In this blog post, I will be talking about my understanding of the theory presented by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey- more specifically her older claims before.
The basis of Mulvey’s argument is the reflection on the paradox of phallocentrism, which is an ideology whereby the penis is the central element of the social world, but still depends on the image of a castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world. Mulvey summarised, that “the function of woman in forming the patriarchal unconscious is two-fold, she first symbolises the castration threat by her real absence of a penis and second thereby raises her child into the symbolic”. This was then supported by John Berger and his saying that men’s social presence is different from the one of woman’s. ,,Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at”, that is some of the words indicating what was said in the previous sentence.
Following the reason of this theory is that women in the narrative cinema play the traditional exhibionistic role. The women’s body represents a passive erotic object for the male spectators who are the agents of the look, with whom spectators identify to enjoy the control and possession of the woman.
It was said that Mulvey’s argument was to point out the operations of hollywood cinema. That cinema positioned the camera in ways to represent the male charackter’s point of view. That then encouraged the audience to self-identify voyeuristically with the character that observes women.
The females were here encouraged to either identify as a male spectator, or to feel the lack that was produced by the film’s presentational mode. Mulvey claims that this identification happens in connection to the mirror stage which was elucidated by Jacque Lacan. That stage was proposed to be a time of formation of the human ego or identity.
(
Chaudhuri, S. (2006) Feminist film theorists: Laura Mulvey, Kaja Silverman, Teresa de Lauretis, Barbara Creed. London: Routledge
Berger, J. (2008) Ways of seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books (Penguin modern classics).
Mulvey, L. (1973). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema Available at: https://www.asu.edu/courses/fms504/total-readings/mulvey-visualpleasure.pdf )
Cindy Sherman and her connection to the male gaze
Cindy Sherman’s work and the theory of the male gaze was the anker point of my work Le Cerveau. The American photographer and her relationship and position in the field of the male gaze is a good example for understanding Laura Mulvey’s point.
Sherman is known for showing works that are a representation of feminism’s model and how femininity has been produced within the logic of Male Gaze through fetishism, scopophilia and the use of masquerade. The use of masquerade represents the female projecting onto herself the womanliness suited for the male gaze. It here then becomes a mask that can be worn or removed. This mask then lies in its denial of the production of femininity as imagistic.
Sherman then uses the projective eye in her works because its understood as violent and penetrative.,, It gazes and catches its victims in its vice grip: a tool with a purpose for the constitution of those without a penis as pathetic specks pinioned by its inexorable force-lines” is the explanation found in the text of Amelia Jones and re-written in my dissertation titled The Ressuraction of a Theory; The Gaze and its ‘successor’.
What I love about the Untitled 94 is the colour pallete, the composition and the emotion seen on Cindy Sherman’s face. This work seems like its not really connecting to the male gaze, but the emotion in her eyes, the wetness of her hair and the school uniform (?) she is wearing is telling me the opposite.
I feel like the cropping of the picture leads the audience to have the desire to see ‘more’. Sherman’s subject is not directly looking at us, which could slightly move us away from being the possible male subject standing above her, but on the other hand, the subject could be just calling for help with her eyes not facing us.
There is so much to be unraveled in this work. The more I look at it, the more questions I have. Why did I think that the female subject is in danger? Why is her hair wet when her clothes is not? Why is the subject on the floor? What is the narrative of this image.
