How Cinema and Theater Convey Pleasure in the Acts of Search and Lust
In her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, British film maker Laura Mulvey attempts to demystify how pleasure can be fulfilled in film. Contending that a pleasure in looking (scopohilia) and a pleasure in possessing the female as what to be looked at (voyeurism) fufills the audience’s desires, Mulvey suggests how filmmakers use this knowledge to create film that panders to our innate desires. In “Meshes of the Afternoon” by Maya Deren and “Vertigo” by Alfred Hitchcock, it is seen that Mulvey’s argument—the desire to look, the hunting, seeking, and watching, and harnessing of the female form is natural human desire. Deren and Hitchcock will use entirely different techniques to achieve that sense of fulfillment for the audience. But how does this watching and looking translate in to the written word? In “The Winter’s Tale” by William Shakespeare, we will see the ideas approached by Mulvey and the themes used by Hitchcock and Deren utilized to create a sense of looking and objectifying the woman in the absence of the screen. Through this paper, the concepts of pleasure for Mulvey will be shown to have applicability not only in cinema but in art in far more universal terms. First, a discussion of pleasure and Mulvey’s definition of it will allow for clearer understanding as to what this fulfillment actually is. Secondly, Vertigo will be examined—as an example of “mainstream film” utilizing the ideas of scopophila and voyeurism in a perfect balance. Scottie and his search will then be contrasted with Leontes of Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, where again desires will be balanced in harmony with Mulvey’s principles. It is to become clear through...
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...wrong—the film version goes so far as to have characters cheating to the camera, informing the viewer of what is fact. The innate desire to seek and find is still clear in “The Winter’s Tale”. However, Leontes stubborn arrogance allows a sexually charged voyeuristic desire to surface, at no point more clear than when Hermione stands as a statue in the final scene—an object, a creation. The focus is on her form, her features—Hermione as an image and representation of the desire to be voyeuristic.
While Shakespeare doesn’t have the cinematic luxuries of lighting and shadow at his disposal, he proves that Mulvey’s argument that desire is expressed in voyeuristic and scopophiliac fashion, but also that these innate desires of an audience transcend mediums and can in fact be fulfilled and appreciated in written form as much as within the intricacies of modern film.
Mulvey, Laura."Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality/Screen. London: Routledge, 1992.
Neill, Alex. “Empathy and (Film) Fiction.” Philosophy of film and motion pictures : an anthology. Ed. Noel Carrol and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. 247-259. Print.
"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" Laura Mulvey asserts the fact that in mainstream films, women are simultaneously looked at and displayed. That is to say, the woman is both an object of desire and a spectacle for the male voyeuristic gaze. The male's function is active; he advances the story and controls the gaze onto the women. Interestingly, the spectator identifies with the male through camera technique and style. In an effort to reproduce the so-called natural conditions of human perception, male point-of-view shots are often used along with deep focus. In addition, camera movements are usually determined by the actions of the male protagonist. Consequently, the gaze is dominated by the active male while the passive female exists to support desire within the film. In an attempt to change this structure, Mulvey stresses the importance of challenging the "look." One way this is accomplished, is in the film Reassemblage, where the look of the camera is free from male perspective and dominated more by passionate detachment. In doing this, the filmmaker, Trinh Minh-Ha attempts to destroy the satisfaction and pleasure derived from images of women in film, by highlighting the ways Hollywood depends on voyeuristic and fetishi...
Margie Warrell explains how as a culture we don’t take enough risks. We do this because our modus operandi is to catastrophize and predict things will go wrong even though we often overestimate the risks. She also states that we expect things to be worse than they would be if they do turn out badly because our brains are wired to do so. Often we are pessimistic of our own abilities and so we expect we will be unable to cope with the consequences, thus we try to avoid risk so we don’t have to worry about needing to fix things in the aftermath. While overplaying the risks of doing something we downplay the risks of following the status quo—we try to persuade ourselves that it is better than taking the risk even if the status quo is sub-par.
Firstly, Raymond Bellours work, as written in ‘Psychosis, neurosis, perversion’, from Camera Obscura, has taken a physiological understanding of sexual difference in Hollywood cinema claiming a space for female desire. (Stacey,1994, p24) By investigating the dialogue of Hitchcock films, Bellour discovered an analysis of the way the gaze is created. Bellour stated “The mechanisms for eliminating the threat of sexual difference represented by the figure of a woman, are built into the apparatus of the cinema” (Bellour, 1979, p97) Although, his version is a very pessimistic ideology for the female desire, Bell...
When a play is presented on film, the director takes the script, and with poetic license, interprets it. A film not only contains the actual words of the author (in this case Shakespeare), but it includes action, acting, and cinematographic techniques; the three are used to better portray the author’s story. Using these elements, the director’s interpretation of the plot is reinforced. The film provides symbolic images and a visual interpretation, hence Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth” is better understood by the viewers.
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Gallagher, T. 2002. Senses of Cinema – Max Ophuls: A New Art – But Who Notices?. [online] Available at: http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/feature-articles/ophuls/ [Accessed: 8 Apr 2014].
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