Study task 1 - Triangulation

In this seminar we were given the task of reading through the text 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' by Laura Mulvey, and in groups pick out: five key points that Mulvey makes within the text, five key quotes and five contextual facts about Mulvey that would help to build up a clear idea of why Mulvey might be inclined to make the claims she was making.

Five Key Points

1. Mulvey makes the claim that there are distinct differences in the roles of men and women in cinema.

2. Men project themselves onto characters on screen.

3. Males have an active role in narrative, whereas females tend to have a more passive role.

4. The concept of To-be-looked-at-ness

5. That 'among other things' the role of the spectator is to project repressed desires onto the characters on screen.

Five Key Quotes

1. (P.19) 'the woman has not the slightest importance' (to the narrative)

2. (P.19) 'woman displayed as sexual object is leit motif of erotic spectacle'

3. (P.20) 'as the bearer of the look of the spectator'

4. (P.20) '..just as the image in the mirror was more in control of motor co-ordination.'

5. (P.20) 'a woman performs within the narrative: the gaze of the spectator and that of the male characters in the film are neatly combined without breaking narrative verisimilitude.'

Five Conextual Facts About Author

1. Mulvey is a professor of film.

2. She grew up in the 1950's - rise of feminism on the rise.

3. Avant garde film maker.

4. 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' became Mulvey's most famous piece of writing.

5. Feminist

An interesting thought of my own through discussion in this seminar came about when the topic of modern film came up. One person made the claim that Mulvey's claims have stood the test of time in that the male in a film is still given the active role in that the male moves the narrative forward whereas the female in a film takes a more passive role within the narrative. But what was thought provoking for me was the claim that the spectators of a film play the role of projecting they're repressed desires on to the characters on screen, I feel in some cases this may be true however it would depend on the audience and perhaps the subjective experience of each individual within the audience.

Triangulation

In the essay 'Visual pleasure and narrative cinema' Laura Mulvey makes the point that in cinema, the role of a male in many films is an active one, meaning to carry the narrative forward, whereas the female's role in cinema is a passive one, 'as the bearer of the look of the spectator' (Mulvey. L, 1975) put simply- to be looked at.
Author of 'Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction' John Storey goes further on this point by stating that, 'popular cinema is structured around two moments: moments of narrative and moments of spectacle.' (Storey. J, 2008), he goes on to make the claim that for the male spectator to satisfy his own ego and project his 'repressed desires', the male spectator would fix his gaze upon the hero of the narrative ('the bearer of the look') of which is looking at the heroine removing her clothes, it is this 'second look' that is the spectacle, the male spectator projecting himself on to the hero of the narrative to satisfy labido.
A Paul Mcdonald writes a chapter in Richard Dyer's 'Stars' (1998) in which he states that Laura Mulvey's arguments are made using a 'psychoanalytic framework'. At a glance this way of looking at the relationship between the spectator and the characters on screen, may seem to generalize cinema in the way that the male is represented as 'the bearer of the look' and the spectator needing to satisfy his own ego by fixing a gaze upon the male character - the view of which received critique from other academics of film. This critisism could may be just, in the way that Mcdonald cites Dyer as pointing out that the look of a male character may show disinterest in a female character by looking up or away, not always a look that see's a female character as a sexual object.