Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. LAUHA MULVEY. This paper intends to
use psyehoanalysis to diseover where and. I. Introdue• tiou. A. A Political [he.
Marilyn Monroe, publicity photograph
Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema LAUHA MULVEY
This paper intends to use psyehoanalysis to diseover where and
I. Introdue• tiou
A. A Political [he ofP~yr:/wanalysis
how the faseination of film is reinforced by preexisting patterns of fascination ah-eady at work within the individual subject and the social formations that have molded him. 1t takes as starting point the way film reflects, reveals, and even plays on the straight, socially established interpretation of sexual difference that controls images, erotic ways of looking, and spectac1e. It is helpful to understand what the cinema has been, how it•'i magic has worked in the past, while attempting a theory and a practice that will challenge this cinema of the past Psychoanalytic themy is thus appropriated here as a political weapon, demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form. The paradox of phallocentrism in all its manifestations is that it depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to it.
