transmedia storytelling, gender inequality, critical game studies, Batman franchise, castration anxiety, Gaze Theory Abstract. [8], To feel so powerless can be detrimental to an individual's mental health. Castration anxiety | definition of castration anxiety by Medical This burnt-earth policy is complicated by Mulvey s own contention that Hollywood is not as straightforwardly monolithic as she makes it appear here, butVisual Pleasure and Narrative Cinemashould be understood as a polemic rather than as a nuanced argument. WebAccording to Mulvey, the female cinematic figure is an indispensable presence, yet a paradoxical one. This leads her to the conclusion that, since she is interested in the cinemas ability to materialise both fantasy and the fantastic, the cinema is phantasmagoria, illusion and a symptom of the social unconscious (ibid. That simple photo may say quite a lot. [14] From this viewpoint, by not recognizing racial differences, when Mulvey refers to women, she is only speaking about white women. And then theres Ingrid basically carrying Gregory Peck on her back all by herself in Spellbound. Why is it that these perfectly competent and capable female characters so willingly subject themselves to the authority of a male figure who is not at all strong enough to exert any sort of control over them? A lot of his women are, to put it nicely, problematic. As regards camera work, the camera films from the optical as well as libidinal point of view of the male character, contributing to the spectators identification with the male look. I feel Hitchcock wanted to envoke thought in his audience as to what is at the heart of many male and female relationships; and although a woman maybe physically inferior to a man, many are tower over men emotionally and psychologically. Regarding Mulveys view of the identity of the gaze, some authors questioned Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema on the matter of whether the gaze is really always male. Want to write about Film or other art forms? Even the problematic ones (like the ones in Marnie, Psycho and North by Northwest). She says in her paper that essentially any woman who enjoys movies like this is a masochist, which I think thats a little harsh, but I get what shes saying. Many of the elements of the film were decided once production began. [8] Therefore, these men may be expected to respond in different ways to different degrees of castration anxiety that they experience from the same sexually arousing stimulus. The first "look" refers to the camera as it records the actual events of the film. [2] Prior to Mulvey, film theorists such as Jean-Louis Baudry and Christian Metz used psychoanalytic ideas in their theoretical accounts of the cinema. In her 1975 work of feminist theory Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey attempts to make sense of the inherent misogyny present in Hollywood, basing her arguments on fundamental concepts in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. [] Beat it! (Vertigo) All throughout this scene, she has her hand on the door, ready to shut Scottie out, and yet she never does, hinting at the disappointing weakness that the films universe will ultimately fall back on. bold, well researched, and exhaustive in its scope. Is it at all possible that a film made about straightforward, honest, hard-working, capable, independent, diligent, creative women who dont get into any kind of trouble or have any drama in their lives, because they are so sensible that they avoid it all, would be just dull and not dramatic? Her ruminations on C.S. The Artifice is an online magazine that covers a wide spectrum of art forms. What is CASTRATION ANXIETY? definition of CASTRATION Phallic Women in the Contemporary Cinema This is particularly exemplified in the film in two brief, but noticeable moments. In this work, Mulvey responds to the ways in which video and DVD technologies have altered the relationship between film and viewer. Three, the only way to evade conclusions one and two, for spectatorship to be liberated from patriarchal ideology, was via a film practice that operated in opposition to narrative cinema. Alfred Hitchcocks Rear Window Film Studies Essay While the term love of looking makes an expedient link for a discussion centring around cinema, it seems clear that Mulvey is in fact discussing sadism and masochism: the desire to inflict harm or to have harm inflicted on the self. According to Freudian psychoanalysis, castration anxiety can be completely overwhelming to the individual, often breaching other aspects of his or her life. According to Cohler and Galatzer, Freud believed that all of the concepts related to penis envy were among his greatest accomplishments. Phallic Women in the Contemporary Cinema As a massive screen on which collective fantasy, anxiety, fear and their effects can be projected, it speaks the blind-spots of a culture and finds forms that make manifest socially traumatic material, through distortion, defence and disguise. This enjoyment is, however, ambivalent, because of the castration anxiety engendered by the sight of Castration anxiety is the fear of emasculation in both the literal and metaphorical sense. WebMulvey continues this psychoanalytic approach to spectatorship by focusing on gendered differences in the act of looking. [7] As previously stated, the fear of castration is solved through Scopophilia is, literally, the love of looking, and for Mulvey, this takes on a sexual connotation as this act often has a sexual element to it. Despite her claims to the contrary, it is obvious that Midge is still in love with him and she is not subtle in the slightest about this fact. Gender A fantastic read. These include photography (particularly ideas of stillness and delay) and contemporary art (with an emphasis on women artists and artists who could broadly be described as postmodern). Antonyms for Anxiety, castration. Another point of criticism over Mulveys essay is the presence of essentialism in her work; that is, the idea that the female body has a set of attributes that are necessary to its identity and function and that is essentially other to masculinity. Webcastration anxiety: 1. a child's fear of injury to the genitals by the parent of the same gender as punishment for unconcious guilt over oedipal feelings; 2. fantasized loss of the penis by Yet as history begins to repeat itself, the stereotypes that Mulvey criticizes in her essay begin to appear in rapid succession. Josef von Sternberg, 1930), Citizen Kane (dir. University of MissouriSt. Louis In all of her scenes, Midge is displayed as more capable than Scottie. Applying this supposition to Vertigo does not entirely work. Hes the main character but he doesnt have the qualities any sane person would qualify as heroic. [8] For Mulvey, this notion is analogous to the manner in which the spectator obtains narcissistic pleasure from the identification with a human figure on the screen, that of the male characters. [24] The researchers hypothesized that male dreamers would report more dreams that would express their fear of castration anxiety instead of dreams involving castration wish and penis envy. [13], Additionally, Mulvey is criticized for not acknowledging other than white spectators. It was thought that these desires are trying to reach the men's consciousness. Castration Anxiety | SpringerLink In her introduction to Visual and Other Pleasures she writes: Before I became absorbed in the Womens Movement, I had spent almost a decade [during her twenties in the 1960s] absorbed in Hollywood cinema. [8] "[11][12], Themes central to castration anxiety that feature prominently in circumcision include pain,[11] fear,[11] loss of control (with the child's forced restraint,[9] and in the psychological effects of the event, which may include sensation seeking, and lower emotional stability[13]) and the perception that the event is a form of punishment. Emotional Control or Compromise?: On Mulvey and Vertigo [8] The experimenters aimed to demonstrate that in the absence of a particular stimulus, men who were severely threatened with castration, as children, might experience long-lasting anxiety. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. At the beginning film, she is the working woman while Scottie lays reclined, wearing a corset. Mulvey seems to come to the conclusion that reality, while always the necessary yardstick of interpretation, cannot in the end be understood through curiosity. Among his many suggestions, Freud believed that during the phallic stage, young girls distance themselves from their mothers and instead envy their fathers and show this envy by showing love and affection towards their fathers. Mulveys work has been overshadowed by this single piece of youthful polemic (the author was in her early thirties on publication) but Visual Pleasure does highlight issues of concern that continue to run through her subsequent work. Awesome article! It is clear that the most iconic of Mulveys articles is Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, first published in Screen in 1975 (reprinted in Visual and Other Pleasuresalong with Afterthoughts on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema inspired by King Vidors Duel in the Sun (1946)). Subversive Sisters: The Female Torturer in Contemporary Horror Films This seems to hold true for the films primary storyline which takes up more than half of its length, but following Scotties release from the sanitarium, things invert and the typical misogynistic views regain control of a film that was headed in the right directiona direction which was, in fact, unusual for the films time. The key distinction is between the active/male and [9] Another study of 60 males subject to communal circumcision ceremonies in Turkey found that 21.5% of them "remembered that they were specifically afraid that their penis might or would be cut off entirely," while 'specific fears of castration' occurred in 28% of the village-reared men. [citation needed] A link has been found between castration anxiety and fear of death. Mulvey returns to the problematic of difficulty again and again throughout these essays. Most obviously these include feminism and psychoanalysis, and it is these two branches of twentieth- century thinking, alongside Marxism, that most consistently inform her philosophical approach to film and art. Despite being the films hero (or, perhaps, anti-hero), Scottie is heroically impotent due to his own acrophobia, a condition imposed upon himself which he is unable to overcome. Critics of the article pointed out that Mulvey's argument implies the impossibility of the enjoyment of classical Hollywood cinema by women, and that her argument did not seem to take into account spectatorship not organized along normative gender lines. Curiosity, a drive to see, but also to know, still marked a Utopian space for a political, demanding visual culture, but also one in which the process of deciphering might respond to the human minds long standing interest and pleasure in solving puzzles and riddles. Teresa Wright is fantastic in the role, one of my favorites. Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses. The fault lies in Mulvey s necessary simplification, which subordinates critical insight to political expediency. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Laura Mulvey | Goodreads This is further reinforced when Midge openly expresses her readiness to conform to Scotties desires by painting herself into the portrait of Carlotta Valdes. She is "the bearer of the bleeding WebAdditionally, Mulvey claims that a woman also connotes something that the look continually circles around but disavows: her lack of a penis, implying a threat of castration and hence This language is to be understood in formal, structural terms, which will then inform the new cinema that is to come. Webfilm theory begins, with Laura Mulvey's extraordinarily influ ential article, "Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema" (1975; 1989). She writes of three processes that the hieroglyph evokes: a code of composition, the encapsulation, that is, of an idea in an image at a stage just prior to writing; a mode of address that asks an audience to apply their ability to decipher the poetics of the screen script; and, finally, the work of criticism as a means of articulating the poetics that an audience recognises but leaves implicit. Freud entertained that the envy they experienced was their unconscious wish to be like a boy and to have a penis.[22]. There are a small number of films to which she dedicates extended discussions Morocco (dir. Using Freud's thoughts, Mulvey insists on the idea that the images, characters, plots and stories, and dialogues in films are inadvertently built on the ideals of patriarchies, both within and beyond sexual contexts. More specifically, Lacan points out, the gaze must function as an object around which the exhibition-istic and voyeuristic impulses that constitute the scopic drive turn in short, the [8] The researchers concluded that individuals who are in excellent health and who have never experienced any serious accident or illness may be obsessed by gruesome and relentless fears of dying or of being killed. Here she concentrates on photography more than cinema and is indebted to Roland Barthes linking of the photograph with death in Camera Lucida (1981). The Womens Press Limited. Clearly Mulvey hoped that her own films would be a part of this new cinema but it is evident from the continued dominance of traditional fiction film that the pleasures that she hoped to destroy keep coming back. Everything about Madeleines appearance in these two moments connote[s] to-be-looked-at-ness. On a first viewing, it appears as though Madeleines character is very limited, for she is viewed entirely from Scotties love struck perspective. The second "look" describes the nearly voyeuristic act of the audience as one engages in watching the film itself. Smelik, Anneke (1995) What Meets the Eye: Feminist Film Studies in Buikema, Rosemarie (ed. In the opening sequence, the elevator scene shows Clarice surrounded by several tall FBI agents, all dressed identically, all towering above her, all subjecting her to their (male) gaze.[10], Mulvey argues that the only way to annihilate the patriarchal Hollywood system is to radically challenge and re-shape the filmic strategies of classical Hollywood with alternative feminist methods. (Ibid. WebThe male unconscious has two avenues of escape from this castration anxiety: preoccupation with the re-enactment of the original trauma (investigating the woman, demystifying her mystery), counterbalanced by the devaluation, punishment or saving of the guilty object (an avenue typified by the concerns of the film noir); or else complete "[17] Mulvey has stated that feminists recognise modernist avant-garde "as relevant to their own struggle to develop a radical approach to art. In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Mulvey characterizes the viewer of cinema as being caught within the patriarchal order and, in accordance with a certain feminist identity politics, postulates an alienated subject (ibid,:16) that exists prior to the establishment of such an order. But it then produces, as a result, a difficulty with the representation of women on the screen which has some unexpected coincidence with the problems feminists have raised about the representations of women in the cinema. This can also tie in with literal castration anxiety in fearing the loss of virility or sexual dominance. Gamman, L. (1988). Evolution of the Final Girl: Exploring Feminism and Femininity in WebCastration anxiety is a psychoanalytic concept introduced by Sigmund Freud to describe a boys fear of loss of or damage to the genital organ as punishment for incestuous wishes For some authors, Mulvey does not consider the black female spectators who choose not to identify with white womanhood and who would not take on the phallocentric gaze of desire and possession. They provide clues, not to ultimate or fixed meanings, but to sites of social difficulty that need to be deciphered, politically and psychoanalytically even though it may be too hard, ultimately, to make complete sense of the code. 1958. Mulvey explains that Hollywood, and crucially its visual style (which we can broadly understand as the style expounded by David Bordwell et al. : 99), History is, undoubtedly, constructed out of representations. WebCastration anxiety is the conscious or unconscious fear of losing all or part of the sex organs, or the function of such. Paramount Pictures. Scottie, who is meant to be our protagonist and a hero in the true masculine sense, is in fact the passive and over sensitive one. Mulvey does not acknowledge a protagonist and a spectator other than a heterosexual male, failing to consider a woman or homosexual as the gaze. Nevertheless, it is clear that Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinemawill inevitably be remembered for its formulation of the male gaze. Laura Mulvey (b. Here, it is possible to appreciate the portrayal of the female protagonist, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), as an object of stare. She speaks of the incontrovertible reality of intense human suffering and proclaims that the Gulf War did happen, in spite of what Baudrillard may claim (ibid. At least in the two cases above the characters seem to be hinting at another (loser) side to the stereotyped category of hero. Her interest in cinema covers a surprisingly narrow range, with an overwhelming emphasis on popular Hollywood cinema from around 1930 to 1960, melodrama (particularly the films of Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder) and, more recently, Iranian cinema. It operates independently with the writers collaboratively building and maintaining the platform. A case in point here is the film The Silence of the Lambs (1990). Again, also a very intelligent woman. According to Mulvey, this power has led to the emergence of her "possessive spectator." I couldnt agree more with you regarding appreciating the films but still understanding why and how theyre problematic and why that matters. "[16] It is within the confines of this redefined relationship that Mulvey asserts that spectators can now engage in a sexual form of possession of the bodies they see on screen. In the first half of the film, Midge is strong and self-confident, and Judy, as Madeleine, is competent and convincing. Im all for gender equality and respect for women and I am a biiig hitchcock fan. His movies point to the foibles and vulnerability of many of his characters, both male and female. Prove you are human, type cats in singular form below: How Time Loop Movies Have Avoided Their Own Groundhog Day, Platos Cave and the Construction of Reality in Postmodern Movies, Persona: A Journey through the Shadow in Ingmar Bergmans Masterpiece, Lost in Translation: The Sounds of Silence, Hollywoods Fascination with Silence and Horror, Cinematic Vampires: From Shadows to Spotlight. xZ7W@:vFY~)U{7cWi!EAwH_!*^;l? She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. Mulvey's contribution, however, inaugurated the intersection of film theory, psychoanalysis and feminism. She commands the entire film solves the mystery, keeps Peck from cracking up and never gives up. castration | Feminist Film Studies Fall 2018 a relief for castration anxiety Webthe horror monster and Laura Mulvey's analysis of the iconography of the female form in narrative cinema shows them to be quite similar. Male Gaze and Visual Pleasure in Laura Mulvey | SpringerLink To summarize briefly: the function of woman in forming the patriarchal unconscious is twofold, she first symbolizes the castration threat by her real That said, I still think its definitely possible to understand why these films are problematic and still appreciate them for what they are. When Scottie first lays eyes on Madeleine, he views her from behind, most of her back exposed by the elegant gown she wears to dinner with her husband and her hair perfectly pinned back in a bun, which in turn exposes the column of her neck, a particularly sensual body part. The film was well received but lacked a "feminist underpinning" that had been the core of many of their past films.[19]. Ousmane Sembene, 1975) and Blue Velvet(dir. I love Laura Mulvey, and this is a great application of her ideas. For Mulvey, Kiarostamis films appear to be an elegy for cinema itself, which is now in its final death throes. Presumably, this explanation of the processes that underpin popular culture and consumer culture in general will have some sort of liberating effect on general society. 2S>TMv=4Zi3NGRlp,,Y'rj1VDCtupnb)DUOr._T~K/'=p>T7]ioXwt7qrFuuiXal`DkC>#2d[+ ( $C)d::7 In the metaphorical sense, castration anxiety refers to the idea of feeling or being insignificant; there is a need to keep one's self from being dominated; whether it be socially or in a relationship. Scottie, of course, is all too willing to be her knight in shining armor, even though his masculinity is far past its prime. Tags: Abbas Kiarostam, Angst essen Seele auf, Citizen Kane, Death 24x a Second, Douglas Sirk, Duel in the Sun, Feminism, Feminist Film Theory, fetishism, Fetishism and Curiosity, Film Theory, Imitation of Life, King Vidor, Laura Mulvey, Laura Mulvey Male Gaze Theory, Laura Mulvey Theory, Literary Theory, Lorraine Gamman, Male Gaze, Male Gaze Films, Male Gaze Theory, Mark Lewis, Merja Makinen, Michele Aaron, Morocco, Peter Wollen, Psychoanalysis, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, scopophilia, Spectatorship: The Power of Looking On, Visual and Other Pleasures, voyeurism, Xala, Miss World competition held in Londons Royal Albert Hall in 1970, Lesbian Film Theory and Criticism Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Homi K Bhabha and Film Thoery Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy, Photography and Film Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Modernism, Postmodernism and Film Criticism Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Third (World) Cinema and Film Theory Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Psychoanalysis and the Cinema Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Body Language in Harold Pinters Plays Literary Theory and Criticism Notes, Jacques Derrida's Structure, Sign and Play, Analysis of Virginia Woolf's A Room of Ones Own, Analysis of Alexander Popes An Essay on Criticism. Mulvey also explores Jacques Lacans concepts of ego formation and the mirror stage. Although she is expressing her willingness to be passive, her means are too active, and so Scottie outright rejects her, even though they share a romantic past. Jefferies is gazing out of his window to temporarily forget his problems, like the cinema-goers are there to take their mind off theirs. (1955) The measurement of castration anxiety and anxiety over loss of love. I find the extrapolation of this so called male gaze idea being to objectify women and fear of castration more-or-less over-simplified nonsense at least as it applies to the character of Scottie Ferguson in Vertigo. [3], Castration anxiety is the conscious or unconscious fear of losing all or part of the sex organs, or the function of such. In order to be able to sustain an intellectual project based on the moral worth of interpretive activity, the critic cannot interpret blindly but must have as a goal the elucidation of the real and of truth. Hes a *detective*, hired to follow and watch a womans every move. : xiv-xv). As regards the narcissistic overtone of scopophilia, narcissistic visual pleasure can arise from self-identification with the image. a good read. He is incapable of keeping alive those about whom he cares, signifying a sort of impotence. Its ironic that Sean Connerys character in Marnie is supposed to be the leading man/hero but he evilly rapes his wife. To alleviate said fear on the level of narrative, the female character must be found guilty. Rather than examining the details of her argument in this book, which are perhaps even less clearly formulated than in her other episodic works, it may be worth noting Mulvey s rather world-weary tone and her emphasis on death. [8] The experimenters deduced that unconscious anxiety of being castrated might come from the fear the consciousness has of bodily injury. Thank you for the wonderfully kind words! WebIn Mulvey's examples, Vertigo and Rear Window, looking is isolated from doing and linked to a physical disability, echoing the castration anxiety. : 5) A shared sense of addressing a world written in cipher may have drawn feminist film critics, like me, to psychoanalytic theory, which has then provided a, if not the, means to cracking the codes encapsulated in the rebus of images of women. If there is such a thing as the real world, the existence of which is manifest only in readings of the representations of that real world, how would one be sure that one has managed to find the real and correct interpretation of those representations and thus be able to claim knowledge of the real world? To account for the fascination of Hollywood cinema, Mulvey employs the concept of scopophilia.