About… Laura Mulvey was born on the 15 th August 1941 and is known today as a British feminist film theorist. Mulvey was educated at St Hilda’s College, Oxford and is currently working as a professor of film and media at Birbeck University of London. A few years prior to this, she worked at the British Film Institute. Mulvey is best known for her essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema which was written in 1975 but published in 1975 in the influential British film theory journal ‘Screen’. She was influenced mainly by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan and this first major piece of worked massively helped towards the shift of orientation of film theory towards physcoanalytic framework and also brought intersections of film theory, psychoanalysis and feminism. Mulvey states that she aimed to use Freud and Lacan’s concepts as a “political weapon” while also arguing that the cinematic apparatus of Hollywood cinema inevitably put the spectator in a masculine subject position, with the figure of a woman displayed on screen to audiences as the object of desire and the “male gaze”. In the times of classical Hollywood cinema, audiences were encouraged to identify the key protagonist within the film narrative- whom was mainly male and still are overwhelmingly today. Furthermore, Hollywood women in the 50s and 60s were coded with “to-be-looked-at-ness” while the camera positioning and male viewer constituted the “bearer-of-the-look”. Mulvey suggests that 2 distinct modes of the ‘male gaze’: Voyeurism- i.e. seeing women as an object to looked at, ‘pleasured’ and ‘desired’. Fetishist- i.e. seeing women as a substitute for the lack of the underlying psychoanalytic fear of castration.

Phallogocentrism and Patriarchy Phallogocentrism refers to the idea of putting the masculine point of view central which builds on the idea of patriarchies within film narratives, dialogues, plots and stories- both within and beyond sexual contexts. Mulvey suggests that viewing a film involves the unconscious and semi-conscious engaging the typical societal roles of men and women. The 3 different looks as they referred to, explain exactly how films are viewed in relation to phallogocentrism. The first “look” refers to the camera as it records actual events of the film. The second “look” describes the nearly voyeuristic act of the audience as one engages in watching the film itself. The third “look” refers to how the characters interact personally with each-other throughout the film. The main idea that bring these looks together is seen as the active male role while the passive role of being watched is adopted as a female characteristic. It is under the idea of patriarchy that Mulvey argues that females in film are tied to desire and their characters hold an “appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact”. The female actor is never meant to represent a character that directly effects the outcome of a plot or something that keeps the narrative going but is intersected into a film in a way of supporting the male role and “bearing the burden of sexual objectification” that the male cannot carry off.

As a film maker… Mulvey was prominent was an avant-garde filmmaker in the 1970’s and ‘80s. Peter Wollen, her husband, Mulvey co-wrote and co-directed Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons (1974), Riddles of the Sphinx (1977- considered one of their most influential films to be made), AMY! (1980), Crystal Gazing (1982), Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti (1982) and the Bad Sister. In 1991, she made a return to filmmaking with Disgraced Monuments, which she co-directed with Mark Lewis. YouTube Video’s in which help to understand Mulvey’s “Male Gaze” theory: