Laura Mulvey - Citizendia

Laura Mulvey (born August 15, 1941) was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. Events 778 - The Battle of Roncevaux Pass, at which Roland is killed Year 1941 ( MCMXLI) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (the link will display 1941 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. St Hilda's College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Oxford is currently bidding for the 2010 Wikimania Conference Oxford () is a city, and the County town of Oxfordshire, She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Film theory debates the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to Reality, the other Arts individual Media studies is a collection of academic programs regarding the content history meaning and effects of various media. Birkbeck University of London, sometimes referred to by its former (and still legal name Birkbeck College or by the abbreviation BBK, is a constituent college She worked at the British Film Institute for many years before taking up her current position. The British Film Institute ( BFI) is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to encourage the development of the arts of film television

1 As a film theorist
2 Phallocentrism and patriarchy
3 As a film maker
4 See also
5 References
6 Further reading

As a film theorist

Mulvey is best known for her essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", written in 1973 and published in 1975 in the influential British film theory journal Screen. Feminist film theory is theoretical Film criticism derived from Feminist politics and Feminist theory. Screen is a journal of film and Television studies based at the John Logie Baird Centre at the University of Glasgow and published by Oxford It later appeared in a collection of her essays entitled Visual and Other Pleasures, and numerous other anthologies. Her article was one of the first major essays that helped shift the orientation of film theory towards a psychoanalytic framework, influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Film theory debates the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to Reality, the other Arts individual The concepts of Psychoanalysis have been applied to Films in various ways Sigmund Freud (ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfʁɔʏt born Sigismund Shlomo Freud (May 6 1856 &ndash September 23 1939 was an Austrian Psychiatrist who founded Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French ʒak lakɑ̃ ( April 13, 1901 &ndash September 9, 1981) was a French Psychoanalyst Prior to Mulvey, film theorists such as Jean-Louis Baudry and Christian Metz had attempted to use psychoanalytic ideas in their theoretical accounts of the cinema, but Mulvey's contribution was to inaugurate the intersection of film theory, psychoanalysis, and feminism. Christian Metz may refer to Christian Metz (critic Christian Metz (Inspirationalist Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behavior Film theory debates the essence of the cinema and provides conceptual frameworks for understanding film's relationship to Reality, the other Arts individual Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behavior Feminism is a discourse that involves various movements theories, and Philosophies which are concerned with the issue of Gender difference, advocate

Mulvey's article engaged in no empirical research on film audiences. She instead stated that she intended to make a "political use" of Freud and Lacan, and then used some of their concepts to argue that the cinematic apparatus of classical Hollywood cinema inevitably put the spectator in a masculine subject position, with the figure of the woman on screen as the object of desire. Classical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures In the era of classical Hollywood cinema, viewers were encouraged to identify with the protagonist of the film, who tended to be a man. Meanwhile, Hollywood female characters of the 1950s and 60s were, according to Mulvey, coded with "to-be-looked-at-ness. " Mulvey suggests that there were two distinct modes of the male gaze of this era: "voyeuristic" (i. In analysing Visual culture, the concept of The Gaze (also gaze and Le regard in French describes how the viewer gazes upon e. seeing women as 'whores') and "fetishistic" (i. e. seeing women as 'madonnas').

Mulvey argued that the only way to annihilate the "patriarchal" Hollywood system was to radically challenge and re-shape the filmic strategies of classical Hollywood with alternative feminist methods. Patriarchy is the structuring of Society on the basis of Family units where fathers have primary responsibility for the welfare of hence authority over She called for a new feminist avant-garde filmmaking that would rupture the magic and pleasure of classical Hollywood filmmaking. She wrote, "It is said that analysing pleasure or beauty annihilates it. That is the intention of this article. "

Feminists made a major criticism of "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. " They claimed that, while Mulvey believed that classical Hollywood cinema reflected and shaped the "patriarchal order," the perspective of her writing actually remained within that very heterosexual order. The article was thus said to have contradicted its "radical" claims, by actually being a covert perpetuation of heterosexual patriarchal order. Heterosexuality refers to sexual behavior with or attraction to people of the opposite sex or to a heterosexual orientation This was because, in her article, Mulvey presupposes the spectator to be a heterosexual man. She was thus felt to be denying the existence of lesbian women and even heterosexual women. A lesbian is a Woman who is romantically or sexually attracted only to other women

"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" was the subject of much interdisciplinary discussion among film theorists that continued into the mid 1980s. In Academia, Pedagogy, Physical sciences, Earth sciences, Human sciences and Social sciences Critics of the article objected to the fact that her argument implied the impossibility of genuine 'feminine' enjoyment of the classical Hollywood cinema, and to the fact that her argument did not seem to take into account spectatorships that were not organised along the normative lines of gender. For example, a metaphoric 'transvestism' might be possible when viewing a film – a male viewer might enjoy a 'feminine' point-of-view provided by a film, or vice versa; gay, lesbian and bisexual spectatorships might also be different. This article deals with the history of the word 'transvestite' Her article also did not take into account the findings of the later wave of media audience studies on the complex nature of fan cultures and their interaction with stars. Audience theory is an element of thinking that developed within academic Literary theory and Cultural studies. Gay male film theorists such as Richard Dyer have used Mulvey's work as a starting point to explore the complex projections that many gay men fix onto certain female stars (e. Richard W Dyer (born 1945 in Leeds) is an English academic specialising in cinema. g. Liza Minnelli, Greta Garbo, Judy Garland). Liza May Minnelli (born March 12, 1946) is a legendary American actress and singer Greta Garbo ( 18 September 1905 &ndash 15 April 1990) was a Swedish-American actress during Hollywood 's Judy Garland (born Frances Ethel Gumm; June 10 1922 – June 22 1969 was an American actress and singer

Feminist critic Gaylyn Studlar wrote extensively to contradict Mulvey's central thesis that the spectator is male and derives visual pleasure from a dominant, sadistic perspective. Studlar suggested rather that visual pleasure for all audiences is derived from a passive, masochistic perspective, where the audience seeks to be powerless and overwhelmed by the cinematic image.

Mulvey later wrote that her article was meant to be a provocation or a manifesto, rather than a reasoned academic article that took all objections into account. She addressed many of her critics, and changed some of her opinions, in a follow-up article, "Afterthoughts on 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'" (which also appears in the Visual and Other Pleasures collection).

Mulvey's most recent book is titled Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (2006).

Phallocentrism and patriarchy

Mulvey incorporates the idea of phallocentrism into "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". In Critical theory and Deconstruction, phallogocentrism or phallocentrism is a Neologism coined by Jacques Derrida to refer to Specifically relating the phallocentric theory to film, Mulvey insists on the idea that film and cinematography are inadvertently structured upon the ideas and values of a patriarchy. ^[1]

Within her essay, Mulvey discusses several different types of spectatorship that occur while viewing a film. Viewing a film involves subconsciously engaging in the understanding of male and female roles. The "three different looks", as they are referred to, explain just exactly how films are viewed in relation to phallocentrism. The first "look" refers to the camera as it records the actual events of the film. The second "look" describes the nearly voyeuristic act of the audience as one engages in watching the film itself. Voyeurism is the sexual interest in spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors such as undressing sexual activity or urinating Lastly, the third "look" refers to the characters that interact with one another throughout the film. ^[1]

The main idea that seems to bring these actions together is that "looking" is generally seen as an active male role while the passive role of being looked at is immediately adopted as a female characteristic. It is under the construction of patriarchy that Mulvey argues that women in film are tied to desire and that female characters hold an "appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact". The female actor is never meant to represent a character that directly effects the outcome of a plot or keep the story line going, but is inserted into the film as a way of supporting the male role and "bearing the burden of sexual objectification" that he cannot. "Sex object" redirects here For the song by Kraftwerk see Electric Café Sexual objectification is Objectification of ^[1]

As a film maker

Mulvey was prominent as an avant-garde filmmaker in the 1970s and 1980s. With Peter Wollen, her husband, she co-wrote and co-directed Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974), Riddles of the Sphinx (1977 - perhaps their most influential film), AMY! (1980), Crystal Gazing (1982), Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (1982), and The Bad Sister. Peter Wollen (b 29 June 1938 London) is a film theorist and writer In 1991, she returned to filmmaking with Disgraced Monuments, which she co-directed with Mark Lewis.

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Laura Mulvey (1975). In analysing Visual culture, the concept of The Gaze (also gaze and Le regard in French describes how the viewer gazes upon "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". Screen 16(3): 6-18. Online version.

Contents

As a film theorist

Phallocentrism and patriarchy

As a film maker

See also

References

Further reading