Laura Mulvey - Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

Harvard referencing
Mulvey. L (2009 [1975]) 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' in 'Visual and Other Pleasures', Basingstoke, Palgrave.

Contextual facts about Mulvey

• She is a Feminist.
• She is a British film theorist.
• She studied History at Oxford University.
• She is a professor of Film and Media at the University of London.
• She worked at the British Film Institute for a number of years.
• Avant-garde cinema maker.

Key points about the narrative

• She talks about how women are purely there for the male gaze so that it is pleasing to the man for the woman to look pretty. Scopophilia - the love of looking.
• Women are nothing other than a sexual object in the film industry.
• The Film industry is dominated by males therefore they like to have women sexualised for their advantage.
• Males identify themselves with the main powerful male character of the film.
• Men do not like to be sexually objectified.

5 key quotes

• 'Woman displayed as sexual objects is the leitmotif of erotic spectacle: from pin-ups to strip-tease' (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:19)
• 'Connote to-be-looked-at-ness' (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:19)
• 'Male figure cannot bear the burden of male objectification' (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:20)
• 'The man controls the film fantasy and also emerges as the representative of power' (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:20)
• ' The spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like, his screen surrogate' (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:21)