In Laura Mulvey’s argument titled Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, I focused mainly on her second section, which was titled Pleasure in Looking/ Fascination with the Human Form. In this section Mulvey addressed the voyeuristic nature of the cinematic experience and how it is intended mainly for male audiences. She mentions the fact that the female body becomes more of an object that a human being that is set in front of the audience simply for erotic pleasure. I noticed two repetitions of words in this section that I believe pertain highly to this argument, which aims to promote feminism and the wrongs of cinema toward the female figure. These two words are “scopophilia” and “ego,” which both pertain to the act of looking.
Mulvey describes scopophilia as the act and pleasure in looking. This word is mentioned a total of five times in the first paragraph alone. Although she mentions it in other parts of the second section, I believe her uses of it in the first paragraph are most pertinent. This word, in the case of Mulvey’s argument, is relevant specifically to the cinema and to that pleasure of male viewers and how they perceive the female body in the cinematic experience. In addition she states, “looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as, in the reverse formation, there is pleasure in being looked at,” (p. 1446). In this sentence, looking is paralleled with pleasure, which begs the question, looking at what? It is then that we read further and we realize that the reverse of this pleasure is equally enjoyable when one is being looked at. The reader can assume that the sentence is referring to humans looking at humans presumably through cinema as that is the main premises for the argument. However, it is not the female that enjoys being looked at, but the male viewer that enjoys looking at the objectified female, and it is he in return who enjoys being looked at by the same female “object.” This gaze is not one for admiration, but rather a controlling gaze on the male’s part, and thus is an instinctual link to sexual pleasure and eroticism.
This idea leads me to my next point in which the word “ego” comes into play. “It continues to exist as the erotic basis for pleasure in looking at another person as object. At the extreme, it can become fixated into perversion,” (p.1447). The word ego is repeated a total of four times in the end of the first paragraph and continuing into the second paragraph. As “scopophilia” can be conveyed into sexual pleasure, the word “ego” takes this a step further and explains that this is a basis for which sexual pleasure is oriented. A male viewer needs to feel in control and important while looking in order to be attracted to the cinematic female object. The pleasure of looking at another person in this controlling gaze is the beginnings of narcissism in which the male viewer can become hopelessly engrossed in his object of interest. Mulvey goes as far as to say that this fixation can turn into perversion. The words fixated and perversion are even used close to each other in the sentence, separated only by the word “into.” The word fixated demonstrates the intensity and the need for this visual pleasure, and perversion explains the extent to which this pleasure can contort a male viewer.
The importance of the words “scopophilia” and “ego” help the reader to understand the significance and the extent to which the cinema has become voyeuristic and intended for a male audience. It is a societal problem that we face in which the female is constantly viewed as an object and subdued into an insignificant existence. This is then extended from the cinema into our daily lives.
I see the repetition of “socophilia” and “ego” as less of sub-literal repetition of ideas than the author repeating words she’s already defined because she needs to convey the same precise meaning at multiple points in her argument (the word almost becomes an understood variable).
I definitely get the sense that the idea of viewership, which is espoused by most of the technical terms Mulvey uses throughout, is at the crux of this section as you’re suggesting. To me, the performer/audience relationship connoted by viewership is a really powerless one, in which the people on the screen, even those with which the viewer identifies, are necessarily objectified by the medium. They become things on a screen. I think the inquiry into the fact that film allows people to become guiltless peeping toms is really interesting because it is very creepy when you begin to think about it that way.
Your analysis of the words “ego” and “perversion” beg the question that I asked myself as I was reading Mulvey’s piece – at what point does this obsession with control and power, paired with the idea of possessing the ability to look, turn into perversion? I appreciate the way you closely analyzed the way Mulvey places these words in close proximity to one another, but do you think that is meant to be taken literally, or is it just a description of the words “perversion” and “ego”? I wonder if one could argue that the male gaze always, in a sense, has an essence of perversion to it because they are the one’s who obtain the ability to look at women without their consent?