Mulvey's Pleasure
Malgosia Askanas
A few days ago I asked if people would be interested in
discussing Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema".
Since I got three explicit encouragements, I will go ahead
and try to formulate my difficulties with the paper.
The paper is divided into two parts. The first part summarizes
certain concepts of psychoanalysis and develops links between these
concepts and the cinematic experience. The concepts in question are:
the function of woman in the patriarchal unconscious, the pleasure
of looking at another person as object (scopophilia), and the
narcissistic identification of the ego with the object on the screen.
The second part of the paper analyzes certain aspects of
mainstream narrative film, in particular its treatment -- visual
and narrative -- of men and women. It discusses the function of
women as erotic objects for both the spectator and the male
protagonist, the active/passive division of labor, and the
interaction between the two. The discussion is to a large
degree based on straightforward empirical observation.
I think the best way of expressing my problem with the article
is that I can't really figure out what the relationship is between
these two parts. The second part does make reference to
the framework introduced in the first part but I don't understand
what purpose is served by this, and what damage would be done
to the article if the framework was absent. This is especially
unpleasant since I agree with much of what is said in the
second part, while at the same time the theory of cinematic
experience developed in the first part seems to me extremely
dubious (to say the least).
Andy Perry
(Malgosia Askanas) wrote:
Well, as I said in e-mail just now (sorry for the late, superfluous
response), I need to go back and reread the article before I can respond.
But, while I do that, can you say more about what it is that you find
dubious about the first part? It seems to me that the discussion of
woman's body as fetish has quite a bit of explanatory power, and the point
of the second half of the article is to demonstrate this. More later...
--
Andy Perry Struggling myself don't mean a whole lot;
Brown University I've come to realize
Dept of English That teaching others to stand up and fight
Andrew...@Brown.edu OR Is the only way our struggle survives.
st00...@Brownvm.bitnet -- Sweet Honey in the Rock
Malgosia Askanas
Andy Perry wrote:
>..... can you say more about what it is that you find
>dubious about the first part? It seems to me that the
>discussion of woman's body as fetish has quite a bit of
>explanatory power, and the point of the second half of the
>article is to demonstrate this. More later...
My doubts about the first part are of two kinds. One is as
follows. Imagine that I say to someone: "Part of the pleasure
of Hollywood films is that they offer up images of women
as erotic objects for the viewer's consumption". This person
analyzes his/her personal experience of Hollywood films and either
agrees with this statement or does not. Now what would I be
adding to my statement if I invoked the authority of Freud?
The second part of the article basically functions on the level
of simple empirical observation; the first part seems to add
the preamble "In keeping with what Freud and Lacan say..." to
these observations. What for?
My second problem, without which I would not notice the first,
is that I simply find the theory itself very doubtful. The theory
is two-pronged: it attributes the pleasure of cinematic _looking_
to erotic voyeurism, and the phenomenon of identification with
the protagonist to Lacan's "mirror phase". I simply don't think
either of these really holds water. I find them stimulating as
metaphors, but false when made to carry _weight_.
I don't believe that the _underlying_experience_ of viewing
a Brakhage film or "Man with the Movie Camera" is different
from the _underlying_experience_ of watching "Gaslight".
Thus, one cannot attribute the ideological effects of
"Gaslight" to the darkness of the movie theatre, the supposed
"repression of the viewer's exhibitionism", etc. These ideological
effects are just as present when "Gaslight" is played as a straight
piece of theater, or as a TV drama, or even -- to an appropriately
lesser extent -- simply _read_.
Similarly, the phenomenon of identification with the protagonist
operates just as much in reading "The Count Monte Christo" or
a heroic folktale as it does in the case of film. Thus, I don't
see how the visual event of the child's encounter with the
mirror can hold any explanatory power for this phenomenon.
Jens Kjartan Styve
: I think the best way of expressing my problem with the article
: is that I can't really figure out what the relationship is between
: these two parts.....
Well, as I see it the first part points out that the man is the 'eye' of
the film while the female is reduced to an object for that eye.
the second is that the male character is the one to control the events of
the film. The protagonist.
The male protagoinst is motivating the continuity of the story, he makes
thing happen. When the female enters the story continuity tends to stop ,
so that one can enjoy the tempting body of her.
(read the example from 'Have and have nots'...) I gotta run.
Anyway thanx to my teacher Tone Kolbjoernsen, those are mostly her words...
Jens.
Malgosia Askanas
>Well, as I see it the first part points out that the man is the 'eye' of
>the film while the female is reduced to an object for that eye.
>the second is that the male character is the one to control the events of
>the film. The protagonist.
>The male protagoinst is motivating the continuity of the story, he makes
>thing happen. When the female enters the story continuity tends to stop ,
>so that one can enjoy the tempting body of her.
This is not what I mean by the "two parts", though. What I refer to
as "the first part" is the mostly psychoanalytic discussion in
sections I and II of the article. "The second part" is the mostly
empirical discussion in section III. Each of them addresses the two
aspects of cinematic pleasure which you mention, but one does it
theoretically and the other, so to speak, practically.
Andy Perry
(Malgosia Askanas) wrote:
I'm never going to have time to reread this article. I guess I'll just
have to pretend that I have. Onward:
> My doubts about the first part are of two kinds. One is as
> follows. Imagine that I say to someone: "Part of the pleasure
> of Hollywood films is that they offer up images of women
> as erotic objects for the viewer's consumption". This person
> analyzes his/her personal experience of Hollywood films and either
> agrees with this statement or does not. Now what would I be
> adding to my statement if I invoked the authority of Freud?
>
> The second part of the article basically functions on the level
> of simple empirical observation; the first part seems to add
> the preamble "In keeping with what Freud and Lacan say..." to
> these observations. What for?
>
> My second problem, without which I would not notice the first,
> is that I simply find the theory itself very doubtful. The theory
> is two-pronged: it attributes the pleasure of cinematic _looking_
> to erotic voyeurism, and the phenomenon of identification with
> the protagonist to Lacan's "mirror phase". I simply don't think
> either of these really holds water. I find them stimulating as
> metaphors, but false when made to carry _weight_.
Okay, well, first off: as far as I remember, the pleasure of cinematic
looking is not attributed to erotic voyeurism (which is not necessarily a
perversion), but rather to _fetishistic_ scopophilia (which is). What
Mulvey is seeking to do is use the trope of the fetish to explain visual
pleasure in cinema. This means linking it to castration anxiety and
delusion. She's not merely invoking an authority structure for validation.
She's plugging her observations into a specific system of meaning, one
which constructs a particular model of subjectivity. That's where the
weight which you don't find would come from if you found it. I don't
recall what she says about identification in the first essay off-hand, but
have you read "Afterthoughts on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Inspired by Duel in the Sun?" It's an important follow-up piece, which
centers on the phenomenon of identification with the protagonist.
> I don't believe that the _underlying_experience_ of viewing
> a Brakhage film or "Man with the Movie Camera" is different
> from the _underlying_experience_ of watching "Gaslight".
I guess you need to say more about what you mean by "underlying experience"
here before I can respond.
> Thus, one cannot attribute the ideological effects of
> "Gaslight" to the darkness of the movie theatre, the supposed
> "repression of the viewer's exhibitionism", etc. These ideological
> effects are just as present when "Gaslight" is played as a straight
> piece of theater, or as a TV drama, or even -- to an appropriately
> lesser extent -- simply _read_.
This I would take exception to. As you may have gathered from my posting
about The Player, I believe rather strongly in the ideological effects of
the cinematic apparatus, as discussed by Metz, Baudry, and others. Surely
you would agree that there is a specificity to the ways in which different
forms construct their audience(s), and that this specificity is worth
attending to?
> Similarly, the phenomenon of identification with the protagonist
> operates just as much in reading "The Count Monte Christo" or
> a heroic folktale as it does in the case of film. Thus, I don't
> see how the visual event of the child's encounter with the
> mirror can hold any explanatory power for this phenomenon.
But Mulvey's assertion is that identification with the protagonist in a
film works DIFFERENTLY in each, not more or less. The relay of looks from
the masculine gaze of the camera through the eye of the male character to
the female object is very real, and observable in most Hollywood film.
There isn't really an equivalent structure in fiction, and I would be leery
of attempts to find one, since it would reduce one form to the status of
analogy/stand-in for the other. Even the most "cinematic" of novels, or
one which obsessively catalogs the bodies of female characters, does not
use such descriptions to orient the reader in relation to space or time in
the way that films do, for example.
Spencer Cox
>I don't
>recall what she says about identification in the first essay off-hand, but
>have you read "Afterthoughts on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
>Inspired by Duel in the Sun?" It's an important follow-up piece, which
>centers on the phenomenon of identification with the protagonist.
Mulvey divides up cinematic pleasure into two modes: fetishism, which
you've discussed, and sadistic, which she equates with film nois and
the films of Hitchcock.
>Surely
>you would agree that there is a specificity to the ways in which different
>forms construct their audience(s), and that this specificity is worth
>attending to?
It's time someone defined what is meant by "construct" here. As has been
pointed out by many of Mulvey's followers, viewers don't necessarily
identify strictly with the camera, or strictly by gender (hence the
popularity of characters like Lassie, or the STAR WARS robots). I,
for example, consistently identify with Cruella DeVille in 101 DALMATIONS.
Across gender, and across the "toon" divide. And how else to explain
my abiding fascination with Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russel in THE WOMEN?
Dame Judith Anderson in REBECCA? Identification is a tricky thing, and
not easily explicable in terms of a simple dichotomy, such as gender.
Hitchcock's PSYCHO is the best example of this that I know. Strict
gender identification theorists would discount my identification with
Janet Leigh, but it's very real -- until Tony Perkins tries to sink
her car in the swamp. By that point, I'm completely with him -- until
John Gavin and Vera Miles come looking for Janet Leigh. My identification
shifts in any number of ways throughout the narrative -- sometimes in ways
that are controlled by Hitchcock, but sometimes not. For example, I
find John Gavin *perfectly* beautiful, and *utterly* untalented. In his
scenes with Vera Miles, I invariably identify with her -- and view him
as an object. This isn't accounted for by Mulvey.
One more quick point -- there have been some who wish to insist that
demographics structure the viewer's gaze, so that, for example, my ability
to take John Gavin as an object is related to my subjectivity as a gay man.
But this doesn't explain my ability to take Marlene Deitrich as an
object of scophophilic delight...Ultimately, the variables that control
our identifications and other forms of object choice are quite personal --
just like any other sexual fetish! <g>
<The relay of looks from
>the masculine gaze of the camera through the eye of the male character to
>the female object is very real, and observable in most Hollywood film.
But that doesn't mean that *my* identification is necessarily structured
by the camera. I can structure my identification with the plot, or
with the actor/actress, or any number of ways.
Finally, there's an unquestioned priviliging of identification as *the*
form of object relation that threads through this entire school of
criticism. Do other forms of object relation necessarily reduce to
fetishism and sadism? Are there no other options? That's certainly not
my experience, but...
Hmmmm. My wrists are getting tired from babbling for so long. More later,
I suppose.
Andy Perry
wrote:
> In <Andrew_Perry...@cluster-217.cluster.brown.edu> Andrew...@Brown.edu (Andy Perry) writes:
>
>
> >Surely
> >you would agree that there is a specificity to the ways in which different
> >forms construct their audience(s), and that this specificity is worth
> >attending to?
>
> It's time someone defined what is meant by "construct" here. As has been
> pointed out by many of Mulvey's followers, viewers don't necessarily
> identify strictly with the camera, or strictly by gender (hence the
> popularity of characters like Lassie, or the STAR WARS robots). I,
> for example, consistently identify with Cruella DeVille in 101 DALMATIONS.
> Across gender, and across the "toon" divide. And how else to explain
> my abiding fascination with Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russel in THE WOMEN?
> Dame Judith Anderson in REBECCA? Identification is a tricky thing, and
> not easily explicable in terms of a simple dichotomy, such as gender.
To follow Metz, I would say that viewers *do* necessarily identify with the
camera, and that this identification is what makes comprehension of the
film possible. Or maybe I'm missing what you mean by identifying with the
camera. As far as what Metz calls "secondary" identification, I agree
100%. I was going to say that narrative identification has a lot to do
with narrative roles (protagonist, antagonist, etc.), but then that would
make it hard to explain your identification with Cruella DeVille.
Identification is an incredibly slippery concept in general, however, and
lots of distinctions could be made. For example, I could say I identify
with the teenagers in Heathers, but only because they have this bantery
style of dialogue which I recognize and sympathize with. I don't identify
with them (other than Veronica) in the more standard definition of the
term.
> Hitchcock's PSYCHO is the best example of this that I know. Strict
> gender identification theorists would discount my identification with
> Janet Leigh, but it's very real -- until Tony Perkins tries to sink
> her car in the swamp. By that point, I'm completely with him -- until
> John Gavin and Vera Miles come looking for Janet Leigh. My identification
> shifts in any number of ways throughout the narrative -- sometimes in ways
> that are controlled by Hitchcock, but sometimes not. For example, I
> find John Gavin *perfectly* beautiful, and *utterly* untalented. In his
> scenes with Vera Miles, I invariably identify with her -- and view him
> as an object. This isn't accounted for by Mulvey.
Well, if the truth be known, I think Mulvey is pretty bad at reading
Hitchcock. In the article under discussion, she trashes Vertigo. She also
claims that radical film practice would involve separating the three gazes
(camera, director (I think?), audience). But there is a scene in Vertigo
which DOES this, at least potentially. When Scotty meets Gavin Elster in
his office, the camera movements and angles go wacko. Elster basically
takes control of the camera and uses it as a weapon against Scotty, pinning
him in a corner of the room. It's an amazing scene. I don't want to say
that Vertigo is "really a feminist film." Janet Bergstrom tried to say
something like that, and she ended up saying "see, the woman gets to die in
the end! Hooray!" But I *do* want to say that there are much more
generous ways to read it, and those ways (in my opinion) are more
productive and interesting than just trashing it out of hand.
Another similar situation involves Psycho. In my reading, we start out
identifying with a likeable woman, and end up identifying with a
psychopath, and there's no single moment at which the shift occurs. It's a
continuum. Which is one of the points the film is making. But there's a
reading (I want to say it's Raymond Bellour's, but I'm not certain) which
looks at it much more cynically, looking at Marion as simply the relay
which brings us to Norman, our real destination. I suppose it's equally
plausible, but I like my reading better. (Now, there's a big surprise...)
Hmm...I seem to have gotten a bit off the subject.
> One more quick point -- there have been some who wish to insist that
> demographics structure the viewer's gaze, so that, for example, my ability
> to take John Gavin as an object is related to my subjectivity as a gay man.
> But this doesn't explain my ability to take Marlene Deitrich as an
> object of scophophilic delight...Ultimately, the variables that control
> our identifications and other forms of object choice are quite personal --
> just like any other sexual fetish! <g>
My initial response is to ask whether generalizations could accurately be
made about the use to which cinema puts each person's personal object
choices. I'll have to think a bit before I come up with my own answer to
this question.
>
> <The relay of looks from
> >the masculine gaze of the camera through the eye of the male character to
> >the female object is very real, and observable in most Hollywood film.
>
> But that doesn't mean that *my* identification is necessarily structured
> by the camera. I can structure my identification with the plot, or
> with the actor/actress, or any number of ways.
Yes, that's perfectly true. But in my last post I was trying to do a
fairly structural analysis of different forms, and to return to that
project for a moment, I want to say that it's important that, whether you
identify with the "desires" which get attributed to the gaze or not, it is
the gaze which orients you in relation to the objects, people, and events
which constitute the world of the film. The relay of looks I refer to
above is the structure which you must navigate in order to make sense of
the images and sounds, and experience them as a narrative. Now, this is
the point where you get to say, "So what?" Hopefully, by the time you do,
I'll have come up with an answer.
> Finally, there's an unquestioned priviliging of identification as *the*
> form of object relation that threads through this entire school of
> criticism. Do other forms of object relation necessarily reduce to
> fetishism and sadism? Are there no other options? That's certainly not
> my experience, but...
Before I respond, maybe you could say what you have in mind when you refer
to other forms of object relation.
Spencer Cox
>To follow Metz, I would say that viewers *do* necessarily identify with the
>camera, and that this identification is what makes comprehension of the
>film possible. Or maybe I'm missing what you mean by identifying with the
>camera. As far as what Metz calls "secondary" identification, I agree
>100%. I was going to say that narrative identification has a lot to do
>with narrative roles (protagonist, antagonist, etc.), but then that would
>make it hard to explain your identification with Cruella DeVille.
>Identification is an incredibly slippery concept in general, however, and
>lots of distinctions could be made.
Agreed in re: identification's slipperiness. I suppose that what I mean
when I discard identification with the camera is is the idea that I as
a viewer regard the camera's eye as the only possible one. Even before
I respond to your specific analysis of VERTIGO, it seems to illustrate
what I mean...During the sequences in which Jimmy Stewart is re-making
Judy in Madeline's image, the camera offers his point of view almost
exclusively, and yet the viewer is *invited* by Hitchcock (in the
loosest sense of the term "Hitchcock" :)) to become aware of the
limitations on this point of view. I don't really know how to be
more explicit about what I'm saying, but, by way of contrast, in
REBECCA, Hitchcock doesn't really offer the viewer a perspective other
than that of Mrs. DeWinter, and yet the resourceful viewer (myself, for
example) can construct alternative readings across the grain. My own
example of this is reading Mrs. Danvers as a lesbian -- a popular
reading, which many critics interested in sexuality have offered, and
yet one for which there is at best limited textual support -- it
requires the viewer to "construct" a gaze that is different from the
camera's gaze.
>Well, if the truth be known, I think Mulvey is pretty bad at reading
>Hitchcock. In the article under discussion, she trashes Vertigo. She also
>claims that radical film practice would involve separating the three gazes
>(camera, director (I think?), audience). But there is a scene in Vertigo
>which DOES this, at least potentially. When Scotty meets Gavin Elster in
>his office, the camera movements and angles go wacko. Elster basically
>takes control of the camera and uses it as a weapon against Scotty, pinning
>him in a corner of the room. It's an amazing scene. I don't want to say
>that Vertigo is "really a feminist film." Janet Bergstrom tried to say
>something like that, and she ended up saying "see, the woman gets to die in
>the end! Hooray!" But I *do* want to say that there are much more
>generous ways to read it, and those ways (in my opinion) are more
>productive and interesting than just trashing it out of hand.
HA! You've clarified my point for me! Thank you! My point is that the
resourceful viewer seperates the three gazes for him/her self, and does
this routinely without the assistance of "radical film practices."
Frankly, while I think Mulvey raises some interesting topics for discussion,
I think that she's bad reading all films. I'm still formulating my
thoughts on the Deitrich films, but she really misses some important stuff.
For example, does it make a difference that SCARLET EMPRESS textually
describes the transfer of power between women, and characterizes the movement
from a patriarchal society to a matriarchal one as a liberation from
oppression? Do the constant parallel structures involving the replacement
of man-looking-at-woman-point-of-view-shot with woman-looking-at-man-point-
of-view-shot (Sheeze -- did I type that?) disrupt Mulvey's theorization of
fetishism? I think so.
>Another similar situation involves Psycho. In my reading, we start out
>identifying with a likeable woman, and end up identifying with a
>psychopath, and there's no single moment at which the shift occurs. It's a
>continuum. Which is one of the points the film is making. But there's a
>reading (I want to say it's Raymond Bellour's, but I'm not certain) which
>looks at it much more cynically, looking at Marion as simply the relay
>which brings us to Norman, our real destination. I suppose it's equally
>plausible, but I like my reading better. (Now, there's a big surprise...)
>Hmm...I seem to have gotten a bit off the subject.
Yeah, Bellour is just trying to work his Catholic angle...I like your reading
better too.
>My initial response is to ask whether generalizations could accurately be
>made about the use to which cinema puts each person's personal object
>choices. I'll have to think a bit before I come up with my own answer to
>this question.
I'm a strict textual guy here -- I think that the proper generalization is
about the uses to which each person's personal object choices use the
cinema. But that's just me...
>Yes, that's perfectly true. But in my last post I was trying to do a
>fairly structural analysis of different forms, and to return to that
>project for a moment, I want to say that it's important that, whether you
>identify with the "desires" which get attributed to the gaze or not, it is
>the gaze which orients you in relation to the objects, people, and events
>which constitute the world of the film. The relay of looks I refer to
>above is the structure which you must navigate in order to make sense of
>the images and sounds, and experience them as a narrative. Now, this is
>the point where you get to say, "So what?" Hopefully, by the time you do,
>I'll have come up with an answer.
er...I'm trying to think of something more polite to say than "So what."
>Before I respond, maybe you could say what you have in mind when you refer
>to other forms of object relation.
Well...Identification is properly an object relation in Freudian theory,
though Mulvey doesn't seem to count it as such. Essentially, it seems to
me, Mulvey is making a sophisticated version of the critique that the
anti-porn feminists make a lot -- we don't identify with the women
characters in this work, women are viewed as "objects," and that's bad.
Mulvey tries to be more specific by connecting "objectification" with
Sadism and Fetishism, but it's basically the same argument. My question
is, do all relationships with an "other," with something that doesn't
seem appropriate to be integrated into the superego through identification
necessarily devolve to sadism and fetishism.
The best example I can offer comes from a talk I sometimes give about
being HIV-positive. When I started giving the talk, the HIV-infected
Hatians were still interned in Guantanamo Bay. I tried to get at the
question, "What do I have in common with these Hatians? Is our experience
shared in any way through our common disease?" And the answer was, IMO,
I don't have very much in common with them. I don't identify with them,
and, I suspect, they wouldn't identify very closely with me. Then
my question was, does that lack of identification imply a sadism on
my part. And the answer was, of course not -- any more than the failure
by some audience members to identify with me across my disease meant
that they harbored sadistic feelings towards me. I then went on to
suggest that the field of ethics was created for just this reason --
to offer a field in which relationships with an "other" could be navigated
without recourse to sadism or fetishism.
If these seems obscure, or off topic, let me know and I'll take it up in
my next post -- my fingers are tired for now! :)
Spencer Cox
Andy Perry
wrote:
> Agreed in re: identification's slipperiness. I suppose that what I mean
> when I discard identification with the camera is is the idea that I as
> a viewer regard the camera's eye as the only possible one. Even before
> I respond to your specific analysis of VERTIGO, it seems to illustrate
> what I mean...During the sequences in which Jimmy Stewart is re-making
> Judy in Madeline's image, the camera offers his point of view almost
> exclusively, and yet the viewer is *invited* by Hitchcock (in the
> loosest sense of the term "Hitchcock" :)) to become aware of the
> limitations on this point of view. I don't really know how to be
> more explicit about what I'm saying, but, by way of contrast, in
> REBECCA, Hitchcock doesn't really offer the viewer a perspective other
> than that of Mrs. DeWinter, and yet the resourceful viewer (myself, for
> example) can construct alternative readings across the grain. My own
> example of this is reading Mrs. Danvers as a lesbian -- a popular
> reading, which many critics interested in sexuality have offered, and
> yet one for which there is at best limited textual support -- it
> requires the viewer to "construct" a gaze that is different from the
> camera's gaze.
It's not clear to me that gaze is the right word to use in your last
sentence there. It links looking to knowing/judging in a pretty intimate
way. Which may, of course, be appropriate for film, but it may not. What
does it buy you to emphasize that you are _seeing_ Mrs. Danvers as a
lesbian, rather than, as you put it above, "reading" her that way? It's
important to try to allow terms of art like "gaze" (and "identification"
for that matter, but that's a lost cause) not to mean too many different
things, otherwise they tend to lose their usefulness. At any rate,
"primary identification" with the camera/apparatus is not meant to denote
this sort of alignment with a narrative or authorial presence. It's a
pretty much unconscious process, whereby you are positioned as a spectating
subject. In terms of attitude towards the film, primary identification is
content neutral. It's only important, because it reinforces the ideologies
which portray the subject as coherent and unified. I don't actually
remember whether this is what Mulvey has in mind by the camera's gaze.
> Frankly, while I think Mulvey raises some interesting topics for discussion,
> I think that she's bad reading all films. I'm still formulating my
> thoughts on the Deitrich films, but she really misses some important stuff.
> For example, does it make a difference that SCARLET EMPRESS textually
> describes the transfer of power between women, and characterizes the movement
> from a patriarchal society to a matriarchal one as a liberation from
> oppression? Do the constant parallel structures involving the replacement
> of man-looking-at-woman-point-of-view-shot with woman-looking-at-man-point-
> of-view-shot (Sheeze -- did I type that?) disrupt Mulvey's theorization of
> fetishism? I think so.
To be fair to Mulvey, I don't know that she necessarily has an investment
in saying that all films work in precisely the way she asserts, even all
Hollywood films. Her article was never meant to be a manifesto for reading
all film, and she has qualified her postion on numerous occasions since its
publications. On the other hand, she and others (E. Ann Kaplan, for
example) would probably say that you're wrong in your reading of the
Scarlet Empress. They would say that the objectifying gaze is masculine by
definition, and the Scarlet Empress merely places women in the masculine
role. This is a position which I have seen expressed very often, but never
really rigorously argued for. Kaplan's article, "Is the Gaze Male?" would
be more appropriately titled, "Of Course the Gaze is Male! Now What Do We
Do About It?" I don't really know what it means precisely (within
psychoanalytic discourse) for a woman to be a fetishist.
> >My initial response is to ask whether generalizations could accurately be
> >made about the use to which cinema puts each person's personal object
> >choices. I'll have to think a bit before I come up with my own answer to
> >this question.
>
> I'm a strict textual guy here -- I think that the proper generalization is
> about the uses to which each person's personal object choices use the
> cinema. But that's just me...
> >Before I respond, maybe you could say what you have in mind when you refer
> >to other forms of object relation.
>
> Well...Identification is properly an object relation in Freudian theory,
> though Mulvey doesn't seem to count it as such. Essentially, it seems to
> me, Mulvey is making a sophisticated version of the critique that the
> anti-porn feminists make a lot -- we don't identify with the women
> characters in this work, women are viewed as "objects," and that's bad.
> Mulvey tries to be more specific by connecting "objectification" with
> Sadism and Fetishism, but it's basically the same argument. My question
> is, do all relationships with an "other," with something that doesn't
> seem appropriate to be integrated into the superego through identification
> necessarily devolve to sadism and fetishism.\
Is an "other" someone you can't identify with? I would think that (once
you accept the psychoanalytic system and its account of identification)
there's an element of identification with just about anyone you identify
(heh) as a person. There is CERTAINLY a lot of identification going on in
relation to anyone you despise/fear/etc. A case could be made for not
identifying with those to whom you are indifferent, but that doesn't quite
cover "others." So, I wasn't asking about what else can happen when
identification fails, I was asking what there is aside from identification.
As far as sadism goes, I need to figure out what I think about the
necessary relation that's asserted by De Lauretis and Kaja Silverman
between sadism and narrative. (I'm going to be a narrative theorist when I
grow up, but I have to do some serious thinking (not to mention reading)
before that happens. Unfortunately, I've only got a year before my
qualifying exams. Fortunately, I get to spend next semester teaching a
course on narrative and film, so that'll help. Not that you necessarily
care about any of this...)
My basic feeling is that you just can't make the kind of arguments you're
making from within psychoanalytic discourse. (I'm not sure if that's what
you're trying to do or not, actually. It may just sound that way, given
the context of our discussion.) It's such an incredibly efficient
totalizing system that once you begin to buy into it, you're trapped. If
you want to reject its conclusions, you have to start by rejecting its
terms.
Malgosia Askanas
Andy Perry:
> Okay, well, first off: as far as I remember, the pleasure of cinematic
> looking is not attributed to erotic voyeurism (which is not necessarily a
> perversion), but rather to _fetishistic_ scopophilia (which is). What
> Mulvey is seeking to do is use the trope of the fetish to explain visual
> pleasure in cinema. This means linking it to castration anxiety and
> delusion. She's not merely invoking an authority structure for validation.
> She's plugging her observations into a specific system of meaning, one
> which constructs a particular model of subjectivity.
I think I am beginning to understand that last point; now I have to
figure out what to do with this understanding given my disagreement
with her resulting analysis of cinematic pleasure. So maybe I will
proceed to further attempts at articulating my disagreement, and in
the meantime my view of the article as a whole may reach a more
harmonious state.
Take the paragraph above, whose generality matches Mulvey's. You say
"What Mulvey is seeking to do is use the trope of the fetish to explain
visual pleasure in cinema." But her explanation does _not_ encompass
the visual pleasures of cinema as a whole; the cinema offers views of
fields and grasses and cafes and prairies and insects and abstract
meshes and crowds and cannons and so on. So what she really wants to
say, it seems to me, is that when certain things are shown in
a certain manner, then the pleasure becomes fetishistic. But my
argument is that although this is so, it is not so because of
anything inherent in cinema itself. What I am objecting to is that
the analysis, instead of concentrating on "what is being shown and
how", unnecessarily attempts to operate on a much more murky level.
I will perhaps re-iterate this more lucidly later.
> have you read "Afterthoughts on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
> Inspired by Duel in the Sun?" It's an important follow-up piece, which
> centers on the phenomenon of identification with the protagonist.
Not yet. I have it, though, and will read it.
ma:
>> I don't believe that the _underlying_experience_ of viewing
>> a Brakhage film or "Man with the Movie Camera" is different
>> from the _underlying_experience_ of watching "Gaslight".
AP:
> I guess you need to say more about what you mean by "underlying
> experience" here before I can respond.
Well, if one says "cinematic pleasure is fetishistic in nature" then
one is supposedly explaining _all_ cinematic pleasure. One is
explaining why we go to the cinema, what pleasures are offered there.
I think that the most basic pleasure in cinema is indeed the
pleasure of _looking_, or perhaps I would say of _seeing_.
This includes looking at "Mothlight". I don't think either Mulvey
or anybody else would argue that the pleasure of "Mothlight" is
fetishistic. So the fetishism is not inherent in the cinematic
experience, but in particular _contents_. I find this both trite
and very difficult to inject into Mulvey's line of argument.
ma:
>> Thus, one cannot attribute the ideological effects of
>> "Gaslight" to the darkness of the movie theatre, the supposed
>> "repression of the viewer's exhibitionism", etc. These ideological
>> effects are just as present when "Gaslight" is played as a straight
>> piece of theater, or as a TV drama, or even -- to an appropriately
>> lesser extent -- simply _read_.
AP:
> This I would take exception to. As you may have gathered from my
> posting about The Player, I believe rather strongly in the
> ideological effects of the cinematic apparatus, as discussed by Metz,
> Baudry, and others. Surely you would agree that there is a specificity
> to the ways in which different forms construct their audience(s), and
> that this specificity is worth attending to?
I certainly believe that different forms have their own specificities,
and that these are rich, far-reaching and often subtle. But I think
I would be prepared, as a first cut, to deny that the cinematic
apparatus in and of itself has any ideological effect. The cinematic
apparatus is _used_ to produce ideological effects, and this use is
specific to the apparatus. Perhaps I would say that the ideological
_potentialities_ offered by the cinematic apparatus are different
from the potentialities of other forms -- one sees this just as much
in "Triumph of the Will" or "Storm over Asia" as in "Vertigo".
Is _this_ what you mean, or do you mean more than that?
If I look at a painting standing up, in broad daylight,
this is not _ideologically_ different than looking
at the same painting seated, in darkness, with the painting projected
on a screen. What might make it different is that in the projection,
I don't have access to anything outside of what is shown and how it is
shown. If the projection restricts itself to a certain out-of-context
detail of the painting, my impression of the painting will be skewed.
But this skew does not have to do with the _cinematic_ apparatus_
per se.
You and Spencer have already talked to a certain degree about the
slipperiness of the notion "identification with the camera".
Does this notion have any content beyond the simple fact that the
viewer cannot see anything that isn't shown? The word "identification"
seems to imply more than that, but what is it?
Maybe that's enough for now.
Spencer Cox
Hmmmm. This requires a longish response (beware, casual reader):
Andy wrote:
>> [Mulvey is] plugging her observations into a specific system of meaning,
>> one which constructs a particular model of subjectivity.
And then MA wrote:
>Take the paragraph above, whose generality matches Mulvey's. You say
>"What Mulvey is seeking to do is use the trope of the fetish to explain
>visual pleasure in cinema." But her explanation does _not_ encompass
>the visual pleasures of cinema as a whole; the cinema offers views of
>fields and grasses and cafes and prairies and insects and abstract
>meshes and crowds and cannons and so on. So what she really wants to
>say, it seems to me, is that when certain things are shown in
>a certain manner, then the pleasure becomes fetishistic. But my
>argument is that although this is so, it is not so because of
>anything inherent in cinema itself. What I am objecting to is that
>the analysis, instead of concentrating on "what is being shown and
>how", unnecessarily attempts to operate on a much more murky level.
>I will perhaps re-iterate this more lucidly later.
Emmm...I'm not sure, but I think Andy and I may slightly disagree on
what Mulvey is saying. I think that she's not using *only* the fetish,
but also sadism: Mulvey suggests that there are three modes of relating
to characters in narrative cinema -- identification, sadism, and fetishism.
She's not suggesting that these mechanisms are inherent in the cinematic
apparatus, but in the act of *watching.* This is, one supposes, an after-
effect of Mulvey's psychoanalytic slant.
Also, one of the consequences of this psychoanalytic slant is a
priviliging of the viewers perceptions of activity/passivity, and therefore
on a preoccupation with agency as opposed to image. Where image takes
precedence over agency, Mulvey certainly does suggest fetishism is at work.
MA:
>Well, if one says "cinematic pleasure is fetishistic in nature" then
>one is supposedly explaining _all_ cinematic pleasure. One is
>explaining why we go to the cinema, what pleasures are offered there.
>I think that the most basic pleasure in cinema is indeed the
>pleasure of _looking_, or perhaps I would say of _seeing_.
>This includes looking at "Mothlight". I don't think either Mulvey
>or anybody else would argue that the pleasure of "Mothlight" is
>fetishistic. So the fetishism is not inherent in the cinematic
>experience, but in particular _contents_. I find this both trite
>and very difficult to inject into Mulvey's line of argument.
I confess I'm not familiar with this work. If a film doesn't have guns
or hooters in it, it's already lost my attention <g>. I wonder
if this affects my reading of cinema...? <g>
>I certainly believe that different forms have their own specificities,
>and that these are rich, far-reaching and often subtle. But I think
>I would be prepared, as a first cut, to deny that the cinematic
>apparatus in and of itself has any ideological effect. The cinematic
>apparatus is _used_ to produce ideological effects, and this use is
>specific to the apparatus. Perhaps I would say that the ideological
>_potentialities_ offered by the cinematic apparatus are different
>from the potentialities of other forms -- one sees this just as much
>in "Triumph of the Will" or "Storm over Asia" as in "Vertigo".
>Is _this_ what you mean, or do you mean more than that?
>If I look at a painting standing up, in broad daylight,
>this is not _ideologically_ different than looking
>at the same painting seated, in darkness, with the painting projected
>on a screen. What might make it different is that in the projection,
>I don't have access to anything outside of what is shown and how it is
>shown. If the projection restricts itself to a certain out-of-context
>detail of the painting, my impression of the painting will be skewed.
>But this skew does not have to do with the _cinematic_ apparatus_
>per se.
Here I would have to confess that the Lacanian in me comes out. Nothing
has meaning "built in." Meaning is a cultural construction which relates
elements of culture to each other in specific ways. What doesn't fit
in the pattern under construction is either "repressed" or "rejected" --
again, according to Lacanian theory. Consequently, I'm not a big believer
in meaning that is "inherent in the apparatus." Also, I believe that
meaning necessarily depends on subjectivity, at least in our culture.
Consequently, the orientation of the viewer in her relation to meaning
in the cinema is both necessary and contingent to any analysis of cinematic
"meaning." By "neccessary," I mean that the viewer's subjectivity must
be considered as a factor in the analysis, and by "contingent," I mean that
the specific role of that subjectivity will change depending on who's
occupying the position. Think of the viewer as an "X the unknown," just
as in algebra.
>You and Spencer have already talked to a certain degree about the
>slipperiness of the notion "identification with the camera".
>Does this notion have any content beyond the simple fact that the
>viewer cannot see anything that isn't shown? The word "identification"
>seems to imply more than that, but what is it?
"Identification with the camera," as I understand it, is more than simply
what the viewer sees, and less than the total control over the viewer's
subjectivity exercised by the director (as auteur theory posits).
Identification is an emotional function in the viewer. It can be manipulated
(see my earlier post about PSYCHO and Janet Leigh's sinking car) but not
completely (see the fragments of my reading of REBECCA).
As per all of this, I don't think Mulvey views these things as necessary
products of the cinematic apparatus, or she wouldn't call for "radical
cinematic pratices." As Andy and I have discussed, there's even some
play with all of this in classic narrative cinema. I think that the only
thing we can really conclude right now is that this is a productive line
of thought, where further work is needed.
Andy Perry
(Malgosia Askanas) wrote:
> You say
> "What Mulvey is seeking to do is use the trope of the fetish to explain
> visual pleasure in cinema." But her explanation does _not_ encompass
> the visual pleasures of cinema as a whole; the cinema offers views of
> fields and grasses and cafes and prairies and insects and abstract
> meshes and crowds and cannons and so on. So what she really wants to
> say, it seems to me, is that when certain things are shown in
> a certain manner, then the pleasure becomes fetishistic. But my
> argument is that although this is so, it is not so because of
> anything inherent in cinema itself. What I am objecting to is that
> the analysis, instead of concentrating on "what is being shown and
> how", unnecessarily attempts to operate on a much more murky level.
> I will perhaps re-iterate this more lucidly later.
Well, I'm not sure what you mean by "cinema itself." If you mean, this
stuff is not physically manifested in the celluloid, then you are right.
But "cinema" in this context is probably best thought of as a signifying
practice or institution with a specific history. Mulvey is talking about
cinema as it has come to be practiced--produced and consumed--in Hollywood
and elsewhere. Remember, she's writing around the same time that Claire
Johnston is writing "Feminist Cinema is Counter-Cinema." That is to say,
"Visual Pleasure" is part of a specific feminist movement in the 70s which
seeks to define mainstream cinema as the enemy, and defines it's own
project as purely reactive. But, as Spencer indicated, they are clearly
not arguing that the apparatus is evil, because they are advocating the
production of radical, feminist film. Therefore, they think such
production is possible. And Mulvey is pretty specific about what such
production would entail (the disruption of illusion, the destruction of
pleasure).
As far as your response, however, it is far from clear to me that fields
and grasses and cafes are not fetishized by film, either in Mulvey's view,
or in fact. She equates fetishism with the construction of an aesthetic
object pretty directly...
> ma:
> >> I don't believe that the _underlying_experience_ of viewing
> >> a Brakhage film or "Man with the Movie Camera" is different
> >> from the _underlying_experience_ of watching "Gaslight".
>
> AP:
> > I guess you need to say more about what you mean by "underlying
> > experience" here before I can respond.
>
> Well, if one says "cinematic pleasure is fetishistic in nature" then
> one is supposedly explaining _all_ cinematic pleasure. One is
> explaining why we go to the cinema, what pleasures are offered there.
VISUAL pleasure is fetishistic in nature. There are other kinds of
pleasure available in cinema, most importantly (I would argue) NARRATIVE
pleasure. These kinds of pleasure are distinct enough that they can be at
odds with each other (to return to the ubiquitous example of Psycho [sorry,
but Spencer seems to like Hitchcock, and I wrote an undergrad honors thesis
on the film, so I tend to use it a lot], a viewer is invited both to
objectify Marion Crane [thereby obtaining visual pleasure] and to identify
with her [thereby obtaining narrative pleasure], and these
actions--treating her as subject and object simultaneously--are pretty
explicitly contradictory. 'Tsall part of the film's strategy to constitute
a viewer as a split subject, before s/he even reaches Norman Bates. But I
digress...)
> I think that the most basic pleasure in cinema is indeed the
> pleasure of _looking_, or perhaps I would say of _seeing_.
> This includes looking at "Mothlight". I don't think either Mulvey
> or anybody else would argue that the pleasure of "Mothlight" is
> fetishistic. So the fetishism is not inherent in the cinematic
> experience, but in particular _contents_. I find this both trite
> and very difficult to inject into Mulvey's line of argument.
You are talking to someone who finds a lot of power in the assertion that
perception is fetishistic (cf. Neil Hertz, "Medusa's Head: Male Hysteria
Under Political Pressure"). Just so's you know...
>
> I certainly believe that different forms have their own specificities,
> and that these are rich, far-reaching and often subtle. But I think
> I would be prepared, as a first cut, to deny that the cinematic
> apparatus in and of itself has any ideological effect. The cinematic
> apparatus is _used_ to produce ideological effects, and this use is
> specific to the apparatus. Perhaps I would say that the ideological
> _potentialities_ offered by the cinematic apparatus are different
> from the potentialities of other forms -- one sees this just as much
> in "Triumph of the Will" or "Storm over Asia" as in "Vertigo".
> Is _this_ what you mean, or do you mean more than that?
>
> If I look at a painting standing up, in broad daylight,
> this is not _ideologically_ different than looking
> at the same painting seated, in darkness, with the painting projected
> on a screen. What might make it different is that in the projection,
> I don't have access to anything outside of what is shown and how it is
> shown. If the projection restricts itself to a certain out-of-context
> detail of the painting, my impression of the painting will be skewed.
> But this skew does not have to do with the _cinematic_ apparatus_
> per se.
If you look at a painting which represents a scene using perspective
techniques modeled after the camera obscura and invented at the same time,
then you are being ideologically interpellated as a certain kind of
subject, who experiences the world a certain way, and over time, you will
find some representations to be more "realistic" than others based upon
your history of such interpellations. It's the reality effect that is
different for different forms which I would point to as an ideological
effect. Also, check out "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematic
Apparatus" by (I think) Baudry and Commoli (is that right? anyone?
anyone?), and "The Apparatus" by Baudry for a specific analysis of the
apparatus and ideology. De Lauretis has a bit in _Alice Doesn't_ where she
gives a cognitivist take on why film seems real to us, using Gombrich's
notion of illusion as a survival skill, which is pretty fascinating, and
which she deploys in the service of an ideological critique.
The basic point is that the cinematic apparatus works to situate you as a
unified subject of vision, and thereby generates effects of truth and a
mode of representation which is profoundly (dare I say it?) ideological.
>
> You and Spencer have already talked to a certain degree about the
> slipperiness of the notion "identification with the camera".
> Does this notion have any content beyond the simple fact that the
> viewer cannot see anything that isn't shown? The word "identification"
> seems to imply more than that, but what is it?
The traditional definition of "identification" entails feeling what a
character feels. For a complication of the notion, as well as a brief
overview of its misuses and ambiguities, see Mary Ann Doane's
"Identification and Misrecognition."
Spencer Cox
>And Mulvey is pretty specific about what [radical feminist film]
>production would entail (the disruption of illusion, the destruction of
>pleasure).
But she doesn't account for the perversion of those of us who take pleasure
in the disruption of illusion and the distruction of pleasure. <g>
It seems to me that Mulvey falls into the trap of assuming that there is
such a thing as an "authentic" discourse -- as contrasted to the techniques
of "classical narrative cinema," with it's "illusion" and appeals to
unconscious pleasure. I think she may make the mistake against which
Freud eventually turned, of associating consciousness with "reality."
This would explain all of her anxiety about fetishism -- for example, she
never points out why fetishism is *necessarily* bad for women. As noted
in one of my earlier posts, one could (with caveats) read the slasher
films as indicating rather the instability of masculinity as a cultural
concept than just unmediated sadism towards women.
Also, (as a strict Freudian) I have to point out that Mulvey plays fast
and loose with Freud's original writings. As Marian E. Keane points out in
her essay "A Closer Look at Scopophilia" (On Vertigo -- yes, Andy, I
like Hitchcock! <g>) Freud explicitly cautions against regarding the
active/passive dichotomy as being inherently gendered. In fact he says
that one never finds one side of this dichotomy without finding the other:
in other words, every sadist is also a masochist, every voyeur also a
peeping tom.
>If you look at a painting which represents a scene using perspective
>techniques modeled after the camera obscura and invented at the same time,
>then you are being ideologically interpellated as a certain kind of
>subject, who experiences the world a certain way, and over time, you will
>find some representations to be more "realistic" than others based upon
>your history of such interpellations. It's the reality effect that is
>different for different forms which I would point to as an ideological
>effect. Also, check out "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematic
>Apparatus" by (I think) Baudry and Commoli (is that right? anyone?
>anyone?), and "The Apparatus" by Baudry for a specific analysis of the
>apparatus and ideology. De Lauretis has a bit in _Alice Doesn't_ where she
>gives a cognitivist take on why film seems real to us, using Gombrich's
>notion of illusion as a survival skill, which is pretty fascinating, and
>which she deploys in the service of an ideological critique.
>The basic point is that the cinematic apparatus works to situate you as a
>unified subject of vision, and thereby generates effects of truth and a
>mode of representation which is profoundly (dare I say it?) ideological.
Hmmmmm. I still have a problem with this formulation, in that it leaves out
that subjectivity that the viewer brings to her experience of film. Being,
as has been noted, of a psychoanalytic bent, I'm more inclined to believe that
the viewer herself, in order to preserve the integrity of her subjectivity in
relation to the larger cultural context, omits certain ways of reading, and
chooses others. This preserves the role of cinema as a bearer of meaning, but
doesn't lock one in to any reading which proposes the same meaning for
all viewers.
Andy Perry
wrote:
> In <Andrew_Perry...@cluster-217.cluster.brown.edu> Andrew...@Brown.edu (Andy Perry) writes:
>
> >And Mulvey is pretty specific about what [radical feminist film]
> >production would entail (the disruption of illusion, the destruction of
> >pleasure).
>
> But she doesn't account for the perversion of those of us who take pleasure
> in the disruption of illusion and the distruction of pleasure. <g>
Are you sure? I seem to recall a line about needing to find new pleasures
rather than replacing pleasure with "intellectual unpleasure." I think the
late 70s wave of feminist film and avant garde theorists were counting on
this kind of perversion (heh)...
> Also, (as a strict Freudian) I have to point out that Mulvey plays fast
> and loose with Freud's original writings. As Marian E. Keane points out in
> her essay "A Closer Look at Scopophilia" (On Vertigo -- yes, Andy, I
> like Hitchcock! <g>) Freud explicitly cautions against regarding the
> active/passive dichotomy as being inherently gendered. In fact he says
> that one never finds one side of this dichotomy without finding the other:
> in other words, every sadist is also a masochist, every voyeur also a
> peeping tom.
Well, Freud is pretty cagey on this issue. If you're thinking of his essay
on "Femininity," he DOES say that activity isn't masculine and passivity
isn't feminine. But he also has no idea how to define those terms without
gendering them, so he ends up saying that femininity is characterized by
passive AIMS, rather than passivity full stop. God only knows what a
passive aim is. It seems like a pretty oxymoronic concept. On the other
hand, this is the kind of productive contradiction from which doctoral
dissertations are born...
>
> >The basic point is that the cinematic apparatus works to situate you as a
> >unified subject of vision, and thereby generates effects of truth and a
> >mode of representation which is profoundly (dare I say it?) ideological.
>
> Hmmmmm. I still have a problem with this formulation, in that it leaves out
> that subjectivity that the viewer brings to her experience of film. Being,
> as has been noted, of a psychoanalytic bent, I'm more inclined to believe that
> the viewer herself, in order to preserve the integrity of her subjectivity in
> relation to the larger cultural context, omits certain ways of reading, and
> chooses others. This preserves the role of cinema as a bearer of meaning, but
> doesn't lock one in to any reading which proposes the same meaning for
> all viewers.
Well, I agree that that's a danger. De Lauretis would say, however, that
what constitutes the subjectivity which the viewer brings to the film is
her "semiotic history," ie, the fact that she's seen other films (and
posters, and TV shows and buildings and what have you) in the past, and has
been "engendered" and interpellated by all of them. So, there IS a
subjectivity which pre-exists any given work, and which is (easily) complex
enough that you can't really predict the effect the work will have on the
individual (or vice versa). But it's a mistake (according to De Lauretis
and to me) to see that subjectivity as pre-existing the semiotic process IN
GENERAL, or as being ontologically prior to the subject's engagement with
meaning (and desire). It's this engagement which constitutes the subject
as such.
Spencer Cox
<Andrew_Perry...@cluster-185.cluster.brown.edu>
Andrew...@Brown.edu (Andy Perry) writes:
>I seem to recall a line about needing to find new pleasures
>rather than replacing pleasure with "intellectual unpleasure." I think the
>late 70s wave of feminist film and avant garde theorists were counting on
>this kind of perversion (heh)...
But if, as has been discussed earlier on this thread, fetishistic and sadistic
desires are a function of the *gaze* rather than of the cinematic apparatus,
how would a change from narrative to non-narrative cinema disrupt this
mechanism?
This, it seems to me, has always been one of the primary problems of
Mulvey's cinematic proposals. She's unwilling/unable to handle her
own dialectic between subject and mass culture. Consequently, as happens
below, one always gets bogged down in a discussion of the chicken and the
egg.
>> Hmmmmm. I still have a problem with this formulation, in that it leaves out
>> that subjectivity that the viewer brings to her experience of film. Being,
>> as has been noted, of a psychoanalytic bent, I'm more inclined to believe that
>> the viewer herself, in order to preserve the integrity of her subjectivity in
>> relation to the larger cultural context, omits certain ways of reading, and
>> chooses others. This preserves the role of cinema as a bearer of meaning, but
>> doesn't lock one in to any reading which proposes the same meaning for
>> all viewers.
>Well, I agree that that's a danger. De Lauretis would say, however, that
>what constitutes the subjectivity which the viewer brings to the film is
>her "semiotic history," ie, the fact that she's seen other films (and
>posters, and TV shows and buildings and what have you) in the past, and has
>been "engendered" and interpellated by all of them. So, there IS a
>subjectivity which pre-exists any given work, and which is (easily) complex
>enough that you can't really predict the effect the work will have on the
>individual (or vice versa). But it's a mistake (according to De Lauretis
>and to me) to see that subjectivity as pre-existing the semiotic process IN
>GENERAL, or as being ontologically prior to the subject's engagement with
>meaning (and desire). It's this engagement which constitutes the subject
>as such.
DeLauretis (and you) would, I think, be right. The subject is a subject
*IN LANGUAGE*, and cannot be prior to culture. BUt again, the danger here
is getting caught up in a chicken/egg debate. It seems to me that this is
properly understood as a dialectical process, necessarily structured
around the construction of the subject in language, but thereafter involving
a certain negotiation between the subject and mass culture as a whole.
BTW, in terms of all of these issues about subjectivity and identification,
have you read Dominick Dunne's analyses of the Menendez brothers trials
that Vanity Fair has been publishing? They're now on part three, and
frankly, Dunne's relation to the brothers is *really* creepy. While
raging about their guilt and demanding conviction during the next round,
He's got this weird identification thing going, so that each incident in
*their* lives has to have a matching component in his own -- he even
"comes out" as a survivor of childhood physical abuse. When he talks about
their contention that tacks were pushed into their skin, he immediately
produces a story about pushing tacks into his own butt. Freud would've
had a field day with this...