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Visual Pleasure And Narrative Cinema Summary

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Response Paper 2
In the article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Laura Mulvey argues that the pleasure produced by narrative cinema reproduces an unconscious patriarchal structure of sexual divisions. It does so by appealing to our pleasure in looking – scopophilia (Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, p. 16) and to narcissistic primordial impulse to see our lives reflected in idealized ways that are in fact diliated, but important. She talks about emotions and how they work on us, how representation produces emotions that trigger unconscious responses.
Historically we respond and behave in ways that are not rational, that are not even understandable to us – it is a relatively new idea, however, extremely important and a powerful …show more content…

It can be either narcissistic or voyeuristic. Mulvey claims that cinema is scopophilic, “But the mass of the mainstream film, and the conventions within which it has consciously evolved, portray a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on their voyeuristic fantasy” (p.17). She says that one of the reasons why cinema is so appealing is because it satisfies this scopophilic impulse that we all …show more content…

However, I think that objectification is not always a negative thing – it is simply a way to represent. It happens when you highlight a certain part of someone or something, whenever you do not show the whole. So it is a particular way in which women are repeatedly objectified is the crucial point; it is a particular way in which men are driving the action forward and when women appear the action slows down or even stops. This is also can be seen in the scene when Sottie sees the blond woman in the restaurant: the time seems to stop; the audience is just forced to look at her. Nothing important happens in this scene, but the fascination that we experience towards her. So women are put into position of the main male character and we have two choices as a spectator: either seeing her from the main character’s sexual perspective or to identify yourself with the objectified

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