Spot the difference…

Wallis – Dress to Kill campaign

Boticelli – The Birth of Venus

Freud & Lacan

• We construct our identities by looking at ourselves and at each other. As children we derive pleasure from looking at other people’s bodies – scopophilia.

• The first time we fully see ourselves (in a mirror) is the first time we understand ourselves as people

• Cinema allows as to look at other people without being seen ourselves. We enjoy this voyeurism.

Laura Mulvey - 1975

• Feminist argument to make political use of conventional Hollywood film.

• Film places woman as subordinate, inactive and limits them to narrow and two dimensional roles.

• The audience are asked to take a male ‘point of spectatorship’ in most cinema

The Male Gaze

• Identification with the male lead.– His actions become a surrogate for our own

part in the narrative. We psychologically align ourselves with his point of view. He is the ideal ego.

• Objectification of the male lead’s romantic interest.– The male lead desires the female form. As we

are aligned with his point of view, the audience desire the female lead also.

What roles for women?

• The Madonna and the Whore

Madonna Whore

Object of reverence

Purity

‘on a pedestal’

Object of desire

Sexual object

Promiscuous

• In your own words, describe the processes of looking that are happening in this picture.

Did I leave the gas on?

• Guy blows her clothes off whilst the other woman looks on admiringly.

• Cover up luv. Get yourself a new frock as lush as mine be like.

Yeah but what’re you lookin’ at?

Is you doggin’ I up?

But seriously…how are YOU being invited to ‘look’ at this image?

Evaluate!

• Mulvey was writing in the 1970s with a political agenda about Hollywood cinema. But are there still such narrow roles for women? What’s changed? What hasn’t?