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Mulvey and Latin American Cinema

This does not conclude that these narratives are free from these misogynistic biases, rather that they are just aware of them and reference them to certain degrees. An analysis of these four contemporary Latin American films provides a way to look at the progression of the female presence in cinema.
             Mulvey is initially concerned with people's obsession with narrative cinema. She claims "the mass of mainstream film portray(s) a hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing of their voyeuristic phantasy so that the  osition of the spectators in the cinema is blatantly one of repression of their exhibitionism and projection of the repressed desire on to the performer."1 It is in this isolated world that audiences receive pleasure from observing subjects in this voyeuristic gaze. She uses Lacanian and Freudian theory to explain her castration complex: the idea that men and women have a fear of lacking a penis as a function of our patriarchal society. This leads us to scopophilia and fetishism, making women into objects of pleasure and sexual stimulation through sight, "subjecting them to a controlling and curious voyeuristic gaze."2 From here she establishes the Woman in cinema as the Image and the man as the bearer of the look. A woman is only appreciated for her 'to-be-looked-at-ness' for she has no importance but a sexual eroticism that disrupts the narrative (like a musical number) that has to be worked in seamlessly even though she adds nothing to the film. The female presence subconsciously arouses fear of castration in the viewer, so she must be investigated and punished or saved, or her castration must be disavowed by making her into a fetish object. This gives men in the narrative an enormous amount of power in film and their women are either glamorized or tamed.


Essays Related to Mulvey and Latin American Cinema

1. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by Laura Mulvey

Laura Mulvey's take on the "male gaze" in cinema in her essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" relies on psychoanalytic theory to highlight the role of the patriarchal subconscious of society in films, as well as the threat of castration in the presence of a female character in the midst of a male-dominant storyline. ... Mulvey addresses Freud's theory of scopophilia to supplement her arguments on the mechanism of objectifying the images on the screen. The pleasure that arises from subjecting someone to one's private gaze is utilized and provided by ci...

  • Word Count: 707
  • Approx Pages: 3
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2. Voyeurism In Rear Window And The "Post-War Crisis of Masculinity"

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3. The Male Gaze

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  • Approx Pages: 14
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4. THE GAZE IS OFTEN LINKED TO POWER AND GENDER IN VISUAL CULTU

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5. Ways of Seeing

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6. Pure Cinema

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8. Movies - Women through the Eyes of Men

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9. Latin America

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