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| Grace Kelly (Promotional Photo for Rear Window) |
In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema Laura Mulvey analyzes the male gaze in films by explaining concepts such as scopophilia, voyeurism, and castration. She describes the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan and how filmmakers use their influences to help men gain authority in cinema. This is a problem because in these films women are merely there for "visual pleasure".
It is believed that the ideal viewer for traditional cinema were white men. This has somewhat changed in modern cinema because there are more movies that are made with the idea that women will be more drawn to them, but I believe the majority of movies made are done so with the intention that they will attract men. My reasoning for this is because if you look at the cast of most movies the female is usually a conventionally attractive woman and although there may be more of a story line for her, she will still be used for visual pleasure. Women in traditional movies were there for men to project their fantasies onto. Women were in these movies to for their visual and erotic impact but did not play huge roles in the main story. Once again, this is because the ideal viewer was a man. Why would the woman need an important role in a movie if the expected audience were going to be men? It's not like they could identify with the woman.
According to Sigmund Freud, the female figure poses a bigger problem in movies. Because of her lack of penis, men fear castration... for some reason. A castration complex is a fear of losing a penis if you have one and penis envy if you don't. I have never heard of this concept before, so I am trying to wrap my head around it. Mulvey mentions that men have two ways to cope with this castration anxiety: to investigate the female body, and to turn the female body into a fetish so that it will be more enticing rather than a dangerous thing. Honestly, anxiety over losing your penis is not a good enough reason to objectify women.
The camera movements and close ups in particular enforce gender roles because it implies that we are supposed to be watching the film from the perspective of a man. In Rear Window for example, the close ups of Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) put the audience in the place of L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart). The camera follows her movements closely in a way that we don't experience for the male characters. Even when the camera pans around to each of the open windows in the beginning, it lingers on the woman changing in front of the open window.
Movies made today still reinforce these gender roles because the main character is usually a conventionally attractive man with a conventionally attractive woman as his counterpart. They will inevitably end up together in the end after an hour and a half of sexual tension and objectification of the female character. Some movies made recently have started being more inclusive for example the lead characters may not have the stereotypical physique that main characters usually have. There is also more inclusivity as far as race goes and sexuality go, but there is still room for improvement in films made today.
Works Cited
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Screen (London: Palgrave Macmillian, 1975)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grace_Kelly_Promotional_Photograph_Rear_Window.jpg
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