophical on the potential of Alfred Hitchocks 1958 thriller Vertigo being a proto-feminist work, however, she does not give adequate consideration to two of the most significant aspects of the film: how does the films universe respond to women when they try to be above the male gaze and what would happen should the male character not be strong enough to exert his authority over the stereotypically objectified female characters? According to them, Mulveys essay shows a binary and categorical division of genders into male and female. Josef von Sternberg, 1930), Citizen Kane (dir. <> But it then produces, as a result, a difficulty with the representation of women on the screen which has some unexpected coincidence with the problems feminists have raised about the representations of women in the cinema. [8] The experimenters aimed to demonstrate that in the absence of a particular stimulus, men who were severely threatened with castration, as children, might experience long-lasting anxiety. Your analysis is brilliantly constructed with great depth. Mulveys interests are broad, ranging from contemporary art to the introduction of sound in cinema, from Douglas Sirk to Abbas Kiarostami. His initial attraction to Madeleine (and accepting the assignment) is admittedly based solely on her appearance but to suggest thats a man thing is just plain silly when women choose men like that all the time. Mulvey, however, goes on in her later work to develop her discussion of fetishism in terms of what she calls curiosity. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. (1955) The measurement of castration anxiety and anxiety over loss of love. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Using Mulveys term, everything about Madeleine caters to the male gaze. [9][10] This view was shared by others in the psychoanalytic community, such as Wilhelm Reich, Hermann Nunberg, and Jaques Lacan, who stated that there is "nothing less castrating than circumcision! 2 0 obj The male's castration anxiety leads him to regard the fetish with a peculiar form of intrapsychic splitting in which the fetish is both a denial and a confirmation that They provide clues, not to ultimate or fixed meanings, but to sites of social difficulty that need to be deciphered, politically and psychoanalytically even though it may be too hard, ultimately, to make complete sense of the code. Are you a film studies student by any chance kdaley? [8] For Mulvey, this notion is analogous to the manner in which the spectator obtains narcissistic pleasure from the identification with a human figure on the screen, that of the male characters. I dont know that I am answering any questions but this seems like a start. Most obviously these include feminism and psychoanalysis, and it is these two branches of twentieth- century thinking, alongside Marxism, that most consistently inform her philosophical approach to film and art. : 9) like a footprint or shadow. "[16] However, with digital technology, spectators can now pause films at any given moment, replay their favourite scenes, and even skip the scenes they do not desire to watch. Want to write about Film or other art forms? She commands the entire film solves the mystery, keeps Peck from cracking up and never gives up. Cant we make the argument that the patriarchal category of hero is destabilized in the insanity of Psycho, Marnie and Vertigo? And then theres Ingrid basically carrying Gregory Peck on her back all by herself in Spellbound. Laura Mulvey (b. In her 1975 work of feminist theory Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey attempts to make sense of the inherent misogyny present in Hollywood, basing her arguments on fundamental concepts in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. That simple photo may say quite a lot. The male characters in these two movies might be multidimensional but they arent very successful. Thames & Hudson. Peirces semiotic triangle of icon, index and symbol try once again to come to terms with the relationship between representation and reality and her focus on the index, which is a sign produced by the thing it represents (ibid. Laura Mulvey (born 15 August 1941) is a British feminist film theorist. James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, and TomHelmore. Thus, Mulvey fails to consider that these women create a critical space outside of the active/male passive/female dichotomy.[14]. : 27) The enigmatic text [Citizen Kane] that then gradually materialises appeals to an active, curious, spectator who takes pleasure in identifying, deciphering and interpreting signs. Both identifications are based on Lacans concept of mconnaissance (misrecognition), which means that such identifications are blinded by narcissistic forces that structure them rather than being acknowledged.[8], Different filming techniques are at the service of making voyeurism into an essentially male prerogative, that is, voyeuristic pleasure is exclusively male. "The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex.". Im all for gender equality and respect for women and I am a biiig hitchcock fan. The representation of powerful male characters is opposite to the representation of powerless female characters. In the later films at least they tend to be a seriously creepy lot, thanks to the depth of performances he got from the likes of Grant (going upstairs with a glass of milk, with a light in it, for Joan Fontaine, or pimping Ingrid Bergman) and Stewart (almost psychotic in his manipulation of Kim Novak). In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey characterizes the viewer of cinema as being caught within the patriarchal order and, in accordance with a certain feminist identity politics, postulates an alienated subject (ibid,:16) that exists prior to the establishment of such an order. [2] According to film scholar Robert Kolker, it "remains a touchstone not only for film studies, but for art and literary analysis as well". She attempts to act out against the oppression of this universe in which she lives, and yet for some unknown reason, she is unable to go through with it. Antonyms for Anxiety, castration. Judy entirely allows herself to be the object of Scotties active, perverse, and obsessive control and Midge gives up all of her gumption and resigns herself to leaving Scotties life. The camera films women from above, at a high camera angle, thus portraying women as defenseless. Her hair is bleached to the point that it may as well be white and her wardrobe consists of drab gray and black suits that hide her form. (Ibid. transmedia storytelling, gender inequality, critical game studies, Batman franchise, castration anxiety, Gaze Theory Abstract. WebMulvey connects the situation and placement of the viewer within the cinema back to Freuds castration complex, relating to childrens fascination, voyeurism and instincts of sexuality. Sarnoff et al. In this manner, male spectators come to indirectly possess the woman on screen as well. This objectification repeats itself soon after when, just as she checks in to the McKittrick Hotel, Madeleine is viewed by Scottie primarily in profile through one of the rooms windows. According to Anneke Smelik, Professor of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Radboud University, classic cinema encourages the deep desire to look through the incorporation of structures of voyeurism and narcissism into the narrative and image of the film. Clearly Mulvey hoped that her own films would be a part of this new cinema but it is evident from the continued dominance of traditional fiction film that the pleasures that she hoped to destroy keep coming back. The same universe that has no place for Midge also has no place for Judys desire to be in control and this ultimately proves to be Judys downfall. During the 200809 academic year, Mulvey was the Mary Cornille Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Wellesley College. The book does, however, contain an essay on the Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami, whose work she terms as a cinema of uncertainty and of delay. : 11). It is the importance of interpretation that lies behind Mulveys other, less frequent, metaphor in Fetishism and Curiosity: that of the hieroglyph, one of the meanings of which is a secret or enigmatical figure (OED). Mulveys work has been overshadowed by this single piece of youthful polemic (the author was in her early thirties on publication) but Visual Pleasure does highlight issues of concern that continue to run through her subsequent work. Hitchcocks aim, in all his film- making, was to please the female audience! : 5) A shared sense of addressing a world written in cipher may have drawn feminist film critics, like me, to psychoanalytic theory, which has then provided a, if not the, means to cracking the codes encapsulated in the rebus of images of women. N$OZD5L}-/ f'Ccz,\]M_:H`R=l2IwE%$YpyN`*:_dLZc%;m/ In Death 24x a Second, Mulvey shifts her attention to the freeze-frame, or the slowed image, and to the image of death. What is the place of psychological horror and thriller in a world gone mad? 2. The films discomfort with active female characters is only strengthened when one takes into consideration the duplicitous Madeleine/Judy. His women were multifaceted, as opposed to the empty headed pretties that were all the rage at the time. The fault lies in Mulvey s necessary simplification, which subordinates critical insight to political expediency. In their first scene, once Scottie begins to question her about her love life, she brushes him off with tongue-in-cheek quips such as You know theres only one man in the world for me, Johnny-o (Vertigo). However, using the bridge of scopophilia Mulvey quicky arrives at Freuds structure of fetishism, since the gaze finds within its object a disquieting lack (the infamous castration anxiety) and moves beyond this anxiety by, paradoxically, overvaluing (fetishizing) the object, which then, of course, means that the object is once again examined and found wanting, and the circle of anxiety and pleasure continues. [24] The results demonstrated that many more women than men dreamt about babies and weddings and that men had more dreams about castration anxiety than women.[24]. Castration anxiety can also refer to being castrated symbolically. Its really fascinating to see the effect shes talking about played out in movies today as well as in the classics; it really shows that next to nothing has changed. She is the author of Visual and Other Pleasures (1989), Fetishism and Curiosity (1996),Citizen Kane (1992) and Death 24x a Second (2006). At three times over the course of the film, Scottie is powerless to prevent the same horrific fate from befalling three different people: a fellow police officer, the real Madeleine Elster, and Judy Barton all fall to their deaths under his watch. Mulvey addresses these issues in her later (1981) article, "Afterthoughts on 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' inspired by King Vidor's Duel in the Sun (1946)," in which she argues a metaphoric 'transvestism' in which a female viewer might oscillate between a male-coded and a female-coded analytic viewing position. "[19], AMY! This final reading of the hieroglyph would constitute the failure of the fetish and the final cracking of the carapace. n. the fear of suffering an injury or loss of the genitals. Smelik, Anneke (1995) What Meets the Eye: Feminist Film Studies in Buikema, Rosemarie (ed. South End Press. More specifically, Lacan points out, the gaze must function as an object around which the exhibition-istic and voyeuristic impulses that constitute the scopic drive turn in short, the Studlar suggested rather that visual pleasure for all audiences is derived from a passive, masochistic perspective, where the audience seeks to be powerless and overwhelmed by the cinematic image. a good read. stream (2006: 191), Mulvey had expanded on the theme of curiosity, which is also an explanation of her own academic drive to see, in Fetishism and Curiosity (1996) and in what follows I will explicate some of her arguments of this book.3 Mulvey argues that if a societys collective consciousness includes its sexuality, it must also contain an element of collective unconsciousness (1996: xiii). [] But Im here, it is a beyond heartbreaking moment, as her simple words mean so many things (Vertigo). Her exhibitionism, her masochism, make her an ideal passive counterpart to Scotties active sadistic voyeurism. [6] In this same period, Dr. Kellogg and others in America and English-speaking countries offered to Victorian parents circumcision and, in grave instances, castration of their boys and girls as a terminal cure and punishment for a wide variety of perceived misbehaviours (such as masturbation),[7] a practice that became widely used at the time. Her stated aim in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinemais not only to analyse the way in which pleasure has been organized and used by Hollywood in the service of patriarchy, but to destroy that pleasure (despite any lingering sentimental regret for the enjoyment that cinema had previously afforded), and not only to destroy past pleasure but to make way for a total negation of the ease and plenitude of the narrative fiction film This rebellion will transcend outworn or oppressive forms and will conceive a new language of desire (ibid). The female actor is never meant to represent a character that directly effects the outcome of a plot or keep the story line going, but is inserted into the film as a way of supporting the male role and "bearing the burden of sexual objectification" that he cannot.[7]. Also since an argument for a patriarchal hero might include violence, Norman Bates violent acts signify how insane patriarchal violence is. In 19th-century Europe, it was not unheard of for parents to threaten their misbehaving sons with castration or otherwise threaten their genitals. Fassbinder, 1974), Xala (dir. When the sculptures were shown in 1978 at the bold, well researched, and exhaustive in its scope. He always has an attractive blonde in mind to play each role before he even starts filming. Webattention to anxiety about fragmentation, for example through castration. This can also tie in with literal castration anxiety in fearing the loss of virility or sexual dominance. On the other hand, females are presented as passive and powerless: they are objects of desire that exist solely for male pleasure, and thus females are placed in an exhibitionist role. A case in point here is the film The Silence of the Lambs (1990). Due to the oppressive need of the films universe to portray the metaphorically impotent John Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) as superior in every regard, however, the film eventually gives up its innovative messageand reverts to the comfortable stereotypes of old. New York: Routledge. Dir. His movies point to the foibles and vulnerability of many of his characters, both male and female. He is incapable of keeping alive those about whom he cares, signifying a sort of impotence. Scopophilia is, literally, the love of looking, and for Mulvey, this takes on a sexual connotation as this act often has a sexual element to it. 1941) is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. It operates independently with the writers collaboratively building and maintaining the platform. WebCastration anxiety 1. For some authors, Mulvey does not consider the black female spectators who choose not to identify with white womanhood and who would not take on the phallocentric gaze of desire and possession. When Scottie is done with reconstructing Judy, any signs of her hearty character are long gone. : xiv). Nevertheless, it is clear that Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinemawill inevitably be remembered for its formulation of the male gaze. This perspective is further perpetuated in unconscious patriarchal society.[7]. [19], Crystal Gazing exemplified more spontaneous filmmaking than their past films. She tries in vain to communicate with him, but he is long gone at this point, so when she says Ah, Johnny-oyou dont know Im here, do you? This binary opposition is gendered.[6] The male characters are seen as active and powerful: they are endowed with agentivity and the narrative unfolds around them. "BFI Screenonline: Mulvey, Laura (1941) Biography", Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Film, Television and Screen Media MA at Birkbeck, University of London, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Laura_Mulvey&oldid=1147883880, Academics of Birkbeck, University of London, People educated at St Paul's Girls' School, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 2 April 2023, at 20:04. Her last scene of the film occurs when Scottie is in the sanitarium. Webcastration anxiety: 1. a child's fear of injury to the genitals by the parent of the same gender as punishment for unconcious guilt over oedipal feelings; 2. fantasized loss of the penis by In all of her scenes, Midge is displayed as more capable than Scottie. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. In the metaphorical sense, castration anxiety refers to the idea of feeling or being insignificant; there is a need to keep one's self from being dominated; whether it be socially or in a relationship. In the preface to her book, therefore, Mulvey begins by explicating the changes that film has undergone between the 1970s and the 2000s. . 2S>TMv=4Zi3NGRlp,,Y'rj1VDCtupnb)DUOr._T~K/'=p>T7]ioXwt7qrFuuiXal`DkC>#2d[+ ( $C)d::7 Thank you for the wonderfully kind words! {u!Xdd:>`X=p"A+N; 2@/ai:uwJI'4Q[-oeIv:9Bue(#;=cu_r)XZ"ikArO\`a:( me&0I xB%D-TV$nA+8FfYW |2e|,)M`iR^H For Mulvey, then, cinema functions much like the speech of the analysand on the psychoanalysts couch: what we see on the screen can be interpreted as containing a latent meaning that reflects the desires and problems of that cinemas contemporary society. This is unrelated to the notion of "small penis syndrome" which is the assumption by the man that his penis is too small. Mulveys later position is to try to rescue Hollywood from her own critique.In Spectatorship: The Power of Looking On, Michele Aaron provides a succinct overview of the issues raised in Mulvey s article (2007: 24-35) and summarizes her conclusions usefully as follows: One, women cannot be subjects; they cannot own the gaze (read: there is no such thing as a female spectator). Furthermore, as regards the fetishistic mode of the male gaze as suggested by Mulvey, this is one way in which the threat of castration is solved. viii 3) Maurice Merleau-Pontys (1962, 1968) phenomenological concept of body image: not only a map of the material body but, like Freuds interpretation, a psychical representation of the body. She gave no thought to what his feelings would be like when she created this perverse token of her love and affection for him, which causes her to seem somewhat detached from the plethora of emotions which Scottie experiences in excess. [9] Another study of 60 males subject to communal circumcision ceremonies in Turkey found that 21.5% of them "remembered that they were specifically afraid that their penis might or would be cut off entirely," while 'specific fears of castration' occurred in 28% of the village-reared men. Queer theory, such as that developed by Richard Dyer, has grounded its work in Mulvey to explore the complex projections that many gay men and women fix onto certain female stars (e.g., Doris Day, Liza Minnelli, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland). hooks, b. WebCastration anxiety is a psychoanalytic concept introduced by Sigmund Freud to describe a boys fear of loss of or damage to the genital organ as punishment for incestuous wishes Freud entertained that the envy they experienced was their unconscious wish to be like a boy and to have a penis.[22]. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. She writes, "It is said that analyzing pleasure or beauty annihilates it. According to Mulvey, the paradox of the image of woman is that although they stand for attraction and seduction, they also stand for the lack of the phallus, which results in castration anxiety. Hes the main character but he doesnt have the qualities any sane person would qualify as heroic. (1999): 58-69. ~>zKZW_VzfS^|N:EWS/PV&E|{}* jdp6Nf %QUcCWXeG*k~j4.CYV/i r0x' i@'em3npV8]RVkm5ZlX2Zh}[lq*ou8Nc_[(yrHDs9@:IvU(\& `V@t Finally, Mulvey cannot reconcile pleasure, or even life, and reality. In the literal sense, castration anxiety refers to the fear of having one's genitalia disfigured or removed to punish sexual desires of a child. This concept was first introduced by Sigmund Freud in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) and it refers to the pleasure gained from looking as well as to the pleasure gained from being looked at,[4] two fundamental human drives in Freuds view.
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