Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) Laura Mulvey

Originally Published – Screen 16.3 Autumn 1975 pp 6-18

Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look

Laura Mulvey describes a world of sexual imbalance where pleasure in looking is described as being split between active males and passive females – the determining male gaze projects its fantasy to the female form, which is then styled accordingly.

Laura describes how the traditional exhibitionist role women of that time tended to display a strong visual and erotic impact and suggests they were often a recurrent theme throughout - suggesting a feeling of erotic spectacles for male desire also the female an indispensable viewing element in a narrative film often working against the developing storyline. Laura gives Budd Boetticher’s example to demonstrate how the erotic female image has to be incorporated into the story. She goes on to say how traditionally women are displayed on two levels either as an erotic character within the screen story or an erotic object for the spectator  - a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen. Laura gives examples of Marilyn Monroe and Lauren Bacall to demonstrate how the authentic gaze of the audience and of the actors can be combined to create a moment of sexual impact outside of the film and into “no–mans-land outside its own space and time.”

Laura argues that the male, according to the principles of ideology and subconscious structures that back-it-up, can’t bear the burden of sexual objectification. “Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like.” The man’s role is an active one that forwards the story and makes things happen - supports the split between spectacle and storyline or plot.  Man is portrayed as having the power and controlling the fantasy created by the woman- by structuring the film around the main male controlling figure with whom the audience have identified with.

The spectator identifies with the main male character or hero, often a screen surrogate that coincides with the active power of the erotic look – giving a genuine feeling of synchronised satisfaction and ego.

“A male movie stars glamorous characteristics are thus not those of the erotic object of the gaze, but those of the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego in the story can make things happen and control events better than the subject/spectator, just as the image in the mirror was more in control of the motor coordination.

Lastly Laura describes how the active male figure demands a three- dimensional space , the mirror recognition, in which the alienated subject internalised his own representation of the imaginary existence – a figure in a landscape. The function of the film is to reproduce as accurately as possible the so-called natural conditions of human perception mainly by using camera technology to blur the limits of screen space – the hero is then free to command the stage and the action.