Laura Mulvey uses the psychoanalysis theory as a method to demonstrate the effect the patriarchic unconscious of society has shaped film cinemas in her Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema piece. Based on Mulvey’s argument, she states that film reflects socially established norms of sexual differences. These norms have controlled media images that can be analyzed to show the impact culture has on films.  According to Mulvey, the pre-existing social patterns that have shaped the individual subject that have reinforced the popularity of Hollywood films.  Mulvey’s main argument is the use of women in Hollywood narratives as a means to supply a pleasurable visual experience for men. Mulvey is able to decipher film production and the meaning they produce to the connection of the phallocentrism of society. Phallocentrism is dependent on the image of a castrated woman which weakens her role in our culture as merely being used in place of something a man can live out his fantasies. Through the analysis of the destruction of pleasure being a radical weapon, pleasure in looking with the human form, and a woman as image and the man the bearer, Mulvey has been able to argue that women used in films are placed to solely be for the male’s pleasure.

            According to Mulvey, narrative film structures its gaze as masculine, where the woman is always the object of uphold the gaze, and now be the bearer of it (297). In her piece, she introduces the first form of pleasure, the term coined by Sigmund Freud as scopophilia, the pleasure in looking. The cinematic gaze produced as masculine including telling the narrative through the male’s perspective and through the way the camera I used. She identifies two ways in which cinema has produced pleasure; the first implicates the objectification of the image as Freud used this term to describe using people as objects, exposing them to be controlled by a gaze. The second form is identifying with it as the pleasure Freud describes is closely linked to the constitution of the ego where the erotic pleasures are able to exist from looking at someone as an object. Some examples described were “Peeping Tom” whom satisfaction comes from watching with a controlling sense.

            As Mulvey states, often people are oblivious to the influence film has on society and exactly how it manifests the same idea Freud described when speaking about scopophilia. In a sense, we are the Peeping Toms as we are separated from the film and receive pleasure from watching as the audience. Although audiences are seated away from the screen and in a dark room, they are transfixed into believing that they are gaining entrance into a private world. The audience becomes fascinated with the familiarity of the characters in the film that they begin to identify with them. This becomes a problem when audiences begin to believe that the characters in the film are a more complete version of themselves. Mulvey describes this as the mirror-moment where she mentions Jacques Lacan for the similarity between a child recognizing hi reflection and the film experience (298). Means that create cinematic realism help in this mirror-moment identification that reinforces the ego. Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory is important because it explains how films create an idealistic space where a female is the sexual object and exploited through the patriarchy of society as well as having the audience look into the screen as in the act of voyeurism for an ego boost. While this idea may weaken the ego temporarily, it also reinforces our self when we begin to identify with the characters in the film because they impersonate the glamorous with the ordinary.

            In her third section Woman as image, man as bearer of the look, she begins to describe the structure of cinema between gender where active/male and passive/female. She states that women reform back into their traditional roles where they are there to be looked at and displayed (299). Women are displayed as sexual objects to play off the eroticism leaving them with the role as the one who freezes the story plot where as a man advances it. Traditionally, having a woman on the screen ensures that there is an erotic object for the characters within the film story, and one for the spectators. Within the film, the active male cannot bear the burden of sexual objection and often is reluctant to look. The man forwards the story, while the woman interferes and stops time. Mulvey identifies three perspectives that occur during film in which their purpose is to sexually objectify women. First being the perspective of the male character in the film and how they perceive the female, the second is the perspective the spectator view the female on the screen, and the third involves the male audience perspective on the male character in the film. The last perspective allows the male spectators to view the female in the film as his own sex object because he has become familiar and identifies with the male character. According to the essay, women in film create a paradoxical argument. She connects the attraction with the fears of castration by a woman (301).  Based on Mulvey’s argument there are two ways in which a man can escape his fear of castration, one being demystifying the female where in film active male saves the female saved because she is too weak or is punished for being the guilty character, similar to film noir. The other way is substitute castration with a fetish where the woman now becomes alluring rather than dangerous. The first option Mulvey describes as being compared to the idea of sadism where the pleasure lies in overcoming obstacles or asserting control; whereas the second avenue builds up the physical aspects of the object, therefore transforming it into something pleasurable. In her argument, Mulvey states that films are created in order to resolve the tension between the attractions of woman versus fearing here, for this reason; they offer the need of the masculine form of desire.

            Laura Mulvey uses psychoanalysis to dismember the aspects of film. Through this method, she argued the idea that women are placed in film for visual pleasure. Their roles are often created for the male character to advice the story whether it is through saving her or killing the female. Women’s bodies become fragmented on screen and narration stops. She argues that in order for women to be represented equally alongside men in the workplace, women have to be portrayed the same way men are, where they aren’t being sexually objectified. In addition, Mulvey asserts that the only reason why men feel like they have such dominance over women is due to the fact that women exist and women are represented as such. Films create this notion that men advance the story and women are present to be there for him. These ideas come from societies traditional values of women holding domestic roles. The norms present in society are again being reflected on film. 

Reflection: 

           I chose to do Laura Mulvey's Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema because in a previous women studies course I also read it and felt i didn't get as much out of it. Once i began writing i realized how much i did miss the first time i read it. Although her use of language was somewhat difficult, going back and rereading it helped me comprehend Mulvey's argument. What i also enjoyed about the piece was how relevant it was to today's society. Her argument about how our patriarchal society reflects today's film and how objectified women's bodies are can be seen in cinema today. In many films, women are featured with little clothing and a majority of the time males are the protagonist who advance the plot. Her essay can be used today to analyze the structure of cinema in relevance with our culture.

           Some problems that i encountered when writing this analysis was understanding the language. Her sentence structures were sometimes difficult to comprehend. What helped my comprehension was reading her essay more than once and writing side notes. With writing this paper i risked trying to interpret her argument as simply as Mulvey would. This essay relates to many of the women studies courses i have taken thus far because in many of my classes the issues of women's objectification and the effects of it always come up. I would not change how i wrote the paper.