Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema”
It lauched a new direction for film studies.
Mulvey argued that old classical narrative films are tailored to the male POV, “the Male Gaze.”
Women are represented eithr as passive appoendages of men, or as ideally desirable bodies, larger than lifecultural icon, “stars”
In this dual function, they serve both s an image of castration, which male viewers fear for themselbves, as a fetish to allay the same castration anxiety.
Female spectators face difficulties at the movies. Theynhave no choice but either to assume the male POV(therefore denying their POV as women), or to submit to masochistic identificatin with the femake object/victim.
Mulvey cites 2 of Hitch films of the 195s: Rear Window, Vertigo, as prime examples of the sexist dynamics inheresnt in the genre.
Mulvey saw entertainment as the product and purveyor of an oppressive patriarchal culture.
