Women in Hollywood Cinema

In her essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Laura Mulvey examines the convention of the traditional Hollywood narrative film structure and its male-oriented construction. According to Mulvey, these films are intrinsically designed to provide for the viewing pleasure of the male spectator, by virtue of their male "gaze" or "look" upon the female subject. Traditional narrative films are structured this way, with few notable exceptions and regardless of the director's intentions, simply based upon the patriarchal nature of the mise en scne of popular film. The bulk of Mulvey's explication is founded upon the dichotomy between the roles and characteristics of men and women in patriarchal society, and is incisive and defensible. However, where she falters is in her reliance upon an outmoded and arguably flawed theory: the Freudian psychoanalytic theory of the Castration Complex.

This is not to dismiss Mulvey's essay or arguments as themselves unsound. On the contrary, her essay is a call to males and females to reexamine the convention of film spectatorship on the whole, and to cease to view films in an uncritical light. While she concedes that with this heightened consciousness comes a loss of the simple pleasures of film, she argues that it results in a new kind of pleasure, stemming from awareness: awareness of the disingenuous exploitation of both the female form, and of the unconscious desires of the viewer.

While Mulvey's examination of gender in film, and its basis in sexual difference rings true, I take issue with its uncritical acceptance of and reliance upon Freud's Castration Complex. Mulvey cites this theory as the basis for the treatment of women in film. She asserts that women exist in film exclusively to be bearers of symbolic meaning, more generally put, the "gaze." At the basic level, women exist on the screen to provide the male spectator with pleasure: pleasure derived from the recognition of sexual difference from himself, and from identification with the male protagonist as like himself. By identifying with the male protagonist, the male subject both vicariously and directly subjects the female object to his gaze, deriving sadistic pleasure from her subjection to it and from the male protagonist.

Contrary to the pleasure derived from sexual difference and identification, is the unpleasure derived, again, from the knowledge of the female's sexual difference, in that it serves as a reminder of the castration threat. The woman is a human being capable of surviving without and ignoring the significance of the penis, rendering its symbolic power suspect. The anxiety produced from this symbolic castration places women in the dubious culpability of having attempted castration. Logically, they must be punished, an institution of traditional Hollywood film to be observed consistently throughout its history, and manifested in the death, abandonment, or forgiveness of the female.

For instance, Mulvey cites the 1930 film, Morocco. The narrative centers around a disillusioned but well-meaning American, Tom Brown, who joins the French Foreign Legion. In a Moroccan city, he meets a beautiful and talented cabaret singer, Amy Jolly. The two are swiftly entangled in a whirlwind romance, but upon realizing that he cannot offer her the wealthy, comfortable lifestyle of his rival, Monsieur La Bessiere, Tom leaves town, heartbroken. According to the Mulvey and the Freudian model, Tom's failure to win Amy's hand can be equated with a kind of symbolic castration, over and above the castration threat she poses simply by her lack of a penis. As a result, she is stricken with grief at finding that Tom is her true love, and wanders barefoot into the desert after him, likely to her death. Thus, her emasculation of the male protagonist, and her excessive symbolic power are appropriately punished.

However, the logic upon which this analysis of film gendering rests is inherently flawed. Mulvey, among many other contemporary film analysts, integrates Freud's theory into her own unquestioningly. She fails to consider that this theory, like any other, originates from the mind of a man whose opinions and beliefs, however well-researched, should be subject to criticism. Freud's' theory dates to the first decade of the 20th century, a time in which the patriarchal inequalities in society were still more pronounced than today. Women had little to no influence in daily life, much less in intellectual, academic spheres. Lacking a prominent female voice in psychology, the theories of Freud served (and still serve to a large extent) as a widely-accepted, holistic analysis of human behavior.

It seems incongruous that feminist writers such as Mulvey should so openly embrace the reasoning of a man whose theories not only fail to consider the female perspective, but border on the misogynistic. To assert that males, from the time of sexual identification, view the female lack of a penis as a defect, and that females, in turn, envy them for it, is a facile, ham-fisted account of human sexuality. While boys may view their female counterparts as somehow defective early in life, and believe that the latter must have somehow lost their penises, it is logical and universal that they are later informed by their mentor figures that neither gender is "right" or "wrong," merely different, from birth.

Proponents of Freud's theory may argue that, if it is indeed false, then why do so many films, not to mention all of visual media, coincide so perfectly with it? The answer lies not in an underlying and intrinsic distortion of gender consciousness, universal to all people from birth, as Freud asserts. It stems, rather, from the patriarchal structure of our society. For centuries, even millennia, Western civilization has existed in the form of a patriarchy. Males have been deemed stronger than women, and thus more fit to rule. Over the course of civilization, a false dichotomy has formed as a result of this disparity in power. This dichotomy establishes men as defined by one set of characteristics, and women by another. For instance, men are generally considered more pragmatic, logical, and decisive than women. Women are considered more compassionate, gentle, and sensitive. However, the existence of this dichotomy depends on its own cyclical, self-reinforcing nature. Children are raised from birth to fulfill the gender roles laid out for them by the patriarchy. Thus, the gendering process is self-perpetuating.

It is this sharply-defined, self-reinforcing dichotomy between male and female that underlies sexuality, as well as the resultant behaviors that arise from it. The treatment of women as sexual objects and mothers arises from the fact that that has been their standard position in society for as long as there have existed men and women. Aside from the patriarchal upbringing/sexing explanation for film and society's treatment of women, there exists another salient reason: it is genetically encoded in all people by the pattern of human evolution; simply put, the women most capable of attracting mates with their bodies, and the men most motivated to attain mates produced the most offspring. Compounded over millennia, this trend furthered the sexual objectification of women, and led to the patriarchal structure of society.

Thus, film's treatment of women is not the result of a complicated theory of Castration Anxiety; its introduction is an attempt at understanding, but ultimately an unnecessary convolution of the essential nature of human sexuality. Women are subject to the male gaze, and punished when they achieve any semblance of symbolic power simply because that is the way it has always been, and will continue to be as long as society supports the male-oriented system of sexing its offspring.

Upon reevaluating the causes of female objectification, a second interpretation of the film, Morocco, is possible. Tom, being a poor but altruistic member of the French Foreign Legion, is unable to provide the most comfortable, pleasurable existence for his would-be wife. Thus, she doesn't choose him. However, as Hollywood film conforms to the traditional societal view of gender, she must be punished; she attracts men with her intense sexuality, but then rebuffs them. For shrugging the yoke of male authority and refusing to conform to her role as a passive object of the male gaze, she is ultimately returned to her passive state.

Through her incisive examination of the treatment and spectacle of women in film, Laura Mulvey reveals a number of truths regarding the role of female sexuality and male spectatorship. Her discussion of gender difference and the scopophilic gaze serve to awaken readers to their own spectatorship, as well as to force them to reevaluate the traditional Hollywood narrative in a more critical light. While it may weaken itself by relying upon problematic psychoanalytic theory, it is ultimately a valuable and innovative feminist text.