Week 5 Psychoanalysis

For this weeks zoom discussion we read “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema” by Laura Mulvey. Mulvey writes about psychoanalytic theory, specifically from a political standpoint to explain how society has structured film form. Other film theorists have written about psychoanalysis in film but didn’t express the importance of the representation of the female form in narrative cinema. To explore how this representation provides “visual pleasure” while also fortifying male dominance, Mulvey enlists the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.

Psychoanalysis is defined as a set of psychological theories and therapeutic methods which have their origin in the work and theories of Sigmund Freud. His theory suggests that psychoanalysis is a belief in which every person has unconscious thoughts, feelings, desires, and memories.

Mulvey believes that psychoanalysis is used to “advance our understanding of the status quo”. She understands that there are alternative forms of cinema, but she believes that the “status quo” of Hollywood cinema uses visualizations, camera angles, and sexualization to trigger unconscious desires around the female character. Mulvey’s intention is to analyze, understand, and spread conscious awareness of this issue in hopes that it will stop the pleasure produced by the visual and narrative structures of classic cinema.

One known strategy that exposes these conventions and also disrupts the male gaze is by allowing the camera to make its presence known in the film. The visuals of an intrusive camera will stop the unconscious pleasure that is produced by the illusion of realism.

In most films the targeted audience is a white male. Cinema has catered to the male gaze in films. Camera movements, close-ups, angles etc. enforce gender roles by imitating a male gaze. They identify with male characters and their control or desire for female characters using close ups, sexy voices, and a very limited, quiet and submissive woman roles that attributes pleasure and power to the man. 

Most often, especially in older films, women are objectified to look like Barbie. They are tall and skinny with blond hair, big breasts and perfect skin and faces. The character usually is “saved” by a white man in some way or another. Especially in princess movies, for example, which gives children subliminal messaging from an early age suggesting that is normal in society. Barbie was created so that little girls would strive to grow up and basically be hot housewives for men. Mulvey explains how children watch people that resemble what they want to become. Children slowly develop self awareness and experience the notion of an ideal ego. Mainstream film focuses on the ideal form. Mulvey concludes that women “cannot view the decline of the traditional film form with anything much more than sentimental regret”

 I do believe that cinema has changed, at least a little bit, because even though many films continue to be structured in this way, these days there are a lot more blended families in films. More black lead roles are casted, and I’ve noticed a lot of lgbt tv shows and movies in the last 15 years. We have colored princesses, and strong independent women roles in movies, and shows. It seems less catered to a white mans viewing experience.






Cite

https://blackboard.lms.csupueblo.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/blti/launchPlacement?blti_placement_id=_9_1&content_id=_1449097_1&course_id=_57404_1


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