Visual Pleasure And Narrative Cinema
I. INTRODUCTION
A. Political Use Of Psychoanalysis
- psychoanalytic theory is used as a political weapon, demonstrating the way the
unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form
Phallocentric Theory
- the sexing of a woman and her relationship to the symbolic
- phallocentrism depends on the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning
Woman
- the function of a woman in forming the patriarchal unconscious is two - fold: she first
symbolizes the castration threat by her absence of a penis and second raises her child into
the symbolic
- woman’s desire is subjected to her image (turns to her child as a signifier of her desire to
possess a penis)
- woman stands as a signifier for the male other, bound by symbolic order
B. Destruction Of Pleasure As A Radical Weapon
Cinema
- cinema raises question about the unconscious mind
- cinema has gone from being monolithic to technologically advanced, changing economic
conditions of cinematic productions
- cinema has always restricted itself to a formal mise - en - scène
Alternative Cinema
- cinema that is radical and in political and aesthetic sense, challenging the traditional
- a reaction against physical obsessions and assumptions
- only exists as a counterpoint
Hollywood Style
- skilled and satisfying manipulation of visual pleasure
Mainstream Film
- coded erotic into the language of dominant patriarchal society
