Task 11

Summary of Laura Mulvey
-Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975)

Mulvey states and puts across the fact that a patriarchal society is dominant in narrative cinema and that we are made to identify with male charcters and look at things through their perspective (audience positioning) which is why most protagonists are male and play more leading roles in hollywood films.

Hollywood cinema these days highlights the objectification of women and how they are just put into a movie to be looked at which in this case connects to scopophilia which means a pleasure in looking at something. Women are seen and made to be seen as fetish objects and are subject to the male gaze.

Women are usually seen holding what appears to be a phallic symbol which means an object which is representative of the penis and is used there to cancel out the feeling of castration that men hold towards females as they do not have what males have. This is known as womb/penis envy

Although you may argue away from Mulvey and say that men are also subjected to female gaze as they are put in tight costumes and their body is sometimes being exposed however a term called narcissim (where a man has self love) could be used to argue that men are put like that for the pleasure of other men to look at so that they can aspire to be like that and they are not put there to be objectified like women are. The men see an idealized veiw of themsleves therefore is beneficial to them.


Why is this relevant to my Independant Study

The girls in mean girls are subject to the male gaze as they all wear clothes that reveal parts of their body which is fetishized by men. The girls are more into their looks showug the change in society and how women are obsessed with their image and ther obsession to impress men.

In this film no males are being subjected to the female gaze and the focus of objectification is on females as they are seen in mini skirts and tight tops showing alot of their body of.
patriarchy is potrayed as the females actions are all being done for males and the dilemmas that they go thorugh evolve around a male character althoguh the main characters are not male the way they are represented fills the gap of dominant male characters. The females are seen as dependent on eachother and the males

However the movie is directed from a teenage females point of veiw as the narrator of the movie is the actual leading character (Kady)

Also the females characters emotions are recognised without any complaint like in any other hollywoood movie where guys have resisted to listen to female emotions and what goes on in their head. The more sensitive man "new man" is portrayed in this movie to a certain extent.