Laura Mulvey

Mulvey says that the female form plays two roles she first symbolizes castration because of her absence of having a penis and second role is the che child raiser. Mulvey say that the woman is bound by a symbolic order that a man can live out his phantasies and obsession by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as the bearer of meaning , not the maker of meaning.(Mulvey pp…

The Piano: Excavating National Cinema’s “Desire” The concept of a national cinema is one that speaks to a discourse of a particular state or nation. However, the definition of what the constructs of this cinema is inherently problematic. Andrew Higson (1989:52) discusses the implications of the terminology asserting that “... the parameters of a national cinema should be drawn at the site of consumption as much as at the site of production of films”. Higson attempts to underline and further…

film critic Laura Mulvey, introduced in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema which was published in 1975. The male gaze enforces the sexual politics of the gaze and states that in film, women are typically the objects of heterosexual male desire. It is a sexualised way of looking that objectifies women and empowers men, which is deeply rooted in patriarchal ideologies and discourse. Laura states that “the determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure” (Mulvey 837)…

Many feminists have pointed that classical Hollywood film has been associated with the “male gaze” in most case. British feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey (1975) expands on this conception to argue that in cinema women are typically depicted in a passive role that provides visual pleasure for male viewing that male audience tend to take the female character in film as his own personal sex object because, he can relate himself, through ‘looking’, to the male character in the film. Not only in…

Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) portrays a man's (John’s) passion for control and the dangers of idealisation and desire. Vertigo; "a sensation of whirling and loss of balance, associated particularly with looking down from a great height”1 is a metaphor of protagonist John “Scotty” Ferguson relationship with Judy Barton/Madeleine Elster. The narrative structure of Vertigo is fundamentally driven by the encounters between John and Madeleine/Judy. The relationship between the two progresses on the…

Laura Mulvey, in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), reveals how traditional cinema is imbued with an active male gaze that communicates dominant and sexist ideologies. She argues that classical Hollywood movies reflect the patriarchal system in which they are produced, with women being “looked at and displayed” for the (assumed) male spectator’s pleasure. While the success of several recent female-led blockbusters seem to indicate a shift toward greater female representation, I…

Magic Mike XXL, the sequel to the widely popular film shedding light on the male entertainment industry, is a film that is geared towards heterosexual women and their viewing pleasure. The audience follows Mike, a male stripper-turned-furniture business owner, as he reunites with his former stripper buddies and travels to Myrtle Beach for a final appearance at a male stripper convention. Delving into the themes of the sexualization of the male body and fulfillment of female pleasure, Magic Mike…

“A film is made up of a hundred or more hidden things,” Vincente Minnelli once said in an interview. The quote seems to sum up Minnelli’s layered film making style. In this essay I will be exploring the themes of feminism, one of the hundred or more hidden things in Minnelli’s work. The essay will move through the life of Minnelli, analysing films from both the beginning and end of his career in the context of the time in which they were made. Vincente Minnelli was born Lester Anthony Minnelli…

is a portrayal of “The Nuclear Family”, DiCaprio clearly being the “Breadwinner” in this whole situation by being the sole provider in the home and Robbie being portrayed as the “Homemaker” or a housewife that has to stay home and be domestic. In Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) states that “Women Stands in patriarchal as signifier of male others, being bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his fantasies”. The movie relates with this point because in one…

Andrew Milner cites Laura Mulvey and her idea of the Male gaze and Scopophilia in his article Darker Cities. Mulvey believes that in film, audiences have to view characters that are often female from the perspective of a heterosexual male. Certain features of Male Gaze includes the camera lingering on the curves of the female body and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man’s reaction to these events. Milner in his article talks about Ridley Scott’s film Blade…