According to Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Laura Mulvey, film takes on the male gaze. This means that the camera is shot at a male point of view. For example, when a woman appears on the screen, the stereotypical camera shot is one where the camera begins at the legs and pans upward, just like the path a male’s gaze would follow if he were to be viewing the woman as a sexual object. This applies to the idea of visual pleasure in film, known as scopophilia, or the pleasure of looking. Scopophilia also applies in a narcissistic manner, as viewers watch the characters on screen in a way compared to how a baby first views him or herself in a mirror. The viewers identify with the people in the movies, and use them in order to help develop their own ego.
These two aspects combined can cause tension when it comes to the beliefs of feminism. Women are using the characters on screen as characters to identify with, even though those characters are developed from a male point of view. Thus, women are made to believe that they should identify as sexual objects and inferior in a phallocentric society.
No comments:
Post a Comment