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Example research essay topic: Point Of View Key Concepts - 1,202 words

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... r, three years later Mulvey accepted that her original account could now be construed as inaccurate and agreed that the gaze could account for both male and female. For example, Brad Pitt in Fight Club is the object of the gaze; he brings satisfaction to the female viewer and male viewers who see themselves as him. From the point of view of psychoanalysis, the female figure is presented in images as a lack of phallus. She represents the castration threat. Although men enjoy looking at the female figure, she also signifies the anxiety of castration.

The male unconscious has different avenues to deal with these anxieties and can re-enact the original trauma of castration, investigating the woman, exploring her body, and demystifying her mystery. This is done through fetishistic scopophilia, meaning that we make of the woman's body something satisfying in itself. The other avenue is by making her the bearer of the guilt (typical of film noir). The gaze that assigns guilt is more like voyeurism because in this case the male asserts his control and subjects the guilty female to punishment or forgiveness.

This is usually associated with sadism, which affects the narrative by demanding control, to make things happen. Through summarising Mulvey's essay I have touched on what I believe to be her key concepts: scopophilia and voyeurism, narcissism, the mirror phrase, the male gaze, the 'lack'. Mulvey's essay also discusses the Oedipal Complex, the imaginary and the symbolic, desire and screen theory all of which are essential theory for feminist film studies. Now I shall discuss some of Mulvey's key concepts in relation to Michael Powell's "Peeping Tom." In films attitudes towards women are clear.

The connection between movies and pleasure in looking, or what Freud called scopophilia is also clear. In movies, this kind of looking ranges widely from innocent enjoyment of women as spectacle to more pathological mechanisms, like voyeurism and its sadistic consequences, where women are violated and / or brutalized. A startling example of this is the influential horror film "Peeping Tom" (1960), by British director Michael Powell, which equates filmmaking with male aggression. The story is a character piece, a fine psychological study of a voyeuristic serial killer who happens to be a cameraman, and his obsession with the girl next door. There is a deep sense of humanity and pathos in the characterisation of Mark Lewis.

Undoubtedly, this subversive approach was a key ingredient in the bitter controversy. Peeping Tom was more about the compulsion of the viewing and filmmaking process than the murders. A dark, hysterical film, Peeping Tom examines the madness resulting from a childhood under extreme surveillance. This theme is central to the film and as examples of Mulvey's essay.

It is Mulvey's essay taken to the extreme. Mulvey's concept of scopophilia is important in this film because it coats every scene with morbid desire. Peeping Tom takes scopophilia to the limits. Voyeurism becomes obsession. In the film the gaze not only penetrates, it kills. Peeping Tom is not voyeuristic in the sense that his victims know their fate, because they don't.

They allow Mark to watch them and enjoy the experience right up to the crucial last minutes. Mark is a soft-spoken murderer, who carries a lethal camera. A metal spike is attached to the tripod leg, mounted alongside a rounded mirror. Marks camera not only records the death of his victims, he confronts them with the reflection of their own ugly panic before death.

Mark returns after each incident to his reclusive quarters to screen and savour the rare moments again. What provokes Mark's obsession is, in fact, the impossibility of capturing the precise point when his beautiful victims are simultaneously dead and aware of it. This impossible moment, which Mark would freeze in time frames, is the virtual moment when consciousness meets oblivion. Within Peeping Tom the look (The Gaze) is central to the plot.

Throughout the film we are faced with scenes of confusion and a child screaming, this is a result of Marks childhood as he remembers it and the horror of always being under surveillance by his father. This is important to the theme because of the repercussions and also ties in with Lacan's account of the mirror stage. Mark was often frightened by his father, faced with hundreds of reflections and images of himself. As a result, Mark as he works watches Helen and most of the film is centred around who Mark is watching. We are given Marks point of view through what Mulvey called 'subjective camera, whereby we see what the hero sees. Helen to Mark is the ideal woman, however, his fascination with women and the prostitutes he kills randomly make the viewer think that Helen is special too because we are presented with Marks point of view.

This looking position causes tension because it makes the viewer feel uneasy, we question what he is doing, when he is spying we are spying with him. We as the audience share his fascination and compulsion to watch the women and in extreme cases watching him kill his helpless victims. We want to know who's going to be next and how he is going to 'get' Helen. Even the intense scene when Helen's blind aunt 'feel's his gaze, and we know as spectators that mark wishes she could see because without her sight she is worth nothing to Mark. The gaze is also relevant in Peeping Tom because Mulvey talks in her essay about the active male being the bringer of action. For example, when he is with Helen, without his phallic symbol, (his camera) he appears normal and kind, if a little uneasy.

However with this object he brings action to the film and is not normal. We can also apply Mulvey's concept of fetishistic scopophilia, described by Freud as, "autoerotic: narcissism, when the object of the look is one's own body - or reflection. " The situation we are placed at in the cinema is exactly the situation that allows for this pleasure to take place. However, this situation is further exemplified within Peeping Tom because we are watching Mark watch the reflection of the women as they die and as he plays back the tapes that he is recorded. He often within the film turns off the lights so we are not only faced with a cinema screen but a screen within a screen and made to feel part of all the wrong. To conclude, Mulvey has generated widespread debate as a result her essay. Her feminist views have highlighted cinema and brought the female character to the forefront of cinema, for all the right reasons! !

Constructed views of gender have changed the way women are viewed in mainstream cinema by challenging traditional film theory and putting a feminist spin on things. A way, which can only be seen as moving forward in today's modern society. BIBLOGRAPHY & REFERENCES 1 Cook, Pam et al. The Cinema Book December 1999 (Feminist Film Theory) Routledge 1992, The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality.

Reference to: Mulvey, Laura 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' Powell, Michael "Peeping Tom" John Schlesinger "Far from the Madding Crowd" Mulvey, Laura website: web


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