This image is important:

As an intersectional feminist who is well aware of the sexual objectification of women in media, Mulvey didn’t have much to say that I haven’t surmised before; nevertheless, it’s always great to see academic work on the subject, and even better to be assigned such a reading, as I’m aware most people are deeply lacking in a feminist education. I truly think courses on feminism should be mandatory at the college level if not high school level. But I digress…

So, in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Laura Mulvey deconstructs the ways in which film thrives on the sexual objectification of women. Clearly drenched in psychoanalytical theory, Mulvey writes that the (cis-)women’s biological “lack” (the absence of a penis) instills fear in males– to be specific, castration anxiety. Men feel threatened by women’s lack of a penis, which symbolizes male power, and subsequently feel fit to degrade and subjugate women due to that perceived threat. It seems to me that by this theory, the root of patriarchy is this castration anxiety, although it’s hard to say who decided that presence as opposed to lack is indicative of power. Perhaps lack (the vagina) is analogous to death, and presence (the penis) is analogous to life. But men aren’t the ones giving birth anyway.

Mulvey asserts that this phenomenon is pervasive in cinema (particularly classic Hollywood films, which I lament as a TCM fan) as well, which isn’t at all surprising as the field is dominated by men. Mulvey came up with three looks in cinema that serve to objectify women in a sexual manner in other to facilitate male pleasure and position the male viewer as the “hero”. The first look is from the perspective of the dominant male in the film looking at the female character who he sexualizes and objectifies (he perceives her as a sexual object because men are always entitled to women’s bodies, naturally). The second look  is from the perspective of the audience, and the third look is a conglomerate of the first and second looks, in which the male audience makes the female character his personal sex object through his voyeurism and absurd self-identification with the male hero in the film.

Basically, none of this is unexpected to me. When I do go to the movies on rare occasion, I go anticipating being offended, although I try to take a step back and analyze what I’m viewing and still allow myself to enjoy the parts of it that aren’t so dehumanizing. Something else I’ve been mulling over is how cinema has changed for women since the classic Hollywood era. Although most women in films from the 20s-50s (and I guess the first half of the 60s counts too?) do match up to what is expected of a woman (that is, traditional femininity), there wasn’t nearly as much graphic sexual content (like why is that even necessary and how does that ever further a plot, please go away with your sad teenage fantasies thank you). Women were implicitly, but not explicitly, sexual objects of male desire. I think it can be argued that in that regard, maybe women had it better in classic Hollywood films, but then again it can also be argued that the sexual liberty of modern and contemporary films promote the idea that women are sexual beings, do like sex, and shouldn’t be ashamed of it.