Laura Mullvey Cinema Analysis

Laura Mulvey on Feminism in Cinema and Theater Laura Mulvey is best known for her essays written in “Visual Pleasures and narrative cinema” published in 1973. In this book she argues that the controlling gaze in cinema and theater is always male. Mulvey’s concept of the “male gaze” is only mentioned twice in “Visual Pleasures and narrative cinema” but it has become the main point in feminist film debate. “The Spectacle is Vulnerable:Miss World 1970” offered a good starting point for the concerns that Mulvey developed in her feminist film theory. At the Miss World contest, many feminist protested against this event by “hiding leaflets, water-pistols, stink bombs, and bags of flour secreted themselves among the audience.”. This was their way of protesting the way in which women are seen and treated.This protest was broadcast live, gaining the most views of the year. In an article written, after the protest, by Laura Mulvey and Margarita Jimenez, they state …show more content…
On the other hand, the men on the screen are the ones that look and who spectators identify with and “enjoy vicarious control and possession of the women” (Mulvey 1989). In Mulvey’s theory she states that there are three sets of looks in cinema: (1) the camera’s look at the pro-filmic reality (2) the audience’s look at the final film product, and (3) the character’s look at each other. The way in which narrative cinema is made is used to make the spectators forget that there is a camera and the fact that they are actually watching a film. Mulvey states that this works to deny the first (1) and second (2)statement and favors the third (3)statement. This then allows the film to create an “illusion of a world where the male protagonist acts as the spectator’s surrogate” (Mulvey