VISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CINEMA

Laura Mulvey - Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

1. VISUAL PLEASURE AND
NARRATIVE CINEMA
Ivonne Cotorruelo, Nicolás Niño

2. Introduction:
-Laura Mulvey (Born 1941), British feminist film theorist.
"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" → written in 1973 / published in 1975 in
the film theory journal Screen.

-Purpose of the text → Through the Psychoanalysis discourse help explain the
fascination with the film medium. And use Psychoanalytic theory as a political
weapon.

-Use of psychoanalytic theory and main takeaways.

3. Male Gaze - Looking at women as objects
-Subjugate the image of women by objectifying women.

-Male (LOOKER)
-Female (ONLY EXISTS TO BE LOOKED AT)

-The look (pausing for the male protagonist to look and contemplate the female)
halts narrative progress. Halting the narrative process for the sake of pure
objectifying visual pleasure.

6. Metropolis (1927)

7. River of No Return (1954)

8. Lady in the Lake (1947)

9. Male Gaze - Identifying with a male protagonist
●Man’s role as the active one, forwarding the story, and making things happen.

●Jacques Lacan’s → The Mirror Stage.

●Film’s perspective: Vertigo, Lady in the Lake, L'Événement

10. L'Événement (2021)

11. Vertigo (1958)

12. REAL-LIFE APPLICATION TODAY
FIERCE A PORN REVOLUTION - Film -
Hidden from view, in Lausanne, Switzerland, a group of young women in their
twenties are making pornographic films, camera in hand. Between their odd jobs
for some and their studies for others, they do everything possible to produce
ethical and dissident films. Very quickly, the media of the country are interested in
them and reveal them to the general public. Having become pornographers in the
eyes of all, they are now immersed in a battle for another vision of desire and
sexuality.