castration anxiety mulvey
Dodane 10 maja 2023Mulveys essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema(1975) has had a major impact on the course of film scholarship. Hitchs women are imperfect, because perfect people dont make for good films. Want to write about Film or other art forms? Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. I agree that Midge leaves the story line because her common sense character isnt congruent to the insanity of Scotty. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Mulvey explains that Hollywood, and crucially its visual style (which we can broadly understand as the style expounded by David Bordwell et al. [17] Deceiving Lilith into believing newborn babies were a girl letting the boy's hair grow and even dressing him in girl clothes were said to be the most effective means to avoid her harm, until they were ritually circumcised on the eighth day of life as part of a covenant with God. The male characters in these two movies might be multidimensional but they arent very successful. Mulvey's most recent book is titled Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (2006). \p?rUbk:o$TL&4gtuD~@*K XgV[>_94x@#n"Q@}U&ICGyy;X-#e {3[dNrWq5W; QD^P7Zp)Nxc)MrPw|D`LVAW0Bf.SLs|nAK}*l'Y:VVI87|/in|4Cp! WebCASTRATION ANXIETY. In all of her scenes, Midge is displayed as more capable than Scottie. The book does, however, contain an essay on the Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami, whose work she terms as a cinema of uncertainty and of delay. investigated whether sex differences would be found in the manifestations of castration anxiety in their subject's dreams. She says in her paper that essentially any woman who enjoys movies like this is a masochist, which I think thats a little harsh, but I get what shes saying. Peirces semiotic triangle of icon, index and symbol try once again to come to terms with the relationship between representation and reality and her focus on the index, which is a sign produced by the thing it represents (ibid. Castration anxiety is a psychoanalytic concept introduced by Sigmund Freud to describe a boys fear of loss of or damage to the genital organ as punishment for incestuous wishes toward the mother and murderous fantasies toward the rival father. As a massive screen on which collective fantasy, anxiety, fear and their effects can be projected, it speaks the blind-spots of a culture and finds forms that make manifest socially traumatic material, through distortion, defence and disguise. Schwartz, Bernard J. Mulvey suggests that scopophilic pleasure arises principally from using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight. Roberto Rossellini, 1954), Imitation of Life(dir. Even though Judy is much more independent than Madeleine ever was, as soon as Scottie enters into her hotel room, she cowers and backs away from him as though she is the prey being stalked by the predator. Her article, which was influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, is one of the first major essays that helped shift the orientation of film theory towards a psychoanalytic framework. Mulvey writes: Psychoanalytic film theory suggests that mass culture can be interpreted similarly symptomatically. In their first scene, once Scottie begins to question her about her love life, she brushes him off with tongue-in-cheek quips such as You know theres only one man in the world for me, Johnny-o (Vertigo). Curiosity, a drive to see, but also to know, still marked a Utopian space for a political, demanding visual culture, but also one in which the process of deciphering might respond to the human minds long standing interest and pleasure in solving puzzles and riddles. (Ibid. I dont know that I am answering any questions but this seems like a start. Strong article. WebPerhaps the most notorious shot of the music video of Miley licking a hammer with her lips at the center of the screen. WebMulvey connects the situation and placement of the viewer within the cinema back to Freuds castration complex, relating to childrens fascination, voyeurism and instincts of sexuality. His movies point to the foibles and vulnerability of many of his characters, both male and female. At the films end, Midge is the only one who has the strength and good sense to walk away before it is too late. The Womens Press Limited. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. 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.[7]. If Hitchcocks movies were really presenting a case for patriarchy wouldnt the characters be more cardboard and one dimensional? Through fetishization of the female form, attention to the female lack is diverted, and thus, renders women a safe object of pure beauty, not a threatening object. I find the extrapolation of this so called male gaze idea being to objectify women and fear of castration more-or-less over-simplified nonsense at least as it applies to the character of Scottie Ferguson in Vertigo. Both the old lady and the young female lead in The Lady Vanishes are also good, strong characters. I agree that Midge leaves the story line because her common sense character isnt congruent to the insanity of Scotty. I meant, her common sense isnt compatible with Scotties insanity. Sirk, 1959), Psycho (dir. "[17] Mulvey has stated that feminists recognise modernist avant-garde "as relevant to their own struggle to develop a radical approach to art. This tension is resolved through the death of the female character (as in Vertigo, 1958) or through her marriage with the male protagonist (as in Hitchcocks Marnie, 1964). In Lacans view, children gain pleasure through the identification with a perfect image reflected in the mirror, which shapes childrens ego ideal. was a film tribute to Amy Johnson and explores the previous themes of Mulvey and Wollen's past films. While Mulvey uses a seemingly complex psychoanalytic structure to explain the objectification of women, not only within the narrative but also within the stylistic codes of Hollywood film-making, it strikes me that her use of the term scopophiliais given too much weight, since Freud himself never really discusses the idea in much detail. [13], Additionally, Mulvey is criticized for not acknowledging other than white spectators. Smelik, Anneke (1995) What Meets the Eye: Feminist Film Studies in Buikema, Rosemarie (ed. Freud entertained that the envy they experienced was their unconscious wish to be like a boy and to have a penis.[22]. viii 3) Maurice Merleau-Pontys (1962, 1968) phenomenological concept of body image: not only a map of the material body but, like Freuds interpretation, a psychical representation of the body. Is Gender Fluid? Freud, Sigmund. Alfred Hitchcock. Films, then, can now be "delayed and thus fragmented from linear narrative into favorite moments or scenes" in which "the spectator finds a heightened relation to the human body, particularly that of the star. My interest here is to argue that the real world exists within its representations(ibid.). A number of other broad areas are of obvious and continuing interest to Mulvey. Hie problem that faces the critic is difficulty itself. Using Mulveys term, everything about Madeleine caters to the male gaze. This is unrelated to the notion of "small penis syndrome" which is the assumption by the man that his penis is too small. It is because of this revolutionary strength and independence that the film ultimately does not know what to do with her. It is implied in Freudian psychology that both girls and boys pass through the same developmental stages: oral, anal, and phallic stages. Hines, S. (2018). Midge, Scotties former fiance, represents a woman who is both willingly subjected to the male gaze and above its influence. Whereas Mulvey notes that, when she first began writing about films, she had been "preoccupied by Hollywood's ability to construct the female star as ultimate spectacle, the emblem and guarantee of its fascination and power," she is now "more interested in the way that those moments of spectacle were also moments of narrative halt, hinting at the stillness of the single celluloid frame. Fear of emasculation in both the literal and metaphorical sense. According to Mulvey, the paradox of the image of woman is that although they stand for attraction and seduction, they also stand for the lack of the phallus, which results in castration anxiety. How can a supporting female character be more competent than our heroic male protagonist? Whether this is because the patriarchal system is indeed unbreachable or whether it indicates a flaw in her own argument is something that must be explored further elsewhere. Vertigo makes a valiant effort to present fully developed, independent women who exert their power over men without being entirely sexualized; however, as the plot complicates with each repetition, this effort seems to get lost somewhere along the way. [8], To feel so powerless can be detrimental to an individual's mental health. [8] The researchers claimed that this anxiety is from the repressed desires for sexual contact with women. If we can understand her work to have been concerned with the womb (the origins and interpretation of reality), perhaps her most recent book deals with the other retreat: death. She employs 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 and "the male gaze". The first "look" refers to the camera as it records the actual events of the film. WebMoreover, Mulveys article participates in this project because it is doing something similar: presenting readers with the manipulative techniques which suppress the destabilizing She writes, The presence can only be understood through a process of decoding because the covered material has necessarily been distorted into the symptom (ibid. This character formula presents a fundamentally degrading image of women that seeks to affirm a primarily patriarchal expectation of the world, which I would say is, in some ways, absolutely a crime. This truth lies beneath the carapace created by another (presumably evil) power. Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses. In this manner, male spectators come to indirectly possess the woman on screen as well. The film was well received but lacked a "feminist underpinning" that had been the core of many of their past films.[19]. [1] Although Freud regarded castration anxiety as a universal human experience, few empirical studies have been conducted on the topic. In the literal sense, castration anxiety refers to the fear of having one's genitalia disfigured or removed to punish sexual desires of a child. (1955) The measurement of castration anxiety and anxiety over loss of love. The camera films women from above, at a high camera angle, thus portraying women as defenseless. She considers telling Scottie the truth, even going so far as to write a letter explaining everything, which is in a way seeking the punishment or saving of the guilty object that Mulvey highlights in her definition of voyeurism (65). Webattention to anxiety about fragmentation, for example through castration. Clearly Mulvey hoped that her own films would be a part of this new cinema but it is evident from the continued dominance of traditional fiction film that the pleasures that she hoped to destroy keep coming back. A lot of his women are, to put it nicely, problematic. According to Freud, this was a major development in the identity (gender and sexual) of the girl. As Midge is not and will never be the subject of Scotties determining male gaze, a film so consumed by the importance of appearances has no place for her (62). Freud, however, believed that the results may be different because the anatomy of the different sexes is different. [8] The researchers concluded that individuals who are in excellent health and who have never experienced any serious accident or illness may be obsessed by gruesome and relentless fears of dying or of being killed. As regards camera work, the camera films from the optical as well as libidinal point of view of the male character, contributing to the spectators identification with the male look. She takes part in the demonstration against the Miss World competition held in Londons Royal Albert Hall in 1970, and this action also points to a concern that runs throughout her work: the relationship between theory and practice (Mulvey 1989: 3-5). It was thought that these desires are trying to reach the men's consciousness. This approach seems uncannily to echo Mulvey s 1970s negative aesthetics approach that film as it exists should be destroyed, with only a vague sense of sentimental regret. For Mulvey, then, cinema functions much like the speech of the analysand on the psychoanalysts couch: what we see on the screen can be interpreted as containing a latent meaning that reflects the desires and problems of that cinemas contemporary society. Lots of Hitchs women were very intelligent. [3], Castration anxiety is the conscious or unconscious fear of losing all or part of the sex organs, or the function of such. More specifically, Lacan points out, the gaze must function as an object around which the exhibition-istic and voyeuristic impulses that constitute the scopic drive turn in short, the New York: Routledge. Mulveys later position is to try to rescue Hollywood from her own critique.In Spectatorship: The Power of Looking On, Michele Aaron provides a succinct overview of the issues raised in Mulvey s article (2007: 24-35) and summarizes her conclusions usefully as follows: One, women cannot be subjects; they cannot own the gaze (read: there is no such thing as a female spectator). This seems to hold true for the films primary storyline which takes up more than half of its length, but following Scotties release from the sanitarium, things invert and the typical misogynistic views regain control of a film that was headed in the right directiona direction which was, in fact, unusual for the films time. . Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. She knows her part is to perform, and only by playing it through and then replaying it can she keep Scotties erotic interest. A Feminist Introduction to the Humanities, p. 66-81. Ironically those personal motives being confused with what is right or altruistic, is what Vertigo is *really* about. WebThis system of looks assumes narcissistic identification with the male protagonist of the narrative and voyeuristic enjoyment of the female object of the gaze. Castration anxiety is the fear of emasculation in both the literal and metaphorical sense. WebIn Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey argues that the physical absence of the penis from womens bodies creates castration anxiety in the men that gaze upon Her bronze hair, crimson lipstick, and vibrantly green gown parallel her robust character. I find that generally summarizes my feelings on much of Hitchcocks body of work, many of which are some of my favorite films on the level of purely being wonderful works of cinema, but also because they are so interesting to analyze and discuss. Mulvey, Laura. Its really fascinating to see the effect shes talking about played out in movies today as well as in the classics; it really shows that next to nothing has changed. Webism (1927; 1940). Is it at all possible that a film made about straightforward, honest, hard-working, capable, independent, diligent, creative women who dont get into any kind of trouble or have any drama in their lives, because they are so sensible that they avoid it all, would be just dull and not dramatic? Presumably, this explanation of the processes that underpin popular culture and consumer culture in general will have some sort of liberating effect on general society. : xiv-xv). (1999): 58-69. But we might more reasonably ask whats wrong with his men, given that theyre supposed to be the heroes. Judy entirely allows herself to be the object of Scotties active, perverse, and obsessive control and Midge gives up all of her gumption and resigns herself to leaving Scotties life. (2006: 191), Mulvey had expanded on the theme of curiosity, which is also an explanation of her own academic drive to see, in Fetishism and Curiosity (1996) and in what follows I will explicate some of her arguments of this book.3 Mulvey argues that if a societys collective consciousness includes its sexuality, it must also contain an element of collective unconsciousness (1996: xiii). She attempts to act out against the oppression of this universe in which she lives, and yet for some unknown reason, she is unable to go through with it. At least in the two cases above the characters seem to be hinting at another (loser) side to the stereotyped category of hero. transmedia storytelling, gender inequality, critical game studies, Batman franchise, castration anxiety, Gaze Theory Abstract. Even the problematic ones (like the ones in Marnie, Psycho and North by Northwest). The two never converse again in the rest of the film. Mulvey's contribution, however, inaugurated the intersection of film theory, psychoanalysis and feminism. This view does not acknowledge theoretical postulates put forward by LGBTQ+ theorists -and the community itself- that understand gender as something flexible. (1992). Whether she subconsciously/inadvertently/habitually influenced any of these characters, we cant really know, but its still a wonderful question to think about. xZ7W@:vFY~)U{7cWi!EAwH_!*^;l? Jefferies is gazing out of his window to temporarily forget his problems, like the cinema-goers are there to take their mind off theirs. In Mulveys essay, she states that In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness (62-63). WebDiscussing the 'look' in cinema, Mulvey notes that 'in a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female' (Mulvey, cited in Thornham, 1999: 62). Mulvey believes that avant-garde film "poses certain questions which consciously confront traditional practice, often with a political motivation" that work towards changing "modes of representation" as well as "expectations in consumption. She calls for a new feminist avant-garde filmmaking that would rupture the narrative pleasure of classical Hollywood filmmaking. [8] Therefore, these men may be expected to respond in different ways to different degrees of castration anxiety that they experience from the same sexually arousing stimulus. Then theres Stage Fright Jane Wyman plays, again, a very resourceful brave, intelligent young woman. WebA recent tendency in narrative film has been to dispense with [the dread of castration anxiety] altogether; hence the development of what Molly Haskell has called the buddy movie, in which the active homosexual eroticism of the central male figures can carry the story without distraction He is incapable of keeping alive those about whom he cares, signifying a sort of impotence. The counterpart of castration anxiety for females is penis envy. This camera focuses and draws attention to the action of licking the hammer, which obviously has sexual connotations, seeming to comply once again with Mulveys Male Gaze Theory. [24] They further hypothesized that women will have a reversed affect, that is, female dreamers will report more dreams containing fear of castration wish and penis envy than dreams including castration anxiety. Mulveys work has been overshadowed by this single piece of youthful polemic (the author was in her early thirties on publication) but Visual Pleasure does highlight issues of concern that continue to run through her subsequent work. Critics of the article pointed out that Mulvey's argument implies the impossibility of the enjoyment of classical Hollywood cinema by women, and that her argument did not seem to take into account spectatorship not organized along normative gender lines. [19][20] Judith defeats Assyrian General, Holofernes by cutting his head off decapitation being an act that Freud equated with castration in his essay, "Medusa's Head".[21]. Among his many suggestions, Freud believed that during the phallic stage, young girls distance themselves from their mothers and instead envy their fathers and show this envy by showing love and affection towards their fathers. [18], The figure of Judith, depicted both as "a type of the praying Virgin who tramples Satan and harrows Hell," and also as "seducer-assassin" archetypically reflects the dichotomous themes presented by castration anxiety and circumcision: sexual purity, chastity, violence, and eroticism. Paramount Pictures. It is to the possibility of this romantic individual and his or her liberation from that order that the essay is addressed. Film. Critical activity becomes a crusade against hypocrisy and oppression where the avant-garde (whether it be artistic or interpretive) is the only position from which an attack on the carapace is possible. : xiv). I think Hitchcock uses a lot of irony in his movies. Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons was the first of Mulvey and Wollen's films. : 5) A shared sense of addressing a world written in cipher may have drawn feminist film critics, like me, to psychoanalytic theory, which has then provided a, if not the, means to cracking the codes encapsulated in the rebus of images of women. Penis envy, in Freudian psychology, refers to the reaction of the female/young girl during development when she realizes that she does not possess a penis. (67). 1941) is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. Hes absolutely and categorically lying to you. Hitchcocks fetishistic need to mould such strong, morally upstanding men-folk in his films whilst literally rubbing dirt into the faces of anyone with a hemline is just dastardly. As she leaves the sanitarium and tells the attending doctor that Scottie is still in love with Madeleine, even though shes gone, she bows her head and walks painstakingly slowly down an absolutely vacant corridor, a long shot executed with such melancholy that it is clear that not only is she walking out of the film at this point, she is also walking out of Scotties life. The fact that a majority of movies are written by men. N$OZD5L}-/ f'Ccz,\]M_:H`R=l2IwE%$YpyN`*:_dLZc%;m/ In herself the woman has not the slightest importance. According to Cohler and Galatzer, Freud believed that all of the concepts related to penis envy were among his greatest accomplishments. Alfred Hitchcocks women in his films have always been a topic of discussion when you discuss his films. According to Anneke Smelik, Professor of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Radboud University, classic cinema encourages the deep desire to look through the incorporation of structures of voyeurism and narcissism into the narrative and image of the film. Home Laura Mulvey, Male Gaze and the Feminist Film Theory, By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on April 13, 2017 ( 8 ). Psychoanalytic interpretation of Biblical stories shows themes of castration anxiety present in Judaic mythology concerning circumcision. [8] Because of unconscious thoughts, as theorized in the ideas of psychoanalysis, the anxiety is brought to the surface where it is experienced symbolically. This binary opposition is gendered.[6] The male characters are seen as active and powerful: they are endowed with agentivity and the narrative unfolds around them. She formulates two new models of spectatorship the pensive and the possessive spectator but neither of these are fully articulated in any convincing manner. : 250). Interesting read, I was wondering if Mrs. Hitchcock had and any influence on roles of the females you identified in this film? Based on Laura Mulvey's theory on male gaze, the analysis of the screening of the body in action films revolves around the aspects of narrative, and cinematography of the Salt films. He reasoned that so long as the wives and sweethearts were interested in seeing the films, the husbands and boyfriends would shell out the ticket price. Likewise, the male gaze is the filter through which women are viewed in film and are styled accordingly in order to please the desires of the objectifying male subject (62). Alfred Hitchcock, in my opinion, was not only a master of suspense but also of satire. I find the women in his earlier films are comparatively better. 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. There is an idea that exists, which is then translated into a form that demands to be deciphered but which can be properly understood only by a small group of critics who will come and explain to the general public the true message of any mode of address. Everything about Madeleines appearance in these two moments connote[s] to-be-looked-at-ness. On a first viewing, it appears as though Madeleines character is very limited, for she is viewed entirely from Scotties love struck perspective. WebAdditionally, Mulvey claims that a woman also connotes something that the look continually circles around but disavows: her lack of a penis, implying a threat of castration and hence Her stated aim in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinemais not only to analyse the way in which pleasure has been organized and used by Hollywood in the service of patriarchy, but to destroy that pleasure (despite any lingering sentimental regret for the enjoyment that cinema had previously afforded), and not only to destroy past pleasure but to make way for a total negation of the ease and plenitude of the narrative fiction film This rebellion will transcend outworn or oppressive forms and will conceive a new language of desire (ibid). It operates independently with the writers collaboratively building and maintaining the platform. (1980), Crystal Gazing (1982), Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (1982), and The Bad Sister (1982). It is not the women who represent the threat of castration for Scottie, but it is he who enacts his own castration. Here she concentrates on photography more than cinema and is indebted to Roland Barthes linking of the photograph with death in Camera Lucida (1981). The interior/exterior model explored in Fetishism and Curiosity could be explained by a term such as false consciousness, or even ideology, and in this sense it can be linked back to Mulveys preoccupation with the real. In the pregenital stage of the Freudian psychoanalytic theory, feelings of deprivation and loss may (63). Also since an argument for a patriarchal hero might include violence, Norman Bates violent acts signify how insane patriarchal violence is. They provide clues, not to ultimate or fixed meanings, but to sites of social difficulty that need to be deciphered, politically and psychoanalytically even though it may be too hard, ultimately, to make complete sense of the code. This is further reinforced when Midge openly expresses her readiness to conform to Scotties desires by painting herself into the portrait of Carlotta Valdes. But it then produces, as a result, a difficulty with the representation of women on the screen which has some unexpected coincidence with the problems feminists have raised about the representations of women in the cinema. Its ironic that Sean Connerys character in Marnie is supposed to be the leading man/hero but he evilly rapes his wife. [4], In Freudian psychoanalysis, castration anxiety (Kastrationsangst) refers to an unconscious fear of penile loss originating during the phallic stage of psychosexual development and lasting a lifetime. Thanks for the great comment! For some authors, Mulvey does not consider the black female spectators who choose not to identify with white womanhood and who would not take on the phallocentric gaze of desire and possession. She tries in vain to communicate with him, but he is long gone at this point, so when she says Ah, Johnny-oyou dont know Im here, do you? Mulvey attempts to move beyond this Freudian paradox by concentrating on the drive to knowledge, which she understands as the desire to solve puzzles and understand enigmas (problematically, perhaps, festishistic disavowal the act of believing two contradictory elements simultaneously is itself unsolvable in the traditional sense of arriving at a single conclusion).