LaUrA mUlVeY

Laura Mulvey constructed the idea of ‘the controlling male gaze’ which presents ‘woman as image’ and man as ‘bearer of the look’.

Many classical Hollywood movies focus on a male protagonist in the narrative but also assume a male spectator; therefore, the action on screen is aimed at other males as this allows them to identify with the male protagonist.

In this case, males are often portrayed as powerful and ones who regulate the events. Women are objectified as sex symbols or feeble in order exert more dominance on the male protagonist.

Mulvey distinguishes between two modes of looking for the film spectator:

Voyeuristic: looking involves a controlling gaze and Mulvey argues that this has associations with sadism: ‘pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt - asserting control and subjecting the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness’

Fetishistic: looking, in contrast, involves ‘the substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous. This builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself. The erotic instinct is focused on the look alone’.

‘the female image as a castration threat constantly endangers the unity of the diegesis and burst through the world of illusion as an intrusive, static, one-dimensional fetish. Thus the two looks materially present in time and space are obsessively subordinated to the neurotic needs of the male ego' (Mulvey, 1986)

Laura Mulvey’s work was adapted from the work of Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud said:

An infant male unconsciously attracts towards the mother and becomes jealous towards the father, wanting to kill him (Oedipus Complex)

Castration Anxiety- The deep-seated fear or anxiety in boys and men. It asserts that boys, when seeing a girl's genitalia, will falsely assume that the girl had her penis removed, probably as punishment for some misbehavior. The boy then becomes anxious that the same happen to him.