By reading the following sources carefully:
- 'L Mulvey - Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' - Text A
- 'J Storey - Cultural Theory and Popular Culture' - Text B
- 'R Dyer - Stars' - Text C
1) What kind of document is it? Who is the author?
2) In summary, what is being discussed/argued? 6 points for the primary article and 3 for each of the others.
3) What is the article in reference to?
- Laura Mulvey, primary document collection of analytical essays. - essay opinion about women in cinema
- Man gaze, Women objectified, traditional roles of women, Heterosexuals, male controls women fantasy, patriarchal, films reproduced as accurately as possible so called natural conditions of human natures.
- Male gazes
- John Storey - Male desires vs castration - secondary summary.
- Psychological theorist - freud
- Gaining pleasure from the sexualisation of women
- Un - biased summary of original text.
- In reference to other 2 texts.
- Richard Dyer - Biased own document/experience.
- Stars and Spectators
- Criticism of Mulvey's work.
- Ways in which males are objectified.
- Analysis of picnic & the ways in which the characters (males) are sexualised.
- Stars profiles.
- Homosexual views.
Triangulation - 300 words/summary
1) What is the relationship between the writers?
- All objectify women/men in a visual sexual way.
- Most about the male gazes and women are sexual desires.
2) Does one text help to highlight information in the primary?
- Yes Text A. Which points? The main argument of how patriarchal is explained through the use of visual images within cinematic screens.
3) Are there any criticises? There are some arguments between the texts due to how men are just as objectified as women. In the media, e.g: cinema, TV etc. What are they? (quotes from texts) How are justified? One counter balances the other texts points. Text C neutralises the other two texts.
In these three texts (A,B,C) triangulate how patriarchy is depicted within society's attitude towards men/women specifically in the media. Text A, called 'Visual Pleasure & Narrative Cinema' by Laura Mulvey which is the Primary document of this main triangulation, within this document demonstrates the function of woman in forming the patriarchal unconscious is two elements. Women stand in patriarchal culture as a sign physical form for the male other, by a women being this symbolic object. This creates an order in which a man can dwell his phantasies and obsessions through expressive command by resplendently them on an image of the women still trapped in her place. There is also an unconscious of a patriarchal society that has constructed in a film format. This is how to battle agains the unconscious structure of the language of the patriarchy. The important problems for the female unconscious which is little bit relevant to the psychoanalytic theory: 'the sexing of the female infant and her relationship to the symbolic, the sexually mature woman as non-mother, maternity outside the signification of the phallus, the vagina. In a cinematic aspects, it has changed over the last decades, as technological advances have changed the economic conditions of cinematic production, in a more capital and democratic. It is now seen in a more unchallenged, mainstream film coded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order.
In the chapter, 'Women as Image, Man as Bearer if of the look. Women are ordered by a sexual imbalance in the world, they are only a pleasure in looking which has been split between an active male and a passive female. Woman have an a traditional exhibitionist role as they are only displayed as a sexual object. This is strengthened by a quote by Budd Boetticher, "What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance.” This is why traditionally, the women is portrayed in two different ways: as an erotic object for the characters within the screen story & as an erotic object for the spectator when the camera moves in various angles. This then shifts tension between between looks on each side of the screen. In the other hand, in a male prospective there is a spilt between spectacle and narrative that support's the man's role as the active one of making the story move on. Films are usually structured with an order of having a man controlling figure, in this case the audience will immediately identify the male being the lead protagonist. Because of this character in the story, he can make things happen and control events better than the subject/spectators. For example, that of the spectator in direct scopophilic contact with the female form displayed for his enjoyment & that of the spectator fascinated with the image of his like set in an illusion of natural space, and through him gaining control and possession of the woman.
In Text B, 'Cultural Theory and Popular Culture' by John Storey which is a secondary summary and it has a chapter about 'Gender & Sexuality'. Since the 1980s, gender has been another source of cultural analysis, with feminism becoming a guiding theoretical process. Storey identifies four different forms of feminism: radical (female oppression is the result of male patriarchy), Marxist (females are oppressed by capitalism), Liberal (males are prejudiced against women and these prejudices are seen in law and other outgrowths of society) and dual-systems (the oppression of women comes as a result of both patriarchy and capitalism); moreover, much of the analysis of popular culture has suggested that men and women have a specific relationship to culture that is different from each other. However, Mulvey's notion of the "male gaze" was nonetheless influential in early feminist cinema studies, contemporary scholars have begun to challenge it. But, Storey points out studies that argue that these magazines still reflect a capitalist/patriarchal view of what womanhood is and what sort of goals a woman should aspire to through the generation of desire. The issue, Storey argues, is that these ideas are built around an idealised "mythical individual woman" that does not have to conform to the same constraints as actual women.
Within Text C, 'Stars' by Richard Dyer which is a biased own document/experience. Which also criticises of Mulvey's work. But focuses on both a females and males being the sexual object and stars/idols are perceived in media. His star theory is the idea that icons and celebrities are manufactured by institutions for financial gain. He believes that stars are constructed to represent 'real people' experiencing real emotions. Stars are manufactured by the music industry to serve a purpose; to make money out of audience, who respond to various elements of a star’s personality by buying records and becoming fans. The theory is spilt into three sections: Audiences and Institutions, Constitutions and Hegemony.
Audience and Institutions - Stars are made for money purposes alone. Increasing the brand identity benefits the institution as they become a household name increasing sales in all of the media platforms they are in.
Therefore, Dyer says that stars are created to an audience so they can relate to them. Stars are made to be consumed and made money from, they are 'personas' not real people. Pop stars often have a persona so people can relate to them, it also helps if they have a USP (unique selling proposition) so an audience can copy off them and creates an ideology based on the stars. As Dyer has quoted "A star is an image not a real person that is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (e.g advertising magazine, films and music etc)". Stars are made and groomed to meet the expectations of an audience, we can link this to Mulvey's theory of the 'male gaze' as being a star comes with expectations and one of these expectations is to be looked at as a desirable person (does not matter if male of female). A star is an image presented to an audience.
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