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Paper Abstract: Discusses how the theory of spectatorship is used by feminist film theorists. Psychoanalytically oriented film theory. Psychological processes involved in the film-viewing experience. Voyeurism and narcissistic identification. The nature of female spectatorship. Analysis of two popular films to illustrate points made: The 1972 "Portnoy's Complaint," and the 2000 "Malena." Paper Introduction: Psychoanalytically oriented film theory became a significant force in the 1970s and has been one of the most productive influences of the past few decades. This is nowhere more true than in feminist theory where, despite theorists' misgivings about the reactionary nature of psychoanalysis, it was instrumental in developing approaches to spectatorship that first accounted for male scopophilia, as the principal pleasure project of classic Hollywood film, and has since been employed in elucidating the nature of female spectatorship. This essay begins with a brief discussion of the tenets of Freud and Lacan that were adapted by film theorists in creating a theory of spectatorship. This is followed by an explanation of its uses in feminist film theory and a demonstration of the manner in which the psychoanalytic approach informs the analysis of two popular Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. 2nd ed. When she turns,however, it is Portnoy, simpering coyly at the camera. But, in justice to Tornatore, his fetishization of theactor, Monica Bellucci, is deliberate--even though he may not conceive ofit in that fashion. Thefilm's diegesis is not disturbed by the fact that it stops to look at herbecause the male character is doing the same thing. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Metz recognized that the essential condition of this all-powerfultranscendent subjectivity, however, is the cinema's insistence on "the roleof monocular perspective" and the fact that "as he identifies with himselfas look, the spectator can do no other than identify with the camera too"and in this identification with the camera's view (which depends, in itsdeceptive way, on the construction of this view from the bits and piecesthat, in their deceptive way, make up the film that is presented) hisidentification with the camera's progress is "that of a transcendental, notan empirical subject" (Metz 8 4). Psychoanalytically oriented film theory became a significant force inthe 197 s and has been one of the most productive influences of the pastfew decades. Threelevels of the gaze--camera, character, and spectator--work to make thefemale character a spectacle. He never really interferes within all the terrible treatment meted out to Malena; never defends her oreven contests other readings of her. It does this both through the consistent treatment ofMary Jane as spectacle but the conclusion of the scene drives the pointhome even more firmly. In this dual form of knowledge the spectatorial "I" both knowsthat I am perceiving something imaginary and that it is I who am perceivingit. Ed. Works CitedGledhill, Christine. 5th ed. The second form of this knowledge also consists of two parts, i.e.,"I" know that I am actually perceiving (not fantasizing) and I know it is Iwho am perceiving it, that all "this perceived-imaginary material isdeposited in me" where its ordered form develops and that, therefore, it isin me that this "really perceived imaginary accedes to the symbolic by itsinauguration" as the activity called cinema (Metz 8 3). Ed. Lacan posited that between the ages of six and eighteen months theinfant catches sight of itself in some reflecting surface and becomesaware, for the first time, of her or his status "as a self-recognising,thinking subject" (White 347). In addition she, and others, called for afeminist film practice that would overthrow narrative cinema in favor of"free[ing] the look of the camera into its materiality in time and spaceand the look of the audience into dialectics and passionate detachment"(Mulvey, quoted in Smelik 354). Yet this recognition of the image "is whatconstitutes the ego, what allows for the fabrication of the individualmind" so that the ego is, essentially, formed through a sort of'misrecognition' in which the individual's sense of autonomy is achievedonly by looking at this external image and out of basic self-love(narcissism) denying its externality. In this scene as soonas Portnoy focuses the camera (his gaze) on Mary Jane, she snaps intoprofessional posing. The spectator,therefore, identifies with himself and his own pure act of perception whichis the condition of the existence of the perceived and thus establishes theself as a transcendental subject which precedes all that is. Ed. This may involve either a re-enactment of theoriginal trauma of seeing the woman's (according to Freud, the mother's)lack of a penis by investigating the woman and then punishing or saving thewoman-as-guilty-object or else it may engage in the "complete disavowal ofcastration" by the substitution of a fetish object--which may be the femalefigure itself, thereby rendering 'it' reassuring rather than dangerous(Mulvey 84 ). Pam Cook and Mieke Bernink. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. The absenceof the image of the self is enabled, however, by "the fact that thespectator has already known the experience of the mirror" and canconstitute a world of objects without having to see himself (usedadvisedly) in it first (Metz 8 2). Portnoy's Complaint. Ed. This not only implies that the femalespectator is either disregarded or co-opted, it also, because it evokes thesmall shock of surprise that initiates comedy, makes it clear thatreversing the male/active and female/passive roles is an absurdity. (This is not to say, ofcourse, that either of them influenced the other at the time.) But just asrealism can be used in either way, so self-reflexivity of this sort can beused in two ways. The all-but-silent Malena is, from the outset,the subject of the gaze of every other character in the movie. Malena. An example from Lehman's Portnoy's Complaint demonstrates how thegaze is conceived of as inherently male and the female as inherentlyspectacle. The common-sense objection to the idea that classic cinema involvesan exclusively male gaze is that even though the male character may look atthe female character, the camera is equally directed at the male charactersand, surely, female characters must look at the males as well. London: British Film Institute, 1999. Since what the infant identifieswith and longs for is essentially an other, a reflected image, this imagebecomes the "prototype for other love-objects" (White 347). 2nd ed. Mulvey's arguments regarding the basic structures of cinema help todemonstrate how "Hollywood cinema is tailor-made for male desire" (Smelik354). But thespectator's identification is with the engaging character of Renato(Giuseppe Sulfaro), an identification that is reinforced by the nature ofthe film as a 'memory piece' which the voice-over of an older manestablishes. But the basic description of how mental functioning is orderedis assumed throughout. The scene is a break in the film in which Portnoy (RichardBenjamin) and Mary Jane (Karen Black) frolic in a park to pop music on thesoundtrack as Portnoy snaps pictures of her. The infant acknowledges her/himself and theimage's gratifying appearance of wholeness. "Psychoanalysis." The Cinema Book. The manner in which the techniques of cinema render voyeurism as anexclusively male prerogative is at the heart of Mulvey's analysis. On the one hand such intervals seem to signify the film's awarenessof its own 'constructed' nature, which one can only assume leads to moreinsight into the process. The key concepts in the formation of psychoanalytically influencedfilm theory were Lacan's notion of the mirror stage and Freud's concept offetishism. The character is a model and so her series of posesfunction in the manner described by Mulvey. The individual thus firstidentifies (in the sense of noticing) the image and then, "ambitiously andlongingly," identifies with the image (White 347). Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." [1975]. A brief analysis of elements of two films demonstrates how thesemechanisms work. But the true oddity of the film is the manner in whichRenato hugs his fetish/woman to himself. The power lies with the malecharacter because he controls the flow of the narrative and because it iswith his power that the spectator can identify. 8 -17.Mulvey, Laura. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. The male spectator, therefore, has two ways ofdealing with this anxiety. This essay begins with abrief discussion of the tenets of Freud and Lacan that were adapted by filmtheorists in creating a theory of spectatorship. And, since the spectator 'must'identify with the fetishizing gaze of Renato, this comes to be acceptable--at least as Tornatore conceives of it. At the same timethe spectator's knowledge takes the form without which cinema would beimpossible. But Christine Gledhill makes the interesting comment, in herdiscussion of the complicity of the notion of film realism in thepatriarchal project, that "the claim to realism can be involved by forcesseeking to preserve or to challenge the status quo" (emphasis added 255).In this respect it is interesting that at the same time that film theoristsbecame interested in the ideological content of film structure Hollywoodfilms became much more self-reflexive and engaged in far more 'breaks' ofthe type seen in this romp-in-the-park interval. This is an example of what Mulveyrefers to as "the device of the showgirl" in which the woman is, usuallybecause of her occupation, one who puts herself on display (838). This is followed by anexplanation of its uses in feminist film theory and a demonstration of themanner in which the psychoanalytic approach informs the analysis of twopopular films. The "meaning ofthe woman" in narrative cinema (and elsewhere, in psychoanalytic terms) is"sexual difference" which implies the lack of the penis and, therefore, thewoman as icon "always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originallysignified" (Mulvey 84 ). But in order for Renato to grow Malena has to sufferand the sadism inherent in the punishment and salvation she is given isunpleasant enough. In other cases, however,theorists employed psychoanalytic concepts in their attempt to develop afull account of the cinematic 'apparatus,' i.e., a description of thepsychological processes involved in the film-viewing experience. The glamorous qualities ofthe male movie star are not, then, those that invite the erotic look but"those of the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ego idealconceived in the original moment of recognition in front of the mirror"(Mulvey 838). New York: Oxford UP, 1999. In some cases it was employed as a method ofexamining the devices of cinema in terms of the interplay of "desire andinhibition, meaning and its distortion" that according to Freud and Lacanstructured mental operations (White 341). 5th ed. "[From] The Imaginary Signifier." [1975]. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. This is the operation of the structuredescribed by Freud in which conflict between the libido (governed by thepleasure principle) and the super ego (bearer of social prohibitions, guiltand the threat of punishment) is mediated by the ego, thereby producingrepression of wishes and unfulfilled desires into the unconscious (Lecturenotes). The continuing impact of psychoanalysis on film theory had its rootsin the pages of Screen in the early 197 s. "Recent Developments in Feminist Criticism." [1978]. She is an astonishingly beautiful woman with immensepresence and the display in which she engages--while it makes littledramatic sense--is an overpowering one. Instead it serves as a means to reiterate the film'sideological stance. But since there is no longer any selfimage in the 'mirror' of the cinema the perception is only of the object.The spectator derives a feeling of power from the all-seeing quality heacquires in the cinema where he is "a great eye and ear without which theperceived would have no one to perceive it" (Metz 8 3). Mulvey later elaborated her position to demonstrate the complicityof the mechanisms of classic narrative cinema in the perpetuation of sexualimbalance, thus responding to criticism that she did not adequately accountfor the female spectator. 833-44.Smelik, Anneke. Within thepatriarchal order, however, pleasure in film has been structured in binaryfashion "between active/male and passive/female" so that the fantasy of themale gaze is projected onto a female figure styled to appeal to it (Mulvey837). In the last shot of the sequence she is shown frombehind with a piece of her clothing draped over her head. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. He is castin every classic 'voyeur' shot in the history of cinema from the extremeclose-up shot of light streaming through a hole in the wall onto his openand staring eye (several times) to the point-of-view shot at the end of thefilm in which the camera is placed very low and watches her across the roadwhile foregrounding part of the boy's bicycle (and none of his upper body)as he watches her. But since the image isonly an image, Lacan noted, there is a strong element of delusion that ispart of this process. Pam Cook and Mieke Bernink. But if the pleasure of film-going depends on the voyeuristic gaze andnarcissistic identification with the power of the male gaze, the presenceof the woman is problematic since, in psychoanalytic terms, she alsoconnotes something the gaze avoids, that is, "her lack of a penis, implyinga threat of castration and hence unpleasure" (Mulvey 84 ). But in the second, even more suggestive, instancethe quality of self-deception that characterizes the identification withthe mirror image is considered analogous to the manner in which narrativecinema offers the pleasurable experience of a coherent form of knowledgewhich is achieved only by distracting the spectator from the reliance ofthis coherence on the construction of this apparently 'whole' image from amultiplicity of bits and pieces (dubbing, make-up, acting, editing,separate shots, individual frames, and so on). In the active/passive structure which she discerned Mulveyexplicated the manner in which the powerful and active male character wasthe "agent around which the action unfolds and the look gets organized"(Smelik 353). Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. In classic cinema the female is both lookedat and displayed and the appearance of these characters is "coded forstrong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness" (Mulvey 837). 251-72.Lehman, Ernest, dir., screenwriter, prod. But, of course, insight is not what inheres inthis interval. Warner Brothers, 1972.Metz, Christian. Psychoanalytic concepts wereused there in two ways. Inthe former, of course, the possibility for an analogous view of mirror andfilm screen is clear. 5th ed. Medusa Film-Miramax Films, 2 .White, Ron. Thelatter approach is exemplified by the work of French theorist ChristianMetz, whose work was presented in Screen. This is nowhere more true than in feminist theory where,despite theorists' misgivings about the reactionary nature ofpsychoanalysis, it was instrumental in developing approaches tospectatorship that first accounted for male scopophilia, as the principalpleasure project of classic Hollywood film, and has since been employed inelucidating the nature of female spectatorship. Ed. Giuseppe Tornatore's Malena is a film "that is very awareof the structure of the gaze and uses this structure to turn the woman intospectacle" (Lecture notes). "Feminist Film Theory." The Cinema Book. Indeed this insistence on the gaze directed at the womanbecomes quite tedious as Renato hovers around her incessantly. Metz proposed that the filmviewer's conscious self is all but eliminated during film viewing whichallows the id "utter control of the spectating personality" (White 348).This project of defining the nature of spectatorship took on added weightwith Laura Mulvey's identification of the manner in which scopophilia, thedrive that impels the film viewer, is stimulated by the integration ofstructures of voyeurism and narcissism into narrative film. The ideological message ofthis brief interval is perfectly clear. 341-52. But Mulvey added a social context tothis psychoanalytically oriented approach when she began to look at thescopophilic aspect of film-going with an eye to how this pleasure isconstructed. Metz was one of the first to employ Lacan's propositions in histheorizing and noted that, of course, the cinema spectator is not an infantand the screen is not a mirror in which s/he sees her/himself. Two elements of this summary of Lacan's theory were especiallyimportant for film theory: the importance of the exciting visual experienceof the image appearing on a reflective surface and the stress on the "self-defeating, illusory foundations of subjective knowledge" (White 347). Because of the principles of the dominantideology the male figure does not support sexual objectification and so asplit between narrative and spectacle enables the male character's role asthe active force that makes the story move forward while the woman remainsthe object on display in the spectacle. It is, of course, the change inRenato that matters to the film and his maturation--as he learns to accepther as less than perfect and, supposedly, more of a person--is thenarrative's point. Here the film says,in no uncertain terms, that the very notion of the male as object of thespectator's gaze is absurd. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. Psychoanalysis describes human beings as eternallycaught "between an excessive, self-destructive preoccupation with pleasureand a practical, realistic knowledge" of what will happen if pleasure ispursued without limits (White 346). 353- 65.Tornatore, Giuseppe, dir., screenwriter. London: British Film Institute, 1999. How then,it is asked, is the male gaze necessarily embodied in the view of narrativecinema? If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.