1. Debates in Media
Gendered Bodies on the cinematic screen

2. Introduction
• Key words in Mulvey’s essay:
– Psychoanalysis
– Scopophilia…
• Laura Mulvey’s ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema’
• Media example
• Open discussion

3. Key words in Mulvey’s essay
Psychoanalysis
• Originated by Sigmund Freud
• Definition:
– ‘A therapeutic method … for treating
mental disorders by investigating the
interaction of conscious and unconscious
elements in the patient's mind and
bringing repressed fears and conflicts
into the conscious mind, using techniques
such as dream interpretation and free
association.’ (OED)
• The use of psychoanalysis in Mulvey: A
method to analyse and condemn how ‘the
unconscious of patriarchal society has
structured film form’ (p.6)

4. • Patriarchal Society – A society controlled by the male
• Scopophilia or Voyeurism – Sexual stimulation or satisfaction
derived principally from looking
• Fetishism – The worship of an inanimate object for its
supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be
inhabited by a spirit
Rear Window
(Hitchcock, 1954)

5. Laura Mulvey: ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema’
• Psychoanalytical Background
– Image of castration
• Pleasure in Looking/Fascination with the Human
Form
– Voyeurism, Separation and sexual instincts
– Recognition, Identification and the Ego
• Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look
– The Male Gaze
– Women as erotic objects

6. Pleasure in Looking/Fascination with the
Human Form
‘The first, scopophilic arises from pleasure in using
another person as an object of sexual stimulation
through sight. The second, developed through
narcissism and the constitution of the ego, comes
from identification with the image seen’ (p.10)

7. Woman as Image,
Man as Bearer of the
Look
• Determining male gaze
• Active/male & passive/female
• Women serves as an ‘erotic object for the characters…
and as an erotic object for the spectator.’ (p.11)
– ‘her appearance is coded for strong visual and erotic impact’
(p.11)
– Male character becomes ideal ego, identification, and ‘the
spectator can indirectly posses her too’ (p.13)
• Links to voyeurism and fetishism

8. Media Example
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWWg4Jtg-EI

9. Open Discussion
• Can the psychoanalytical method be applied
beyond the cinematic medium (TV & Film)?
• What about the female spectator/the female
gaze?
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WP4Ssaj8Zc
• The article is 30 years old, is it still relevant
today?
• How does this link to Boys Don’t Cry?